Quicksilver(43)

“You do not seem to be a young man who is in doubt about his gender,” Ching said as he passed the keys to me. “I hope I may meet the lady traveling with you. She must be very interesting.”

By that point, I should have known that it was going to be a day of Ching with more twists than the woven chains of dried red peppers that were for sale in his store.

Outside, where Winston had drunk a bowl of water and was busy peeing in the dead grass beyond the parking lot, I gave one key to Bridget and one to Sparky. “All right. I told Mr. Ching that my name is Bart Simpson, so be careful not to call me Quinn or anything.”

“Bart Simpson?” Sparky said, favoring me with a look of pained incredulity.

“It was the first thing that came to my mind.”

“There’s actually a Mr. Ching?” Bridget asked. “I assumed that must be some Native American word meaning the end of nowhere.”

“Mr. Ching thinks you must be very interesting.”

“Why would he think that?”

“I made quite an impression on him.”

Sparky snorted and gave me the key to the Explorer and headed toward the men’s room.

“One more thing,” I said. They turned to me. “He thinks we’ve been over in Winkelville looking at property to purchase.”

“There’s actually a Winkelville?” Bridget asked.

“It’s about four miles from here, two miles east of Sulphur Flats and three miles south of Vulture’s Roost.”

“If they ever want to build an Arizona Disneyland,” she said, “it won’t be in this part of the state.”

After telling Winston to sit and stay, I drove the Explorer to pump number one. I cranked the numbers from the previous sale off the meter, filled the tank, and parked again in front of the store.

In the men’s room, Sparky had finished his business and was studying his face in the mirror.

I said, “Handsome fella, huh?”

“How’d I ever get to be so old?”

“You didn’t die.”

“I’m working on it,” he said, stepping outside.

I at once regretted being flippant when I remembered Bridget’s prediction that not all of us would survive what might lie ahead.

A few minutes later, refreshed, I found my three companions waiting for me in the shade of the scalloped green awning near the entrance to the store. Snakes of heat were writhing up from the blacktop highway.

“We’re starving,” Sparky said, “and the sign on the roof says fresh sandwiches.”

“It also says that well-behaved dogs are welcome,” Bridget said. “I’m thinking they might sell dog stuff. We need a leash.”

Just then a grizzled character exited the store with a purchase in each hand—a box of shotgun shells and a fifth of bourbon. Wild tangles of white hair flared out from under his cowboy hat, and the length of his beard suggested that he might once have been a member of that old rock group, ZZ Top. He looked as if he’d had a part in every Western movie ever made. As he passed us, he glanced at me and said, “Tell Homer and Marge they done a nice job with you,” and proceeded to the faded-blue pickup truck with the I SHOOT TAILGATERS bumper sticker.

Inside, Mr. Ching had concluded resupplying the candy rack and was engaged with small bags of salty snacks. I introduced Bridget as Vanessa and Sparky as her uncle Vernon, and I sounded pretty slick if I do say so myself. For a long moment, Mr. Ching stared at her with astonishment, and then regarded me for two seconds, and then looked at her again as he said, “Only in America. Excuse my saying so, Vanessa, but you do not look like Winkelville.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “but I much prefer it to Vulture’s Roost.”

Ching Station did indeed cater to dog owners no less than to grumpy, grizzled old coots who needed ammo and liquor. We selected a nice red collar and leash, a can of tennis balls, and a white lamb squeaky toy for Winston, as well as a packet of teeth-cleaning chews and a case of gourmet dog food.

A pretty teenage girl worked the small deli section that offered three homemade soups, potato salad, macaroni salad, cakes, cookies, and sandwiches. She said her name was Taylor Ching, that the sandwiches were made fresh every morning and stored in a cooler, that they sold out every day by two o’clock, and that she thought my sister, Lisa, deserved better treatment than she got from me.

If I’d just used a name from The Family Guy, no one would have known, and the Chings wouldn’t have had so much fun at my expense.

Sparky paid for everything with drug-gang money, and Mr. Ching said he hoped to see us again, once we’d moved to Winkelville and took up life along the Little Snake River.

We sat in the Explorer, with the air conditioner blasting, to eat our submarine sandwiches—Italian cold cuts for Bridget and me, chicken for Sparky—and wash them down with cold bottles of flavored water.

As we ate, we brainstormed ways to find one of the three men who had rescued me back in the day. We could drive thirty miles to the Indian casino where Caesar Melchizadek had been a blackjack pit boss and see if he still worked there. We could check out the wind farm where Bailie Belshazzer had repaired the expensive equipment that suffered regular, grievous damage from the thousands of birds that threw themselves so recklessly into the giant, chopping blades. We could go to the county office of the power company to learn if Hakeem Kaspar was still living out the Glen Campbell song.