Working the evening shift at a highway gas station is exactly what it's cut out to be.

It's all cleaning bathrooms, selling cigarettes, and making sure nobody drives off with the gas and

us still in the tank.

But most of all, it's a lot of small talk.

I remember when Todd, the manager, interviewed me for the job, He never asked me anything. We just talked about sports, his wife's

cooking and Hunter S. Thompson. I thought the interview was a bit odd at the time, but looking back he was just vetting

my small talk skills.

But as much as like shooting the breeze, my favorite time of the day is when the customers

start dying off, which is around six on a weekday

and eight on a weekend.

That's when you get to kick back, listen to the radio, pick up a book, and if you're bored, chew over anything interesting you might

have heard from one of the customers that day.

The gas station is located right at a fork in the highway. If you keep going straight, you're going on a new highway, the 301.

If you look right, then you're on the old one, the 93, which takes you through Windermore.

Taking the 93 at an extra 40 minutes of travel time,

so nobody but the people who live in Old Windomore take it.

You might think that most of my customers are people passing by in the 301, but it's actually

locals returning from work from out of town.

Since the new highway was constructed, most people work out of town.

One of these locals is a guy named Red who comes to the station with his semi truck every second day.

He talks a lot without asking me much, which is my favourite type of folk.

But one day I noticed he was acting different, quieter. This went on for a couple of weeks until I decided to fish for a reason.

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