Fiction

Lucas Fortune
by Bryan Clark

The gray dawn was indistinguishable from the vague, hazeless air of the entire previous afternoon. Lucas swerved strangely into an enormous parking space in front of a convenience store, spilling his lukewarm coffee onto the sleeve of his cheap white oxford shirt. He didn't even bother to swear out loud, since the accident seemed a necessary prelude to the miserable daylong drive which lay ahead. The seatbelt choked his shoulder as he crawled out of his dirty but ever-dependable station wagon. No one at all watched him stride across the harsh concrete and through the heavy glass doors. But then again, perhaps there were several unseen onlookers.
The newsstand was freshly stocked, as though the early morning delivery boys had driven out of the parking lot just moments before. The stylish broadsheets beckoned, yet repelled, and Lucas reached stupidly for the tabloid with the most garish colors on its cover. He barely considered replacing his home-brewed coffee with an (ostensibly) fresh cup, not because of the probable quality (Lucas was, in fact, a connoisseur of bad coffee) but because he had always been strangely fearful of the "serve-yourself" region of the glaring store. The smirking boy behind the counter obviously sensed his fear, and might have even cast a mocking glance toward the coffee pots as Lucas presented his randomly-selected tabloid for payment.
The dawn had not improved in any way as Lucas swung awkwardly back into his car. His seat belt was the only sound, and the front of the convenience store the only sight. A ridiculous sign, taped to the inside of the plate glass window, offered three packs of cigarettes for only $2.15 per pack. Lucas calculated, out loud, that the offer was obviously at a total cost of $6.45, and then he released the handbrake, allowing his car to drift slowly back out of the deceptively protective space.
The tabloid was meant to be his breakfast reading material, and Lucas clutched it self-consciously as he waited to be seated in a bizarre, sprawling, all-night family restaurant. There were no families in evidence among the smoking, belching, early-morning trucker community. Lucas was barely conscious of being seated, and suddenly found himself being offered a "Bottomless Cup of Coffee" by a mousy, open-faced waitress. She could have been his evil aunt, or she could have been his lover. Or, he thought, she could have simply been his waitress. The coffee was poured almost instantaneously, and Lucas was ordering a hearty breakfast of two eggs and two pancakes, without even realizing that this was what he wanted to eat. As his menu was taken from him, he found that he was ready to focus on the warm, frightened face of his harried waitress. She had already captured the corner of the eye of his imagination, even in his unseeing early-morning sleep trance. The more coffee he ingested, the more clear this woman's tragic condition became. As she sheepishly placed his egg-and-pancake breakfast on the table and poured his second refill of coffee (although he had been totally unaware of the first), he stared deep into her simpering smile and read stories of loneliness and loss, from the solitary drives home after working the graveyard shift, to the depressing t.v. dinners posing as breakfast, to the tidy double bed with never anybody on the other side. It seemed that she never really left the table, returning again and again to make sure that all of Lucas's breakfast needs were fulfilled. He was effusive in his gratitude, hoping that he was fulfilling her wretched needs as thoroughly as she was fulfilling his. She looked like no one in particular, with an ordinary face which was memorably unmemorable, so perhaps it was her shakingly submissive voice which etched her image permanently into the memory of the beginning of Lucas's dreaded day. He deliberately left her a tip equivalent to fifty percent of the bill, and hurriedly exited, clutching his unread tabloid, pretending that he had not seen, out of the corner of his eye, her bewildered gratitude as she saw the excessive gratuity decorating the ugly tabletop. But Lucas still imagined her straining to watch his departure through the filthy front window of the restaurant, as his car rolled backwards into the first leg of his inevitable daylong journey.
The road, endless, wide, and straight, then wide and curving, sprawling, never stopping, carried Lucas lonely over streams, ice sheets, lizards, deer parts, townships, state lines, dialects. Like a country singer in the mind's eye of a dreamy tune, then like an imitation Elvis hero in a pop video from a David Lynch film, Lucas blurred ahead, not yearning at all, to his misunderstood horizon, a destination and a non-entity.
Radio stations came and went, but always the preset buttons offered a consistent supply of distraction from the hypnotic drone of white streaks on the newly-repaved interstate. The music, and the d.j.'s voices, grew steadily older as Lucas plunged deeper into the heart of the country. The continent, even, he mused.
"Electric Lunch," "Classic Cafeteria," "Rock 'n' Roll Diner" — old favorites consumed the airwaves as the noon hour approached. Although he expected to hear the dated tunes of his carefree youth, Lucas could have sworn that these songs he was hearing had been released since he had become an adult. Alarmed, he tried to fathom the notion that his own adult life encompassed both this generation and the previous one. The more difficult quandary, however, was deciding what he meant by his own adulthood, assuming he actually had acquired one.
Interview shows dominated the early afternoon, a soporific tag to Lucas's lunchless lunch hour. The gray slate of the morning had long ago brightened, and finally cleared off, without any notice from Lucas. He only became aware of the late afternoon sky as it turned into the ominous irony of tornado country. Lucas looked down at the road in fear, noticing that it was indeed as flat as in the movies. A horizon suddenly loomed ahead through the windshield, appallingly clear and loudly whispering its urgent invitation. The current radio offering was a phone-in Bible-thumping question-and-answer session. "Sir, do you really mean to tell our God-fearing Jesus-loving radio audience this fine day that our Lord instructed you to perpetrate such a bizarre and misguided act of depravity on your own loyal household pet?" The horizon was rotating quietly as the dusk began to sprinkle itself onto the hood of Lucas's car. "Hey, I'm telling you, man, you don't know what God says to me, O.K., I mean you just don't know, I mean, I respect your position as a respected preacher and man of the Lord and everything but I just have to tell you that you don't know the intimate details of my conversations with the Lord, conversations about sin and desire, and my own dog." Lucas understood his present destination as surely as the puzzled caller understood his own divine instruction, and the horizon in the rear-view lost all sense of finality as Lucas aimed his station wagon toward the familiar darkened entity yawning before him.
The heartland was invitingly dark as Lucas rolled into town. His watch had stopped at seven, and the dashboard LED had begun flashing "12:00" at the stroke of midnight. Lacking a timepiece for at least two hours, Lucas swerved abruptly into the familiar convenience store parking lot, intending to demand the time of the clerk. The seatbelt coffee crunched between his fingers as he extracted himself from his dirty but ever-dependable station wagon. No one at all watched him slink across the harsh concrete and through the heavy glass doors.
The newspaper rack was completely empty, to Lucas's dismay, but then he remembered the unread tabloid which lay on his passenger seat. He moved on to the candy bar aisle, the dairy case, the soda section. The boy behind the counter smirked as Lucas shied away from the ever-intimidating serve-yourself region. It was the same boy, twenty hours later, and Lucas wondered if the wretch had been there straight through the day. But he did not ask the boy if he had gone home, or even ask him the time. Lucas left the store with neither a purchase nor a new piece of information.
The passenger-seat tabloid would be his breakfast reading material, and Lucas clutched it absently as he waited to be seated in the bizarre, sprawling, all-night family restaurant. As usual, there were no families in evidence among the smoking, belching, early-morning trucker community. Lucas, tired of waiting to be seated by one of the gossiping klatch of corner-booth smokers, sat down at the counter and stared deep into the coffee machine.
Suddenly his eye was pulled back toward the gossiping corner as his mousy waitress from the previous morning stood and shuffled, smiling, into the kitchen. Lucas caught the briefest glimpse of her face as she backed through the swinging door, and the sound of her simpering voice flooded back into his ears. He stifled a sudden wave of jealousy which drove him to wonder if she had spent a nocturnal afternoon with the smirking clerk at the nearby convenience store, but all suspicions were erased as she suddenly emerged from the kitchen and shuffled rapidly towards the coffee-maker in front of him. His coffee was poured almost instantaneously, and Lucas was ordering a hearty breakfast of two eggs and two pancakes, without even realizing that this was what he wanted to eat.
She had recaptured the corner of the eye of his imagination, even in his unseeing early-morning-late-night sleep trance. The breakfast was before him, and as she sheepishly placed his egg-and-pancake breakfast on the table and poured his second refill of coffee (although he had been totally unaware of the first), he stared deep into her simpering smile and read familiar stories of loneliness and loss, from the solitary drives home after working the graveyard shift, to the depressing t.v. dinners posing as breakfast, to the tidy double bed with never anybody on the other side, not even the mocking convenience store boy. It seemed that she never really left the table, returning again and again to make sure that all of Lucas's breakfast needs were fulfilled. He was effusive in his gratitude, hoping that he was fulfilling her wretched needs as thoroughly as she was fulfilling his. She looked like no one in particular, with an ordinary face which was memorably unmemorable. It was her shakingly submissive voice which had etched her image permanently into the memory of the beginning of Lucas's dreaded day.
Just as Lucas began to pour the syrup onto his third and final pancake, he looked up at the corner booth in time to see this mouselike creature light up a Salem. He was shocked by this unexpected dismantling of her pristine image, but then he dropped his fork with a clatter to the table as an enormous waitress stuffed herself into the smoking-booth, lit a Virginia Slim, and asked Lucas's love where she was going on her honeymoon.
"We're going to Hawaii," his own waitress replied.
Lucas, smiling uncontrollably, staggered to the register for payment. The mousy bride-to-be glanced, bored, in his direction, blowing smoke through her nose, and her huge co-worker extracted herself from the booth and lumbered to the register to receive Lucas's $7.14. He returned to the counter, placed three dollars underneath of his unread tabloid, and, as his fallen waitress descended on the place with bus-tub in hand, he exited, pretending that he had not seen, out of the corner of his eye, her bewildered gratitude as she saw the excessive gratuity decorating the ugly countertop. But Lucas still imagined her straining to watch his departure through the filthy front window of the restaurant. He was numb, yet he was alive, and most of all he felt strangely relieved to be home.