Knox Pirates
All gas stations, clinging to the hull
of the interstate like barnacles, flow together
in your head after you’ve seen
ten thousand of them. It’s as though
they’re made to be forgotten—disposable
memories like all the other disposable things
they sell, but somehow, this Conoco
triggers a memory:
an Indian man, graying at the temples, standing
behind the counter; a young man who closely resembled
him, barely older than me, at the register;
one of the other boys and I inside to provide
distraction while the others filled
an RV with gas and dashed.
An anatomy book beside the register, maybe
for the young man to study when he’s not
helping people sent to avert
his attention so that they can
steal from his family.
How many peanuts come in this bag?
Do you sell Vanilla Coke Zero?
Can you show us where we are on this map?
What do you think would happen if someone vaped Red Bull?
Then the realization of what we were doing.
Us sprinting for the door.
The older man yelling
at our backs in heavily accented English,
Never come back, thieves, I’ll call
the authorities. I have your faces on camera.
Him giving chase, awkwardly, slowly;
me hurling a chip rack to the ground
in front of him to trip him up (not that
he was any true threat) and trip him up
it did. He landed hard and cried out.
Me, looking back to see him
get to his feet with the help
of the younger man, his arm hanging
at an unnatural angle.
Us, jumping aboard the moving RV;
high fives and laughter and calls
of bleed the Beast. $233 worth of free gas.
Pirates, baby. Pirates.
I remember the voice
of the man—it echoed in my ears—
and it wasn’t the voice
of a Beast. It was the voice of someone
who left his home to travel
far away and root himself in American soil
and try to grow toward the sun through
honest work and raise a boy
to become a healer.
What was $233 to Conoco? I thought to reassure
myself. But the note of desperation
in the man’s tone told me
that it wasn’t Conoco who would be bearing
this loss, and even without that, I knew
that it wasn’t the way of the world
for the powerful to absorb the losses
they could so easily afford without shifting
them to those who lived on the knife’s edge.
I couldn’t look that man
in the face again. I couldn’t risk him
recognizing me and calling me by the name
I’d earned—Thief—in front of Sylvie.
I couldn’t be in his presence
knowing the pain I caused
his spirit and body, my own broken arm
the karmic badge of my dishonor,
just like the psychic said.
Shame pricks at me like
thorns, drawing stripes
of blood on my skin, like
someone who ran through
the woods too fast, without a care
as to who he hurt.
I burn the location
of the gas station into my memory
like a convict’s brand. One day
soon that man will receive
an envelope in the mail
containing $233 in cash
and a note, which will read:
I’m sorry. I wronged you
in another life. I hope
your arm healed true. Please
forgive me.