The Locket

Genre: General
Word Count: 1640

You meet a lot of strange people when you work the night shift out in a gas station just outside of town. It’s an experience, I’ll tell you, and one I’ll probably never forget.

It’s a rare feeling to look out the recently cleaned windows and spot those two glaring lights turning in for a stop at two in the morning. If anyone’s out at all, they aren’t stopping their car unless they really need to.

It’s a slow job, I’ll say, and most nights, after I’ve finished cleaning and rearranging the displays, after I’ve given up trying to get the ‘four’ in the ‘Open Twenty-Four Hours” sign to work, after I’ve counted and recounted the money in the old register, when there’s just about nothing else to do, I’d sit back in the plastic lawn chair I found out back and count the cars that went by.

It was a waiting game, one of those things that just tests your patience. You’d be just about ready to give up, just about ready to go back through and count the cash again when there’d be the faint glow in the distance, slowly coming closer, slowly getting brighter until those glowing eyes pass by, beams pooling ahead like some sort of crazy cones of light.

Sometimes, I’d guess how long it’d be before the next one passed. Some nights, it’d be half-an-hour. Others, two or three. If I was really bored, I’d keep track of my score, trying to figure how much I was off by every time those headlights came in the distance and the soft purr of the engine brushed by.

And then, of course, there was the occasional stopper, someone who was just so low on gas that they didn’t think they could make it over to the next city, to somewhere where there were actually other people, to some other station with their polished, automatically-opening, sliding doors and their bright signs screaming out the latest prices and bargains. Buy one get one free. Twenty percent off a new bottle of antifreeze. Twenty-four ounce fountain drinks for only a buck.

There was nothing like that here, just a bored night-worker and a small convenience store filled with the various trinkets and curios that had piled up over the years.

An authentic baseball hit by the Great Bambino over in the last game he played. A broken guitar string from some artist I’ve never heard about before I took the job. Some holographic trading card apparently worth thousands of dollars. But most special, to me at least, was this small chain of linked golden rings—not even the whole necklace, just a bit of it.

It had joined the stack of stuff at the shop only about six months ago, when he had said that he would return in about half a year. I took the fragile-looking chain and closed my hand tightly around it so I could feel those little golden rings pressing into the inside of my hand. I tried to remember that man’s face, his tired eyes, the wild, untamed wilderness of his hair.

I’ll be back, he had said.

When I had asked when, he only shrugged his shoulders, adjusted his scraggly jacket and reached out to stroke the chain he had just put onto the freakishly clean counter. Three months, two years, it makes no difference to me. He grasped the chain and let a thoughtful look slide onto his face. It came gently, as if it had been pushing all along and the man had only just given in. ‘Bout six months, I suppose. Look for me in about six months.

“You’ll be coming from the West again?”

The thoughtful look disappeared and his eyes returned to that smooth, glassy dullness. Finally, his shoulders rose, and then lowered. He let go of the chain and let it slide gently through his rugged hands onto the counter, like a quaint, golden waterfall over the beaten rocks. The West, the East, it doesn’t matter. When you don’t care where you’re going, any road will get you there.

I didn’t understand completely, but I took his chain and slipped it into a drawer, keeping it as he had asked. No doubt I thought he was just a bit odd then—most who stopped to talk were. I probably figured I’d never see him again.

Man, was I surprised when that letter came two weeks ago. Only five simple words, but they stopped my heart for a moment. Do you still have it?

Five simple words. No return address. There was nothing to do but wait.

I opened my hand and stared curiously at the nice little imprints the rings had left. For some reason, they seemed to beckon, almost as if there was some kind of hidden message to be found in those little grooves.

I looked up, and there, almost as if it had been planned, there was that tell-tale glow on the horizon, a small ghostly form, almost, stretching out and out until it became obvious that there was something coming.

The lights slowed, and then almost passed completely by, but not quite. The dark shape behind the lights made a turn into the lot, and I had a feeling that it was him.

A tall, thick form stepped out of the vehicle, and I left the chain on the counter and stopped out the door, going to offer whoever it was my help, just doing my job. He stepped into the dim light coming from the single bulb by the pump and my suspicions were confirmed. He was almost unrecognizable in the near-complete darkness.

I stopped walking, not wanting to move too far from the comforting oasis of light I had left behind me.

He looked up and saw me, and for the first time, his face was more exposed to the light. His beard had gotten slightly longer, and perhaps his hair as well, although I couldn’t really tell his dark, nearly black strands from the darkness around.

“You still have it?” the voice was surprisingly hoarse, almost guttural.

I started nodding before I realized how hard it would be for him to see my movements. I was about to say something, but he seemed to have gotten the message.

He took a step towards the small store. “’Kin you get it out?”

“Alright,” and I turned and made my way back towards the door I had just stepped through barely a minute before. I heard the door of the car slam behind me and then the sound of his heavy boots on the gravel.

He stepped into the store right behind me and homed in on the short length of chain on the counter right away. He looked as if he was about to say something, but only a sort of gulping noise came out of his mouth. He walked up to the counter and I followed him, wondering what he was doing here a second time.

In one quick movement, he had reached into one of the folds of his jacket and produced a small pendant hanging from some of an identical chain. The rings at the ends were popped open.

He dropped it next to the chain on the counter.

He was blocking my view of the two pieces now, and I could only make out a short length of part of the broken necklace. There was a glint of gold in the bare light as, for a moment, he lifted both together before him. A heart-shaped locket hung open along the chain—I thought there was a picture in it for a moment, but he had moved it too quickly for me to judge for sure.

“You found the rest,” I said, breaking the silence. The words seem to hang awkwardly in the air.

“I’ve always had the other part,” he said heavily, setting the now-completed necklace back onto the counter. I heard the soft clink of metal hitting porcelain.
He sighed heavily. “I had hoped it could be fixed but…” his voice died off into some sort of croak.

In one swift movement, he produced a hammer from somewhere and smashed it down onto the counter.

I stood, frozen, as the last waves of the blow faded away.

He slid the tool back into a loop in his pants, where it must have been hanging before. He turned slowly towards me, all of a sudden seeming completely exhausted. “Thank you,” he said tiredly. He stumbled past me to the door.

The remains of the necklace were still left on the counter. Most of the links were still intact, but the locket had been completely pulverized, the precious gold pressed into a heart-shaped foil on the counter. There was a barely visible rectangle raised slightly in the center, just about the size of a small picture.

Outside, a car started. With a cautious finger, I brushed the top of the flattened gold, feeling the barely perceptible bump as my finger passed over where a picture must have been entombed. It was a disquieting feeling, one that sent some sensations through my spine, not a chill, but more like a feeling of clearance, a feeling of completion.

Finally, I thought I understood the words he had told me half a year ago. Finally, I understood the reason the man had been driving so late at night in the middle of nowhere.

I lifted my finger from the gold, lifted my finger from the final monument to the now-destroyed love that must have brought the chain here in the first place.

I have loved, and I have lost, the words stared back at me from the small scrap of paper left on the counter.

It was a melancholy hand that finally threw the crumpled note into the wastebasket.

Written: Before 12/17/2007