The Girl at the Filling Station

by BEN HUR LAMPMAN

1

WHEN than her the filling father station, died and a few left debts, her no — more not too many, — and the three cottages, the simplest thing to do, seemed like, was to stay there and keep right on selling gas and oil, checking air, and washing windshields. For Rosy the fat girl, as folks called her, was all alone, and running the filling station was the only work that she knew. She lived in one of the cottages and was lonely for FP, — perhaps a little lonelier than she had been when he was there, — and the other two cottages were rented overnight once in a while. It wasn’t a good place for a filling station, but such as it was, there was a lean living in it. And Rosy had lived there as long as she could remember.

To all appearances Rosy was contented with her life at the filling station, but fatness often is mistaken for placidity, and how were any of the customers to know that in her heart Rosy was slender and lovely, and a far, glad traveler? Not that she was without loveliness, were one to look twice — for the filling-station girl’s eyes were gray as mist on a frog pond, and her round cheek had the ineffable bloom which sometimes is given to the cheeks of fat girls. Indeed, had one looked twice one must have agreed that her mother had named her well, but nobody ever looked twice at Rosy in her greasy brown jumper, with her blonde bob every which way.

“How much will it take?”

“Fill her up.”

“Check the oil?”

“No.”

There wasn’t anybody who looked twice at Rosy, except to observe that she plumped out her brown jumper quite ludicrously. How were they to guess that Rosy had been to Palm Beach — in her heart — and that she was lovely — in her heart again?

Florida. Maine. California. New Hampshire. Wyoming. Virginia. North Carolina. South Carolina. Tennessee. Quite all of the stales on the license plates — and sometimes a foreign country, like Canada. In summer there were almost as many out-of-state license plates as there were those of her own state. The cars swung or lurched out onto the pavement again and were away on their travels. And Rosy had never been out of the county. A fat girl in a brown, greasy jumper, with a blonde, tousled bob, standing there looking off down the road. In a little while another car would drive in. It might be from Texas — from Texas down on the Rio Grande.

“How many, mister?”

The gravel spurted again and the car from Texas was gone.

More dearly than ever you have watched the wild geese passing over, Rosy watched the cars going by. More than ever you have wondered what might be beyond the blue hills, Rosy wondered to what manner of places the strange cars were bound — for she was going on twenty-three, and dieting didn’t seem ever to help, and she hadn’t been out of the county in her whole life. Rosy tended the wants of the road, and the road went away she didn’t know whither, and there were times when behind the roseate mask of her so-rounded cheeks and the still, pond-gray eyes of her, beneath the tousled blonde bob, the real Rosy felt as though she just couldn’t stand it a single day longer.

It was three years since Rosy’s father had taken the cold that went into pneumonia — and Rosy was yet at the filling station, and still she hadn’t been out of the county. Sometimes of nights when she had closed the station and gone to bed in the third cottage, where she always had lived, fat Rosy cried on her pillow until she was dreaming. There wasn’t anybody there to see her, but when Rosy was dreaming she smiled, and the long-lashed, full face on the pillow, with the red parted lips and the dream on it, would have been rather lovely to see. At five in the morning the alarm clock roused Rosy, and she made coffee. The first of the millhands would be out there honking for gas. For Rosy, who hadn’t been out of the county, not in her whole life.

2

TOWARD twilight one day, and the day hadn’t seemed any different, the rattletrap car from Texas drew up, and she filled its tank. The car’s driver was about Rosy’s age, and lean and leathern as she was plump and roseate, and brown as she was fair. Rosy filled the old car’s tank, and counted the change into his hand, and he might have gone on into town, where there was a real auto camp, if he hadn’t happened to look twice at Rosy. And nobody ever had done that before, at least not in that way. But he saw that her mother had named her well, and he marked the mist-gray of her eyes, the softness of her blown blonde bob, and he fell to whistling softly as he jingled the change in his hand.

“You say you got a cottage for rent for the night?” he asked her.

“I never said that I had,” answered Rosy, “but I’ve got one.”

He paid the cash in advance.

That night, when Rosy had closed the filling station and padlocked the pump, the two of them walked together as far as the river bridge. There was a full moon and the moon swam on the water. Nobody ever had walked with Rosy to the river bridge, not ever before. She didn’t know whether to let him hold her plump hand or to refuse it — but they walked back swinging hands under the moon, and in spite of her work at the filling station Rosy’s hand was nigh as soft as a child’s. He didn’t try to kiss her when they said good night, but Rosy didn’t really expect him to. She might be a slender, gay girl in her heart-ah, she knew that she was — but he couldn’t know it. Well, mister, Rosy was wrong about that.

She rapped on the door of his cottage when she got up at five the next morning, for he had told her he wanted to make an early start, and they had coffee together. He got into his rickety old car and started the motor — and fat Rosy stood there with one foot on the running board, hungrily looking her last at him, the only one of them all that ever had looked twice. And this young fellow from Texas, he saw the soft gray of her eyes again, and their eyes caught and held — and two round fat tears welled warmly from Rosy’s mist-gray eyes and rolled slowly down her fat checks.

“Rosy!” he said.

“What?” gulped Rosy.

“Rosy,” he said, “climb in!”

Rosy gasped as she realized what he had said, but she knew her moment. “Wh-wh-where are we going?” stammered she.

“We’re a-going to Texas,” he said, “that’s where we’re a-going!”

Mister, the fat girl of the filling station, this Rosy, she was pretty as a rose.

How they managed it doesn’t matter a great deal — she just about gave the filling station away, as she would have, but they went to Texas all right. To Texas and heaven knows where else. For sometimes it is that way with them — you have to look at them twice.