Across Dorchester Road, in the swamp behind the store selling boiled peanuts, two kids (braids, XL tees and denim shorts) inadvertently celebrate July first by setting off the bottle rockets intended for Tuesday.
"The two forty five bus to Atlanta broke down outside Florence," says the intercom. "It won't be here for another four hours. Don't blame me because it ain't our fault."
The intercom is a single outside speaker broadcasting the station manager's announcement through a foot of concrete to the bench where I sit, next to two older West African women with name tags.
Inside the cooled air of the one room station, a gang of Mexicans joke around and buy each other rounds of cola from the machine in the corner. The stuffed animal claw game periodically bursts into action accompanied by an electronic melody. The computer is broken and the station manager (a fat woman with skin tight jeans and hair extensions)shouts at the five person line, "y'all haf to wait a while." Nobody looks at her.
At the store, the vats of boiled peanuts are a sickly green so I buy the dry ones instead. The woman who is looking after my bag wants a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and the boy in front of me (braids, an XL tee and Air Force Ones) buys onion rings and a stick of beef jerky. He counts out his coins one at a time.
The Arab behind the counter is watching the World Cup on a little TV. His accent is both deep south ebonics and Arab ESL. "Who won the early game" I ask.
"Tie...England and some place, Borto. I don't know what that is."
"Portugal?"
"Yeah, Portugal"
He yells at a guy stacking boxes in the back and smiles as he counts out the change.
2 comments:
You may not have a job yet but with your writing skills you don't have to worry about that, me thinks. The Road Trip is sounding great thus far... :)
So ... when are you coming to Victoria again? This weekend?
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