Last stop for fuel By Jason Jackson

Last stop for fuel.

I ain’t got no camera, ain’t got no picture to show.
   But listen:
   A road, long and straight.
   The mountains that way.
   The city that way.
   And desert both sides.
   Sometimes I look too long one way.
   Look too long the other.
   Nothing good comes from looking, what Ma used to say, and I buried her
here.
   Right here.
   And this day I’m telling about, I’m standing out front looking cityward.
   Most times, all that comes from looking is the heat in the air making
everything wave.
Like God’s shaking the picture.
But the times that the looking brings a car, what I’d do is draw the gas.
   Fill her up, what they say.
   Sometimes they say more.
   Not much.
   Never had to use the gun.
   Pointed it, is all.
   Anyways, this day I’m telling about, there’s a car.
   Long ways off, but I can see it against the the flat grey of the sky.
   And I don’t rightly know why I decide to turn myself around, but that’s
what I do.
   Those mountains hang black in the sky, and it can be hard to see a car
against them, but this day I’m telling about, I see one just the same.  
   So, a car, one way.
   A car, the other.
   They’ll both stop, what I’m thinking.
   And I’m thinking, that’ll be funny.
   Two cars.
   Two fill her ups.
   Ma, she woulda liked it.
   But the closer they get, the more I get the feeling.
   I ain’t gonna be drawing no gas.
   The air is waving like God’s shaking the picture, and I’m feeling
something like the night Ma died.
   Bad thinking, what I used to call it.
   What she used to call it too.
   That night the storm brought down the fence, I knew it.
   The morning Ma got sick, I knew it too.
   The night she died, I knew it, and I told her, but she was too far gone to
hear.
   Anyways, this day I’m telling about.
   Car one way.
   Car the other.
   And I knew they weren’t stopping.
   Leastways, not the usual kinda stopping.
   I started to think, which one?
   Which one gonna swerve into the other?
   And it comes over me, real strong.
   The mountainside one.
   It takes a little time for them to get here.
   But they get here.
   Right in front of me.
   And it turns out I’m right.
   The mountainside car is the swerver.
   Like I say, I ain’t got no camera, ain’t got no picture to show.
   But listen:
   When one car swerves like that right into another, it makes a real mess of
​everything.
   Makes some real kind of a noise, too.
   I think it was the noise what did it.
   Set my feet on the road.
   Cityward, the way I starts walking this day I’m telling about.
   Who knows why these things happen?
   Not me.
   But let me tell you one thing.
   I ain’t never looking back.

Jason Jackson's prize-winning writing has been published extensively online and in print. In 2018 Jason has won the Writers Bureau competition, come second (for the second year running) in the Exeter Short Story competition and had work short-listed at the Leicester Writes competition, the Bath Flash Award and The Frome short story competition. His work has also appeared this year at New Flash Fiction Review, Craft and Fictive Dream. In 2017 he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Jason regularly tweets @jj_fiction and has an occasional blog at http://jjfiction.wordpress.com.

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