FLIPKA

Chapter One

He held a yellowed phone in one hand and a lit cigarette posed about four inches from his mouth in the other.

"Yup, that's right," he coughed, pent up cigarette smoke escaping through every orifice north of his neck. "You got it. Ok, well then. Ok. If that's all you want, I got a customer, capeesh?" He slammed the receiver down. "Damn  government."   

His was as strange a place as I'd ever walked into in rural Nevada, and that's saying a bunch. There were only a few rows of wooden shelves, half full of packaged, canned, and bottled food - nothing fresh. In the corner several cats, frozen in various states of ire by a taxidermist, posed under a dead Christmas tree hung upside down from the rafters. The cats were clearly marked "not for sale" lest any of the many travelers drawn to his place way out in the middle of nowhere had a hankering for a stuffed cat. Luckily there was at least one refrigerated unit behind the cash register. It had been a long ride up from Vegas and I knew that where I was going the food would be institutional, unseasoned, and probably powdered-the only drinks apple juice and weak coffee sweetened with saccharin. I needed a junk food infusion to keep me going for what I hoped would only be a few days of  culinary hell. 

"I'm sorry, Ma'am," he coughed. "What'll it be?"

"I'll take a cold Pepsi and these Cheetos." I informed him, plopping a large bag of Cheetos on the Formica counter.

He gave me a once-over and pulled a can of Diet Pepsi from the refrigerated unit.

"I want the regular Pepsi! I might need to lose a few pounds but that diet stuff's full  of chemicals!"

He looked at me as if to say your funeral, lady, and grabbed a regular Pepsi, "You  come in that Nova?" he asked.

I squelched the urge to point out that mine was the only car in front of his store.  

"Yup. Say, where am I?"

"Pile of junk those Novas."

"It's a rental. I didn't have much of a choice."

 "Wouldn't catch me in one of them piles of junk."

"Oh yeah. Well I wasn't thinking of offering you a ride, so don't worry. Now, could you kindly tell me where am I?"

"This here'd be the turn off to Steptoe," he replied. "Steptoe, Nevada, Planet Earth.  

You know we get a lot of Martians out here. You wouldn't be one of them, would you?"

I chuckled, mostly out of politeness. It was an old and very tired joke in that part of the world. "I'm looking for the turnoff to Fort Palmer. It's supposed to be around here somewhere. You wouldn't happen to . . ."

"Visiting somebody?"

 "Yeah, you could say that."

 "First road past the cattle guard. You can't miss it. There's a sign." 

The phone rang again.

"Got kids?" he asked, as the phone rang unanswered. 

"Nope," I replied, "I'm a . . ." Ring, ring, ring. The ringing was like fingernails against blackboard. "Hey, aren't you going to answer that phone?" 

He picked up the phone and set it down speaker side up on the counter to squawk at  us.   "Nope, I ain't. That'll be two-fifty, Ma'am," he replied, looking me in the eye as if to say mind your damn business. His eyes were so clouded over that the doctor in me wanted to tell him he could get help for cataracts, but I was sure that would be none of my damn business too. So I just handed him exact change and left.