At twenty-seven, I found myself living a dead end life, working a dead end job in a filling station my mother owned. While the work was next to nothing, my idea of finding a good man was not made any brighter by the fact that the store set on an old road, once used for a lot of interstate traffic until the four-lane went in. Most of the customers were the rough and tumble, good old boy types, fun to party with but, most certainly, nothing I would ever settle down with.
One night my mother, Betty, came home laughing about some guy from the north, Michigan I think, who always told her he was having an "adequate" day. That man always has a smile on his face and, oh, Lordy, he's got the nicest brown eyes I've ever seen."
I found it a bit strange as, my mother never talked about any customers very much, especially like that. I sucked on the end of the ink pen as I went over the receipts she had just brought in, wondering what kinda man could get my mother, a very married woman, to say such a thing. I shrugged the whole thing off and started entering the figures onto the spread sheet.
A couple weeks later I was tending to the early shift at the filling station, bored to death after the early rush hour of factory workers had disappeared till later that afternoon. I didn't pay any attention when some guy came in to pay for his gas, not even looking up as I read the amount from the inside meter.
"How are you today?" I asked, picking up the credit card.
"Adequate" was the reply as I felt a smile tug at my lips.
"So, you're the one my mom laughs about?" I said, sliding the card back to him as the machine made the transaction.
"Me?" He said with a smile.
My eyes caught his and I knew what she meant by his eyes. Deep, dark brown and looking as big a cow eyes, they seemed to be ready to cry and laugh at the same minute. I was shocked.
"Yeah, she thinks you're pretty neat."
He chuckled and shook his head. "You know, she makes me say that every time I come in here. Sorta has become a, ritual or something."
"She said you had pretty eyes," I said softly, looking deeper into them.
"Oh, she did she?"
I looked deeper into his eyes. "She was right to," I said, feeling his eyes and smile disarming me.
"They're just eyes," he replied, his face turning a little red.
"Well, maybe so, but you have any idea the eyes we see in here on a normal day? Bloodshot, bored, high and any number of states of boredom."
He smiled, moved to the pop cooler and took out a Mountain Dew, sat it and a dollar bill on the counter. "You may have something there," he said, popping the top as I made the change. "Maybe I'm wrong but, most people here seem to be waiting for something to happen. Know what I mean? Nice people and all, but they are just so sad in some ways."
For maybe the next hour, we talked back and forth, soon laughing and carrying on like old friends. I had figured he was here to work over at the nuclear power plant and would be gone soon but, to my surprise, he pointed out that he was working at a nearby resort, trying to find a place to "build a little cabin on a mountaintop and just sit up there away from it all".
At supper that night, my mother found it most interesting as to my reactions to the stranger, a man named Dave. She smiled down at her plate as I kept talking on and on about his dreams and, above all else, how smart he seemed.
"You know, Faye, he is old enough to be your dad, don't ya?" She asked, looking up and locking eyes with me.
"Right," I giggled. "Like my father would be maybe thirty-six or around there."
"He'll be forty-nine next month."
