The Gas Station

    “Did you hear that?” Geoff asked over the loud beating music. My silver Jetta hurdled down the arrow straight road somewhere in Idaho. I had heard the sound. A loud clang from under the car; I knew the cause of the sound.
    “Its my god damn muffler.”
    “Again?” my friend queried.
    My muffler, had in fact, fallen off for the third time. We were driving through nowhere, Idaho. For the last hour, our only other companions were the lonely patches of stars above our heads. To stay awake at two thirty am, we had resorted to blasting rock music. The sound of my muffler grinding into the pavement died as I pulled off on the shoulder. Stepping out of the car, I was struck by the sheer isolation of the desert surroundings. My car’s dim interior lights vainly tried to illuminate the darkness.
    “This could be the beginning of a horror movie,” Geoff’s voice cut into the stillness. Two shafts lights suddenly appeared on a curve in the road behind us. A large truck barreled around a corner. Heart racing, I leaned up against the back of my car. My imagination was beginning the run wild.  
    “Let’s just fix this quick.”  

“Don’t turn here!” Geoff cried as I started turning into a dark parking lot. A streetlight illuminated a tall, dodgy-looking man in a black sweatshirt pointing at us. We had driven for forty miles to the next town to figure out a solution. On the side of the road, we had determined that the end of my muffler had rusted through the exhaust line and detached. A thick rubber band looped through a metal hook held the end of the muffler onto the undercarriage of my car. With the muffler dragging on the ground, my Jetta was far from quiet. We had tried every idea from brute force to clever scheming to unhook the rubber band, but in the end we failed. Desperate, we decided to try our luck down the road in the next town.
I swerved out of the turn lane and drove to a semi-lit, but closed, gas station. The town was eerily quiet at three in the morning. We climbed out of the car and tried to devise a plan. We gathered around the front window of the gas station and peered in.
    “Okay if you give me a boost, I think I can get into that vent. I’ll climb into the bathroom, go find some scissors or a knife, pay for it, and then climb out. That’s not stealing right?” I asked while we peered into the closed gas station.
    Almost on cue, a police patrol car pulled into the parking lot. A tall, well-built cop stepped out of his cruiser and looked at us. His partner stayed in the vehicle and began to talk on the radio.
    “How can I help you boys?”
    “Our muffler partially fell off and is dragging. Do you know of anywhere we can go tonight and get it fixed?” Geoff asked.
    “Why do you think we are here? We could hear you from across town driving around. You’re not exactly quiet. At this hour, you boys are S.O.L until tomorrow.”
    “Sir, we have somewhere to be in the morning. Is there anything you can do to help us?”
    “I’m sorry boys but there is nothing I can do.”
    “Do you have scissors or a knife we can use for a minute? We just need to cut off a rubber strap holding my muffler onto my car,” I asked as frustration leaked into my tone.
    “I really want to help you boys out, but I can’t, by law, give you a dangerous weapon.”
    “What if you accidentally dropped your knife, we happen to find it shortly thereafter, cut the rubber band, and then we lose the knife right after we’re done?”
    The police officer turned and walked to his vehicle. Soon after making a short radio call, two more cruisers pulled into the parking lot and surrounded my car. A group of five police officers leaned against the hood of one cruiser to watch the spectacle. Crime must have had taken the night off with the number of officers that graced us with their presence. The first cop walked towards us and blatantly held his knife in the air.
    “Oops,” he said letting his knife drop to the ground. He then walked back to the small blockade of cruisers surrounding my travel-battered vehicle. He had a touch for the dramatic. In less than a minute, Geoff and I had detached the muffler from my car.
    “Oops,” I mimicked the police officer with a smile and dropped the knife and walked away. The cop quickly regained custody his weapon.
    “Drive safe boys,” he said before he returned to his car and drove away. Sounding like a Harley motorcycle, we pulled onto the road and continued east towards the sunrise.