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the-east-art · 6 months ago

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Fantail Pigeons and Mourning Doves Part 1

Mel sat and stared out the window. The car at pump 6 left. That left two cars at pumps. Three cars parked in the lot. One was Mel’s. The other two would indicate that he should have at minimum two customers in the store, but the gas station remained empty. Mel cast a quick glance, just to double check. From here he should be able to see any adults in the building - their heads usually peak out over the shelves. Designed that way, Mel was sure. Just short enough for him to clock how many people there are. Kids could hide in the aisles though. Usually did - some middle schoolers that drove out with their learner permits and reveled in the fact that they had money they could spend on things like sour gummy worms and large sized slushies.

He didn’t hear any giggling, so no kids. Mel’s eyes flicked back to the lot.

A red car slid into pump 7 - the favorite pump. Not on the end, but not in the middle. One of the silver cars - pump 3’s - left. He should probably learn cars types. He wasn’t really interested in them, but some part of him felt a kind of obligation. The same way a child is obligated to eat their vegetable or memorize scriptures.

The person of red car of pump 7 waited for their tank to fill. They twirled back and forth absently, skirt flaring around their knees. The silver car at pump 1 left.

Mel felt the end grow closer.

oOo

Mel was short for Melchior. He knows it sounds like a girl name, but he can’t really bring himself to care too much. Mel is what his brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles all called him. And it wasn’t as stuffy as Melchior. Melchior was a name only called out if he was in trouble, if they caught him staring out the window too long, if his sister Auriel needed something. He couldn’t see the name Mel as a concept separate from his own personhood, so Mel didn’t. He was luckier than Astrophel, whose name was only ever shortened to ‘ass’.

Red blue black. Red blue black. Mel patterened the cheap lighters methodically. Two extra blues. Mel frowned. He wondered if it was worth it to toss them - someone would probably notice though, and he’d get in trouble. He adjusted the pattern, made if so that the two extra were each on one end. Went back to the window.

A little past midday, and no cars were at the pumps. The only car was his, black and dull in it’s usual spot - tucked off to the side to invite guests into the gas station. Or maybe just so that it had a good vintage point to look out over the lot. The passenger side still had a dent in it from the time he tried to peel out of his spot and had instead very slowly hit the back bumper of a truck.

Seven pigeons roamed the lot in place of the lack of cars. Their heads bobbed forward and back and forward and back. Alone in the station Mel tried it too. Pigeons communicate through their head bobbing. He had seen, once, a rescued show pigeon. It had been abandoned by its’ owner, and bred in such a way that it’s head was permanently back and chest stuck out. The pigeon had been manufactured in such a way that, when the rescuer had put it with the rest of their flock, the other pigeons didn’t know what to do with it. They steered clear of this strange creature that looked like themselves through a funhouse mirror, that could not bob its’ head.

The roof over the pumps was covered in sharp points that prevented birds from roosting there. Not for the first time, Mel imagined himself finding a tall ladder. He inserted it there, and saw himself climbing up its’ many rungs. When he reached the top - it would have to be a really tall ladder to get that high, and Mel would probably be scared at that height - he would take off or file down the spikes. Invite the birds to stay.

Mel absently bobbed his head back and forth until someone came in gave him a funny look.

oOo

The art of projection was one of Mel’s chief skills. Distinctly different than a simple child ‘imagination’. Or at least, Mel thought so. He knew the things he projected into the world weren’t really there, it was like a child who believed their imaginary friends was really there. It was more of a thought exercise.

He could be sitting at a register, or a bench, or a pew, and look out a window to somewhere else and simple, project that he was there. A simple mind trick, really. Overlapping what he saw with his eyes with a layer of something he could only see in his head. The idea of seeing a picture without your eyes was strange, but it was there all the same. Mel wondered if he took a cleaver down his skull, cracked open his frontal lobe, if he’d see a little threatre in there was a projector.

Some people, Mel had read, can’t do that. Raguel couldn’t, when he asked. Didn’t think in pictures, didn’t imagine the scenes in books in his head. Mel didn’t understand that. Wouldn’t that leave the letters on the word flat? The stories muttered over bedtime or against the stained glass window like water slidings down your face when you emerge from the lake?

In another life, sitting in a pew, making sure to absently nod his head to fake that he was listening, Mel stared out a window. The nodding thing was new - he was hoping he could integrate it in well enough. His knuckles still stung and his knees hurt.

At the gas station, Mel doesn’t need to do the nodding part. He can just look out the window and project. He takes his sock and shoes off, and he climbs the tree. It doesn’t matter that he probably doesn’t have the upper body strength for it, his projection does it with ease, and Mel can imagine the texture of the bark under his hands and feet. Zeph was good at climbing trees, and used to cajole Mel into trying it with their limited free time. The bite of the trunk had hurt his hands.

Mel sits ontop of the gas pump roof, and his feet dangle off the side. In his mind, he edits out the anti-bird spikes, and his projection is instead surrounded by feathery friends. They bob their heads at him, and inside the station Mel reflexively bobs his own.

The door chimes, and Mel pulls himself back to his body.

He’s lost track of the cars. Casts a quick glance back out - two at the pumps, two parked. The man who walks in is alone, and detours immediately to the bathroom. Mel assumes that will be it - statistically if someone comes in and uses the restroom, that’s all they’re here for - especially if they’re alone. The owner of the place keeps telling him to try and get their attention and start friendly conversation, and then push some product ANY product onto them. Mel thinks he’d rather cut his tongue out.

The man surprises him by emerging from the bathroom and strolling the shelves. Mel watches carefully. Astrophel said that look was offputting, and he should stop, but Mel doesn’t really know how or care enough to curtail it. And at a gas station far enough from town to be separate from it, there are seldom enough repeat customers for him to worry about making a bad impression. Low stakes. And he likes looking.

People are more complicated that pigeons. There’s a lot more that goes into it than head bobbing. Body language and tone and gestures and winks. All kinds of things. Mel likes watching families and lovers and strangers come in. Watches their interractions. It’s even more interesting to watch someone alone. What a person does with their body when no one is looking.

The man adjusts the bill of his ballcap. Snorts - the arid desert air probably getting to him. Or maybe he’s sick. Aunt Apollonia used to snort and cough and blow her nose in a way that seemed like she was commanding attention. It would ring out and drag the attention of strangers on the street, when they went out in public. At home it had become background noise to everyone. Mel had hated it, it made his skin crawl. But no one else commented on it, so Mel had kept his mouth shut.

Eventually the man gets a lemonade, a soda, and a bag of chips. At the counter he adds a black lighter. Mel is going to need to choose a new pattern now. The back of his mind gets to work on that. The stranger doesn’t smell of cigarette smoke, but sometimes if it isn’t enough of a habit it doesn’t stick to a person quite as much, or maybe it’s for someone he knows. Some people get lighters just for the novelty of having fire at their fingertips - usually the aforementioned teens. If Mel turns his head to the side, he thinks he could see this man being some kind of a pyro.

“If you get two of these, they’re buy one get one.” Mel gestures to the bag of chips. The man before him starts. He knows this part is hard - suddenly having to talk and act like a human being when you aren’t prepared for it. But if the mans’ getting the one anyway, he might as well snag a second. It doesn’t make sense to Mel - wouldn’t that be a profit loss for the chip company?

“Oh yeah? I’ll, uh, I’ll be right back then.” The man leaves his collection of items at the register and retreats back to the chip aisle. Mel thinks about business strategies of chip companies.

The loud sound of a bag of doritos breaks his thinking, and Mel rings it up. The man has brown eyes.

“Weathers’ nice today.” The man says. Mels’ heart sinks a little - by helping the man gain chips, he has broken the spell of the gas station. He doesn’t mind talking to customers, but he knows they don’t really want to talk to him. Mel knows his body is too stiff and made wrong, and his head angled too far up. He’s used to looking out windows and staring at stained glass. He isn’t used to looking someone in their eyes, or at least at their face. He feels guilt that he has shackled this man to trying to converse with him through the act of goodwill.

“It is.” Mel replies, because that’s what you do when someone says the weather is nice. There is an awkward pause. The man is waiting for something. Mel does not know what the man is waiting for. He moves his body, and his facial muscles. “That’s going to be $9.47.” That’s not what the space in the air was for, but Mel doesn’t know what else to put there.

The man pulls out a wallet and several bills. Paying in cash. It’s a surprise. Mel’s face heats up.

“Oh, sorry, one second.” He has to crane over the counter to get to the card reader, and presses the red button. Nobody really pays with cash these days. The instinct to push the purchase to the reader had been automatic.

“I can pay with card if you want.” The man offers.

“Don’t.” Mel winces at his own voice. That came out wrong - too sharp. He used the wrong font - the one he said that with had too many points. He tries again. “I already canceled it. Cash is easier now.” Tone tone tone. Don’t forget the tone. Mel attempts to do something with his facial muscles, he’s not sure what. The man nods a few times and hands over the cash.

“I like the register here.” The man says as Mel punches in the the information and the drawer pops out. He counts and recounts the change. Tilts his head to the side.

“You like… the register?” Mel says slowly. One of the mans’ hands is already outstretched, waiting for the money. Mel places the bills first, and then the coins, letting them fall together in a short lived windchime.

“When you put the order in, it makes the Sonic the Hedgehog sound.” He elaborates. Mel feels lost in the conversation. “Ba-ling! Ba-ling!” Mel usually tunes out the register, but he knows what sound the man is imitating. “When you pick up rings.” The man is waiting for recognition to light up in Mels’ gaze. Mel should fake it, to save face.

“Is it a good show?” He says instead. The man’s eyebrows raise, then he smiles and shakes his head.

“It’s not a show - well, it had a show at one point - but it’s a video game. A classic.” Mel nods in understanding. Another bit of pop culture that Mel had failed to catch up on. He knows the contents of leatherbound journals, ancient scrolls, writing etched only on walls and forbidden from being transcribed onto paper. He did not know much else.

“I’m sorry,” And Mel really was. “...I’ve never heard of it.” The man moves his body, and his facial muscles, and Mel compares it to his internal reference guide. This means ‘no big deal’ or something to that affect.

“Eh, it’s kind of overrated to be honest. Just makes me think of me and my sister plahying it as kids. Nostalgic, ya feel?” The man nods to himself.”I know not everyone grew up in a Sega household.” He’s starting to gather his things up in his arms, and slice of embarrassment runs through Mels’ spine as he realizes he never bagged the items. In a flurry of hands he fluffs a plastic bad and starts shoving the items that hasn’t gathered up into it.

“I’m sorry, I forgot-”

“Don’t worry about it.” He’s good natured, and places the other items back down for Mel to grab. “I didn’t mind carrying this stuff. It’s not that far to my car anyways.” Mel nods but finished the task anyways. Make’s sure everything is int he back just right, that once it’s picked up the drinks won’t crush the chips. When he’s satisfied, he pushes the bag towards the customer.

“Thanks for your help…” The man’s eyes rove around Mel until they finall land on the nametag. “Mel-shy-wah?” He doesn’t stutter the word, but his voice increases in pitch at the end. An open question without words.

“Mel-key-oar.” The correction is automatic. He’s standing too stiffly, he should do something with himself. His face, or his body maybe. Mel goes for a shrug, raising his shoulders up and down. Tries to copy the movement the man did earlier, when they were talking about the hedgehog. “It’s my job.”

“Sorry that’s weird - I hate it when customers know my name without me giving it to them.” The man is apologetic again. Mel doesn’t get it - that’s why he wears a nametag afterall. The customer seems to think he has fallen into some kind of fauxpas. The hand not holding the bag sticks out. “I’m Wren.” He says. “There, now we’re on equal footing.” The man’s lips tily up, and even Mel can tell that’s pleased with himself, that Wren feels like he had managed to save the situation, despite the fact that the situation was not in any danger to being with.

“Wren.” Mel repeats, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and shakes the proffered hand. The grip is calloused and firm, Mel knows his is too limp by contrast but doesn’t really know how to remedy it. The handshake lasts the wrong amount of time, but Mel has a hard time determining if that is too long or too short. Their hands break apart. “Have a good day.”

The man gives one last grin, big and easy, and leaves. The bell above the door chimes at the exit. Wrens’ green car leaves, and there is now one car parked, and one car at a pump.

#the east writes #story #short story #part 1 #fantail pigeons and mourning doves

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