I almost drove past the gas station, even though I’d been looking for one for the past hour. There was no sign outside and the pumps were so covered in rust they were almost camouflaged against the tire-tracked dirt. But after hours of driving, the needle on my gauge was brushing against empty. Beggars can’t be choosers.
I parked my car beside the least fragile-looking pump and, after a moment to figure out the ancient mechanism, filled up my tank. The numbers popped up on little cards, like an old cash register. I went inside to pay.
The store was the size of a broom cupboard. It stank of stale pine-scented air fresheners. There was a shelf stacked with candy that looked like it hadn’t been restocked since the 1950s. There was nobody behind the desk, so I tapped the bell. The chime was out of tune.
I waited, wondering if the place was abandoned, when a door behind me creaked open and an old woman appeared. She smiled a gap toothed grin at me. ‘Well, hello there, dear.’ There was soft rumble to her voice, like a distant waterfall.
‘Pump one,’ I said. I immediately worried I’d jumped the gun. She had just finished closing the door behind her and was shuffling towards the desk. It was an excruciatingly long minute before she reached the register and peered at it through her glasses.
‘Six dollars,’ she said at last.
That was extraordinarily cheap but I didn’t argue. I put the notes into her outstretched palm. But before I could withdraw it, she grabbed my wrist with her free hand. Strangely, this didn’t alarm me much. Her grip wasn’t tight and I could have pulled free if I wanted to. Instead, I let her pull my hand up to her eyes and trace the lines of my palm with her finger.
It occurred to me now that she was a bit eccentric looking. She wore strings of beads and feathers around her neck and on her wrists. Her white hair hung behind her back in a braid that reached her waist. And there was a snake-like tattoo that wrapped around her neck.
‘You’re having trouble sleeping,’ she said with a tut.
I shivered. This was true. Most nights I lied awake for hours. I wondered how she could possibly have known this by studying my palm. But then I realised after a five hour drive I must have looked pretty tired. This was probably not magic.
The woman ducked down below the desk. I’d already paid for my gas and was eager to hit the road again, so I couldn’t tell you why I waited. A moment later, she re-emerged and placed a paper bag in my still outstretched hand. She said nothing, but smiled approvingly.
I opened the bag. It was full of leaves.
‘An herbal remedy,’ she said. ‘Just burn the leaves and inhale the smoke.’
‘What, like tobacco?’
‘No, dear, like incense.’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘I don’t want to buy drugs from you.’
Her smile didn’t falter in the slightest. ‘You ain’t. For one, it’s an herbal remedy, like I said. For two, you ain’t buying. That’s a gift, dear.’
I didn’t know how to react. I was certain accepting a gift of unidentified psychoactive leaves from a random old lady at a gas station in the middle of nowhere was high on the list of bad ideas. But even though I was suspicious of her intentions, there was something about her that made me believe she’d never mean me any harm.
‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘Burn ‘em before bed and you’ll sleep deeper than you’ve ever done. And you’ll dream too. Folk don’t know how to dream anymore. They barely even remember their dreams these days. But when you dream deep, so deep you dream right into your soul, you’ll become who you truly are.’
This sounded like bullshit to me. But I couldn’t bring myself to hand back the bag of leaves. So I thanked her and left.
Once back in my car, I dropped the bag on the passenger seat and promptly forgot about them. It was getting late. I would have step on it if I wanted to reach my destination before dark.