Nasty Conjugation

We had a birthday party for Buddy today. He turned eighty-seven, which he swore to us is the oldest he has ever been, though sometimes I think he seems even older. We decided to believe him because he would probably know better than us, and besides, we didn’t want to argue on his birthday.

Good old Buddy has been working at the Pump and Go gas station on the corner of Maple and Oak in Verboort, Oregon since he was just sixteen years old. Oregon has a little old-fashioned rule that says gas attendants have to pump your gas for you. Call it history or pride or angry union folks, but there you go. Buddy reckons Verboort is just about the only place in the world worth living in. It could be because Buddy’s been pumping gas here for seventy dang years, or it could just be that he’s more old-fashioned than any gas pumping law. It could be a bit of both.

I’m not so old-fashioned that I can’t see that it might be a little silly having other people pump your gas for you. See, I have worked here since I was sixteen, too, but I’m only seventeen now. Not as impressive as seventy years, I know, but I’m working real hard at getting older. Old Buddy calls me Jeff-boy on account of how young I tend to be. I don’t mind much. If I were that old I bet I’d call young kids all kind of crazy things, too, like Lil’ Joey or Billy the Kid, or maybe even Jimmy Doodle. I don’t call him anything cute like that, though. Fact is, I’ve never been told any name to call him other than Buddy. It seems to me that a man as wise and aged as him doesn’t deserve to be called Buddy by a young spit like me, so I call him Mr. B, and no one seems to mind that.

Well, back to this birthday party I mentioned. It really was one of the best I have ever been to, though I haven’t got quite to that part yet. We weren’t even planning anything grand. Mr. McNealy, our boss, was thinking about letting him off work early, but we don’t really think he does much after he leaves the pump, so we decided he might rather stay here. Mr. McNealy was at a loss, but I’d already taken care of my end of the birthday. I’d bought Mr. B a pair of real nice gloves from a department store, and I even remembered to wrap them in a bit of newspaper before bringing them to work with me. I say they’re real nice, but I guess they’re just about as nice as one paycheck could get. I figure Mr. B will like them no matter how much they cost. The days are getting colder, and in the mornings when he’s pumping gas there’s still frost on people’s windshields, and him with just that ragtag pair of gloves he’s had as long as I’ve known him.

At first it was just me and the boss and the man of the hour, chewing that first hour of the morning shift away with some birthday donuts and a carton of birthday milk, courtesy of Mr. McNealy. Buddy looked like he might rather be chewing on some tobacco, but he was choosing to humor poor Mr. McNealy and wait until the donuts and milk were gone. I imagine there aren’t many things more foul than donuts, milk, and chaw. It usually stays pretty slow this early, so we like to sit back and talk a bit about this, that, and pumping gas (Mr. B, bless him, doesn’t talk much about this or that, but no one knows more about pumping gas).

So there we were, sitting out on the front stoop of the store under the mighty Marlboro man, when Buddy points his leather finger at a big green car rattling up to the pumps.

“Reckon we got a customer, Jeff-boy.”

I figured, it being his birthday and all, I’d let him finish his donut and take the first customer myself.

“Keep wrestlin’ your donut, Mr. B, I’ll take care of this one.”

The car came rumbling on up, an old green Chevy with a dent in the hood and Mr. Baker the grocer all smiles behind the wheel. Mr. Baker is a man you can actually describe as all smiles. When he smiles his whole body gets in on it, jowls jostling, barrel chest bouncing, and his beard split in two by a set of pearly whites you might see on a horse or a toothpaste commercial. Dang, could that man smile. He and all his smiles came rolling out of the car, grabbing my hand in a handshake to match all that mighty grinning.

“Jeff, great to see you, truly marvelous as always. You grow faster than a stalk of wheat, I wager. Must be five, six inches taller than the last time I saw you!” He playfully slugged me in the arm, and I thought that I must’ve been growing pretty hard to make six inches since last Tuesday. Mr. Baker was prone to such over-excited exaggeration.

“Mornin’, Mr. Baker. You’re lookin’ fine and healthy,” I said, keeping an eye on what may have been a third chin trying to sneak onto his red face without much luck at stealth. “Want me to fill her up?”

“Great, great, fill her right up there, Jeff,” he said over his shoulder as he turned to the back of his car. I started filling up his tank as he popped open his trunk, shuffled some stuff around, and came up with a beautiful watermelon, shiny and emerald and probably just as delicious as it looked. Conspiratorially, Mr. Baker leaned over and shielded his mouth with his hand.

“I don’t know if you are aware, but today is Buddy’s birthday, Jeff, and I happen to know that he’s got a powerful love of watermelons.” With a chuckle he walked around the pump balancing the watermelon on his own prodigious lump. He greeted Mr. McNealy with a nod and a wink and then turned to Buddy.

“Buddy, Buddy, how old is it now? Thirty-three? You don’t look a day past twenty, as I live and breathe. How’s my dear friend on this most joyous of occasions?”

See, the thing about Mr. Baker is that every last person is his dearest friend. He’s got dearest friends he’s never even met. How he remembers everyone’s names, birthdays, street addresses, and favorite fruit far beyond me, but it sure is amusing to watch in action. It especially is amusing with Buddy, since I don’t think Buddy even has any dearest friends, a situation that seems to suit him fine.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.