An Excerpt

THE
RIPENING

The attendant watched the man approach and the door chimed as he pushed open the entrance door. The traveler looked around the store briefly as he stood as a silhouette in the sunlight, just now streaming through the front door, and then crossed to the counter peripherally littered with breath mints and chewing gum racks.
The clerk reluctantly set aside his phone.
The clerk was young, the outbursts of acne on his chin suggested he was in his late teens. Metallica could be heard faintly playing from inside the booth. He was casually dressed – tee shirt, torn jeans, except for the name tag – 'Chet', he was like many he had seen in his travels.
“What’ll it be?” the young man asked.
The man with the green eyes said, “Fifty dollars on pump number two.”
He then reached into his pocket and withdrew a roll of bills.
Now there’s a fuckin’ wad!, the clerk thought to himself.
The man unwound one fifty-dollar bill from the roll and placed it across the metal tray beneath the opening in the Lucite partition.
“You betcha,” said the clerk as he turned to the console to this right.
Drug runner? Bank robber? Mother fucker! What I could do with that kind of cash! I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here and putting up with this shitty job.
The man watched the station attendant key in the necessary pump information and listened – as the young man’s thoughts floated in the air from behind the clear security wall.
The traveler listened intently but recognized - this one isn't ready.
Life hasn’t beat him down enough.
Twenty more years of just sitting there and continuing to put up with the shitty job ... might just be all it would take.