I was on my way to go fishing with my buddy Earl when I noticed the fuel light was on. That's not normal for me. I always fill up when the tank hits half.

But I'd had a lot on my mind lately. So when I spotted a Casey's General Store, I pulled in for a quick fill.

Then I looked up at the price board. Regular was $5.95 a gallon. Ninety-two was $6.95. The green diesel was $8.99. That's about two bucks a gallon more than I pay near home, across the board. My stomach did a slow little flip, the way it does when a mechanic says 'huh' and doesn't finish the sentence.

1. The question

It was a little after five on a Thursday, at the Casey's on the edge of town with the flickering canopy light and the squeegee bucket that's been the same brown water since the nineties. Six pumps, four of them working. A hand-lettered sign on pump three said CASH INSIDE ONLY, SORRY, and nobody looked sorry.

I was at pump two, filling up my Ram TRX. I love that truck. It's fast, it's loud, it jumps things it shouldn't, and it drinks like it's at an open bar. The pump was ticking up in big orange numbers. I tried not to look at them. The numbers looked at me anyway.

I looked over as a guy rolled in across the island, in a 1975 Pinto. Satin black. And the entire back end of that car was covered in stickers. Bumper, hatch, taillights, every square inch. Bands I'd never heard of, a cartoon possum, something about the moon, and one that just said NO. If that Pinto ever got rear-ended, the other driver was going to have a lot of reading to do. The engine rattled off with a sound like a shopping cart going down stairs. The door creaked open, and he unfolded out of it.

Pink and purple hair. Not a streak. The whole head, pink fading into purple like a gas station slushie somebody forgot in the sun.

And metal. Rings up both ears, top to bottom, like a shower curtain rod. A ring through his nose. Two through his eyebrow. One in his lip. A little stud on each cheek. I lost count somewhere around fourteen. He had more earrings in his face than my daughter has in her entire jewelry box, more hardware than I had in my toolbox, and he'd be a nightmare at airport security.

The sunset hit all that metal at once, like somebody had plugged in a string of Christmas lights on his face. Faded band shirt, cargo shorts, black boots.

Antifa type, I figured. I braced for a lecture on my carbon footprint. I was filling a TRX. I was not in a strong position.

Then I heard it before I saw it. A low, steady diesel rumble rolling in off the highway. A brand new F-450 pulled up to pump four. Dually. Shiny enough to check your teeth in. Four fat tires across the back, those back fenders flaring out like a pair of shoulders, five little amber lights along the roof. It idled there, purring, that deep diesel tick you feel in your chest more than you hear.

I forgot I was holding a fuel nozzle. I just stared. Gas was running down my wrist and I did not care. I'm a TRX guy. But I've been drawing a dually on my fridge for months, and here was the real thing, ten feet away, purring at me.

The pink-and-purple guy was looking at it too. Slow. Front bumper, cab, bed, and then those back wheels. He tilted his head. Every ring on his face tilted with it.

He squinted up at the price board, then over at the F-450 drinking diesel at eight ninety-nine a gallon. "Five ninety-five for regular," he said, to nobody in particular. "I didn't vote for this."

Then he leaned towards me. Boots planted on the little bits of broken glass every gas station keeps in stock. From about six feet away, he nodded at the F-450, and looked at me like I was the guy who'd know.

"Why in the hell would someone need that big of a truck with six wheels?"

The F-450 purred. Somewhere a truck downshifted on the highway. A plastic bag blew across the lot like a tumbleweed that had given up.

I could have argued. I'm a grown man standing next to a TRX, which is basically a monster truck with a cupholder. I was in no position to lecture anybody about needing that big of a truck.

Besides, I didn't know the answer.

So I shrugged. Just a big, slow, both-shoulders shrug, the kind you give your wife when she asks where the remote is.

He looked at the shrug. He looked at the F-450. He nodded slowly, like I'd confirmed something. "Yeah," he said. "That's what I figured." Then he walked back to his Pinto, squeegeed his windshield like a man with nothing to prove, and drove off with that shopping-cart rattle, a whole bumper full of stickers waving goodbye.

I stood there while my pump clicked off. A guy with fourteen holes in his face had just out-argued me without arguing.