Joan Connor
OUT OF GAS
That was the year we all headed south. The cobwebs between the cars stalled at the pumps had twisted into ropes as thick as hawsers; the pumps cowered under heaps of dust. NO GAS placards bordered the thoroughfares like old Burma Shave signs. Along this road/ Of rocks and tar/ Your car may roll/ But it won’t go far. NO GAS.
The women kept warm to the clicketyclack of their knitting needles, purling at breakneck pace to meet the demand – sweaters, mittens, hats. Some folks bumbled around in quadruple layers of worsted. No heat in the homes, no heat in the offices, no heat in the discos. What fuel was not rationed was off-the-charts expensive, unaffordable by the kilowatt nanosecond.
So we mustered the wagons. It was 1974, I think, maybe ’75. Moses (that was his nickname) Hart yoked his oxen, the team he used to parade on the Fourth of July. Others made do with ponies and horses, donkeys, even a slobbery old Newfie who pulled a Radio Flyer stuffed with toddlers. And we headed south.
Had you asked me then did I foresee a migration, a reverse direction, some sort of Exodus Coriolis Effect a half century later, I would have said, No. We had ourselves an Austral convoy, dispersing as we went – some folks deserted the trail at North Carolina, others detrained in Georgia, or derailed in Florida. Some scattered at the Fountain of Youth, Saint Augustine, where one of the knitters as a parting gift gave me her Bible, reciting Ezekiel: And thou shalt come from thy place out of the uttermost parts of the north (38:15). Myself, I kept going south until I ran out of road but not water. I settled on the beach.
When change is gradual, you do not always note it right away. I was odd-jobbing at the Green Parrot and Sloppy Joe’s, busing tables and bouncing the bad boys, although in Key West nobody gets bounced very high. I pitched my tent near the Fort, sometimes Higgs, other times Smathers. A sand nomad is less likely to be bothered, moves from home to home like a hermit crab.
But high tide was getting higher. The oceanic detritus – the seaweed, the plastic bottles – was striping the land not sand. The shingle disappeared. And the sun was getting hotter. My forehead blistered after minutes, turning as red as boiled lobster.
I cannot pinpoint the year. As I said, the change was gradual, but I left Jimmy Buffet land bound to follow in Robert Peary’s disputed footsteps to the North Pole. With only my Bible and a change of clothes, I followed the reverse migration into the north, into “the end of days.” Along the way, people streamed into our group or forked off. But as temperatures rose, so did the population of the congregation headed north. The Lizard King sang of Mr. Mojo Risin’. Mojo is magic, but it could have translated to temperature risin’. Jason Head named a lizard the Bearded King Morrison. The lizard in the desert like the canary in the mine.
People trickled into the cavalcade like so many grains of sand in an hourglass. But time was not on our side. We could not stay ahead of the heat. Infinite grains of sand. We struggled on.
When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the Earth – Gog and Magog – and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. Revelations 20: 7 – 9.
Seashore. I missed my beach although I knew the beach was gone. I kept trending north along the diminishing seaboard, slowed by the dreadful growing heat. Diverging from my ever-improvised group, I headed inland, northward through Vermont, my body aflame. And I will send a fire on Magog and on them that dwell securely in the isles (Ezekiel 39:6). I slogged on until I stood on the misty shore of Lake Memphramagog, named by the Abenaki for where there is a big expanse of water. But I thought not of Memphramagog but of Gog and Magog, of the Magog River on the Quebec side. I longed to cross, head for the pole, but Canada did not welcome us, not since the Kyoto accord. I stood on the shore, staring across the expanse, and only then did I notice the roiling bubbles churning the surface of the lake. The “lake of fire” (Revelations 20:11) was boiling. What I mistook for mist was steam.
And then I saw the long white face emerging from the steam, parting the vapor. The spectral face emerging like steam from steam. And although I had no witness, I raised my arm, I pointed. “Behold,” I yelled. “Behold. And behold a white horse” (Revelations 20:11).
That was the year we all headed south. The cobwebs between the cars stalled at the pumps had twisted into ropes as thick as hawsers; the pumps cowered under heaps of dust. NO GAS placards bordered the thoroughfares like old Burma Shave signs. Along this road/ Of rocks and tar/ Your car may roll/ But it won’t go far. NO GAS.
The women kept warm to the clicketyclack of their knitting needles, purling at breakneck pace to meet the demand – sweaters, mittens, hats. Some folks bumbled around in quadruple layers of worsted. No heat in the homes, no heat in the offices, no heat in the discos. What fuel was not rationed was off-the-charts expensive, unaffordable by the kilowatt nanosecond.
So we mustered the wagons. It was 1974, I think, maybe ’75. Moses (that was his nickname) Hart yoked his oxen, the team he used to parade on the Fourth of July. Others made do with ponies and horses, donkeys, even a slobbery old Newfie who pulled a Radio Flyer stuffed with toddlers. And we headed south.
Had you asked me then did I foresee a migration, a reverse direction, some sort of Exodus Coriolis Effect a half century later, I would have said, No. We had ourselves an Austral convoy, dispersing as we went – some folks deserted the trail at North Carolina, others detrained in Georgia, or derailed in Florida. Some scattered at the Fountain of Youth, Saint Augustine, where one of the knitters as a parting gift gave me her Bible, reciting Ezekiel: And thou shalt come from thy place out of the uttermost parts of the north (38:15). Myself, I kept going south until I ran out of road but not water. I settled on the beach.
When change is gradual, you do not always note it right away. I was odd-jobbing at the Green Parrot and Sloppy Joe’s, busing tables and bouncing the bad boys, although in Key West nobody gets bounced very high. I pitched my tent near the Fort, sometimes Higgs, other times Smathers. A sand nomad is less likely to be bothered, moves from home to home like a hermit crab.
But high tide was getting higher. The oceanic detritus – the seaweed, the plastic bottles – was striping the land not sand. The shingle disappeared. And the sun was getting hotter. My forehead blistered after minutes, turning as red as boiled lobster.
I cannot pinpoint the year. As I said, the change was gradual, but I left Jimmy Buffet land bound to follow in Robert Peary’s disputed footsteps to the North Pole. With only my Bible and a change of clothes, I followed the reverse migration into the north, into “the end of days.” Along the way, people streamed into our group or forked off. But as temperatures rose, so did the population of the congregation headed north. The Lizard King sang of Mr. Mojo Risin’. Mojo is magic, but it could have translated to temperature risin’. Jason Head named a lizard the Bearded King Morrison. The lizard in the desert like the canary in the mine.
People trickled into the cavalcade like so many grains of sand in an hourglass. But time was not on our side. We could not stay ahead of the heat. Infinite grains of sand. We struggled on.
When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the Earth – Gog and Magog – and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. Revelations 20: 7 – 9.
Seashore. I missed my beach although I knew the beach was gone. I kept trending north along the diminishing seaboard, slowed by the dreadful growing heat. Diverging from my ever-improvised group, I headed inland, northward through Vermont, my body aflame. And I will send a fire on Magog and on them that dwell securely in the isles (Ezekiel 39:6). I slogged on until I stood on the misty shore of Lake Memphramagog, named by the Abenaki for where there is a big expanse of water. But I thought not of Memphramagog but of Gog and Magog, of the Magog River on the Quebec side. I longed to cross, head for the pole, but Canada did not welcome us, not since the Kyoto accord. I stood on the shore, staring across the expanse, and only then did I notice the roiling bubbles churning the surface of the lake. The “lake of fire” (Revelations 20:11) was boiling. What I mistook for mist was steam.
And then I saw the long white face emerging from the steam, parting the vapor. The spectral face emerging like steam from steam. And although I had no witness, I raised my arm, I pointed. “Behold,” I yelled. “Behold. And behold a white horse” (Revelations 20:11).
Joan Connor is a professor at Ohio University and a former professor in Fairfield University’s and Stonecoast/University of Southern Maine’s low residency MFA programs. She is the recipient of the Barbara Deming award, a Pushcart Prize, the Ohio Writer award in fiction and nonfiction, the AWP award in short fiction, the Leapfrog Press Award for Adult Fiction, and the River Teeth Award for nonfiction. She has published four collections of short fiction and a collection of essays.
Chila: Your writing awards are impressive, Joan. Tell us a little about those, brag a little on yourself - you deserve it!
Joan: Probably the AWP award.
Chila: How long have you been teaching and in what capacity?
Joan: 23 years, and 10 in low residency teaching.
Chila: Your short story for our SmartApocalypse Issue (#5) was so well done. How long did it take you to write & revise it? How did the theme come to you?
Joan: Just remembering the gas prices in the seventies. Just a day because it is a short short.
Chila: In the writing world, which past and present writers have most influenced you?
Joan: Not sure about influences, but I love Woolf and Joyce.
Chila: Next projects? And which goal do you yet want to achieve in the writing world?
Joan: I am working on a project set in Storyville in New Orleans.
Joan: Probably the AWP award.
Chila: How long have you been teaching and in what capacity?
Joan: 23 years, and 10 in low residency teaching.
Chila: Your short story for our SmartApocalypse Issue (#5) was so well done. How long did it take you to write & revise it? How did the theme come to you?
Joan: Just remembering the gas prices in the seventies. Just a day because it is a short short.
Chila: In the writing world, which past and present writers have most influenced you?
Joan: Not sure about influences, but I love Woolf and Joyce.
Chila: Next projects? And which goal do you yet want to achieve in the writing world?
Joan: I am working on a project set in Storyville in New Orleans.
