King of the Woods, or Trivial Pursuit

Part 15 - Kangaroo

Rony Karam had never seen a kangaroo. He did not particularly care for animals, though he was never cruel to them. He did not like zoos. He liked dance clubs with country-western music and blonde girls that wore cutoff jeans and drank whiskey. He had never visited Australia and never would. He had only even visited Lebanon once, when he was six years old and his cousin got married. His paternal grandfather, always a frugal man, died that same week to save the family airfare. Rony had never seen a kangaroo, but he knew that they neither produced nor consumed gasoline and that Kangaroo was a bullshit name for a gas station.

Rony knew firsthand about bullshit names. Twenty years earlier, his parents met in a restaurant in Atlanta, fresh off the boat. Mr. Karam ran the grill. The future (and present) Mrs. Karam ran the register. They worked hard, traded love poems scribbled in French on the back of receipts, and screwed in the meat locker anytime the manager wasn't looking. Soon they managed the restaurant, then owned it, then owned two more like it. Rony's parents got into gas stations after that, and a couple extended-stay hotels, but they never forgot where they started. They never forgot the man who gave them their first chance to make it in America. Sometimes, Rony told the blonde girls that his name meant "lion" or "warrior" or "sandstorm" in Arabic. Sometimes he didn't bother correcting them, or the brunettes for that matter, when they tugged at his gold chains and his curly chest hair and said that they just loved Italian men. Rony wasn't ashamed of his heritage, but he wasn't going to say that he was named after a fucking clown.

Rony was not a clown. An ocean of whiskey could not flush the work ethic from his DNA. Rony was serious about the used civil engineering text book that lay open next to the cash register. Unlimited Red Bull and Twizzlers were great and all, but he didn't want to work in his parents' gas station all his life. He was serious about his cowboy boots. He'd put a rack of shoe polish next to the lighters and scratch-off Lotto tickets so it'd always be in reach. He kept a Mossberg pump-action shotgun behind the counter. That was serious too.

Most nights, the gas station was peaceful. The fluorescent bulbs buzzed, the door chimed when a trucker came into buy Funyuns or herbal Viagra, the fridge hummed, and the hot dogs rolled nowhere like Sisyphus's boulder and just as old. Sometimes Rony put on some Taylor Swift and wondered whether she drank whiskey and whether she liked Lebanese or Italian men. Most nights, Rony stayed safe and sound in the pouch of the Kangaroo.

This night was not most nights. Rony had not been concerned with the drought, so he had not noticed when it started to drizzle. The thunderstorm demanded his attention. The door chimed but did not open. There were no cars at the pumps or in any of the parking spaces. Rony took a sip of Red Bull and returned to his studies. The wind whistled. Sheets of rain slapped against the gas station windows, and the door chimed again and again and again.

Rony's boots clicked as he walked to the door. He turned off the door chime. "Piece of junk." He looked out the rain-blurred windows. The pumps were covered and lit, but he could not see beyond them to the road, and no headlights pierced the gloom. Rony clicked back to his stool. He picked up the Mossberg, checked the chamber, felt foolish, and set it back down. Feeling even more foolish, he opened the cash register.

Beneath the tray of small bills and coins, beneath the twenties that Rony had not bothered to put in the safe, lay a blue amulet in the shape of an eye set into a palm. Whose palm depended on who you asked; in the Karam household, or in any of the small businesses that they owned, the hand belonged to Mary. Rony looped it around his neck amidst the gold chains. The wind howled, and the rain sounded like radio static. He closed his textbook, looked out the windows, and thought of horrors.

The most horrible story that Rony's father ever told him was about how his parents used to do it in a McDonald's meat locker. Rony had responded, "Jesus, Dad, why would you even tell me that?" He was twelve years old at the time. Rony's father had laughed and clapped Rony on the shoulder. "One day, you will meet the right girl and understand. Also, don't take the Lord's name in vain." He was drunk at the time.

The second most horrible story that Rony's father ever told him was about the jinn. Rony's father was true to his faith, but he was also a poet and a storyteller. Besides, he felt that he owed a duty to God to mess with his kids' heads. Growing up, Rony and his sister had ingested Big Macs and stories in equal proportion: Stories of spirits who were neither angel nor demon, who granted wishes and curses, who were fickle and deadly and lived in the stone and the water and most of all the wind. In those stories, living cyclones swept up little girls who dressed like the whores on MTV or used too many cellphone minutes, and they dashed against the earth little boys who got into fights or jacked off in the freezer. Rony's father may have taken some liberties.

When Rony's fifth grade class watched "The Wizard of Oz," Rony threw up kebab all over his Trapper Keeper. The school nurse was blonde, a Shania Twain fan, and kind to him on that terrible day. It could be a coincidence.

Back in the Kangaroo, Rony checked the Mossberg again. The shotgun was not for would-be robbers. The Kangaroo was too far from the city for a criminal to bother with. It was too far from the city and too close to the woods where, on quiet nights, or even when he turned up Taylor Swift songs, Rony could hear something moving in the trees. It could have been raccoons, but the shotgun was not for raccoons. The shotgun was for jinn.

The wind sang, but Rony couldn't dance to it. He heard cackling spirits in the storm. He thought that the Kangaroo might finally live up to its name by leaping high into the sky and, inevitably, falling on a witch. He dry-heaved and tasted Twizzlers. This was far worse than naming a gas station after a marsupial. It was even worse than naming an innocent boy after Ronald McDonald.

"This is bullshit!" Rony said. Lightning and thunder were his reply. The lights at the pumps went first, then darkness flooded the station. The fridges went silent. The hot dogs were granted respite from their endless journey, as though Orpheus had come to Hades.

Something thumped against the door. It was not rain. It was made of meat and bone. Rony fumbled for the Mossberg and heard it clatter across the floor. Lightning flashed again, illuminating a ragged figure covered in muck and vine tendrils. It was not a jinni, he thought. No, the wretched thing came from another one of his father's stories. It was a flesh-eater. A ghoul.

The ghoul stumbled into the gas station, groping the air. Rony's hand clasped something hard and round. He prayed for David's mighty aim and loosed the missile at his foe. His prayers were answered. He heard a thunk, and the ghoul exclaimed in pain. If it felt pain, Rony thought, perhaps it could be killed.

The power came back on. The hotdogs resumed their divine punishment. Rony dove for the Mossberg.