Out in Kalona, another place on the long road, I stopped inside the gas station outside of town. This is a place known for it's Mennonite and Amish population. A quiet back page taken for granted as reliable physical labor and an unknown population of nobodies.
Inside, the cashier, who wasn't Anabaptist, held an expression on his face that made him seem empty and used. He wore a faded uniform of red and black, he looked unshaven and distracted; smelling of stale nicotine. He told me that two months had passed where no one had covered the other two shifts that he wasn't supposed to be doing on top of his own, cursing a ''friend'' who claimed he would cover the supposed shift, he rubbed his eyes as he exhaled the remnants of his sanity all the while burning a hole into the ground with a thousand mile stare.
Outside, the sun slowly sunk into the distance of endless rows of farming field and road. I looked back inside the gas station and saw the attendant look out at the horizon from the window before sitting down with a gallon of gas and a rag behind the counter. He eyed the canister in the corner as he fiddled with his lighter and occasionally exchanged glances, across the ghostly parking lot, towards the nearby ''blackout bar'' and was confounded with the decision between drunkenness or arson.
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