The Gas Station Customer Who Warned Me to Lock the Door

I worked the overnight shift at a gas station on a highway, the dead hours from eleven to seven, mostly alone, mostly quiet, the kind of job where you get used to being the only lit-up thing for miles.

One slow night around three a low steady trucker came in, filled a coffee, bought some jerky, and paid. Normal guy, tired eyes, nothing unusual. As I handed him his change, though, he did not leave. He leaned in a little and said, quiet and even, not wanting to alarm me but wanting me to hear it: "Lock your door when I go. There is a man crouched down behind your ice machine, outside, by the window. He has been watching you. I saw him from the pumps."

My blood went cold. The ice machine sat outside, right against the big front window, in a dark spot the lights did not quite reach, a spot I could not see from behind the counter. The trucker said the man was low, tucked down against it, still, facing in, watching me work. He said he had noticed him while pumping and watched him not move the whole time, several minutes, just crouched there looking in at me.

The trucker offered to wait. He did. He stood by the door, a big calm presence, while I called the police with shaking hands. When the cruiser pulled in, its lights swinging across the lot, we both watched the man break from behind the ice machine and run off into the dark field behind the station, fast, gone before the officer could get near.

The police told me later he matched the description of someone who had been reported hanging around a couple of overnight stops on that highway. I do not know what he was waiting for. I quit overnights not long after. I still think about that trucker, who did not have to say anything, who could have just driven off, and who instead stopped and told me to lock my door. He may have been the reason I got to lock it.