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There’re only two ways out of town: east or west on I-70. I see most everyone before they go, either way they’re headed, because the next closest station is fifty miles going east, or seventy-five headed west.

I’ve worked here twenty-five years now, mopping floors and selling cigarettes to kids I watched grow up from diapers. I was here when Doug left, scared and shivering and bruised up, stopping in for a coffee and paying with change before standing on the side of the road to hitchhike out. I worked here when Janine came through, all smiles, car piled up with things on her way to college. And I worked here when, five years ago, Gabby said goodbye for the last time, and gave me that smile I always missed, and asked, “Aren’t you curious what’s out there waiting for you?”

There’re folks who just drive through, too, from all over. Some just pay and go, others stop and stay a while. Sometimes they’re so lonely, and they want to tell me where they’ve come from and where they’re going, wanting someone to know that they’re real. After a while, all of them kind of merge together, the out-of-towners, and I’m sure I’m just a blur for them, too.

I’ve thought about going. I grew up here, just like my father and his father. I’ve never been anywhere else, except the city a couple times a year for Christmas or for picking something up I can’t get close by. I’ve never done anything else but work at this station, watching the people come and go and trying to listen the times they needed to be heard.

I do wonder where all the people I knew went. I wonder who they became, when they picked a direction and started driving, sometimes knowing where they’d end up and sometimes not. I wonder if they made it, and how they’re doing. I wonder about Gabby especially, even now, and wonder what it would be like to leave and run into her, hundreds of miles from this tiny town, and see her smile again.

But those idle wonders fade when someone new comes in or someone else I know goes. I sit and man my post, make my living and go home and come back the next day. It’s a simple life, but it’s all right. I don’t want anything too complicated, and maybe that’s why I never left. I could never face down the chance that I’d made a mistake. And after all that driving — all that time by myself up in my head — I guess I’m worried I’d arrive different from who I was when I departed. So I stay, and watch them go, east or west. And I hope for them: hope it’s good and hope it’s wanted, whatever they find after all that time and gasoline.