the 941

I haven’t filled up my gas tank for weeks. Maybe in some insane way I believe that if I hold out for long enough, gas prices will drop by $2 a gallon.

Whatever the cause, my car lurched to a stop at the corner of Gulfstream Road and U.S. 41 last night, at 2 a.m. My friend Casey Anderson and I started walking north on the highway, gesturing wildly with our thumbs. A Sarasota Police officer slowed, made a face, and sped on through a yellow light.

We were ignored by many other cars. Suddenly a pickup heading south made a U-turn and pulled up. “You guys shouldn’t be walkin’ in the middle of the street,” he said. “People will think you’re crazy, or on drugs.”

“Thank you, sir,” we said. “That sounds perfectly logical.” And we hopped in.

We got to talking with the guy. He asked us where we were from, whether we believed in a Sept. 11 conspiracy. I don’t remember how it got to this point, but at one point the man remarked, “How can a stone cry out for joy unless it has some sort of consciousness?”

We arrived at the Shell across from New College precisely at closing time. I pleaded with the clerk, and he let us buy a gallon of gas.

On the way back, the truck driver told us about a film project he was working on. He was interviewing everyone in town about their spiritual beliefs, in attempt to prove that their beliefs were all fundamentally similar.

We got to the car, thanked him, and moistened my gas tank. Casey complained that the guy was kind of spiritually vaporous, dabbling in various metaphysics without getting concrete about anything. Then he reneged, decided that at any rate the man’s beliefs led him to do a good deed.

“I don’t care if you believe in Helios the sun god,” he said. “If you’re going to pick me up when I’m out of gas, that’s all that matters.”

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