Flint was a big silver fuel tanker, long and smooth, with a hose coiled up behind him like a sleeping snake. Every evening, when the desert sky turned dark purple and the first stars poked through, Flint rolled out of the garage to make his deliveries. Hiss went his air brakes. Rumble went his engine. Off he went. Tonight he had one last stop: Star Stop, the little gas station at mile marker forty-seven, the one with the star-shaped sign that blinked on at dusk. Pink, pink, pink — then steady. Flint loved that sign.
He drove through the cooling desert air, past the tall saguaro cacti standing like dark fingers against the sky, past the dry riverbed that smelled of dust and old rain. The road was empty and smooth. His headlights swept out ahead, two long yellow arms reaching into the dark. Rumble, rumble, rumble. Almost there. Then Flint's headlights hit something strange. Shapes in the road. Round shapes. Bumpy shapes. He slowed down. He squinted through his windshield. Tortoises. A whole herd of desert tortoises, spread all the way across the asphalt, eyes closed, completely and utterly asleep.
Flint stopped with a long, slow hiss. He looked left — deep sandy ditch. He looked right — deep sandy ditch. He couldn't go around. And he couldn't honk, because everyone knows if you honk at a sleeping tortoise, it tucks right into its shell and stays there for a very, very long time. He needed another idea. He thought about the hose. His long, flexible fuel hose, coiled up behind him. Flint had never used it for anything except filling tanks. But it was soft at the tip, and it could loop and curve any way he pointed it. Rumble, rumble, rumble — an idea!
Flint slowly uncoiled the hose. He stretched it out across the road, long and looping, and curved the tip gently around the first tortoise. He nudged — just a little. The tortoise grumbled. Its claws scritched on the asphalt. Then it shuffled sideways, off the road, and onto a wide flat rock beside the ditch. The rock was still warm from the day's sun. The tortoise settled right down with a satisfied thump. One by one, Flint guided them. Loop and nudge. Scritch and shuffle. Thump. Loop and nudge. Scritch and shuffle. Thump. Each tortoise found a spot on the flat warm rock, and each one seemed, if anything, even happier there than on the road. Loop and nudge. Scritch and shuffle. Thump. The rock filled up like a plate of slow, sleepy biscuits.
Then Flint counted. One tortoise missing. A tiny one. He swept his eyes across the dark and spotted her — small as a dinner roll, wandering the wrong way, heading toward the sandy ditch. That was Dot, and Dot was very, very small, and the ditch was very, very dark. Flint clicked on his amber running lights. They cast a soft orange glow along the ground, just enough to catch the edge of the flat rock. Dot stopped. She blinked one slow blink. She turned. Her little claws went scritch, scritch, scritch across the asphalt, and then — thump — she climbed up onto the rock with the others.
Flint coiled his hose back up. He rolled forward, easy and slow, and at mile marker forty-seven, there was Star Stop. Pink, pink, pink — then steady. He filled the tanks, the hose glug-glugging in the quiet night until his own tank was empty and light. He rumbled home to the garage, slower now, his long silver body hollow as a straw. The door clanged shut behind him. His engine ticked once, twice, three times as it cooled. Flint sat in the dark, empty and still, the smell of diesel and warm metal settling all around him, parked.
