Gas Station: Magic Realism

The rusty strum of the banjo was the only sign that there was somebody alive when Al pulled into the gas station just outside of Mobile, Alabama. Well, it was just outside if by "just outside" you meant another three hours' drive. To him, it was close enough. The only thing he could think of was h is girlfriend. He hadn't seen her for way too long; not since she'd gotten a summer job doing work for a newspaper up here--one he'd never heard of before, and neither had she, but that hadn't meant a tinker's damn to her. He laughed, just thinking of her. She loved using phrases like that: "a tinker's damn." What did that really mean? To her, it meant license to give him shit about the Romany in his family tree. Al followed the sound of the banjo--

Inspiration: Some music I was listening to at the time.
Story Potential: High. Damn it.
Notes: So, yeah, the girlfriend goes missing. And Al has to go to his Romany family for help. And there's all kinds of magic realism/surrealism mixed up in it, beginning in about thirty seconds when the broken payphone at the gas station rings. Might even be a novel in this. Curse it.