55 Miles to the Gas Pump

Content Warning: This story includes a suicide and references to the sexual assault and murder of women.

The title speaks to the circumstances of the story’s setting and characters. If the nearest gas pump is 55 miles away, necessities such as school and law enforcement are presumably out of easy reach too, along with any sense of community (neighbors, church, etc.). Connoting rural desolation, the title foreshadows characters accustomed to being on their own—and doing as they please without fear of repercussions. Far from prying eyes, the man is free to indulge his worst impulses, while the woman stands passively by. At just 266 words, the story indicts The Dangerous Effects of Isolation and The Violence of Rigid Gender Norms.

The first paragraph considers Rancher Croom and his volatile life and death. “Rancher Croom in handmade boots and filthy hat,” the story begins, with a narrative perspective that seems removed from the character while also knowing him intimately (Paragraph 1). In referring to him by his job, Proulx evokes an archetype, or even positions him as a fairy-tale character. However, Croom is more complex than first meets the eye. The description of his hair as “like the curling fiddle string ends” suggests that he may be a musician, or at least a music lover (Paragraph 1). He is a “quick-foot dancer on splintery boards” but also a drinker who heads into his cellar for homemade beer as explosive as he is: It “burst[s] out” of bottles “in garlands of foam” (Paragraph 1). The narrative paints Croom as a frenetic man but not necessarily an unlikable one; the description of him as “warm-handed” could even suggest that he is friendly.

The pause before Croom’s suicide breaks the preceding movement, and the careful, deliberate way in which he “steps out” seems at odds with how he has been described thus far (Paragraph 1). Nevertheless, Croom remains fierce and defiant to the end: “[B]efore he hits he rises again to the top of the cliff like a cork in a bucket of milk” (Paragraph 1). The description imbues the suicide with mysticism and speaks to Croom’s indomitable life force. Although Croom’s “roar” could evoke that of a wild animal, the overall depiction of Croom remains positive, making the revelations of the second paragraph more jarring.

The white space on the page between the two paragraphs not only indicates a shift in focus from one character to the next but also suggests the differences between Rancher and Mrs. Croom. Although her husband has forbidden her to go near the attic and has it under lock and key, such measures only sharpen her “desire” to know what is inside. As she saws and hammers away at the roof to create a space to peer in, it becomes clear that, like her husband, she is strong and determined. Her satisfaction at seeing the bodies (and thus confirming her suspicions) suggests that she is almost as callous, too: “just as she thought: the corpses of Mr. Croom’s paramours” (Paragraph 2). By contrast, Mrs. Croom’s patience in cutting the hole and her apparent willingness to bide her time suggest she is more practical and less impulsive than her husband.

That Mrs. Croom thinks of her husband as “Mr. Croom” denotes the formality of a bygone time—the deference a wife was expected to pay her husband—but also the distance between the two despite years of marriage. The “old Croom” remark could also refer to a significant age gap between them. More telling is Mrs. Croom’s deeming the murdered women Croom’s “paramours,” lending insight into the extent to which she has internalized societal misogyny. Regardless of whether the women ever had any romantic connection to Croom, the fact that this is the word that comes to Mrs. Croom’s mind demonstrates the depths of her jealousy, the result of living in a patriarchal society that positions women as competitors for men’s attention.

Mrs. Croom could be considered complicit in the crimes, as she apparently had her suspicions all along but never alerted the authorities. Another look at the story’s title, however, suggests that Mrs. Croom may be a victim herself. Isolated and married to a man she believes capable of extreme violence, she likely had to keep the peace, stay strong, and put her own safety first. The moment in which she chooses to satisfy her curiosity underscores this. In addition to indicating a shift in perspective from one character to the next, the white space between the two paragraphs seems to reflect a passage of time during which Mrs. Croom learns of her husband’s death. Only knowing this does she muster the gumption to climb to the roof and start sawing away. Had she made such an attempt when Croom was alive, she might not have survived to tell the tale (certainly a possibility in the Bluebeard legend from which Proulx is drawing). That her top priority upon his death is finding out what he was hiding in the attic rather than mourning his loss further indicates the antagonistic state of their relationship.

However, the second paragraph also tempers the story’s title. Mrs. Croom “recognizes [the women] from their photographs in the paper” and observes that one of the bodies is wrapped in newspaper (Paragraph 2). The house may be remote, but the Crooms had access to the newspaper and read it, or at least Mrs. Croom did. The goings-on of society, including crimes against women, were known to her, and the newspaper covering the woman’s body may even carry the story of her disappearance.

This grim, ironic idea leads into the story’s final sentence, standing starkly on its own: “When you live a long way out you make your own fun” (Paragraph 3). The darkly humorous suggestion that murder is “fun,” combined with the sudden shift from third-person to second-person narration, suggests the toll isolation takes on the psyche, warping one’s sense of right and wrong. It also cautions readers from judging the story’s characters too quickly, as the “you” implies that such corruption can infect anyone, no matter who they are or claim to be.

With its attic full of murdered women, “55 Miles to the Gas Pump” draws upon the Bluebeard legend, a 17th-century French fairy tale in which a wealthy man seeking a wife is chagrined to find that women are repulsed by his blue beard. Eventually he marries, and as he embarks on a journey, he tells his new wife to enjoy herself and lavish his wealth upon her friends. Giving her his keys, he points out one that opens a small room and forbids her to go near it. She promises, but her curiosity gets the better of her, and when she unlocks the door, she sees the bodies of her husband’s former wives, all with their throats cut. When Bluebeard comes home, she cannot hide the fact that she disobeyed him. He threatens to murder her, but she is saved by her two brothers, who chase Bluebeard down and kill him.

“55 Miles” has clear narrative similarities to the Bluebeard story, but while the legend has a clearcut villain who is punished for his crimes and a damsel in distress who is rescued, “55 Miles” contains no such easy dichotomy or lesson in morality. Croom dies by suicide rather than at the hands of those seeking justice or vengeance, and it is unclear what motivated him to step off the cliff; while it is possible he felt remorse, he might simply have feared punishment, or even been thinking about something entirely unrelated to the murders. What’s more, this depiction of Death and Mortality reads far more positively than the account of his victims’ bodies, which hampers any attempt to read it as punishment. Mrs. Croom further complicates the picture, as she bears some responsibility for suspecting her husband’s crimes and remaining quiet. Crime and justice on the Wyoming plains are no simple matter.