On Labor Day, my last day at the station before I quit for the school year, I put in two shifts. There was a final surge of traffic, mainly retired people who owned cabins and milked the last juice from summer before heading home. These older drivers were the worst kind of customers. Check the tires. Check the windshield wipers. Check the brake fluid. Check the spare. Check the valve stern in the spare.
Which I did without complaint. After Convention, some kind of horizon had shrunken. Drawn itself closer to the present, to the moment at hand. I began to think more about small matters: the right socket for the right nut; oiled threads that turned one way only; the brightly colored odor of gasoline. I put my faith in the wide steel arms of the old hydraulic hoist; an oil can’s pouring spout and warm, olive flow; my pocket feeler gauge and its polished, wafer-thin fingers with which I gapped ignition points and set valve clearances. I took pleasure in the perfect pitch of an engine in tune, in the absoluteness of tools.
This carried over into how I approached people as well. Regularly I drove out to Mr. Blomenfeld’s estate and mowed the lawn. Once, as I arrived, I saw Angelo
and Bud duck into the boathouse, and another time I found Miss Verhoven, the librarian, having dinner with Harry Blomenfeld. I accepted this. I made no judgments, offered no gossip. Everyone around me—the customers, Kirk, even my parents—I took at face value. The world was made up of people and things, things and people. That was it. I took comfort, felt a kind of oneness with everyone and everything that went on around me, because I understood that I was on my own: how my life unfolded was up to me.
Kirk, Tim, and I labored all that day until near closing, when traffic died as if the roads around town had been rolled up and stored away. “I’ll close up,” I said to them. “Why don’t you guys take off.” Since Convention I had quietly been punching out an hour or two early, then staying on to work. It was a way to pay back Mr. Davies for the stuff I’d stolen.
“You sure?” Kirk said. Tim was already heading to his car. His wife was home, healthy now, and, as Tim put it, “back in the saddle.”
“Sure. I’ll drop off my key tomorrow.”
“Hey, keep the key. We might need you on occasion this fall. And you’re coming back next summer, right?”
“That’s a long way off,” I said.
“Well, it’s been real,” Kirk said. We shook hands, and he turned to his shiny Chevrolet and motored off uptown (not home).
I sat on the station steps before the empty intersection and smoked a last small cigar. The stoplight clicked,
and clicked, and clicked. The churches on three sides stood somber and still. I finished my cigar, then checked my watch—fifteen minutes left. I locked up the back room, gave the johns a quick mopping, then emptied the windshield-washing buckets by the pumps and rinsed the tattered chamois cloths. I went inside to power down the lights—was reaching for them—when the bells rang.
I swore briefly, tiredly, and went out. A dusty station wagon sat at the far pumps. Some family getting a late start back to Minneapolis was my guess, though I couldn’t see anyone but the driver.
“Evening. Fill with ethyl?”
“Five dollars regular,” the man answered.
Not “Fill it up” but “Five dollars.” For the full-service attendant, this was the most annoying request; it meant that I had to stand there and watch the spinning numbers—there was no time to move around, wash the windshield, check the oil. “Sure,” I said.
I finished the gas, then went alongside the open window. “Anything else?”
“I guess that’s up to you, kid.” In the shadows, I couldn’t get a good look at him, but he was clearly your average pain-in-the-butt customer.
“Let me get that windshield,” I said.
“Thanks. Bugs are bad tonight.”
I went for a fresh sponge, wet it, trudged back to his station wagon. He was my last customer; it felt important to go out on a high note, to do it right. When I finished the glass I said, “Oil all right?”
“Check it, would you?” He stepped out to watch me—the kind of guy who didn’t trust anyone—but I was okay with that. Each to his own. I pulled his stick, wiped it clean, reinserted it, withdrew it for his inspection. “Good,” he said.
Before closing the hood, from habit I made sure the radiator cap was tight, the battery cables secure, the windshield washer reservoir full, the fan belt tight.
“Five dollars,” I said. He fished out a twenty (of course), so I headed to the office. Passing behind his car, I paused: the left brake light was out. Had it been earlier in the day I would have gone back and alerted him. Changing a taillight bulb was a five-minute job, maximum. But he was in no real danger, I was tired, and the summer was over.
I came back out with his change. “Thanks,” I said.
He seemed to pause, then from the shadows said, “Looks like it’s closing time—is the men’s room still open?”
“Right over there.” I pointed the way. Inside the office I swept the floor and watched the drive, hoping the lonely station wagon wouldn’t attract another car. The man stayed in the bathroom a long time—what do they do in there?—but finally he came out and started the engine. His lone brake light blinked once, then he caught a green light and drove away west.
Inside, I shut down the main bank of lights over the pumps—kachick, kachick, kachick—then went around to lock the doors. In the men’s room, stuck between the
door and the frame, was a folded piece of paper. I pulled it free, opened it.
At the top was the official Shell logo and a checklist of the seven-point code. All were checked except “Extra Service.” My heart started to pound in the back of my skull.
At the bottom, handwritten, were these words:
Good job, son. I was pleased, especially since it was closing time. But I know you saw my brake light, and that was the extra service I was looking for. Sorry, but the rules are the rules. However, I’ll be giving you and your station (very clean bathroom, by the way) a positive report in general.
Sincerely,
“Mr. Shell”
I drove straight home, though I didn’t speed. My truck radio was picking up Little Rock as clear as a bell, but then it faded, replaced by WLS from Chicago. The Beatles’ song “Help!” came on, and I listened to it as if for the first time. At home, I parked the truck, then sat on the porch and watched the stars. The days were shorter now, the sky dark, and the constellations were never brighter. Suddenly I laughed—at the great, cosmic hugeness of things—at how small this porch was, this house, this farm, this township, this county, this state, this whole planet.
My mother came onto the porch in her nightgown. “Paul, you’re home!”
“Yes,” I said. I kept looking at the Milky Way, and the galaxies unending.
She sat down beside me. “How’d it go tonight?”
“Fine.”
“So you’re done for the summer.”
“Yes.”
She was silent.
“By the way, thanks,” I said.
“For what?”
“For sending me out there.”
She stared past our driveway to the dark road beyond, then bent her head. “I didn’t think ‘out there’ would be quite so far.”
I put my arm around her; always it had been the other way around, but tonight I hugged her close. “I’ll be okay, you know.”
She looked at me, then we sat there watching the stars.
“There’s Orion.” I pointed. “See his shoulder and, below, his belt buckle?”
“Kind of …” she said. “It’s something I should do, learn my stars.”
“We’ll get a book, figure them out together—every one,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll try,” she said, then shivered. “I’m going in. Do you want anything, some ice cream?”
“I’m fine,” I said, and really I was. I stayed on the porch after she left, looking up into the sky. I lay back to take it all in. The night was a giant domed tent, shot with salt or white sand, and through those tiniest of holes shone a huge light, one that people never got to see. But no doubt about it, it was up there, behind everything, burning on and on.