The Gas Station Statue

I

Tom Briggs opened the gas station at six in the morning.

He unlocked the door, flipped the light switches, and stood in the fluorescent glow of the convenience store, watching the coffee urn begin to fill. The machine made a sound like grinding gears, the same sound it had made every morning for three years, and Tom thought about how some things never changed, which was either comforting or depressing depending on the day.

Outside, the concrete angel sat on its pedestal near the pump island. It was cracked on the left wing. The paint was peeling. It had cost forty-seven dollars and ninety-nine cents at a garden supply store in Columbus, and Tom had bought it on a whim during a rainstorm twenty years ago, thinking it would add character to the station. It had not added character. It was a concrete statue in a concrete world, and nobody looked at it.

Tom filled the coffee urn, counted the cash in the register—eighteen dollars and forty cents from the previous night—and went outside to check the pumps.

Two cars were in the lot. A Ford pickup with Ohio plates and a sedan with no hubcaps. Both had been there when he closed at ten. Both were still running.

Tom walked toward them. The drivers were not inside.

He looked around the lot and saw the tip jar on the counter of the convenience store, visible through the glass door. It was empty. He had seen it full the night before. Not full-full. It was never full. But there had been dollars in it. Maybe four or five dollars in quarters and dimes and the occasional crumpled bill.

Now it was empty.

Tom stood in the morning light, looking at the empty tip jar, looking at the concrete angel, looking at the two cars that had been running all night with no drivers. He thought about calling the sheriff. He thought about how much trouble it would be. He thought about the eighteen dollars and forty cents in the register, which wasn't enough to cover the night shift.

He thought nothing. He just stood there, in the morning light, looking at the empty tip jar, looking at the statue, saying nothing.

II

Three miles down Route 47, the two men were sitting on the ditch, watching the cornfields sway in the wind.

They had no names. Not that Tom knew. Not that anyone knew. They looked like men who hadn't slept in days. Their clothes were dirty and ill-fitting. Their faces were the color of old paper. They had walked up to the gas station around two in the morning, and one of them had gone inside while the other kept watch, and the one inside had taken the coins from the tip jar, and they had left, and they had been driving for three hours and they were still driving because neither of them had a destination and neither of them wanted to go home.

"I should put it back," the one who had taken the coins said. He was younger, maybe twenty-five, with a face that hadn't yet learned to be hard.

"They won't miss it," the other said. He was older, maybe thirty, with a face that had already learned everything it needed to know about not caring.

"It's not right."

"It's four dollars. They won't miss four dollars."

They argued for twenty minutes. They didn't reach a conclusion. The younger man said he would put it back. The older man said they were already three miles away and it was too late. The younger man said it wasn't too late. The older man said it was.

They drove in silence for another hour. The cornfields stretched in every direction, green and indifferent, growing in neat rows that stretched to the horizon and came back again, row after row after row, an endless repetition of planting and harvesting and planting and harvesting, the kind of repetition that made you wonder if meaning was just a word people used to make the repetition feel less like repetition.

III

The next morning, Tom Briggs opened the gas station at six.

He unlocked the door, flipped the light switches, and stood in the fluorescent glow, watching the coffee urn begin to fill. The machine made the same sound it had made every morning. The concrete angel sat on its pedestal, cracked and peeling, saying nothing.

He went to the counter and looked at the tip jar.

It was full.

Not full-full. It was never full-full. But it was fuller than it had been yesterday. There was money in it. Quarters and dimes and one crumpled bill. He counted it: twenty-three dollars. Six dollars more than the four that had been stolen.

Tom stood there for a while. He looked at the tip jar. He looked at the concrete angel. He thought about asking the sheriff. He thought about putting a camera in the store. He thought about locking the door at night.

He thought nothing. He just stood there.

He refilled the coffee urn. He filled windshields for a trucker who stopped for gas and coffee and a pack of cigarettes and didn't speak a word. He counted the cash in the register at closing: not enough to cover the night shift.

Life went on.

Nobody knew what happened at the gas station on Route 47. Nobody would ever know. The two men never came back. The younger man put the four dollars back, or tried to, or thought about putting it back, or dreamed about putting it back. The older man told him to forget it, and he forgot it, or tried to, or remembered and tried to forget.

The concrete angel sat on its pedestal. It was cracked on the left wing. The paint was peeling. It said nothing. It would never say anything. It was concrete.

IV

Three years later, Tom Briggs sold the gas station.

It hadn't made a profit in five years. The highway had been rerouted two miles east, and the new traffic pattern meant that nobody on Route 47 needed gas anymore. The bank foreclosed. Tom signed the papers. He packed his things into a truck he had bought used and drove away.

The last thing he did before he left was look at the concrete angel one more time. It sat on its pedestal near the pump island, cracked and peeling, watching nothing, saying nothing, being exactly what it had always been: a concrete statue in a concrete world.

Tom got in his truck and drove away. He didn't look back. He didn't need to. He knew the angel would be there when he looked back, and it wouldn't have changed. It was concrete. It was cracked. It was an angel.

The new owners of the gas station never removed the statue. It sat on its pedestal for another ten years, cracked and peeling, until the building was demolished and the land was sold to a chain store that wanted a clean lot. The concrete angel was crushed into rubble and used as foundation fill for the parking lot of a supermarket that opened in 1998 and closed in 2008 and stands empty now, a hollow shell with a parking lot full of cracked concrete and weeds growing through the fissures.

Nobody remembers the gas station on Route 47. Nobody remembers the tip jar. Nobody remembers the two men who stole four dollars and put back twenty-three.

The angel says nothing. It will never say anything. It was concrete.

M₁=1.0, M₈=2.0, R=0.4, θ=225°, I₁=0.0, I₂=0.0, N₅=0.3

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