The Night Shift

The gas station is at the intersection of Route 23 and Main Street. It has been there since 1974, when the man who owned it before me decided that a gas station at the intersection of Route 23 and Main Street was a good use of his property. I did not decide it. The property decided it. Properties decide these things. They sit on land and accumulate value and eventually someone puts a pump on them and calls it a gas station.

I arrive at 5 AM. The sign flickers—QUICK STOP, the S in STOP has been out since 1979, so it reads QUICK TO, which is philosophically interesting if you think about it but I do not think about it. I unlock the door. The lock sticks. I pull. It opens. This has been our arrangement for eleven years.

I fill the tanks. Diesel in the morning, unleaded after noon. The pumps count in decimals—3.49 gallons, 4.12 gallons, 0.75 gallons. Decimals are honest. They do not round up. They tell you exactly how much you are getting, down to the hundredth of a gallon. The world would be a better place if money worked the same way.

Ray comes at 7:30. He drives a Peterbilt from Duluth to Columbus and back, four days on, three days off. He orders a black coffee and a meatball sub from the cooler and stands at the counter while I ring it up.

"Rough night?" he asks. This is his greeting. It is not a question. It is a statement dressed as a question, the way most things in a gas station convenience store are statements dressed as other things.

"The usual," I say. This is my greeting. It means nothing and everything.

He pays. I give him change. He leaves. The bell above the door rings. I put the change in the register. The register is not locked. It has not been locked since 2019, when the man who worked the night shift stole forty-three dollars in a single week and I decided that the cost of a lock was higher than the cost of theft.

Diane called Tuesday. She does not call often. Maybe once a month, usually on a weekday morning when she knows I am alone in the station and unlikely to be in a hurry to talk.

"Sarah has a parent-teacher conference on Thursday," she said. Her voice was flat. Not angry. Not cold. Flat. The emotional equivalent of beige wall paint.

"I'll be here," I said. "Unless—"

"Unless what?"

"Unless a truck breaks down and needs a mechanic and I'm the only one who knows how to fix a fuel injection system on a '98 Freightliner."

A pause. "You could miss it, Tom."

"I know."

Another pause. Longer. The kind of pause that contains things that will never be said.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I'll tell her you're working."

"Tell her I'm sorry."

"She knows. She's sixteen. She knows everything."

That was the call. That is always the call. No drama. No argument. No slamming doors or raised voices. Just a woman telling a man that their daughter has a meeting on Thursday and the man will probably miss it because he works at a gas station at the intersection of Route 23 and Main Street and the pumps do not fill themselves.

I fixed the Freightliner. Sarah's conference was at 4 PM on Thursday. I was there at 3:45, which is late, which is the usual. Sarah did not look at me when I walked in. She looked at her phone. She has had the phone for two years and has not looked at anyone else for two years. Not even me.

The teacher was nice. She told me Sarah is "bright but disengaged." Those are teacher words for "smart kid who has decided that nothing matters." I nodded and said "I understand" and wrote "I will talk to her" in my notebook, which is the same notebook where I write down the prices of diesel and unleaded and the phone number of the mechanic I call when the pumps break.

I did not talk to her that night. I came home. She was in her room with the door closed. I stood outside the door for thirty seconds and then I went to the kitchen and made a sandwich and ate it standing up and went to bed.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. Tuesday is the same as every other day. I will arrive at 5 AM. I will fill the tanks. Ray will come at 7:30. He will order a black coffee and a meatball sub. He will ask if I had a rough night. I will say the usual. He will pay. I will give him change. He will leave. The bell will ring. I will put the change in the register.

This is not a tragedy. This is not a comedy. This is a Tuesday.

At 8 PM, a truck pulls in. It is not Ray's Peterbilt. It is a Kenworth, older model, paint faded to the colour of a sky that has forgotten how to be blue. The driver gets out. He is tall, wearing a jacket that has seen better decades, and he walks into the store with the slow, heavy gait of a man who has spent thirty years sitting in a cab.

He goes to the cooler. He takes a beer. He does not take a sub. He stands at the counter and pays with a ten-dollar bill and I give him three dollars and forty cents in change.

He does not leave. He stands there, holding the beer, looking at me with eyes that are the colour of the Mississippi in November—grey, tired, and holding something that might be curiosity or might be pity, which in my experience are often the same thing.

"You ever think about it?" he asks.

"Think about what?"

"Everything."

I look at him. He is not being cruel. He is not being kind. He is being a truck driver who has spent thirty years on the road and has seen a lot of men in a lot of gas stations and recognizes something in me that he does not have the words to name.

"Think about what?" I repeat.

"About whether it's worth it. The pumps. The register. The 5 AM. The Ray coffee. The ex-wife. The kid who won't look at you. Whether any of it adds up to anything."

I think about the answer. I have thought about this question before, usually at 3 AM when the station is empty and the fluorescent lights hum and the silence is so complete that you can hear your own heartbeat. I have never had an answer.

"I don't know," I say.

The truck driver nods. He does not look surprised. He has heard this answer before, from other men, in other stations, at other intersections in other towns where the pumps count in decimals and the sign reads QUICK TO and the bell above the door rings when someone leaves and the change goes in the register and nothing adds up to anything and that is just what it is.

"Me neither," he says. And he opens the beer, and he drinks it standing up at the counter, and then he leaves, and the bell rings, and I put the empty bottle in the recycling bin behind the store, and I turn off the lights, and I go home.

I drive past the community center on the way home. It used to be a church. Then it was a campaign headquarters—my campaign, two years ago, when I ran for town council and lost to Henderson by forty-seven votes. Forty-seven votes out of three thousand. I was close. I was not close enough.

The community center is dark. The sign in the window says "Henderson for Council—Re-Election Committee" in letters that are peeling at the corners. Henderson has been councilman for six years. He will be councilman for six more. The pumps at my station will count in decimals. The sign will still read QUICK TO. The bell will still ring.

I stop at a red light. It is a four-way stop. The light is red for thirty seconds. I watch it. Thirty seconds. Green. I drive.

I get home. The house is small—three bedrooms, one bath, a yard that is mostly dirt and one tree that is dying. I eat leftover pizza from the fridge. It is cold. It is adequate. I brush my teeth. I lie down. The ceiling has a crack in it that runs from the corner to the middle, the way the crack in the ceiling of my apartment in Ohio runs from the corner to the middle, the way the crack in every ceiling in every house in every town in every state runs from the corner to the middle, because houses crack and ceilings crack and people crack and the crack is not dramatic and it is not tragic and it is not anything except a crack, and eventually the house falls down and the ceiling falls down and the person falls down and the crack was always there and always will be.

I sleep.

The alarm goes off at 3 AM. I am already awake. I have been awake for twenty minutes, lying in the dark, listening to the house settle and the tree outside creak in the wind and the distant hum of Route 23, where trucks pass at all hours of the night and the day and the morning and the evening, because the trucks do not stop and the pumps do not stop and the register does not stop and neither do I.

I get up. I put on my boots. I drive to the station. I unlock the door. The lock sticks. I pull. It opens.

QUICK TO. The S is still out. It has been out since 1979. It will probably stay out until 1979 again.

I fill the tanks. Diesel in the morning, unleaded after noon. The pumps count in decimals.

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport) and his beloved father.
The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED （BRN74685111） all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement.
Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication.
To contact author， please email to datatorent@yeah.net