The Gas Receipts in Mom’s Glovebox

The Fridays

The next Friday morning I took an early break and drove past the station at ten after nine, just to see. I am not proud of that either, but I needed to know.

My mother’s white sedan was at pump two. Colt was standing at the nozzle in a brown canvas work coat, pumping her gas, watching the gallons roll up.

My mother was sitting in the driver’s seat with the window down, talking to him, and he was nodding.

When the pump stopped at ten gallons, he hung up the nozzle, took a squeegee out of the bucket by the pump, and washed her windshield.

Then he went around and did the back one too. I drove on to work and cried a little at a stoplight.

Every other Friday after that, Lavonne would call me at the office around noon. “Payday,” she would say. “He initialed it.” And on my way home I would stop in, and she would hand me an envelope with my mother’s name on it, and I would put it in a coffee can in my cupboard.

He never missed a check. Some weeks it was a hundred and ten, because he picked up a Sunday shift.

He went to the bank in Kimball with Lavonne that first Monday, too. I do not know all of what happened there, and it is not my business.

I know he came out with a small loan at the bank’s rate to pay off the three payday places, and a payment he could carry, and that he cut up the cards.

By Thanksgiving my mother was telling everyone at church that her grandson pumped her gas now, every single Friday, and washed her windows too. “He won’t let me get out of the car,” she said, proud as anything. “He says it’s too cold for me.”