I unwrapped that old station rag right there in my driveway, and I had to sit down, because inside was a cigar box full of little folded papers, and the top one had my name on it, and it was an IOU in my Franks handwriting.
The man who ran that service station on the highway for fifty-four years, an old fellow named Rusty, had left a note in the box. He wrote that a station on a highway sees every young person in the county come through with an empty tank and empty pockets, and that he had done a quiet thing about it for half a century.
When a kid rolled in on fumes with no money, headed home late on a dark road, Rusty filled the tank anyway and had them scribble an IOU, and told them to pay it back when they could. Most never did, and Rusty never once collected. He kept the IOUs in a cigar box, not to hold over anybody, but because each one was a young person he had sent safely home on a dark highway instead of leaving stranded.
For fifty-four years Rusty filled the tanks of broke teenagers on empty at midnight and let them owe him a debt he never intended to collect, hiding the IOUs in the pedestal of the pump, because what he was really doing was making sure no kid in this county ever got stranded on a dark road for want of a few gallons of gas.
My Frank was in that box. 1962, an IOU for a full tank, in his young hand. I remembered him telling me once about a night old Rusty filled his truck when he was broke and would not take a dime. That was the truck he took me courting in.
Rustys note said: I never wanted the money. I wanted them home safe. A boy on a dark road with an empty tank is a boy something bad can happen to. So I filled them up and let them think they owed me, and they owed me nothing but to get home alive. Every paper in here is a kid who made it home because of a few gallons of gas.
I found some of them, gray now like me. I told them old Rusty never expected the money, that the IOU was just his way of getting a proud kid to accept help. Grown men have teared up learning that the old station man filled their tank on a black night decades ago just to make sure they lived to see morning.
I bought back the old glass-top pump because it had not run in decades. It held fifty-four years of one mans quiet watch over every young person on a dark highway, and I have been the one lucky enough to tell them all, at last, that somebody made sure they got home.