The Repair Shop The gas station was off Interstate 70, about halfway between Columbus and Indianapolis, in a town called Millersburg that had a population of 847 and a post office that closed at four. Tom Briggs had been running it for eleven months, ever since the factory closed and he had walked out of the parking lot for the last time and decided that pumping gas was better than sitting in a house with a wife who had stopped speaking to him six months before the factory closed. The station had two pumps, a convenience store with a cooler that held soda and beer and a refrigerator that did not work properly, and a back room with a cot and a microwave and a television that picked up three channels if the wind was right. Tom lived in the back room. He cooked in the microwave. He watched the trucks roll by. He pumped gas. He counted the money at the end of each day and put it in a lockbox under the counter and told himself it was enough. It was not enough. But it was something. On a Tuesday in November, a man named Ray pulled up in a pickup truck that had seen better years. The truck was blue and the paint was peeling and the right mirror was held on with duct tape. Ray got out and he looked tired. He looked like a man who had not slept in days and had stopped trying. He carried a duffel bag. "Got something for you," Ray said. Tom was wiping down the counter. He did not look up. "I don't do something." "This isn't something. This is -" Ray stopped. He looked at the duffel bag. He looked at Tom. He looked away. "Just take it." He set the bag on the counter and opened it. Inside was a boy. The boy was small, maybe seven, with dark hair and eyes that had learned to look at everything and trust nothing. He was dressed in a sweater and slacks and shoes that had been polished, which meant someone cared about him even if that someone was not here now. The boy did not cry. He did not struggle. He just sat in the duffel bag and looked at Tom with an expression that was too calm, too resigned, for his age. Tom stopped wiping the counter. He set the rag down. He looked at Ray. "What is this." "His name is Jimmy," Ray said. "His father's got some problems. I was supposed to keep him safe. I can't anymore. Just - just keep him for a few days. Please." And then Ray was gone, back to the truck, back to the interstate, back into whatever had driven him to abandon a child in a gas station in rural Ohio. Tom stood there looking at the duffel bag. The boy was still sitting in it, his knees drawn up to his chest, his hands folded in his lap. He looked like a child who had been placed there deliberately, like an object, like something that needed to be stored. "Get out of the bag," Tom said. The boy got out of the bag. "Go sit on that chair." The boy went and sat on the chair. It was a metal chair from the convenience store, the kind that was supposed to hold four people but could barely hold one. The boy sat on it carefully, his back straight, his hands on his knees, his eyes on Tom. Tom went to the cooler and got him a juice box and a granola bar. He set them on the counter in front of the boy and went back to wiping the counter. The boy drank the juice slowly. He ate half the granola bar and saved the other half. "Are you going to throw me out?" the boy asked. "No." "Are you going to call the police." "Not yet." "Why not." Tom thought about this. He thought about the factory, and the layoffs, and the way the city had turned on its own workers and spat them out. He thought about his wife, and the silence in the house, and the way he had stopped asking questions because the answers were always the same. "Because someone should have thrown you out years ago," he said. "And nobody did." The boy did not respond. He just sat there, drinking his juice, eating his granola bar, watching Tom with those old, tired eyes. Tom went back to wiping the counter. The truck traffic was light this time of day. A few semis rolled by, their horns blaring, their diesel engines rumbling. A family in a minivan stopped for gas and went back into the store and bought chips and candy and did not look at the boy. Nobody looked at the boy. That night, Tom made the boy sleep in the back room on the cot. The boy did not complain. He just lay down and stared at the ceiling and listened to the highway and tried to sleep. Tom sat on the edge of his own bed and watched him. He wanted to ask questions. He wanted to know who the boy's father was and what had happened to him and why Ray had brought him here and what Tom was supposed to do. But he had learned, over eleven months of pumping gas and counting money and telling himself it was enough, that questions do not change anything. In the morning, the boy was still there. He was sitting at the counter, eating cereal from a bowl that Tom had found in the back of the cupboard. The television was on, but neither of them was watching it. "Your father dead?" Tom asked. The boy nodded. "How." "I don't know. Ray said he killed himself. But I don't -" He stopped. He shook his head. "I don't know." Tom nodded. He did not press. He went to the pumps and checked the levels and wiped down the nozzles and counted the cash from the night before. It was not enough. But it was something. The police came at noon. They were state troopers, two of them, in a car that was clean and new and smelled like leather and authority. They walked into the gas station and looked at Tom and looked at the boy and looked at each other. "Is this your son?" the taller one asked. "No." "Who's he." "I don't know. Some guy named Ray dropped him off yesterday and left." The trooper frowned. "Where's Ray." "Gone. Back to wherever he came from." The trooper looked at the boy. The boy looked at the trooper. The trooper's expression did not change, but something behind his eyes did. "Can I talk to him," the trooper said. Tom shrugged. "He's right there." The trooper pulled up a chair and sat down across from the boy. "What's your name." "Jimmy." "How old are you, Jimmy." "Seven." "Where's your daddy." The boy was quiet for a long time. Then: "He's dead." "Who told you that." "Ray. And the newspaper." "What newspaper." "The one on the counter." The trooper looked at the newspaper. It was the Columbus Dispatch, folded open to the local section. There was a notice about a man named Walsh - shipping magnate, suicide, investigation - and a photo of a man who looked like he had been smiling for the camera but was not smiling in the photo. The trooper folded the newspaper and stood up. "Come with us, Jimmy." The boy did not move. "Come on. We're going to take you somewhere safe." The boy looked at Tom. Tom was standing by the pumps, wiping down a nozzle that was already clean. He did not look at the boy. He looked at the highway. He looked at the trucks. He looked at the sky. "Come on," the trooper said again, softer this time. The boy stood up. He put his cereal bowl in the sink. He picked up his juice box and set it next to the bowl. He walked to the door and looked back at Tom one last time. "Thank you," he said. Tom did not respond. He kept wiping the nozzle. The boy left. The troopers left. The gas station was quiet. Tom went back to pumping gas. He counted the money at the end of the day. He put it in the lockbox. He went to the back room and lay down on the cot and stared at the ceiling and listened to the highway. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change. Life went on, indifferent. The next morning, Tom turned the sign in the window to OPEN and made coffee and waited for the trucks. --- ## © 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) 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