Out front the sun is gone, the day is gone, it feels nothing but late. The daylight seems used, thin, good for nothing. He carries his chair back into the office and there in the new gloom is the boy, arms folded, leaning against the counter.
“You scared me,” Ruckelbar says. “Hello.” He sets the chair behind his steel desk and switches on the office fluorescents. He’s lost for a moment and simply adds, “How are you?”
“Where’s my sister’s car?” the boy asks. He looks different close like this in the flat light; he’s taller and younger, his pale face run with freckles. He’s wearing a red plaid shirt unbuttoned over a faded black T-shirt.
“The insurance company came and got it. It was theirs.” The boy takes this in and makes a face that says he understands. “Remember, I told you about this a couple of weeks ago?” The boy nods at him and then turns to the big window and looks out. His eyes are roaming and Ruckelbar sees the desperation.
The camera sits on the old steel desk, and in a second Ruckelbar decides what to do; if the boy recognizes it, he’ll give it to him. Otherwise, he’ll let this sleeping dog be. It feels like a good decision, but Ruckelbar is floating in a new world, he can tell. They can hear the loud voices outside, the man and the woman in the back, and Ruckelbar switches on the exterior lights.
“Where would the insurance take that car?”
“I don’t know,” Ruckelbar says.
“Would they fix it?”
“Probably part it out,” Ruckelbar says. “They don’t fix them anymore, many of them.”
“It had been a good car for Sheila,” the boy says. “Better than any of her friends had.”
“I hear good things about the Saab,” Ruckelbar says. “You want a Coke, something, candy bar?”
“I don’t know why I’m out here now,” the boy says. Their reflections have come up in the big windows. Ruckelbar drops quarters in the round-shouldered soda machine, another throwback, and opens the door for the boy to choose. “Root beer,” the boy says, extracting the bottle.
“You live in Garse?” Ruckelbar asks him.
“Yeah,” the boy says. His eyes are still wide, darting, and Ruckelbar can see the rim of moisture. The world outside is now set still on the pivot point of light, the glow of the station lights running into the air out over the road through the trees all the way to the even wash of silver along the horizon of Little Bear Mountain, and above the mountain like two huge ghosts floats the mirror image of the two of them. The leaves lie still. Standing by the door Ruckelbar can feel the air falling from the dark heavens, a faint chill falling from infinity. Tomorrow night it will be dark an hour earlier.
Now Ruckelbar hears the woman’s voice from outside, around the building, a cry of some sort, and then the rental Escort does a short circle in the gravel in front of the Sunoco pumps and rips dust into the new dusk as it mounts Route 21 headed for Corbett. Ruckelbar and the boy have stepped outside. They watch the car disappear, turning on its lights after a few seconds on the pavement.
“There’s a bonfire at the quarry tonight,” Ruckelbar says. “Garse does it. You going?”
“We’d have gone with Sheila. She liked that stuff; she liked Halloween.” The boy follows him back inside.
“You want a ride home?” Ruckelbar says, knowing instantly that it is the wrong thing to say, the offer of sympathy battering the boy over the brink, and now the boy stands crying stiffly, chin down, his arms crossed tighter than anything in the world. Ruckelbar’s heart heaves; he knows about this, about living in his silent house where a kind word would have broken him.
They stand that way, as if after an explosion, not knowing what to do; all the surprises in the room have been used up. Everything that happens now will be work. Ruckelbar is particularly out of ideas; he’s not used to having anyone in the office for longer than it takes to make change. His father sometimes sat in here and chewed the fat with his cronies, DiPaulo and others, but Ruckelbar has never done it. He doesn’t have any cronies. Now he doesn’t know what to do. Ruckelbar points at the boy. “You go ahead, get the truck, bring it around front.” He hands the boy his keys. The boy looks at him, so he goes on. “It’s all right. You do it. You know my truck.” With it dark now, Ruckelbar can see himself in the front window, a man in overalls. He’s scared. It feels like something else could happen. He reaches for the phone and calls Clare, which he doesn’t do three times a year. “Clare,” he says, “I’m bringing somebody home who needs a warm meal. We’re coming. It’s not something we can talk over. We’ll be about fifteen minutes, okay, honey? Did you hear me? Can you put on some of your tea?” He has never said anything like this to Clare in his life. The only people who are ever in their house are Clare’s sister every other year and a few of Marjorie’s friends who stand in the entry a minute or two.