"Gene," Selma said.
He looked up. "What?"
"Your name. I didn't know it."
"Oh." He looked at his own name tag, as if checking. "Gene. Eugene. Nobody calls me Eugene."
"My father lived on Itaska Street," she said. "When we came. Our first apartment. Nineteen ninety-eight."
He stared at her. "Which block?"
"Thirty-nine hundred."
"That was his route," he said. "That was— he'd retired by then. Ninety-six. But that was his route."
They looked at each other across the pump island. Selma did not know what to say about that, and he did not seem to either, and after a moment he looked back down at his hands.
"He drove it to the cemetery," he said. "After my mother. She died in ninety-eight, pancreatic, it was fast, four months. And every Sunday he drove that car out to Resurrection and sat with her for an hour and drove back. Every Sunday for eleven years. I used to go with him sometimes. He'd sit in the car with the door open, right on the grass. He'd turn the key to wait for the light, you know, the—" he made a small circle in the air with his finger— "the glow plug light, and while he was waiting he'd touch it. The medal. Every time. I don't think he even knew he did it."
Selma closed her eyes for a moment.