Episode 108 · Forty-One Minutes

Maxim stood in the lamplight, breathing hard, his hands open at his sides. His palms were blackening from the wrists toward the fingers. The skin over his right knuckles had split, and blood ran in thin lines between his fingers. Only now did it begin to hurt.

The man in the gray jacket got up first. He looked at Maxim, then at the loading door with the shape of a back in the metal, then at Maxim again. He said nothing of what they had come to say. He dragged the broad man to the car, shoved him onto the back seat, and reversed out to the street with the headlights off.

Maxim looked at the dented door. A man had hit that door. If it had been a wall, or a curb, or the man’s head instead of his back... He wiped his hand on his coveralls and finished tightening the straps. His hands were shaking so badly he had to try three times.

He delivered the pallet where it belonged. Then he drove for a while with nowhere to go, the way people drive when they do not want to arrive anywhere in particular.

He reached the silos around ten.

The railway crossing lay deserted beneath a single yellow lamp, and beyond it the silos rose in the darkness like towers without fire. Maxim pulled over fifty meters from the barrier, switched off the engine, and sat with his hands on the wheel.

For years he had taken the longer road by the canal to avoid this crossing, without telling himself why. That morning he had come this way because he was in a hurry. That afternoon, because Soles had been beside him in the cab and Maxim had not wanted to take the detour in front of him.

Now he had come alone. He did not know why.

Yes, he did.

He had been nineteen and had held his license for two months.

His father let him take the truck only on Saturdays, and only for short trips, and that Friday had been an exception because his brother, two years younger, had taken a job at the industrial bakery by the silos and finished the night shift at two. The bus did not run at that hour. Their father worked in the morning. Maxim had been the one to say, “I’ll pick him up,” because he wanted the truck, because he wanted to drive the empty streets at night with the window down, because he was nineteen.

He had left a friend’s place at half past one, later than he should have.

The barrier had come down just as he reached it. A long freight train had stopped on the line for reasons he never learned. The red light had flashed. The bell had tinkled thinly, like a toy. Maxim had been first at the gate, drumming his fingers on the wheel and looking at his watch. Three minutes. Ten. Twenty. He had no phone. No one did then.

The barrier rose after forty-one minutes. He knew because he had looked at his watch, and ever since then he had known exactly how many minutes any wait lasted without checking.

No one was left at the bakery gate. The guard told him the boy had waited awhile, looked toward the road several times, then left on foot with his hands in his pockets because it was not far, half an hour’s walk.

His brother never made it home. They found him in the morning beside the road near the canal, in the grass by the ditch.

His father never said anything to him. Not then, not later. He did not scold him, did not ask him why, did not take away the truck keys. Only the following Saturday, and the one after that, and every Saturday that followed until his father died, the truck sat in the yard while his father looked at it from the kitchen like something that could no longer be started.

Maxim had never left anywhere first after that. Not from a table, not from a party, not from a yard. He stayed until the end, until everyone else had gone, until he was sure no one was left waiting for someone who would not come. People thought he was polite. Tesa thought he was stubborn. Krista thought he was lonely. Soles thought nothing, because Soles never looked at him any longer than necessary, and Maxim was more grateful for that than for anything else.

And he had rearranged his deliveries so Soles would be on the way.

He knew it was foolish. He knew Soles had a rib cracked twice, a stitched palm, a strength he measured only through fear, and friends who loved him, and dogs, and a woman who slept on his sofa when she was afraid. He did not need a man with a truck passing by every morning for no reason. And still Maxim passed by. Because one morning Soles would need someone to arrive on time, and Maxim would be there. Not at a barrier. There.

He had lost the depot because of it. Lost the print shop. He would lose the stores on the boulevard too if he did not make a decision. He knew. He did not decide.

Far down the track, a light appeared.

Maxim felt it before he saw it. Felt it coming like a change in the weather in his joints. A long, slow freight train from the port. He knew how long it was before he saw it. Knew how fast it was moving. Knew, with a certainty that frightened him more than anything, that the barrier would come down in one minute and twenty seconds.

He checked his watch.

The barrier came down in one minute and twenty seconds.

The red light began to flash. The bell tinkled. Maxim sat fifty meters away in the dark with the engine off and watched the gate the way you watch a man who hurt you long ago and no longer remembers you.

His palms slowly blackened against the wheel, from the wrists toward the fingers.

You’re not on any tower, he told himself. No one is waiting.

But he stayed. Stayed until the whole train passed, car by car, until the barrier rose and the bell fell silent and the yellow lamp stood alone above the track again. He stayed after that too. He did not leave first. Not even here.

He closed his eyes before starting the truck. Tertius stood beside the bright plant beneath his tree. This time he had turned toward Maxim. Maxim had seen the tower, the boy on the water, the lamp kept burning. He could no longer make the man into a warning about trains alone.

Late.

The man stepped aside to leave room beside the plant. His shoulder brushed Maxim’s, heavy and warm. He opened his eyes before he could decide what the word meant tonight.

He left only around one, when he realized there was no one left except him.