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Two Days Later
Episode 2 of 3 of Four Minutes Fast by Megan Pruitt · free to read
Died two days later, at the county hospital, with his wife at his side.
I read it four times. It had never once said hospital. It had said killed at the light. Dorothy had found out from a deputy at the door.
“It used to say he died at the scene,” I said.
Ernie was refilling sugar caddies, one by one. “It’s always said two days.”
“No. It said at the scene.”
“Wanda.” He set down a caddy. “I sat in that hospital hallway Friday and Saturday. Dot held his hand the whole time. She says those were the worst two days of her life and she wouldn’t give them back.”
So that was the price of five seconds. Ernie had two days in a hallway that he hadn’t had an hour ago. Dorothy had held a hand she had never gotten to hold. Nobody remembered it any other way but me.
I sat down in booth five, which I was not allowed to do on shift.
“He was there five seconds longer,” I said. “So the truck didn’t hit him square. It caught his tailgate.”
“I don’t know what you’re doing and I don’t want to know.” Ernie stood at the end of the booth. “But you leave that man alone.”
“He’s going to die at a red light.”
“He did die at a red light. Thirty-two years ago. I carried one corner of the casket.” Ernie looked at his hands. “Dot buried him.” He leaned on the table. “And Dot hired you. She couldn’t run this place by herself. That’s why there was a help wanted sign in 1998. That’s why there’s a you.”
I had thought about that. I thought about it every night that week.
Next Thursday.
At 3:12 he was in booth four with his hat on the seat.
“You new?”
“Seven weeks.”
“Coffee and the cherry.”
I brought it. He told me Dot had made him promise to be home by six for once, because her sister was coming and the sister did not like him. He said it fondly, like a man who had never been home by six in his life.
I didn’t sit. I didn’t top anything off. I watched the clock and the clock watched me back.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, when he got to the crust.
“Sure.”
“If you had four extra minutes. What would you do with them?”
He laughed. “Four minutes? I’d spend them waiting somewhere. I’m always early.”
At 3:23 by the clock he stood, put a five on the table, tapped the frame on his way out, and was gone.
I didn’t look at the clipping until 3:30. It said killed at the light again.
I asked Ernie about the hospital hallway, and he looked at me like I had asked about the moon. “What hallway?” he said.
Lyle had left on time, and the two days were gone, and I was the only one alive who knew Dorothy had ever had them. I went in the walk-in and stood in the cold for a while.
Then I came out and did the math on an order pad.
The truck ran the light at 3:25. A gravel truck doing forty covers two thirds of a mile a minute. Five seconds late had put Lyle into its back corner. Thirty might put him in its dust, or in front of whatever came through the light after it. I did not want might.
Four minutes would put him at the light at 3:29. By then the truck would be two miles down the road and the light would be green.
He didn’t leave after eleven minutes because of some rule. Nobody was calling him home. He left when that clock said 3:23, because that clock was all the watch he had.
Ernie watched me from the window over the grill. He didn’t ask what I was writing. I thought he had done the same math himself a long time ago, and stopped at the part where it hurt.
I tore off the page and put it in my apron with the fives.
“What are you smiling about,” he said.
“Nothing,” I said.
But I looked at the clock over the register, the one nobody had touched since 1990, and I knew exactly what I was going to do on Thursday morning.
It was going to tell the truth.