I ran my dad’s gas station for twelve years while he borrowed against it to pay for my brother’s Cabo wedding and two divorce lawyers. When the bank finally took it, I bought it for $240,000. At our Fourth of July cookout, Mom cried, “That was promised to your brother,” and he kicked over the cooler. Two weeks later, his ex-wife walked in holding a folder and asked which half belonged to her…

I ran my dad’s gas station for twelve years while he borrowed against it to pay for my brother’s Cabo wedding and two divorce lawyers. When the bank finally took it, I bought it for $240,000. At our Fourth of July cookout, Mom cried, “That was promised to your brother,” and he kicked over the cooler. Two weeks later, his ex-wife walked in holding a folder and asked which half belonged to her…

“That was promised to your brother.”

My mother said those words at our Fourth of July cookout, standing in the backyard with tears running down her cheeks. My older brother had just kicked over a cooler, sending ice and soda cans across the grass while my father stood beside the grill holding a pair of tongs.

A can of orange soda rolled past my mother’s feet and stopped against her tomato cage. My aunt Wanita bent down to pick it up, then seemed to think better of getting involved.

All I’d done was buy a gas station.

A gas station I’d spent twelve years keeping open while my father borrowed against it to pay for my brother’s wedding in Cabo and two different divorce attorneys.

When Mom said it belonged to my brother, I looked at him and answered, “Tell him we’re hiring.”

There actually was a help-wanted sign in the front window.

I’d put it there two weeks earlier, right after reopening the place.

My name is Ian, and I’m from Broken Bow, Nebraska. If you’ve ever driven into town on Highway 2, you might have passed our old family business.

Doyle’s Service sat on the corner with four gas pumps, two repair bays, and a coffee counter that hadn’t served a decent cup since the early nineties.

My dad bought it in 1991.

His name is Doyle, and he painted those big red letters on the sign himself. For years, he would tell anybody who listened about the weekend he’d spent on a ladder getting the spacing right.

Dad’s sixty-four now. He’s a big man with a slow voice who can recognize a farmer’s pickup before he recognizes the person driving it.

He could talk to customers for forty minutes about corn prices, truck engines, or the weather. A man might stop for ten dollars of gasoline and leave knowing three things about Dad’s latest fishing trip.

Dad was good with people.

The paperwork was another matter.

Fuel orders, payroll, inspections, invoices, and bank statements tended to disappear into his desk drawers until somebody needed them.

That somebody was usually me.

I started pumping gas during summer vacation when I was sixteen. By twenty, I was running the books, ordering fuel, scheduling employees, and making sure both service bays had what they needed.

Dad still stood near the coffee counter talking to customers.

I worked in the office behind him.

It was his station, and I never had a problem calling it that.

But I did assume that someday the years I put into it would count for something.

My brother Chance is five years older than me.

Mom’s name is Ramona. She works at the deli counter in the grocery store, and Chance has always been her favorite person to introduce.

“My first baby,” she’d say, even after he was married and old enough to be losing his hair.

Chance never worked at the station.

In high school, he claimed gasoline fumes gave him headaches. Later, he got a job weighing trucks at the grain elevator, which he liked describing as working in logistics.

.

Mom thought that sounded impressive.

When I told her I’d passed another safety inspection or negotiated a better fuel delivery schedule, she’d nod and ask whether I’d seen Chance’s new pickup.

I was twenty-eight when I finally asked Dad about buying part of the business.

I’d saved roughly twenty thousand dollars.

One afternoon, I sat across from him in the little office and offered to buy a one-third interest, with a down payment and the rest paid over time.

I’d prepared everything on paper.

Dad didn’t even pick it up.

“That’s Chance’s someday,” he said.

I thought I’d misunderstood.

“The station?”

“Your brother’s the oldest. It’ll go to him. You’ll always have a job here.”

Mom was standing in the doorway.

“He’s the oldest, honey,” she added, like that settled everything.

I looked at the papers in front of me.

Eight years of work, and Dad was promising me continued employment.

.

Chance, who’d never ordered a gallon of gasoline, was getting the business.

I didn’t argue.

That evening, I opened a separate savings account at the credit union.

On the first deposit slip, I wrote two words: My own shop.