Reserve by Brandon McNeice

Start with the cars parked deepest in shadow.

You tell him to keep the can low so it doesn’t bang his knees. Don’t drag it. Don’t swing it. If somebody looks out, you’re helping. He nods like that settles it.

The can is old and mostly lost its color. Just a little red left near the handle. Empty, it still smells like cut grass gone sour. He carries it with both hands and keeps worrying the metal handle where the paint has flaked off.

The block is quiet. One porch light on over a door with a Christmas wreath still hanging in March. A flag hanging straight down. A sedan under the sycamore with water still beaded on the roof. You try the gas cap once with your fingers, then use your shirt for grip, and it gives.

He asks, “Is this ours?”

You say, “Hold the can steady.”

The tube still remembers the tight coil from the hardware store shelf. You pull it straight against your thigh. It wants to spring back. When it taps the car, the sound is small but sharp.

He says, “Will the alarm go off.”

You say, “Not if you stay quiet.”

He goes quiet in that hard, careful way children do, as if silence were something he could do well enough to fix the rest. He is wearing yesterday’s hoodie inside out, the seams showing, one cuff dark with whatever he wiped there before bed. You saw that when you woke him. You let it pass.

The smell rises when you feed the tube down. Not full gasoline yet. Just the warning of it. The neck catches once, then lets you through. You keep your hands steady because he is watching them.

That is the part you did not count on. Not him being here. The way he watches. Like this belongs with the other things a man might show a boy before sunrise.

You remember your father leaning over a door hinge, showing you how to back out a stripped screw. Don’t fight it head-on, he said.

You say, “Give me the can.”

He brings it closer.

You lower the end of the tube into it. Then you stop. The next part is bad every time.

He says, “What now.”

You say, “Look down the block. Tell me if anybody’s coming.”

He turns, but not all the way.

The first pull gets nothing. The second gets the taste at once. Metal. Chemical. Bitter enough to make your jaw lock. You jerk back and cough into your elbow. Spit hits the sidewalk. Your eyes water.

He starts toward you.

You wave him off.

You say, “I’m fine.”

He says, “Did you get it.”

You wipe your mouth with your wrist. Talking brings the taste back. This time when you try, the line goes heavy. You see the dark thread moving through the plastic before you hear it tick into the can.

He looks from the tube to your face.

You say, “Don’t move.”

He doesn’t.

It is not much. You can hear that. Not the deep sound of plenty. Just a thin tapping at the bottom of the can. Still, some knot in you loosens. Enough to turn the engine, maybe. Enough to get to the station if the car feels merciful, and you feel ambitious. 

He says, “Why can’t we use ours.”

You look at him.

Then you look away toward the rowhouses, the dark windows, the stoops with rolled-up mats and broken flowerpots and one child’s sneaker left sideways near a door.

You say, “Ours is empty.”

He thinks about that longer than you want him to. Then he says, “So is this one now.”

The line sputters almost right after. A few last pulses. Then nothing.

You lift the tube, angle it, wait. Nothing else comes.

In the can there is barely anything. A dark shine at the bottom. Maybe enough. Maybe not.

He says, “Is that all.”

You say, “That’s all it had.”

He keeps holding the can after the work is over. You have to take it from him finger by finger. His thumb leaves a clean streak through the dirt near the handle.

You screw the cap back on. Wipe at the paint with your sleeve though it doesn’t do much. The tube drips twice on the asphalt between your shoes.

He says, “Does the man know.”

You say, “No.”

That sits there between you.

Then you say, “Come on.”

You walk home with the can tapping your leg. The sky is starting to change behind the roofs. Not light yet, but moving that way. You pass car after car. Minivans. Sedans. A pickup with one mirror taped on. All of them quiet. All of them holding a little distance inside. Enough to get somebody to work. To school. To church. To the store. To whatever part of the day they are counting on.

At your own car, he reaches for the can before you ask.

You say, “I’ve got it.”

He lets go.

Then he says, “Will we put it back when we can.”

You keep your eyes on the cap while you unscrew it.

You say, “Yes.”

The word is thin, and you hear that. He hears it too, probably. But he nods anyway and crouches beside you in the cold.

Brandon McNeice is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Commonweal, Plough, Hunger Mountain, SmokeLong Quarterly, BULL, and Terrain.org. A two-time Best Small Fictions nominee, he writes about the daily negotiations by which people seek dignity, faith, and decency inside systems that are anything but simple.

18 September 2026