TOLEDO, OHIO — At position 14 in the queue, our observation began. By 06:40, forty-one diesel engines idled at a truck stop beside the Maumee River, awaiting a product that had not yet begun to move. On Friday, President Donald Trump announced he had secured Russia's agreement for a major release of diesel, easing war sanctions on Moscow in a push to lower energy costs ahead of midterm elections. The queue began within the hour. No tanker had departed. The queue did not consider this relevant.
The restriction now lifted had been imposed by the same office now lifting it. The queue treated this sequence as generosity. "A man locks the barn, a man opens the barn, you thank the man," said Randy Pelletier, 58, ninth in the queue, who has hauled grain for thirty-one years. "We don't ask about the lock. The lock is finished. The man is opening things. If he locks it again, I'll thank him twice."
Our log, kept from position 14: at minute nine, the queue produced its fourth apology, each from a driver advancing one place while a neighbour's engine was off. By minute fifty, the queue had thanked the absent President nineteen times and the station attendant forty-one; the attendant controls the supply of nothing. At minute one hundred twelve, word reached the rear that a waiting list — the queue of the queue — had formed behind the queue, and that it had begun apologizing to the queue for the wait the queue was in. The queue received this as further evidence of the diesel's excellence.
To hold their places, the engines idled. Across three hours of observation, the queue consumed, by our estimate, sixty gallons of the substance it had assembled to receive. No one objected; burning the future delivery to demonstrate readiness for it appears, to the colony, to be simply what waiting is. Marlene Okafor, who manages the coffee window, had sold two hundred and twelve coffees and zero gallons of diesel, a ratio she called her best Friday since spring. "He banned it, he un-banned it — same pen, probably," she said. "That's what I call follow-through."
At press time, the first tanker remained in port, an ocean from the pumps it is expected to reach. The queue held its positions: idling, caffeinated, grateful in advance. We have filed six years of behaviour reports on this species and will file this one twice. The gratitude arrived first. The diesel is expected Tuesday.
