The Man
The man walked down the street as he had the day before. It was the same street. It was the same people, more or less. The man greeted most of them. Some offered small talk about the weather, about work. A new business was opening. A family was selling their house.
His hardware store meant he ran into just about everyone sooner or later. He almost always recognized the faces around town, enough to nod hello.
The sign on his hardware store window said it opened at 9:00.
Today he unlocked the front door at 8:50. Then he went to the back room. He checked some stock he had been inventorying the day before. The bell over the front door was quiet. He spent 20 minutes counting boxes before coming back out up front.
A dad and his son came in to buy some light bulbs. A woman needed a longer garden hose with one of those selectable nozzles.
The man took a minute to sweep up the few leaves and the sidewalk dust that had made its way in the front door. The broom handle had once been a uniform green, but that was a long time ago. For any of the part-time employees the broom had always been only mainly green, with a dark wood grain showing through at just the places where hands would comfortably hold it. None of them were working at the store when the man had first taken the broom from among its companions in the long-handled tools section and pressed it into service. Today he set it back in its now customary place, the corner of the alcove just inside the front doors.
The bell sounded as the young couple came in. The man caught the eye of the young man and got a faint smile in return. The young woman was looking down at a piece of paper in her hand. A few minutes later they came to the counter with a small household toolkit. The man rang it up with the usual small talk and the young couple left.
The store was quiet. For a good while the man walked through the store with a clipboard, stopping now and then to make a note or arrange items on shelves. He spent most of his time in just a few aisles and skipped others completely. He returned to the front of the store still marking the pages of his clipboard.
His feet were the only sound in the store.
Behind the counter was a shallow drawer. The man slid it open and looked at the counter. He placed his hand down on two washers laying there and slid them off the edge of the counter and into the shallow drawer. They fell next to a slip of paper, a piece of string and an old key. He pushed the drawer closed.
Later over in the paint section the man was helping a woman when the phone began to ring. It had gone silent by the time she had chosen a drop cloth and three paint brushes and followed the man to the register. She was paying with cash when the phone rang again. The man picked it up and listened, nodding a goodbye to the woman as he handed her her change and her receipt. Then he spoke into the phone saying the store was open until six. He set the receiver back in its place. The cord had twisted slightly against itself.
As the woman left, she let in the sound of rain for a moment. Then the door closed behind her.
The man walked to the door and looked out. He stepped outside under the awning and watched the puddles start to form in the street. He looked to his right down the sidewalk. Pedestrians a couple shops down were under an overhang, glancing at the sky.
Leaves moved in the wind against the brick building where it met the sidewalk. A few of the leaves clung to the wall while the others were carried off.
Back inside he started a pot of coffee in the back room. He listened to the water start to boil. The coffee started to drip through the filter into the glass carafe. The drips continued, uneven and out of time with the bubbling of boiling water. The coffee level started to rise.
With a fresh cup of coffee in his hand the man walked through the aisles. Slowly at first. The cup was full. A drop of coffee fell to the floor in front of the line of lawnmowers. He lifted his cup to examine the sides, then stood sipping his coffee and looking at the coffee spot on the floor.
He finished the cup and walked back for a refill. Only half a cup.
At the front door he was finishing the cup and looking out as the rain slowed. He kept watching. The sky lightened. The rain stopped completely.
He stepped aside and held open the door as a man with a cane entered and asked where the batteries were.
The regular tapping of the cane echoed off toward the second aisle on the right. The man with the cane disappeared around the corner and a few seconds later the tapping stopped.
There was the sound of something small falling to the floor. The man looked toward the second aisle on the right. Cocking his head to the side, he waited. The tapping started again and the man with the cane came back around the corner, smiling, with a two-pack of batteries.
There was a steady rhythm of one or two customers entering and leaving. Some asking questions. Most finding what they wanted. One return, a flashlight that wouldn’t turn on.
Two part-time employees arrived before the lunch hour. The customers came more often. Two registers open.
There was a constant sound of feet and voices and paper bags and registers dinging. The bell over the door kept announcing.
A lull. Two customers in the store. One left as another came in.
A young woman walked in with a branded paper bag and handed it to the man. He thanked her and took out a sandwich. He looked at it then unwrapped a corner. Eating it, he slowly wandered the store. Half was enough. The other half eventually went back in the bag.
An employee that only worked a shift on weekends left a voicemail saying he had taken another job.
The man walked to the back room. In the corner was a slightly dusty desk with two boxes stacked on top. From a side drawer the man retrieved a “Help Wanted” sign with small suction cups on each corner. He returned to the front of the store and pressed the sign against the inside of one of the glass doors. One of the suction cups no longer held a seal but the other three did the work well enough.
An employee approached the man with a question. It wasn’t a quick answer. The man asked the employee to come sit with him in the back room. The man caught the eye of the other employee who was showing a customer a plastic bucket. The man gestured to himself and the back of the store.
In the back room the man and the employee with the question moved a couple of folding chairs and sat down. The man gave the longer answer. The employee nodded and listened. The man spoke a few more sentences. The employee nodded again and both stood up. The employee reached out and shook the man’s hand. They returned to work.
The bell over the door sounded twice. An employee helped a customer carry a larger box through the front doors. A few minutes later the employee returned. He wiped his hands on his work apron.
The two employees shared a story just off the center aisle. A laugh echoed in the store. They each walked off, one going toward a mother pushing a cart with a young boy sitting in it. The child looked at the employee and then his mother. He sipped on a cup as the employee talked, pointing toward a corner of the store.
It was another day. The man sat at a round table in the donut shop. The last remaining coffee in his cup had grown cold. He sat and listened to the conversation around him. He listened to the people next to him. He heard bits and pieces from across the room and up at the counter where people ordered.
He looked at the mostly empty cup. His hands wrapped around it like they would if it were warm.
He got up to leave. Placing the cup on a tray nearby he wished those around him a good day and moved between tables toward the door. The conversations faded as he stepped out to the sidewalk.
At the hardware store he turned the key unlocking the front door. The light switch was to the left. The interior became visible. He was walking to the back when the bell over the door sounded.
The customer began talking the moment he walked in, explaining that he had a plumbing problem and had been waiting for the store to open. The man nodded and listened, then guided the customer to the plumbing aisle. Leaving him to gather what was needed, the man went to the front counter register. Reaching under the counter he took a cloth and wiped off the countertop, making no visible difference.
The customer came down the main aisle from the back, glancing at the man as he grabbed a cart then returned to the plumbing aisle. The cart wheels rolled almost noiselessly on the tile floor back to aisle nine.
The man picked up the ringing phone at the counter. He listened to a short sentence and responded with a longer one. He smiled and spoke a few more sentences looking steadily at the clean countertop, then replaced the phone on its cradle.
More customers arrived.
The man stayed at the register.
The day continued.
An employee arrived and waved a greeting to the man. The man stopped ringing up a customer and called the employee over. Gesturing to the employee, the man said a few sentences to the customer. The customer opened her mouth turning to the employee and raising her eyebrows slightly. She talked to the employee as the man finished ringing up the items on the counter.
The customer and employee talked more as she approached the front door. She left with her purchases. The employee returned to work after saying something briefly to the man.
The store was busy. The two part-time employees were on the registers. The man was at the dusty desk in the back room, looking through the center drawer. He closed it and walked back out to the store.
With the clipboard in hand the man roamed the aisles, stopped and wrote something, moved to the next aisle. A customer saw him and asked a question. The man held open a palm and shook his head, answering the customer. The customer said something extra as he walked off.
The man stepped outside the store where a tradesman was waiting. Together they turned and looked up toward the roof. First one pointed and then the other. They talked and the tradesman handed the man something. The man went back in the store. He used a key to unlock a file cabinet in the back room. The top drawer slid out. The man added something to a file folder and pushed the drawer closed.
As the man walked down the center of the store toward the front he checked with customers to see if they needed help finding anything.
A customer looking at power tools raised his hand in a wave. The man went over and answered a question picking up a tool on display. He set it down and picked up another. The customer nodded, looking at the tool.
The bell over the door sounded.
The phone rang once. The man looked to see the employee talking on the phone and reaching for a pen and paper.
Three customers formed a queue at the register. The man walked to the front and opened a register. One of the customers in line moved to the man’s register.
The bell over the door went a while without ringing. The lines at the registers emptied. An employee grabbed the broom and swept a section of floor near the registers.