Ben jogged uncertainly toward a truck that ambled up one of the lanes and away from the store. Sweat poured down his back and sides, stung in his eyes. It sped up as Ben approached, but he couldn’t run any faster.
“Hey!” he wheezed. “Hey!” Ben waved his arms, but the truck pulled away.
Ben ran back to the store. His chest quivered as violently as his legs. The doors stuttered open, the wheels derailed from the track due to Ben’s collision. Everyone was looking at Ben as he entered, their faces possessed by something. Judgment? Pity perhaps. Ben couldn’t see them. Ben could see only the cashier, shaking her head and standing alone.
“Eric!” he screamed.
But there was only silence.
Eric was gone.
Once upon a tuh-time, there wuh-was a bad man.
2
Five Years Later
By the time Ben graduated high school, he was twenty years old and desperate for a job. His father, Clint, was still delivering newspapers. Now the home’s only paycheck, it was practically spent before it was printed, consumed by old bills. Ben’s stepmother no longer worked. Deidra hardly left the house at all, really. She wanted to be there when Eric came home.
There wasn’t a place in town that Ben hadn’t approached. If it was within walking distance, it had his application, and despite his leg, Ben employed a very loose definition of that measure. Hardware stores, gas stations, landscaping groups. He had two applications floating around somewhere for costumed advertising. Put on a silly outfit and wave a sign. A bad job with worse pay, but Ben put in for it all the same.
Clint said there was no rush, that eventually Ben would find an opening. Ben knew the first part wasn’t true, and after waiting all summer, he stopped believing the second part too.
It might have been for the sake of exhaustion—so that when Ben said to himself that he’d tried everything, it would be the truth. Maybe it was spite. The fact was that Ben wasn’t really all that sure why he’d applied at the grocery store or why he’d agreed to the interview when they called him the very next day.
Late August was hot and sticky, but Ben walked slow—slower than he had time for and slower than his leg demanded. When he got to the doors, he stopped altogether, just outside the sensor that would trip them. Stopped and watched and thought until he was late for his appointment.
In the years since Eric had gone missing, Ben had gone near the store only a couple of times. His father less often, and Deidra not once. Inside it looked exactly like he remembered it. The same sterile lighting and bad music. But it felt different, like thinking about the last meal you had before you got sick. It felt a lot like that. It felt exactly like that.
He wanted to leave so badly that it was all he could think about. But his feet kept moving. His mouth kept speaking. His body kept doing things, until Ben found himself sitting in an office about to interview for a job he didn’t want but somehow knew he’d get.
Just below a long window were two tube TVs. One screen was black, so Ben watched the other one. It was a boring show: nothing but a flickering deli cooler. Ben remembered this room, though he’d seen it only once before. He remembered the store director, Bill Palmer, gesturing toward the same stuttering image and shrugging his shoulders with exasperation while Deidra sobbed in the doorway. The man hadn’t apologized, hadn’t done anything at all except assure customers that everything was “under control.” He kept saying that: “under control.” Like it meant something. Like he had any goddamn idea what was going on.
Ben glanced at his watch. How long had the girl said it’d be? How long had it already been? He felt his legs twitch again, a prompt to stand, a prompt to stand and walk out of the room, walk out of the store. Ben rubbed his left thigh with the heel of his hand and turned his head toward the sound of approaching footsteps. He almost laughed when Bill Palmer walked in.
The man was a little balder and a little fatter, but he still moved like he was king shit. He worked a key into the lock on his filing cabinet and fished some papers out, then turned back toward his desk.
He hadn’t even looked at Ben yet. Grunting as he sat, he sighed heavily as he snatched a pen from his desk. He swiveled from side to side in his chair as he slipped a paper onto his clipboard and rested it against his round belly. Ben waited impatiently for the man to look up, recognize him, and end the interview.
“I don’t usually do these things,” he said, shuffling through the papers, pretending to scan them and doing a bad job of it too. When he finally looked up, Ben felt a rolling in his stomach. But Palmer had no reaction at all. His mud-colored eyes looked ridiculous behind his glasses, swollen and cowlike in his gelatin face. “Says here you ain’t never had a job.”
“Just graduated high school.”
Palmer nodded. “You a dopehead?”
“Nosir.” Ben flinched.
“Thief? You ever been arrested? These forms talk about felonies, but—”
“Nosir.”
The man studied Ben for a moment, tapping his pen against the clipboard. Finally, he spoke. “Do I know you?”
“I’m sorry?” Here we go.
“Do I know you from somewhere? From here?”
“Maybe from shoppin in here sometime.”
“Well, I don’t think I need to ask if you can lift boxes,” the man said after a while, gesturing with his clipboard at Ben. “Can you work overnights?”
That’s it?
“As a cashier?”
“What?” Palmer glanced at the sheet on the clipboard and sighed with exasperation. “We don’t need no more cashiers,” he said, pushing up his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I put in for bag boy too, sir.”
“Stocker. We need someone on the stock crew. Shift is from ten to six, give or take.”
“At night?”
“You’re lucky you’re strong, boy. Yes. At night. When there’s no sun. Prime meridian.”
“It’s just that my daddy works overnights, and my stepmom…There ain’t nothin during the day at all?”
“Not a thing. Pay is eight bucks an hour. Time and a half on holidays, of which you’ll work every single one.”
Ben hunched in his chair and wiped his hands with his kerchief as he adjusted to the offer. The clipboard rattled as Palmer tossed it onto the cluttered desk beside him.
“This ain’t a lifetime stint on a submarine, son. It’s refilling shelves, and I got a stack of names around here somewhere of people I can call when you leave. Someone’ll be there to show you the ropes. You want the job or not?”
“Okay,” Ben heard himself say.
Palmer handed Ben some things along with some papers to sign. Ben wasn’t really paying attention, though. Still stunned from the breathtaking lack of awareness that Bill Palmer had displayed, it took a concerted effort by Ben to resist hurling the stacks of papers off the man’s desk and screaming until he remembered who Ben was.
Ben had no sense of how he would tell his parents or how they would react. And he didn’t have much time to figure it out, since Palmer wanted Ben to start tomorrow. But the money would spend. The bills and “Final Notices” in red ink would swallow up his checks like fire, and when offered a solution, Ben’s father couldn’t go on pretending there wasn’t a problem. This was a good thing. Even if it didn’t feel like it.
3
Mosquitoes swam frantically in the thick, humid air. Stepping out of the house was like walking into a warm, pliable gel, one that Ben had to push through the whole way to the store.
The talk with his dad and Deidra that morning had been strange. There hadn’t been an argument. No real back and forth. Ben tried not to focus too much on how badly they needed the money. He wanted to be vague, say things like “helping out.” But before Ben got to say much of anything, Clint just nodded and said, “Okay then.”
Deidra hadn’t said anything at all. She’d only laughed—just once—when Ben referred to his job as being at “just a store.”
With his name tag clipped to the collar of his polo shirt and a paper bag with his lunch tucked under his arm, Ben stood outside the store for a minute, then leaned against an old metal cage full of propane tanks and stared out into the parking lot. Infrequent cars lit up the road at the far end of the lot to Ben’s right, driving down one of the town’s main arteries, then being swallowed up by the darkness that lay beyond the illuminating streetlights of civilization.
Ben checked his watch. It was 9:30. He brushed one mosquito off his arm, then another. Every bead of sweat and loose, tickling hair caused a reflexive twitch; before long, he swatted at bugs that might not have existed at all. He pulled the time card that Bill Palmer had given him out of his back pocket and tapped it against his palm. Should’ve come at ten, Ben thought.
Turning back toward the store, Ben ignored the large bulletin board that was affixed to the brick next to the entrance. He took one step, then another. The doors seized for just a fraction of a second and then moved apart with a screech. He could think about Eric later. He could think about Eric all damn day if he wanted.
A pretty cashier looked in Ben’s direction. He met her eyeline with a smile while he adjusted his shirt away from his stomach to hide his belly. Ben leaned his back right next to the time clock, which sat on a wall just outside the borders of Customer Service, and passively watched customers weaving up and down the long aisles of the store.
When his watch read 10:00 p.m., Ben pushed his time card into the clock’s slot and heard the metallic ratcheting of the printer head as it marked his slip. He slid the card into an empty space in the receptacle to his right and looked around. There was still no sign of his coworker.
With his spine flush with the wall again, the crown of his skull rolled against the paneling, which crackled noisily under the pressure. Above, he noticed an ancient camera dangling from the ceiling. Ben exhaled heavily and walked toward the register and the pretty cashier.
“Hi,” Ben said with a small wave.
“Hey,” the girl replied, setting down her magazine. Her hair was a pixie cut dyed with bottled colors: reds and blues, pinks and blonds. Her pierced nose was dotted with freckles.
“Chelsea?” Ben asked, reading the girl’s name tag. “You have any idea if someone else is coming in tonight? It’s my first night, but no one really told me anything. Mr. Palmer said someone’d be here.” His lunch bag crinkled in his damp hand. “I’m on the stock crew,” he added with haste.
“Well…Ben,” she said, exaggerating a squint at his name tag, “I have no idea.” She smiled with teeth that were crooked in just the right way.
Ben blushed and laughed goofily. “I guess you wouldn’t know what I’m supposed to do, then?”
“Just straighten up for a while. Make the shelves look nice. Marty will be here soon. It’s hardly even ten o’clock.”
“Alright,” Ben said, backing away from the register. “Thanks a lot.”
Swaying indecisively, Ben settled on an area and started straightening up. As he moved boxes and shifted packages, he hummed along to the songs forced upon him by the intercom. He tried to stay near the front of the store. Unsure of what constituted a good—much less a finished—job, Ben took his time.
At around eleven o’clock, Ben heard the familiar ruckus of the automatic doors and turned to see a thin guy of about nineteen walk through them. A name tag was clipped to the frayed bottom of his Skid Row T-shirt, and a red box cutter bobbed in its leather holster affixed to the waistband of his jeans. He scratched at the scalp beneath his dark auburn hair and then rubbed his eyes with his fists. Moving closer to intercept his coworker at the time clock, Ben recognized him immediately. From school? Ben wasn’t sure, but the familiarity wasn’t shared; he looked at Ben with new eyes.
“Sorry I’m late. Car troubles,” the guy said, the end of each word conjoined to the next in a thick drawl. He looked at Ben briefly, then took a pen from his pocket and wrote “10:00 p.m.” in Saturday’s column before returning the card to the slot on the wall.
“What about the camera?” Ben gestured with his head.
“Huh?” He looked at the camera mounted to the ceiling. “Oh, that? That thing works less than me.” He smirked as he extended his hand.
Ben dug his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hand dry before pressing his palm against his coworker’s. “Ben.”
“Good to know ya, Ben. I’m Marty.” He waved to Chelsea, who smiled wide and waved back. “You ’bout ready to get started?”
“I already did,” Ben said.
“No kidding!” Marty said in apparent disbelief. “Well, alright then. Let’s see your handiwork.”
Ben led Marty past the entrance to the collection of tables on the far side of the store lined with plastic clamshell containers full of croissants and boxes stuffed with cupcakes. Marty, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, stared at Ben’s progress with cartoonishly wide eyes and puffed-out cheeks.
“Did I do it wrong?” Ben asked.
Marty deflated his cheeks and laughed. “Oh, man. She’s gonna shit. This is the bakery department. We don’t mess with any of this stuff; that’s the bread lady’s gig. She’s real…particular.”
Ben smiled uneasily, wiping the back of his neck with his kerchief.
“I mean, I think it looks great, man.”
“I can fix it,” Ben assured, moving toward the table.
“No, no,” Marty interrupted. “She’ll never know who did it. Could’ve been a customer or some sort of freak accident that stacked everything like this…Don’t sweat it.” He gestured with his head back toward the middle of the store. “We’re grocery. That’s pretty much everything between the bakery and drug.”
They walked the inside perimeter of the store while they chatted. The rectangular layout was a simple one, the geography of which Ben already knew quite well, though he didn’t interrupt Marty’s tour. They passed the long front end of the store that housed Customer Service, in front of which were several registers. When they reached the drug department, their discussion was already migrating away from the features of the store. And by the time they walked the deli and dairy racks on the long back aisle, the store had become nothing more than a place to house their conversation.
Ben felt a tightening in his stomach as they moved past the men’s bathroom. The wood-patterned vinyl sticker on its face had begun to peel from around the door’s edges and handle. He buried the feeling and followed Marty through the double doors and into the back room.
The contrast between the two spaces was stark. The main floor was for customers, open and airy so they could push their full carts wherever they liked for as long as they liked. High ceilings beamed with bright light that made the aisles feel spacious, even during crowded hours. But the back room was claustrophobic. Loud. Dim bulbs shone on the clutter of machinery and backstock from a much lower point. Here, the ceiling served as a floor for the store’s second level, a spartan array of storage rooms and offices. Above, Ben could see the metal railing of the concrete catwalk that led to Bill Palmer’s domain and, behind that railing, a colossal machine that filled every pocket of empty space with its noise.
“Air conditioner!” Marty yelled.
Marty yanked hard on the handle of a large industrial freezer. It opened after two or three attempts, and cold air billowed as it exited; Ben could feel it filling up his shoes as it tumbled to the floor. Marty grabbed an ice-cream sandwich from an open box on a shelf just inside, paused, and then grabbed another and handed it to Ben. Finally, the roaring machine wound down and the room felt a little less oppressive.
“Looks pretty full in there.”
“Needs to be reorganized or cleaned out. Probably both.”
“We stock the coole
rs too?”
“Yeah, about once a week or so. Might seem stupid, but you leave that door wide open when you go in there.” He bent and snatched a piece of wood off the ground next to the large door. “And you use this wedge to hold it. I mean really jam it in there. That door’s janky as fuck, and if it closes on you, you’re gonna freeze to death.”
Marty placed the tip of his index finger on the outside of the enormous door. “But here’s the stupidest thing about this piece of shit. You just give it a little love…” Marty gently nudged the door back toward its home, and it glided smoothly into place, latching without protest. “And presto.”
They turned and walked farther into what Marty called “Receiving,” since it was where pallets of inventory were unloaded through the massive metal doors Ben could see at the far end of the room. As they walked, a foul smell coated Ben’s nose and he exhaled sharply through it.
“What is that?” Ben asked.
“What’s what?”
“That smell.”
“Ohhhh,” Marty said. “That’s either the exotic scent of death or it’s the damages.” He pointed to a steel rack with cans and glass jars precariously towered on top of one another. Ben could see flies swarming wildly, enjoying their buffet. “There’s really no way to tell anymore.”
“Yeah. I think that’s it.” Ben laughed. “How come nobody cleans it up?”
“Inventory’s not for another coupla months. But you go right ahead and get scrubbin if you want.”
“Ya know, it’s really not that bad once you get used to it.”
Marty laughed. “And here we have the prize pony of the store,” he said, gesturing with the this-could-be-yours pomp of a car salesman. “The Baler. Built in 1795, and last serviced somehow even before then, this enormous piece of shit will make all your dreams come true, as long as your dreams are only about crushing cardboard.”