“…a page from the spiral notebook in the bottom drawer,” I said, and I watched Brett read it, his lips moving, his breakfast burrito going cold in his hand. The notebook was his own. I had found it in September, when I was cleaning out the manager desk to hand over my keys. It listed, in neat boyish handwriting, forty seven separate parts, alternators, brake rotors, a set of catalytic converters, each with a date, a buyer, and a price. None of it had been rung up on the register. Beside every line, in the margin, Brett had written two initials and a small smiley face.
“That is not mine,” Brett said. His voice came out an octave higher than usual. I told him that was a shame, because I had made a photocopy, and that the original was now in the hands of the owner of the store chain, Mr. Hargrove, in Memphis, who had been reviewing the year inventory losses with a certified fraud examiner. Brett set down the burrito. He reached for the page, and I held it away. “Son,” I said, “you may not remember, but I have been keeping the parts book at this counter since 1995. I know how many alternators we sell in a month. I know when they disappear.”
The bell on the front door jingled, and Walt Pickens came in, my property manager of twenty years, a heavy, friendly man in a windbreaker, carrying a clipboard. Behind him, in a gray suit, came Mr. Hargrove himself, who had driven the eighty miles that morning. He was a short, silver haired man with tired eyes. He looked at Brett, and then at me, and then at the stack of documents on the counter. “Raymond,” he said, “I owe you an apology. I never knew the building was yours. I should have asked who held the lease.”
Twenty four thousand eight hundred nickels, a spiral notebook in a bottom drawer, and a landlord nobody knew.
What followed took about ten minutes, and it was as quiet as a church. Mr. Hargrove read the notebook page. He asked Brett four questions, each in a gentle voice, and Brett answered the first with a lie, the second with a half truth, and the third by staring at the floor. By the fourth, he was crying. Mr. Hargrove nodded to two men in the doorway whom I had not noticed, a pair of security officers from the corporate office, and said only, “Mr. Mathis, please collect your things. You are no longer employed by this company.” Brett walked out with a cardboard box.
Then Mr. Hargrove turned to me, and for a long moment neither of us said a word. He told me that the video of the nickels had been sent to him the day before by a customer, and that he had watched it three times with a sick feeling. He told me that a man who treats a thirty one year employee like that did not deserve to run a lemonade stand. He asked if I would allow him to make it right. I said I would think about it, but that first I had a question about the lease. Walt grinned and handed me the folder.
The lease, I told him, had an unusual provision that I had inherited from the building previous owner. Any default on rent for more than ninety days entitled the landlord to terminate it, or to name a manager of his choosing. I did not want the store closed. Fourteen people worked there, with families, and a good many of them were friends. What I wanted was for the store to be run decently. I looked at Mr. Hargrove and said, “I would like to name a manager. And I would like to name myself.” He opened his mouth. Then he laughed, loudly, for the first time that morning.
I was sixty eight years old and I had not planned to go back. But on the first Monday of October, I tied on my old apron and stood behind my old counter, and the bell rang, and a customer asked me for wiper blades. The final paycheck came by certified mail the same week, twelve hundred and forty dollars, plus a state penalty for late wages, plus a letter of apology from the corporate office. Brett had to pay the whole back rent personally under the guarantee, thirty one thousand four hundred dollars. His friends did not return his calls.
The nickels were still on my lawn, of course. I had left them there for three days, because I could not decide what to do. On the Saturday, I stood on my porch with my coffee, and the whole street came out, as they had the first time, but this time with buckets, wheelbarrows and children. Mrs. Pettigrew organized the neighbors into teams. They sorted, counted and rolled. The pastor brought coffee rolls. By supper, twenty four thousand eight hundred nickels sat in six hundred and twenty paper rolls on my dining room table, in neat glittering rows.
I took them to the Second Harvest food bank on Monday morning, every roll, in the bed of Mr. Pettigrew old pickup. The manager at the front desk, a young woman with tattoos and a kind smile, asked me where it had come from. I told her the whole story. When I was done she said nothing at all. She only walked around the desk and hugged me, in front of the volunteers. The video of that, the nickels, the neighbors, the food bank sign, was seen two million times by Christmas. I am told it did a good deal more good than the first one.
I work the counter four days a week now, and Mr. Hargrove sends me a Christmas ham. We hired a young man named Marcus, nineteen, who calls me Mr. Teague. Last week a customer came in, a big fellow with a ball cap, and asked who was running the place. I pointed to the sign above the register, which the staff put up as a surprise: Highland Auto Parts, Est. 1995, where nobody gets called Grandpa. The customer read it twice, and laughed. Then he bought a set of spark plugs, and counted out his change in nickels.