Benediction (Plainsong #3)(7)

Clayton, the young clerk, followed him and stood at the door, leaning against the doorframe, rolling down his blue shirt cuffs as he did every day after they closed.

Sit down, Dad said.

Something going on?

Come in and take a seat.

I hope this won’t take too long. Tanya’s waiting on me. We was talking of getting a sitter and going out for dinner somewhere. Having a night out.

Were you. Have a seat first, Dad said.

Clayton stepped into the room and sat down. What is it? he said.

Dad looked at him and looked past him out through the open office door for a moment. A car went by in the alley, the top of it visible through the square window in the outside door. He turned in the swivel chair and took down the wide blue-backed cash receipts ledger from the shelf behind him and turned forward again, coming around slowly in the chair, and opened the book on the desk, finding the pages he wanted, and turned the book a half turn so it was right side up to Clayton. You want to say something about this? Dad said.

Clayton looked at him and then down at the ledger pages. He studied the figures and then looked up quickly. I don’t get what you mean.

I think you do.

No, I don’t neither. Are you accusing me of something?

Are you going to make this harder than it needs to be? Dad said. You sure you want to do that?

He pointed his finger at the total for the month just finished and turned back a page and indicated the total for the previous month.

Have you got those numbers in your head?

I don’t get what this is about, said Clayton.

I’m showing you. Keep watching.

He turned back the pages in the ledger to the same months four years earlier. You see these? he said. He pointed to the total for the earlier year.

The store’s making an average of three hundred dollars a month less than it did four years ago, Dad said. How would that be? What would be the cause of something like that, do you think?

I don’t have no idea. People started going someplace else maybe.

Where would they go? This is the only hardware in town.

Maybe we’re just not as busy.

No. We’re still as busy. Inventory tells us that.

Then I don’t have no answer for you.

You could be missing something.

Like what do you mean?

Like something you lost. Something that might of fell out of your jacket pocket when you hung it up on the back hook this morning and never noticed.

Dad leaned sideways and stretched his leg out straight so he could reach into his pants pocket, he withdrew a small key and bent forward and unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk. He sat up again and laid out on the desktop a small receipt book that had half of the pages missing. The perforated ends inside the binding were still there but the carbons that should have been in the book were torn away.

I found this laying on the floor below your coat back in the hall, he said. Kind of leaning up against the wallboard. So then I could see how you were managing it. A customer comes in and buys something and you give him a receipt out of this private little extra book here of yours and then after he goes out the door and the door is shut good you pocket the money and nothing shows. It couldn’t be nothing too big. Because I would notice that. And you had to be sure I was at the back of the store or back in the office here or maybe gone home to lunch, and I don’t guess you could of done it too often or even somebody as trusting as I used to be would get suspicious. Then too I suppose you had to worry about somebody returning some shovel or garden hoe and presenting this false receipt to me and not you, to get reimbursed. You had to worry about that a lot, I guess. But somehow that never happened, did it. But I figure after a while you got too greedy, didn’t you. If you was only taking three or four hundred dollars a year I’d never of noticed anything. Or maybe even a thousand dollars a year. But that would have to be only if you hadn’t of lost this little ticket book out of your coat pocket, isn’t that right.

Dad stopped and stared at him. Clayton didn’t say anything.

Well, I’ll tell you, Dad said. It makes me sick. That’s what it does. It makes me wonder about the whole goddamn human race. And I don’t want to think that way. What’s wrong with you anyway?

Across from him Clayton’s round face had begun to sweat. Later Dad would remember that, how Clayton appeared to burst out in a sudden sweat, and it was wintertime, February, cold outside, and it was not even warm in the little windowless office there at the rear of the hardware store.

How much time will you give me? Clayton said.

Time for what?

To pay you back.

You can’t pay me back.

Not right away. But I could if you gave me enough time.

No you couldn’t. I’m not going to have you around here anymore. You don’t work here. I don’t want to see you again.

But I got a wife and two kids to think of.

Yes, Dad said. I know you do. You should of been thinking about them, what you brought them to by this.

Clayton stared at him. He wiped his hand across his forehead and dried it on his pants leg.

Are you going to the sheriff? he said.

No. I decided not to. On account of your kids. But I’m going to have you sign this.

Sign what?

This paper here.

What is it?

Dad removed a sheet of paper from the drawer in front of him and pushed it across the desk. Clayton read it. The paper was typed out neatly, telling how he’d stolen from the store and admitted as much and it said how many thousands of dollars the sum was and it said he admitted that too and then there was a place at the bottom of the page for him to sign his name and to provide the date.