Albert awoke like he’d done so many days before, to the urgency of someone he didn’t hear approach. He’d learned from experience to sleep light as an errant leaf on the trail, so he’d stood before he’d even opened his eyes. He was met with the surprised face of someone he knew he recognized, but couldn’t remember from where. Albert caught his breath, realizing he was panting through his panic as he leaned heavily on the wall behind him to support the sudden standing position he’d taken in his sleep. The young man had one hand outstretched as he’d simply tapped Albert to wake him, and the other held a red and white umbrella. The heavy raindrops around them made dull plastic sounds as they landed on the umbrella and rolled off in miniature streams. He wore a beige pullover with a light blue collar poking out from whatever shirt he wore beneath it. Albert distantly recognized the color of the polo shirts the Wingdings employees wore, and he more consciously recognized the young man as the same one who’d been there alone the night before.
Why was he there so early?
“Uh…” The young man hesitated as he processed Albert's violent way of waking. He collected himself before continuing “You’ve been out here for a really long time, I wanted to make sure you were alright.” He explained. Albert blinked, his mind still slow from his recent nap. From the look of the brightest patch of clouds overhead it had been more than just a nap.
“M’fine.” He said finally, voice slurring from sleep. The guy flexed his fingers around the handle of his umbrella.
“Well Lainee said you’d been out here since she opened this morning, so I thought I’d make sure.” He clarified again, “It’s like, four o’clock by the way.” He tacked on helpfully.
“Oh…” That did explain the concern. Or it would if anyone had bothered to be concerned about Albert in the past. He still didn’t have much in the way of conversation, but he shrugged as best he could.
“Well Lainee’s gone now so it’s just me and the pharmacists, and you know how they are.” He laughed nervously. Albert did not, in fact, know how they were. “Do you…wanna come inside? Get out of the rain?” He finally asked. Now that Albert thought about it, he was wet. Not most of him, but his boots and the legs of his pants were wet like he’d gone wading in the creek. He realized he must’ve stretched out while he slept, letting his legs get rained on. Albert looked around the outside and shivered despite himself. Eventually, he nodded, unwilling to accept out loud or feel more pitied than he already felt. He followed the cashier inside, remembering why he’d ended up there in the first place.
“Anything happen here last night?” He asked in a suspicious manner he’d meant to be unsuspicious. The cashier either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the way Albert had phrased the question.
“Yeah, we got robbed again. It’s not a big deal, we’re insured.” He brushed it off like it was nothing. Albert closed his eyes and accepted the information, what did it matter anyway? If the kid was shaken up at all he didn’t show it. Albert still felt a comforting relief settle on him as he took a seat in one of the large window sills facing the road and watched the rain, not thinking about anything.
The weather must’ve kept the rush away since there were few customers and they only seemed to be there to pick up a prescription and be on their way. After a few minutes of leaning less-than-entertained on the counter, the young man spoke up.
“I saw you leave last night, you went towards those woods.” He observed. Albert didn’t know what that mattered, but he grunted in affirmation. “You’re the ghost, aren’t you?” He asked.
“The what?” Albert looked up from the window.
“The ghost of the old commune." The cashier was leaning all the way over the counter to see him better. He no longer wore the dead-eyed look he had the night before. Albert knew the town thought the ghosts of the old commune members were haunting the woods, but he hadn’t realized the title had shifted to become his alone. He considered this, thinking of how he stayed there without anywhere else to go. About how he waited endlessly for the return of someone who was long gone. About how he defended his home with smoke and mirrors and traps and tricks. What was he doing there if not haunting the place?
“Yeah,” He affirmed simply, smiling at his hands. He didn’t hate the title, it made him sound scary and mysterious, instead of pathetic.
“What’s your name?” The cashier asked. Albert’s grin faded to a grimace. He hated that question. He hated how many answers it had now, and how whoever knew the answer seemed to find a fate he didn’t intend for them. He grimaced and looked up before he answered.
“What’s it to you?”
“I wanna know what to call you.” The guy answered easily. “It’s better than going with what everyone else calls you.” He added. Albert felt irritation rise in him, making his face heat familiarly. He took deep breaths and refused to say or think anything until the pressure behind his eyes fully subsided.
“What do they call me?”
“Hah,” The kid shook his head, “I’ll spare you that, fine, keep your secrets.” He conceded. “I’ll just call you Mr. Ghost.” He declared. Albert didn’t protest the name, it worked as well as anything else. The accordion doors opened automatically as a customer trudged into the building in their raincoat, not bothering to wipe the water from their shoes. They cast a surprised and vaguely disappointed glance at Albert, but it rolled off him. He watched the window again, eyes being drawn away from it only when he heard beeping from the register. He watched the store clerk ring up the sixpack of seven-up bottles and wondered something. Something that was only pertinent given his history with people who tried a bit too hard to get to know him.
The young man had taken off his beige pullover, leaving him in his polo uniform with his nametag pinned to it. He could see the last name clearly, Mallory, but the first was obscured by a large shiny sticker of a rainbow centipede. Albert didn’t know what to make of this, but there were worse names to have.
Mallory it is.
Mallory let Albert sit in the pharmacy and watch the rain until it stopped. He let him continue to watch the cars on the street racing through puddles long after the sidewalks had dried. Mallory said nothing when he sat and waited and waited and waited and waited for as long as the cashier would let him take advantage of his hospitality. When the store was empty and the cashier got bored, he’d ask Albert unwanted questions about his life.
“Why were you sleeping outside?”
“I was tired.”
He’d count the lottery scratchers and ask another one.
“Why do you spend so much time in the woods?”
“Live there.”
“Like with Jim and Eleanor?” He asked. Albert knew his confusion was evident in his expression, but Mallory couldn’t see it if he didn’t turn away from the window. How did a townie know the old couple? He supposed they’d lived there for a long time.
“No.”
“Oh.” The guy didn’t press further at the dismissive tone. He also never asked why Albert was still there. He never implied he was waiting for him to leave. Albert watched as the better weather let more and more people into Wingdings to purchase things they were too lazy to purchase at a farther, more suitable store. He watched as Mallory greeted each customer with a polite smile and a generic hello, and the customers greeted him in kind with complete silence and wordlessly handing him things to scan. He watched as customer after customer walked in and stared emptily and uncomprehendingly at a rack of kinder eggs only for Mallory to inform them that the newspaper rack had been moved a few feet beside the clearance. Albert wondered if he was usually in the store by himself since this was the second time he’d noticed it in as many times he’d cared to pay attention.
The young man went from such boredom that he was standing around on his phone or bugging Albert, to running around to manage the demands of the customers, restocks, pharmacy needs, and the cleaning he was apparently expected to do once the store approached closing time. Was this what a traditional job was like all the time? Albert had worked his share of uneducated labor, but he was at least treated with the decency of someone willing to do something potentially life-threatening. Albert had hardly noticed when he’d sat there watching the young cashier struggle long enough for the store to be getting ready to close. He was informed of this by Mallory himself as he gently asked Albert to lift his feet so he could sweep under them.
“Have I been here that long?” He asked, embarrassed that the question was a farce. He knew he’d been there long beyond his welcome, he was just foolishly trying to make himself seem like less of a classless lout.
“Pharmacy closed an hour ago, retail closes in fifteen.” He confirmed, nodding at the analog clock above the register counter. Albert scrutinized the symbols with little understanding.
“Huh,” He said. “When’s…when’s that?” He asked nervously. He knew better than he did when he was young, and he knew that asking questions didn’t make you look stupid, but this particular question had him second-guessing. Mallory looked at the clock and then back, not understanding for a second before answering patiently.
“Ten.” He clarified. “It's nine forty-five right now.” He elaborated, nodding a bit more severely at the clock.
“Huh…” Albert squinted at it again, trying and failing to shake the blur from his bad eye. The longer hand was the one that told minutes, but it was on a nine, there wasn’t even a forty-five. Plus the shorter hand that he knew told the hour looked like it was on the ten, not the nine. It was Greek the more he tried to parse it. “I’ll get out.” He fell back on his old reliable.
“I mean, you don’t have to until I lock up, You looked like you were really invested in that grout.” Mallory laughed as he went back to sweeping. Albert glanced back at the small part of the window pane he’d been staring at for the better part of an hour and grinned despite himself.
“I didn’t mean to stay all day.” He defended himself, standing from his spot in the window and stretching his back. It was dark now, and he wanted to get back to the woods to make sure there were no kids up to anything.
“Then why did you?” Mallory asked, not looking up from where he was awkwardly tipping the long-handled dustpan into the trash behind the counter.
“I don’t know, lost track of time?” He said noncommittally.
“I guess it’s easy to lose if you don’t know how to read it,” Mallory remarked unabashedly and Albert felt his face become hot again.
“I don’t read a lot of clocks.” He defended, “never found the skill very useful.”
“You’re really defensive.” Mallory just observed from his place spot-mopping by the accordion door.
“That’s not inaccurate.” Albert conceded, especially given the conversation.
“Well, it’s making you turn red.”
Albert felt his steam leave him, his face was indeed hot from the situation and his words were just turned back on him whenever they left his mouth. He felt he couldn’t predict the store clerks' responses, and he felt the strangest sense of deja vu.
Silence lapsed between them, the store clerk mopping peacefully and Albert trying to convince himself to leave before the guy said anything else. He didn’t even realize he was trying to talk himself into it until he realized he’d been talking himself out of it for most of the day. Why? Why did he prefer to stay in the pharmacy where he couldn’t feel the wind or smell the trees? And everyone looked at him like he was somehow trespassing on public property? Was he tired? He’d slept alright outside and he never let his fatigue hold him back before. Was it the robbery? The guy seemed so nonchalant about it, he couldn’t imagine it was a rare occurrence. Was he procrastinating? A part of him was not thrilled at the prospect of going out to collect recyclables again. He needed the money but he hated the work, especially after rain, and it yielded so little.
“I’ve been putting off picking up cans today.” He said quietly. He didn’t know why he wanted to justify Mallory’s prying questions with answers, but he didn’t like being called defensive.
“You know, I thought you went through a lot of cans.” He laughed as he counted the drawer for the night, writing things down on some kind of mark sheet and gathering receipts together in a paperclip. “You walk around collecting cans for money?”
“When there’s enough.”
“Wow…” Mallory looked up at the fluorescent lights of the ceiling, Albert didn’t know what he was looking at but looked up regardless. “That sounds so much nicer than this, being outside, being your own boss, I couldn’t pay my rent on that though, I don’t think.” He shrugged and went back to counting out the drawer for the next day's opener. “You’re lucky.”
“Lucky?” Albert balked at the assessment. It made sense now why the young cashier was always so decent to him when his coworkers weren’t. He hadn’t put together that Albert was homeless. But the statement at the end had him reeling like a willow in a strong breeze. He was lucky to live like this? Scraping by and living like an animal and…
Being free, outdoors, not working like this just to make rent.
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