Hank didn’t own the deli, but he worked there every single day. He didn’t show up late, he didn’t get sick, he didn’t take vacations. When I asked him what he liked to do for fun, he just shrugged and went back to slicing skin-like strips off a log of salami. I always found his work ethic confusing because Hank clearly hated his job. I think inside any given moment, he careened between bottomless despair and the desperate faith that he could fix everything he saw wrong with the deli.
“They’ve got no clue what they’re doing,” he said the first time I worked with him. He was re-stacking the white paper coffee cups next to the cash register. Before this moment, neither of us had ever spoken to each other.
“Look: a customer orders. You ring them up. Then, while they’re paying, you fill the cup that’s waiting for you right here.” He smacked the counter for emphasis, knocking the stack onto the floor.
“See?” he said, getting down on his hands and knees to pick up the cups. “It just makes sense. It’s logical.”
The next day, the cups were back near the coffee urns, and Hank spent his shift explaining that no-one in the store knew anything about anything and that he was surrounded by god-forsaken morons and the whole fucking thing could go straight to god damn hell for all he cared and that he was going to quit.
Then he re-stacked the cups.
The same thing happened the next week and the week after that.
One shift, about three hours before close, something started beeping from somewhere deep inside the deli, somewhere we couldn’t see. There were no customers in the store, and Hank was just starting to tell me about his ailing mother. Apparently she’d broken her hip tripping over her pot bellied pig, Batilda.
“And I told her,” Hank was saying, sawing through a hunk of Black Forest ham. “I told her, a pet’s no good to keep around at her age. Especially not that pig. The thing’s so fat it can’t even get out of her way.” He threw the ham into the display fridge and began on a slab of prosciutto. “And she’s so blind she can’t even see it when it’s right under her feet. My god it’s a nightmare.”
He was a tall man with pin straight hair that he cut himself to one uniform length with a fringe. It looked like an old leather pilot’s cap. “You know,” he continued, wide-eyed, brandishing the prosciutto.“She says the thing’s healthy. She says pigs are supposed to be round, but guess what? I looked online. I did the math. Apparently that pig’s as fat as I would be if I weighed three-hundred and seventy-two pounds.”
“That sucks,” I said, pumping a cup of stale coffee from the urn and leaning against the counter.
“Yeah, it really does,” Hank continued. “It really does suck. And now she’s living with me. In my one bedroom apartment. It was cramped to begin with, but now I’ve got a hospital bed set up in my living room, and an obese pig waddling around.” He finished with the prosciutto and stepped past me to the sink, furiously scrubbing at the knife.
“And she has this little buzzer for whenever she needs her soup reheated, or her pillows fluffed, or the TV turned up, or the AC’s too cold–” His phone dinged in his pocket and he flinched, checking it. “You know I’ve started smoking again?” He slid the phone back into the pocket of his jeans. “And of course, since she’s laid up, the pig’s my problem. I’ve got it on a diet, but I don’t think it’s help–”
And then the beeping started. Six high pitched chirps, from somewhere out of sight.
“What was that?” Hank said. “Did you hear that? What was that?”
He paced back and forth behind the counter, his head cocked, little eyes darting suspiciously, waiting for the sound to come again. I sipped the coffee and watched him march.
Hank walked like there was a metal rod traveling the length of his spine from the base of his head to his asshole. Every step was short and stiff, and his orthotics always landed flat on the ground, not from heel to toe. His knees barely bent. He kept his arms completely limp and straight with his knuckles facing the floor and chugged along like a wind up toy.
He paced back and forth behind the counter like that for a few minutes before the beeps sounded again. Hank spun around squinting up at the ceiling. “It’s coming from up there, right? Are you hearing this right now?”
I grunted, pouring most of my coffee into the sink and getting down on my belly with a set of salad tongs to reach behind the waist height fridge for knives. They routinely fell from the magnetic strip on the wall to land point first in the grout behind the fridge. One would fall every few days until we were all out. Then, whoever happened to need one next would have to get down on their belly with the tongs and reach. It was my favourite task, since I got to lie down, but the cycle infuriated Hank. He’d stand over me and complain about management, or logistics, or the way the deli was organized. Or the way magnets were getting weaker. He theorized that in ancient times, magnets were stronger than they are now, and that with each passing year, as the poles melt, the Earth gets closer to demagnetization, at which point it will apparently just drift apart into space and we’ll all die. I tried to explain that gravity, not magnets, is what keeps the Earth together, but he just waved me away, muttering “That’s what you’ve been conditioned to think.”
Today, Hank’s main focus was the ergonomic flaws of the knives.
“Don’t even bother with those,” he started to preach, tugging on his nose until it reddened. “You’ll have carpal tunnel syndrome in no time using handles like that.”
“Yeah,” I grunted, struggling to grasp a paring knife with the tongs.
“No, seriously,” he continued. “Seriously, you’ll wish you’d listened to me when you have carpal tunnel syndrome and your thumbs don’t work anymore and you can’t even tie your shoes, or wipe the drool off your ch–”
The beeps sounded again.
Hank stopped mid sentence, mouth hanging, brow furrowed, shifting from one foot to the other, listening. He took an indecisive step over my outstretched body so that he was straddling me where I lay, and cocked his head so far that it was parallel with the floor.
“Hank?” I started, trying to slide out from underneath him.
He raised a hand and frowned, listening, so I just lay there on the dirty grey tiles and waited.
The beeps sounded again and Hank jumped. “You’re hearing this, right?”
He stepped off and continued to pace, marching back and forth across the empty deli, leaning forward as though there was a wire attached to his forehead, dragging him wherever he happened to be going. When the beeps sounded again, he stood stock still, muttering to himself. “Six beeps, same pitch, every two minutes.”
He turned to me. “I’ll be right back, I need a cigarette.”
I focused on cleaning. A fly buzzed, and I swatted it with the washcloth that hung from my shoulder, but missed. I tried again, swatting once, twice and then finally mashed the fly against the Black Forest ham. I flicked most of its pulverized body away and went back to drying coffee mugs.
A while later Hank came back. “Did it go off again?”
“Yeah.”
“How many times?”
“Six.”
“No,” he rubbed his chin impatiently. “How many times did it beep six times?”
“Oh,” I started, but the beeps cut me off. Hank jumped and began moving towards the sound, scratching his head.
“Where are you?” He muttered. “Are you in here?” He opened the cabinet under the sink and crawled in up to his waist, tossing everything inside out across the floor. “Where are you, where are you, where are you,” he whispered as the bottles of bleach and vinegar and lemon-scented cleaner rolled across the tiles.
When the beeps went again, Hank jumped, smacking the back of his head against the ceiling of the cabinet. He collected himself, swearing furiously and whipped out his phone, using the little animation of the mic’s pickup like a compass.
“Shhhh! Quiet!” he spat, staring at the phone and waiting for the beeps.
He marched around the store, letting the phone drag him along, whirling in circles, waiting for the beeps to sound again while I cleaned up the mess.
Hank was terrified of thieves. All day he’d pace back and forth behind the counter, squinting through the deli window at anyone who passed on the sidewalk. If a customer came in with a backpack, they had to leave it behind the register. If a customer looked to be about highschool age, they had to leave the bag and turn out their pockets to get it back. Occasionally he’d tell people we were closed if they came through the door looking the wrong way.
“Never can be too careful,” he’d say, darkly. “Never know what they’ll do.”
“What was wrong with her?” I asked the first time I saw him turn a customer down. The would-be shoplifter was a cheerful looking new mother, pushing a baby carriage.
Hank looked at me as though I’d just told him I didn’t know how to read.
“Mothers?” he’d answered. “Are you kidding me? Come on.”
I didn’t question him again. I’d only asked out of curiosity anyway.
At my last job (as a hardware store cashier) I actually did get robbed. One night, a guy wearing mirrored wrap arounds and dirty white running shoes came in. He browsed for a while, fingering the cookware, barbeque tongs, hammers, gardening shears and steel pipes. Finally, he settled on a slender number three phillips head screwdriver. His shoes squeaked on his way to the register. The guy set his hand on the counter, gripping the screw driver, and explained that he’d stab me between the ribs if I didn’t empty the register.
It contained less than fifty dollars.
I looked behind me, up to the manager’s office, overlooking the floor with its mirrored windows.
“Don’t look up there.” The robber’s skin was greyish under the fluorescent tube lights. I stared at the six or seven wiry blond hairs sprouting from his pimpled chin. He was about my age and seemed tired. He seemed bored. I could see myself in his wraparounds. There were bags under my eyes too.
“Open the register or I’ll stab you,” he repeated. “Screwdrivers go between ribs easier than knives do. I’ll puncture your lungs.”
I handed the bills and coins over and he stuffed them into his pockets. The bell on the door tinkled as he booked it down the sidewalk.
When my manager came down the steps from his office, his face was waxy and the colour of chili peppers.
“You just HANDED over the cash?”
“My lungs,” I said.
The manager shook his head and made it painfully clear that my job was only saved by the ridiculous coddling grace of labour laws and worker’s rights. He made sure that I stayed until the end of my shift.
“Why do you keep working there?” My mother asked when I got home that night. We sat under the light in the kitchen sipping mint tea. “Do you like it?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Does anyone like anything?” I thought for a second. “Maybe the plywood smells alright.”
“Maybe you should find a job you actually enjoy,” she said, sipping her tea. “Something you don’t just show up to.”
Then I got my job at the deli.
Hank was still muttering about the beeps when we left. I emptied our recycling bins and garbage cans into the same massive black trash bag and dragged it out to the dumpster. Hank locked the door behind us after setting the alarm and scratched his head, waiting for me to come back. His hair was sticking out in tufts where he’d pulled it, and he’d rubbed his chin so much there was a raw patch under his lip.
“Thanks for your help today. Always a pleasure working with you” he muttered, lighting a cigarette and turning on his heel “Got to get back to mother.”
I watched him march down the road into the setting sun, the smoke trailing behind him like exhaust from a steam engine.
The next day as I was clocking out, Hank was shouting at the deli’s newest employee, Daisy.
My shift with her had gone like this: First, I’d break the silence by asking her what type of music she liked. She’d say anything but country and death metal. A couple minutes of silence later, she’d ask me if I’d seen any good movies lately. I’d say no. Once enough time had passed for us to pretend that the question was new, I’d ask her about music again. Then she’d ask about movies. Then silence.
“Look!” Hank was screaming, brandishing one of the knives from the sandwich station. “Really look! You think this makes sense?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, backing away, eyeing the blade. “I thought they were supposed to go on the magnet.”
“Who told you that? No. You don’t put the knives on the magnetic wall strip,” he shrilled, flicking the blade back and forth. “If you put them on the magnetic wall strip, they fall behind the soup and sandwich station. Just leave them on the counter,” – he slammed the knife down flat on the aluminum countertop– “like this. Is that so hard? Do you get it now?”
Daisy’s lip trembled but she didn’t shed a tear. She glared at Hank who was standing frozen, arms outstretched, waiting for her answer.
“Yes.”
Hank sighed. “Okay,” he said, more softly. “Okay. I need a cigarette.” He scratched the back of his neck and started towards the door, biting the nail of his pinkie finger. “If you could stack some cups, that would be really helpful.”
I stood in silence. Daisy wiped her nose and started stacking a sleeve of paper coffee cups. I could see Hank through the deli window, pacing with his cigarette. He lit it, tossed it without taking a drag, and ground it out under the flat of his foot.
“I’m sorry about tha–” Hank started on his way back inside. He noticed the tower of cups stacked neatly next to the coffee pots and stopped, looked at the empty space near the cash register, opened and closed his mouth once and turned on his heel to march back into the parking lot. He never returned to the deli.
I used to see Hank every now and then, but I never stopped to talk to him. Sometimes he’d be crossing the street at the corner store near my house, or late at night I’d see him from the window of a moving bus. He was always marching, arms limp, eyes darting, back straight, like there was an invisible string attached to the top of his head being tugged on by God.
I quit my job at the deli a few weeks after Hank did.
When I was in kindergarten, the teacher, Ms. Daily, or Dempsy, or something, asked us what we all wanted to be when we weren’t little kids anymore. She lined us up on the smelly, brightly coloured carpet and sang, “Okay friends, what do we all want to be when we grow up?” and we all sat there, criss cross applesauce with our mouths hanging open and our fingers up our noses. One kid said she wanted to be an astronaut. Another one wanted to be the president of the whole entire world. I don’t remember what I said, but now I work as a night janitor at city hall.
When I think of that time back in kindergarten, I think of Hank. I wonder what he would have said he wanted to be. A chain smoking, angst filled deli worker? I wonder what he was like as a six year old. The idea makes me laugh. All I can picture is a three foot tall version of the guy I knew at the deli, complaining about his ancient mother and her pot bellied pig. I can picture him glaring suspiciously at the other children and storming off when they didn’t follow the rules in hopscotch or freeze-tag or playing house. I wonder if he was ever a child at all.
I knew Hank when I was in high school and it’s been five, maybe six years since I quit at the deli. In grade twelve, in December, I sat under the light in the kitchen in front of my mother’s laptop to register for university. There’d been a thaw the week before and our street was lined with grimy crusty snow banks full of old trash. Outside, our eighty-five year old neighbour was creeping up a ladder with a coil of hideous blue lights draped across his chest like bandoleers. His wife, a squat lady with a perm shrieked at him from the driveway. I could hear her even through the closed window.
“David you’re going to kill yourself climbing up there!”
“No. I’m not, Dotty.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer her.
“Merry Christmas, Dotty!” she screamed. “You’re a widow now because your stupid husband thought it was worth killing himself to make your house look ugly for the holidays!”
David pretended not to hear, continuing up the ladder, one rung at a time. I shifted my gaze to the bureaucratic university webpage and weighed my options.
“I don’t even know what to apply for,” I told my mother, sitting across from me at the kitchen table. I remembered kindergarten and asked myself what I wanted to be when I grew up.
“Well what do you like?” She asked, recrossing her legs.
I shrugged.”Does anyone really like anything?”
She snorted. “Why don’t you apply for a BA and figure it out,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “That’s the beauty of university. You can shop around, see when you get there. It’s a universal education.” She pronounced every syllable in universal like it was a separate word. U-NI-VERS-AL.
I did what she told me. I applied for the BA, but when I got the acceptance letter, I deferred. The next year I deferred again. I never went.
I’ve worked many jobs since I worked with Hank. Chopping vegetables, driving a bus, stocking shelves, stacking boxes, bagging groceries, tending bars, selling shoes, answering phones. I have floated between workplaces like a ghost. I never take my work home. I never forget things behind. I am never remembered after I leave. I barely exist at all. I’ve had many co-workers, but none who inspired such wonder and dread as Hank. Now, as the night custodian at city hall, I work alone.
Even all these years later, I still check up on Hank through the internet to see how he’s doing. When his mother died, Hank live-streamed the funeral on his ancient smartphone. Even with the grainy resolution, his walk was unmistakable as he marched up to the podium, popping and locking his knees and elbows the whole way. I sat on my couch in my underwear, the blue light of my laptop illuminating my otherwise dark apartment, as Hank delivered a tuneless, teary rendition of ‘Danny Boy’. When the live stream ended, I closed my screen and sat in the silence.
After the funeral, Hank wiped his entire Facebook account. He removed the blurry, unfocused images, the stiff happy birthday messages and the political rants. I assumed the account had been abandoned until a few months ago when I got a copy/pasted message from him. Apparently he lives somewhere in northern Saskatchewan now.
The message was inviting me to join his church, Fellows of the United Human Spirit. The group needed members to help build a small communal compound. After that, they were planning on building an ark. The message reassured the reader that although the compound was set to be in a totally landlocked part of Canada, the ark was vital. It was only a matter of time before the whole place was under water.
The end of the message read:
“If you aren’t interested in joining our cause, perhaps you might consider donating a few dollars to support our hard working members.
Cordially,
Hank Spatz”
I’d never been to Saskatchewan, but something spoke to me as I scrolled through the stock images of grass and sky. It seemed so empty. I waited a few days before contacting him, thinking that the feeling would pass, but it didn’t. I knew that joining Hank’s dooms-day cult was a bad idea. I didn’t even believe a flood was coming, I still don’t, but something compelled me to join Hank, like a string, tugging.