Tuesdays in Dad’s Old Aisles

“Who is this gentleman?” he asked.

Nobody answered. Up in the glass office over the produce, the blinds did not move at all.

Then I heard wheels behind him, and a cart bumped the end cap. Three women from the Methodist circle had parked their carts across the mouth of aisle six like a roadblock.

The one in front was Dolores Quade, who has run the church rummage sale for thirty years and once made the pastor move his own car.

“Young man,” Dolores said, “you are going to want to read what we brought.”

She held out a yellow legal pad. It was heavy with writing, page after page folded back on itself.

“Two hundred and fourteen names,” she said. “Since the second week of September. Norma keeps it under the register, and she was not supposed to tell you that.”

He took the pad. He did not say a word for a long moment. He turned pages, and I watched him read the handwriting, the farm wives’ loops, the old men’s block capitals.

Next to the names, people had written things. “Art Brandt carried my groceries when my husband was in the hospital.” “He knew my boy’s name.” “He is the reason I shop here.”

“I am Mr. Keene,” the man said at last, quietly. “I’m the district manager.”

“We know who you are,” Dolores said. “You sent a memo. We have been wondering whether you ever met the man it was about.”

Mr. Keene looked at Dad. Dad, who had not noticed any of this, was turning a can of beef barley around for the third time.

“Somebody’s been shoving these in crooked,” Dad told him, confidingly, as one stocker to another.

“I see that,” Mr. Keene said.

He looked down at the pad again. His voice changed.

“My father had a hardware store in Canton,” he said, to no one in particular. “After my mother died he came in every day and moved the nails around.”

Nobody said anything. Behind us the soup shelf ticked as Dad set a can in place.

“I wrote that memo from Peoria,” Mr. Keene said. “I never walked an aisle with the man it was about. That is on me, and I will fix it.”

Boots came down the office stairs, slow ones. I knew the walk before I turned.

Neil came around the end of the aisle in his green manager’s vest. His face was red from the collar to his hairline, and he did not look at me. He looked at the legal pad in Mr. Keene’s hand.

“Neil,” Mr. Keene said. He did not raise his voice, and he did not lower it either, and every clerk within thirty feet heard him.