Chapter 9 — DWIGHT

In the first week of December, Costa Vasilakis came to my office above the hardware store and told me he was letting Dwight Poole go.

I said why.

He put a printout on my desk.

Dwight had been clocking out at nine forty-five and staying until ten fifteen. Every shift, for about seven months. It came to something like ninety hours of unpaid work.

I said, "You're firing him for working extra for free?"

Costa said, "Walt, read the other column."

The other column was the register.

There were voids. Thirty-one of them over seven months. Small ones. Four dollars, six dollars, nine dollars.

"He's stealing," Costa said.

"How much?"

"About two hundred and twenty dollars."

"In seven months."

"Yes."

I sat with that.

Two hundred and twenty dollars over seven months is not stealing to get rich. Nobody steals that slowly for money. That is stealing for a reason.

I said, "Let me talk to him first."

I met Dwight in the parking lot on a Thursday because he would not come inside.

He is a big man and he stood there with his hands in his jacket and would not look at me and I asked him about the voids and he told me straight out, which surprised me.

He voids meals.

For a woman who comes in on Tuesdays with a toddler and counts change. For a man who sleeps in his van behind the Agway. For two boys who come in after school with three dollars between them.

He rings it, he serves it, he voids it, and he stays late and does the closing work off the clock so the labour numbers come out right and Costa never asks.

"You've been comping meals and paying for them with your own time," I said.

"I've been stealing," he said. "Say it right."

I said, "The boy. The eleventh. Why not him?"

And Dwight Poole stood in that parking lot in December and told me a thing I have thought about ever since.

"Because I didn't look at him."

"What?"

"I heard a kid at the counter at nine oh four and I had a close-out and a wife with an appointment at seven in the morning and I said the thing you say." He finally looked at me. "I didn't look at him, Mr. Harrison. If I'd looked at him I'd have fed him. I've fed forty people in that diner. I said get out to a kid because I didn't turn my head."

I told Costa not to fire him.

Costa said that was not my call, which was true, the lease is the lease and the staff is his.

I said I understood, and then I said that I would cover the voids going forward as a line item in the rent if he wanted to make it official, and Costa Vasilakis looked at me for a long moment and said, "You're a strange man, Walt," and he did not fire Dwight.

There is a small sign by the register now. It says: **If you're short, ask. It's already paid for.**

That was Renata's idea. Not mine.