Getting It Wrong Again

At some point I started calling the greeter “Army,” because he wore army-branded shirts and hats with his Walmart vest as he aggressively checked receipts at the exit. He was always at his post and greeted everyone entering the store gruffly, over his shoulder, as if he had been ordered to do so but really could not wait for us try to get past him with whatever we were hoping to shoplift. He was a big guy with a beard and wore old-man glasses but probably was not much older than me. He did not move well and had hearing aids. I figured he was some former REMF cosplaying being a hard ass at the exit door. The store was in a well-off town.

“Here you go, Army,” I would say, handing him my receipt when he thrust his hand toward me without speaking. It was not an insult exactly—cadre in military schools I had attended spoke like that—but I suppose I wanted him to know I was not intimidated by his dress or manner, and that the suspicious receipt-checking created more ill will than the company could lose by theft at that store. (Despite the insult, I kept shopping there.) He never responded except to tell me flatly to have a nice day.

After about five years he aged suddenly and badly, as if he had cancer, and he was often perched like a vulture on a stool by the door. The starch had gone out of him, and I felt bad. Getting paid low wages to police the poor for greater shareholder profits, while sick, reinforced the need for unions, which Walmart fought. But Army lifelessly did his work as if he believed in it, a corporate bootlicker from way back, I decided.

One night, late, a Fourth of July eve, he stopped me again. I had just been released from an ER after doing something dumb, and I had paid the Walmart cashier for some stuff, including a grill I did not really need, with money I did not really have. I remember I was wearing my Seabee T-shirt; the army had sent me to their underwater school, and I was feeling froggy.

Army and I stood toe-to-toe as he inspected my receipt. It took so long that my curiosity won out, and I asked if he had retired from the military. He looked mildly puzzled and slowly said no, as if he did not know what I was talking about. I said I had noticed for years now that he wore clothing with army logos on it. I realized he was not wearing any that night.

He said his father had been in the army and gave him that clothing as a gift. He wore it to remember his father. He had tried to enlist too but they wouldn’t take him for his near-deafness even as a kid. He was a beaten-down old guy who loved and respected his father, still regretted not being able to serve himself, and eternally manned the Walmart sliding door.

It was an astonishing moment for me, who never felt settled in what he knew. People repeated Hem’s advice that writers should have a “built-in, shockproof, shit detector,” and it was often useful. But it was also an aggressive defense that could shut down lessons of compassion.