The Storm

Douglas Reiche                                                                                             Approx 3,000 Words

108 Bluffview Drive

Troy, MO 63379

618-317-6014

douglasreiche@gmail.com

The Storm

by

Douglas Reiche

It was 8:00 AM on Monday, and Mr. Hinton was at his desk. As he scanned his imaginary domain, he checked to see who was late, and getting coffee did not count. It made no difference because none of the employees reported to him. Interestingly, his kingdom mainly consisted of filing cabinets, of which there were quite a few now due to company growth. The active account files were all on the fourth floor. But for lack of space, the inactive accounts were in the basement. Most employees ignored all the fuss he made about things because he was just a regular employee like them.

           Mr. Hinton has been employed at the brokerage firm forever. It was here that he did his internship in his senior year. His job was to organize all the inactive accounts in the basement. Everyone called it the dungeon, which was a good name for the space. That semester, he lived in the basement. But that was almost twenty-eight years ago now.

           Still, he remembers that semester quite well. The interview with B. J. Collier Investments made him nervous. What did he know about investments? All he had was a savings account with a few hundred dollars. The interview for the internship was challenging. Mr. Peters, the department manager, asked him questions. Like, “What do you want to do?” and “What are you interested in?” In a semester, he would have a degree in Business Administration. But he had no idea what he wanted to do with it. There were plenty of things he did not want to do, but the reverse was quite unsettling.

           The gray marble building took up two city blocks and was five stories high. It was called the First City Bank Building. The bank (from its inception) leased out part of the building. When Mr. Hinton started his internship, B. J. Collier Investments leased a part of the building from the bank. The customer services department was on the fourth floor. He walked into the lobby with its ornate design and grand staircase to the second floor. But he was not sure why he should be there.

           “You are responsible for straightening out all the inactive accounts,” said Mr. Peters in a dramatically stern voice. “Let me show you around.” In the back of the large room were rows of filing cabinets. “These are all the active accounts. As you can see, there is little room for expansion. Now, let me show you the inactive accounts. They have been left unfiled for some time. That is why you are here, to organize them.”

           Mr. Peters went to the elevator located close to the filing cabinets. It was not all that big. But it was wooden; the gate, the sides, the floor, everything was wooden. Mr. Hinton had never seen a wooden elevator before. Mr. Peters lifted up the gate, and as they stepped in, the elevator swayed. Mr. Hinton looked around. Ropes were holding it up, not cables. Since Mr. Peters put the gate down, he chose not to get off. Mr. Peters continued. “The elevator will not work until the gate is down. It is a safety feature.” Mr. Hinton was not impressed. “Here is the light switch.” Several lights came on in the elevator shaft.

           “This rope makes it go up and down. You can see the arrows on the side of the wall. When you pull down on the left side, the elevator goes down,” and it did. It clunked and slowly started down, but the elevator swayed. “When you get to the bottom, it will automatically stop. There are no places to stop between the fourth floor and the bottom.” Mr. Hinton could see where cinder blocks enclosed doorways on other floors. It was getting cool now, and suddenly, it jolted to a stop. It seemed like a five-minute trip. The air had a funny smell, and the room looked scary.

             “All of this paperwork needs filing.” There were rows of filing cabinets and piles of folders on tables and the top of the cabinets. There was an unusable wood desk and a broken desk chair. “You can take a chair from the fourth floor. There are some extras around. “We want to make folders for all the paperwork, label them, and file them. Now, over there,” he pointed, “there is an emergency door behind the last row of files. The alarm will sound if you open it.” He also pointed to the fire extinguisher by the elevator. Lunch was at noon, and supplies were in a cabinet near his office. Then Mr. Peters slowly disappeared on the elevator. “I will send it back down,” he shouted.

           Quitting was on Mr. Hinton’s mind. Can an intern quit? Maybe not. Better still, he might be a no-show tomorrow morning. An internship is, for learning something, an on-the-job experience. What could you possibly learn from this? Right now, it was hard to know where to start. At noon, he managed to eat lunch in the lunchroom. Some asked if he was the guy who was working in the dungeon. Then they laughed.

           When he asked for a vacuum and cleaning supplies. Mr. Peters laughed and shook his head. But sometime later, the supplies came by way of the ancient elevator. Things were better when he left that evening. He went home and took a shower.

           “So, how was your day, dear?” his mother asked.

           “Okay,” he replied.

           “It will get better.”

           There was no way his mother would understand about the basement, the mess, and the wooden elevator. The next day, he came in to work. It was because of his mother, who would have been disappointed if he had quit. Little by little the room started to brighten up. Then came the last day of his internship. The room had become his room. It was less scary now. Mr. Peters sent him to Human Resources in the afternoon. “Mr. Peters is offering you a permanent position with the company.” Being in charge of the filing and retrieving customer accounts was the perfect job for him.

           His mother was excited. “See, I told you. Someday, you will be president of the company. Wait and see.” Signs in the clouds were her specialty. He went to work the next day. Two guys brought in a desk and a chair. Since there was very little room, they put the front of the desk against a square building column.

           Mr. Hinton missed very few days as an employee. Mr. Peters had to insist that he take a vacation. Vacations only mean more work when you get back, Mr. Hinton believed. He was right. When he returned, his desk was a mess. Mr. Peters thought about asking Mr. Hinton about his vacation. But he might not have gone anywhere, and he did not want to embarrass him. Mr. Hinton was a man who was a little shallow about personal things. So, he never asked, and Mr. Hinton never said.

           He had a calendar at his desk. Each day, he would put an X in the box of the current date. Mr. Peters appeared on day as he was making his mark. “When I finish this calendar,” he said, “I can afford an apartment.” After Mr. Hinton worked there for a year, he rented the second floor of a house, owned by a widow. It included a garage, and it was close to public transportation. So, he took advantage of the conveniences.

           Riding on the bus was about as routine as work. The “DTWN” to “ESTN” had its regulars, and they all had “reserved” seats, they said. They could always tell when a stranger got on the bus first. The whole bus was displaced. Mr. Hinton sat in the first seat facing forward, on the curbside after the front wheel well, and it was a window seat. Often, he read the newspaper purchased from the newsstand near the bus stop. In a crowd, he would be unnoticed. In a move, they would call him an “extra.”

           Mr. Hinton was now fifty, a little heavier, with thinning gray hair. Recently, if the filing was behind or something was lost, he would pace around his desk in a circle. ,Mr. Hartman, now the new department manager, seemed to know what to say when Mr. Hinton had issues. Mr. Hartman was in his thirties and just over six foot.

           “Now Bob, you have to learn how to control yourself,” he would say.

           Every day, without fail, Mr. Hinton counted out his pills into a small cup and then took them with water from another cup. At most companies, they would have let him go. But Mr. Hartman saw things a little differently, and he stayed on.

            One day, Mr. Hinton got a counterpart in customer accounts. The company was growing. Mr. Hinton was just not able to keep up. The new lady, a part-time college student was Ms. Ellie. Everyone remembers the day Ms. Ellie started. Mr. Hinton spent half the day pacing around his desk and the other half watching Ms. Ellie. Her job was to manage the active accounts, and Mr. Hinton was to manage inactive accounts and other assigned duties. That meant he was going to the basement. However you look at it, someone had invaded his territory.  

           “This is my job,” Ms. Ellie said to him later in the day.

           Of course, Mr. Hinton was once again in Mr. Hartman’s office. “The customer base is growing, Bob. You cannot possibly keep up with all of it.” Maybe he agreed, but he did not want to. Mr. Hinton was accurate but not all that efficient anymore.

           A few nights later, going home from work, Mr. Hinton looked out the window. A car passed the bus in the right lane. That car impressed him so much that he wanted to purchase one. However, he had no idea what kind it was. The old black 1941 Club Coupe, with a small dent in the left rear fender, barely kept itself together. After dinner, he found the car title among his “important” papers. Now, all he had to do was find the car.

           The nearest dealer had nothing like to one he had seen. The second dealer could not help him. The third dealer was some distance from the house. But when he drove past, he said, “There, there in the window,” and he pointed to the car. The next day, he picked it up. The color was two-tone: Larkspur blue and Harbor blue, and it had big fins and a large chrome grill. When he parked it in the garage, the bumper missed the garage door by so much.

           Monday morning, he almost drove it to work. But he did not want to park in the parking lot. That morning was something to see. Mr. Hartman always greeted everyone when he came back with his cup of coffee. But before he could say anything, Mr. Hinton blurted out, “I bought a new car this weekend. It is two-tone blue with big fins.” 

           Suddenly, Mr. Hinton was anxious to schedule his vacation, the first week in July. Mr. Hartman thought it might help him. The pacing had increased again, and he expressed his frustration over Ms. Ellie who had become a full-time employee now.

            When he returned from vacation, he brought the pictures. They were mediocre at best. An hour later, the pictures were taped on the post by his desk. A few people came to see them, and they got a free tutorial on the trip. For a while, his work was much better.

           One day, in the pouring rain, he hurried to the bus, holding on to his umbrella. Traffic was a mess. Still, the bus made good time. It was only four minutes late to downtown. When he got off the bus, the sky was much darker. It thundered. So, once again, he hurried to get to work, but then it rained much harder, and the wind picked up. He was getting coffee when Mr. Hartman came into the lunchroom.

           “It was nasty out there,” Mr. Hinton commented.

           “Any problems with the bus?”

           “No, but I saw several accidents.”

           People were coming in late and talking about the weather. Mr. Hinton had some filing and a problem with something misfiled. Ms. Ellie and a missing file and asked Mr. Hinton for help. In the afternoon, he paced around the desk. It rained harder in the afternoon. People stood at the windows. After Mr. Hinton finished his work and saw that it was 4:12 PM, he knew there was time to go to the basement to file several folders. It was a place for him to retreat from the pressure of the day.

           On the way down, he remembered no one knew he was going to the basement. It was a rule. But he would only be there a few minutes. After filing two folders, he had a problem finding one of the inactive files, so he made a duplicate folder for the paperwork. It was silent and cool, in the basement. As he put on his sweater he kept in the basement, the lights flickered, then quickly again. It made him feel uneasy. Suddenly, the lights went out, and the emergency light by the elevator came on, but it was not very bright. The other emergency light over the exit door failed to come on. Mr. Hinton, in his panic, did not remember the emergency door.

           He grabbed the folders, went to the elevator and closed the gate. The rope went up when he pulled it, but the elevator did not budge. It was now 4:31 PM. Maybe someone will notice that the doors were open by the elevator and realize he was in the basement. He shouted, “Help!” and wondered if anyone heard.

           Mr. Hartman got a message to let everyone go home, and quickly the stairway was crowded. A new employee, who had just started a few days before, noticed an elevator door was open, so he closed it on his way to the stairs. Sometime later, Mr. Hartman checked if anyone was still on the floor, but everyone had gone home. So, he grabbed his coat and umbrella and went home.

           At 7:17 PM, the emergency light faded away in the basement and went out. It would not come on again. It was dark and chilly. Checking the gate to see if it was closed, he pulled on the rope and imagined the elevator going up. But nothing happened. When the electricity came on, he knew it would start for the fourth floor. But it did not come on, so he waited.

           The basement had become his domain. Looking around, he could not see his hand in front of his face. Was that a noise? There it was again. “Hello! Hello!” No answer. He sat down and looked intently into the darkness. Sometime later, his mind still focused on the darkness – he thought he saw something. There was just a flash. What was that? It forced him to move to the corner of the elevator. Perhaps, he would feel safer there.

           He remembered the fire extinguisher by the elevator. Feeling his was to the front of the elevator, he managed to get it off the hook. Having it made him feel better somehow.

           It seemed impossible, but he dozed off with the fire extinguisher next to him. Suddenly, his head nodded, and he opened his eyes. He had forgotten where he was for a moment. Everything looked black. Looking up, he hoped to see the doors open, but there was nothing to see. It was just endless darkness. When he started to pace around, the elevator moved. He quickly stopped. Something seemed to be out there. “Help!” he yelled. In the corner, he lay down, clutching his sweater, trying to keep warm. Suddenly, fear came over him, and he screamed, as loud and as long as he could. I could die down here, he thought.

           Mr. Hartman arrived early, because he had work left from the day before and because he had an 8:30 meeting. It was 6:03 AM. The first thing Mr. Hartman wanted was coffee. He usually got it on the way, but today he did not want to stop. In the lunchroom, he sat down to make plans for the day. With his second cup, he started for his office. On the way, he noticed that one of the elevator doors was open slightly.

           When he opened the elevator doors, the lights in the elevator shaft were on. Mr. Hinton was in the corner of the elevator in a heap. Mr. Hartman pulled up the gate, and when he did it frightened Mr. Hinton. With the fire extinguisher in his hands, he jumped up and threw it a Mr. Hartman. It flew through the air and caught Mr. Hartman on the side of the head. Falling to the floor, Mr. Hinton jumped on him. Already unconscious from the hit by the fire extinguisher, Mr. Hinton beat Mr. Hartman until he collapsed on the floor.

           Blood was on their clothes and the floor. On of the secretaries came in early. Going to her desk, she came upon the scene. As her purse fell to the floor, she screamed and ran out of the room. Mr. Hinton stumbled to his feet. All he could remember was darkness, but he was gasping for air. A security officer came in and found Mr. Hinton pacing around the body. When he observed the scene, he went to the nearest desk and called the police. Mr. Hinton dropped to the floor.

           Mr. Hinton is currently in the State Mental Health System. When competent, he will stand trial for the murder of Mr. Robert Hartman.