Janitor

Janitor



Buford was not a complicated man. He arrived at work on time, as usual early by a few minutes. Five minutes early is on time, his pappy used to say years ago. He emptied the trash cans, and swept out the hallways, and replaced the toilet paper in the bathrooms where the white executives would wash their hands and snort their coke and make their deals tomorrow. None of that was Buford’s concern, though. His pappy had taught him well not to mind the affairs of other men, but rather to mind his own and let Jesus attend the rest. Buford nodded his old black head silently, almost swaying his body as his heart remembered an old Wilson Pickett song his pappy’s radio would play.

Buford moved along slowly but in a measured cadence, following in his own footsteps from every night of the last thirty years. Nobody notices old Buford in this glass building, he thought, though I seen men come and go like so many summer days on the wind. What if I never came, Buford thought indulgently, as his mop led him into the research and development wing. Thirty years of dust would sure make a mess of those nice pressed white shirts and blue and black suits, and choke those mouths that were always open but never said nothing. Buford chuckled at the thought of all those important men, those powerful white men, in all that black dust, swimming through it, trying to pretend it weren’t there, and all the time saying, whatever happened to that colored fella what used to clean the floors? Shit, thought Buford, don’t be a fool. Plenty more mop pushers where you come from. Wouldn’t miss a beat, this place. Never took sick in thirty years, no vacations neither, just Christmas at home with the dog. And if he dropped dead right now weren’t nobody in this whole place would carry his casket.

Buford mopped between the high black work stations in the labs, the hum of the florescent tubes of light above audible over the slopping moist noises of his wide floor mop. It was a noise he heard in his sleep, as he knelt at his pew on Sunday morning, and even when he walked in the park. You hear a noise for three decades, and it starts to be there even when it ain’t. Then Buford stopped and stood stock still.

The noise had changed. There was still the humming, like a happy refrigerator, though the rhythmic sound of the mop had ceased. Buford cocked an ear, straining to catch it again. And there it was. Like a rabbit cornered under a bush by a cat, a scuffling noise and then a faint shriek. It sounded far off, maybe even outside, so Buford moved to the window and peered out. Maybe some kids were in the shrubs down there, maybe some teenage date gone wrong, or just some squirrels fighting. Couldn’t see nothing down there, the high lampposts of the parking lot were dim, and the circles of light didn’t reach the shrubs along the building.

There was the noise again, closer. The white hairs along Buford’s neck stood up, he dropped his eyes, and his right hand went to his belt. There was a screwdriver there he used to open the paper towel dispensers in the bathrooms. He found himself wishing for his hunting knife instead. He had worked midnight shifts in this place for thirty years, never a thought that he was the only man for what seemed like miles, never any fear. Now he was afraid.

Buford’s gaze returned to the window, where the darkness outside and the light within the room turned the glass into a mirror. There was that ugly old Negro staring back at him, the same one he shaved every morning. Then he almost laughed, laughed at his foolishness, at his fear. What would his pappy say if he knew his boy was afraid of the dark?

It was at that precise moment that the noise came again, louder than ever, in the room with him, right behind him. In the window mirror, over his own shoulder, Buford could see burning yellow eyes staring out of a huge dark shape. Unable to make his old legs run, unable to turn to face the shadow, Buford Adams was barely able to manage a scream before he died.

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