Cantwick was always the first to arrive at meetings and the last to leave. He sat patiently through the most tedious discussions, never slipping out early, actually seeming to enjoy every minute. Yet Cantwick never contributed a word to meetings, only ever speaking to ask a question, usually for clarification of a point that was obvious to everyone else.
Good ole Cantwick. Short, bald, a little mustache, glasses, a bit of paunch. Always wore a white dress shirt and plain dark tie and dark slacks, a tweed jacket and scuffed up loafers. He would recognize causal Fridays by merely eschewing the tie. Once he wore a striped shirt and Mary in accounting nearly fainted.
Such a cheery fellow, ole Cantwick. Greeted anyone he saw with a happy, “good morning” at the beginning of the day and made a point to wish everyone a “good evening” at the end of it. This he altered on Fridays with a “have a great weekend.” About the only thing he ever added was on Wednesdays when he adjoined his good morning with, “it’s hump day!” (He said it with the exclamation point.)
For most of most days Cantwick was anchored to his desk, nose seemingly to the grindstone. Cantwick didn’t pal around with anyone at work. Most of us chatted regularly or were friends with a few others and many of us socialized but Cantwick was not on intimate terms with anyone and never made appearances at the company’s social gatherings. Well, not exactly never. He came to the Christmas party once. He sat by himself for about twenty minutes sipping a whiskey sour then shook everyone’s hand wishing them a Merry Christmas and left. Good ole Cantwick.
Of course Cantwick was never the topic of any office gossip — we didn’t know enough about him to gossip — and he never rubbed anyone the wrong way. Maybe not everyone liked Cantwick, but surely no one disliked him.
We knew nothing of Cantwick’s life outside of work. Whether he was married and had children was frequently speculated on. As far as interests, hobbies or eccentricities, we were in the dark. No one got to know Cantwick well enough to ask about his off hours and he didn’t volunteer anything other than an occasional comment about the weather. It didn’t matter if we were talking about sports, movies or politics, Cantwick kept his own counsel. There were no personal items on his desk, no family photos, pennants of a favorite sports team or memorabilia from a vacation or museum visit. No clues at all as to who he was. Save a single, lonely plant.
Cantwick always took lunch alone at his desk and it was usually a sandwich, potato chips, carrots and an apple. Sometimes on cold days he’d bring hot soup in a thermos.
No one remembered Cantwick calling in sick or taking any personal days. He would take his three weeks in the summer and his week and a half around the holidays but was otherwise at his desk everyday, always on time and always staying until 5:00. “A real Steady Eddie,” Lois in legal often said.
Clarence in research and development said Cantwick drove an old Chevy and noted that once in his car he always put on a plain brown ball cap with no insignia on it. Clarence believed that Cantwick lived in the city though how he reached this conclusion was unknown to me.
You may have gathered by now that some of us spent a fair amount of time talking about ole Cantwick. This is true. There were about four or five months of the year in which it was extremely busy at work and few of us had time for anything but work and many of us logged a lot of overtime — Cantwick, by the way, for all his diligence was never seen working past 5:00. But the rest of the year there was a fair amount of downtime and a lot of us wiled away time by the water cooler or in the break room and many of us sometimes met for drinks after work. Our conversations covered a wide variety of topics as conversations among long time co-workers do. Sometimes we got around to ole Cantwick.
In one such conversation Doug from accounting said, “He’s an odd duck.”
“The odd thing is we know so little about him,” Clarice in shipping added.
“What exactly does he do? I mean what’s his position in the company?” Janet in advertising queried.
No one knew. Given the location of his desk it was difficult to say which department he was in. He seemed to straddle three areas.
“He’s our mystery man,” I said.
“Ole Cantwick, the enduring mystery. Who is he? What does he do? What’s his background? His home life?” Wondered Lyman from sales.
“The world may never know,” Susannah in reception concluded.
Then one day the big boss Courtland Haggis abruptly retired. His wife, Nelly, had gotten some seriously bad health news and CH (as he was called) was nearing retirement age, so he gave the board two weeks notice. We were all stunned. CH had been at the company far longer than anyone else — forty-one years to be exact. One of those go-getters who worked himself up from the mailroom to the executive office. He’d seen hundreds of employees come and go and most of those employees had liked him. No one I knew of claimed to have had a better boss.
“I always try to remember where I started from, what’s like to be at the bottom and the middle and to have to really hustle to impress a supervisor. I thus have great respect for everyone at every level of this company and will treat anyone square who draws a paycheck here,” he said when the board threw him a big 60th birthday bash.
To many of us, seeing CH leave was like losing a father and during those last two weeks leading to his departure there was a somber mood around the company.
No one seemed more somber than Cantwick. There was little enthusiasm in his morning greetings and he eschewed goodbyes all together. He still arrived early for meetings but sat glumly throughout. We were a bit surprised to see Cantwick so downcast. He were used to that even keel that he was always on. No one knew of any particular affection he’d had for CH, no one could remember seeing the two together, let alone chatting. But then, there was -- as I've made abundantly clear -- so little we actually knew about ole Cantwick.
It was six weeks after CH left that his replacement, Lane Jessup called me into his office. Lane and I had started with the company at around the same time fifteen years prior, but Lane came in with a lot of experience and I was neophyte. Lane and I often went fishing together.
Forgoing niceties, Lane immediately asked me a question: “What do you know about Cantwick and what he does here?”
This was, of course, an oft-asked question around the company but one that I found strange coming from the head of that company, even a brand spanking new one.
“Many of us have wondered the same thing. I haven’t a clue.”
“You’re the third person I’ve called and the third person who didn’t know. I’ve got two others to talk to.”
“Surely you’ve called down to personnel.”
“They don’t have a position title for him, if you can believe it.”
“Why not just ask him directly?”
“That would be beyond embarrassing. Imagine, if you will, the man in charge — never mind being new in the position — having to ask an employee just what the hell he does all day. But if if comes to it I will.”
“He comes to meetings — ”
“Yes and never has anything to say. All he ever does is ask simple questions.”
“I know this won’t help, but it occurred to me that I’ve never once seen him making photocopies.”
“Jesus Christ, everybody needs to make copies from time-to-time.”
“Why don’t you call CH?”
“I hate to bother him, not sure how Nelly is doing. But I’ve been planning to check in on him and he did say that I could call anytime.”
“Could you do me a favor, Lane?”
“What is it?”
“If you find out what he does, could you let me know?”
“Sure. Ya know, maybe CH had him on some sort of special assignment. God, I hate to think he’s been collecting a paycheck for sitting on his butt.”
I shared my conversation with Lane at lunchtime and we all began another round of speculation. Some people were convinced he was a freeloader who didn’t actually do a damn thing. Someone guessed that over the years his duties had been subsumed by other people and departments. A couple of folks agreed that he was spying on us for the board. Gus in maintenance suggested that he was CH’s brother-in-law. Lorelai in marketing said that simple explanation was that Cantwick knew where the bodies were buried.
A week later Lane called me into his office again.
“Thought I’d sate your curiosity about Cantwick,” he said.
I couldn’t recall ever being so eager to receive news in my life.
“According to CH, and here I quote, ‘Cantwick’s work is highly valued by the board and they’ll want him to continue in his current duties at his current position at his current pay grade. End of story.’”
I couldn’t recall ever being so deflated to receive non-news in my life.
“What do you make of it, Lane?”
“No fricking idea.”
Thus the Cantwick mystery deepened. We began to talk of him less and less. We’d gone from curiosity to frustration to annoyance. The seeming impossibility of ever knowing his story was now a sore point. No one referred to him as good ole Cantwick anymore. He was goddamned pain in the ass and we resented that he was collecting a paycheck evidently without producing a damn thing.
Finally one day a few years ago as five o’clock approached, I noted Cantwick coming out of the copy room with an empty box. I watched as he emptied the contents of a few drawers into the box, then gently placed his plant in the box.
“You leaving us, Cantwick?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said solemnly. “I’ve taken a position with another company." He walked over, shook my hand and said, “it was nice working with you, best of luck.” Then he waddled over to his desk, tapped the top of it with his knuckles as if for good luck, picked up his box and left, offering goodbyes to anyone he passed en route to the elevator.
Good ole Cantwick was gone.
“He got a job with another company?” I asked Lane incredulously.
“Yup. Their head of personnel called me and all he asked was what Cantwick’s salary was. Said they were hiring him.”
“To do what?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“Jesus…” I didn’t know what else to say.
“The good thing is that I don’t have to replace him because as far as I can tell he didn’t do a damn thing. His salary is off our books.”
In the days that followed some of us admitted it was strange not having Cantwick around. The following week we had our first big meeting sans Cantwick and afterwards a bunch of us met for drinks. The mood was oddly subdued until Crenshaw in purchasing proposed a toast: “To good ole Cantwick, the mystery man.” There were shouts of “here! here!” And we all raised our glasses. Many of us got blotto that night.
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