Matt Cowper - The Clerk

“Will do.”

Roy started up his car and rolled out of the parking lot. Thomas suddenly felt a strong urge to run after the car and stop him before he got out of sight. He imagined Roy driving off a cliff in his Lumina and falling contentedly to his doom — or, since there were no cliffs around here, driving off one of the high-rise bridges and plunging into the cold waters, never to emerge as a living man.

But then Thomas stopped himself. Hadn’t he just refused to commiserate with Roy? And what would he do if someone came rushing up to him and tried to convince him that life was worth living? He might drive off a bridge just to spite them. No, it was better to let Roy go. He would recover — or not, and if not, who was Thomas to tell him to reject sweet oblivion in favor of a life filled with gloom? The Lumina, which was heading west on the beach road, disappeared around a bend. Thomas grabbed hold of the shopping carts and slowly pushed them back inside. Vernon was standing by the door as he entered, watching him curiously.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked.

“Oh, uh,” Thomas stuttered, “no one. Just a customer with a question.”

“What’d they ask?”

Thomas’s mind was suddenly blank. He struggled, and came up with: “They wanted to know how long this store has been here.”

“I gotcha. So you were giving them a bit of a history lesson, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Alright,” Vernon said, rubbing his potbelly. “Oh, have you cleaned the bathroom yet?”

Thomas never told anyone what Roy said in that parking lot on that gray day, and he never saw the man again.

There had been others like Roy, ex-employees who found out that the next stage in their life, though it was supposed to be better, strangely lacked something. Perhaps they missed the camaraderie of Oxendine’s. Perhaps they realized their middle-class job required intelligence and fortitude they didn’t possess. Perhaps they found that college was an endless cycle of read, regurgitate, and forget. Perhaps they’d moved to another low-wage job, only to find themselves overworked and pining for the relative ease of Oxendine’s Grocery. Perhaps there were other reasons.

Roy, however, was the most memorable one. Sitting on the beach now, Thomas wondered what became of him. He supposed he could find him on Facebook or something; this was the Internet Age, after all. But he felt a great reluctance to pull this man out of his past. If he did contact Roy, their last encounter would hang over them like a black cloud, and no amount of cheerful chatter would sweep it away — and Roy might not even want to sweep it away. No, let him stay gone.

Thomas stood up, still pondering Roy, Orianna, and everything. A large part of him wanted Orianna to end up like Roy, wanted her to leave Oxendine’s, then realize her loss and come crawling back a miserable, self-hating wreck. A medium-sized part of him wanted to fuck her. And a very small part of him wanted to be done with her, as he could envision endless complications in the future if they continued to work together.

“To hell with it,” he muttered, finally deciding to continue on. His legs would be sore tomorrow, but he’d heal. He always did.

It was now mid-December, which meant Christmas was perilously close — at least, that’s how Thomas’s mother and sister saw it, and their emotions ruled the family in this matter. They didn’t consider that the Copeland/Dowling Family Christmas Get-Together had been the same for years, and that they didn’t need to worry about plans coming undone. They all met at Emily and Dan’s house in Raleigh on the 24th, where they drank eggnog and talked and watched little Dennis (now not so little) open his one allotted Christmas Eve present. Then they retired to the guest rooms, while Emily scuttled to and fro to make sure everyone had clean linens (though she’d made the beds herself two days ago), fresh towels (though she’d placed them on the dressers herself two days ago), and knew where the two bathrooms were (though their locations had not changed since the previous Christmas). Thomas’s mother would flit after her daughter like a butterfly (albeit one wearing furry reindeer horns, a red Rudolph nose, and a red and green Christmas sweater depicting a happy sledding scene) asking how she could help, and Emily would snarl that “this is my house and I’m in charge of hospitality,” to which Jean would reply, “Yes, dear, but you so overwork yourself. Let your mother help.”

This would continue far into the night. In his assigned room, Thomas’s father would be lying in bed in his pajamas, ready to go to sleep but knowing there would be many more minutes of mother-daughter nonsense. Thomas would likely be drunk and watching TV in his room. Dan would be puttering in the master bedroom, waiting for his wife to cease her marching and come to bed, where, if he was lucky, he could convince her to make out a little, though they’d have to be very, very quiet. Dennis would be getting in a few precious minutes on the Xbox. Finally, after many premature “goodnights,” the house was still, and Santa shot down the chimney and filled stockings and put presents beneath the Christmas tree.

The next day was Christmas, and it was such an orgy of present-opening that Thomas was tired by ten AM. Did he really need a pen that wrote in six different inks, as well as having an extendable toothpick and a nail file? Did Dennis really need a fanny pack equipped with GPS? Did Dan really need a digital rain gauge? After the frenzy, Thomas looked at the wrapping paper strewn across the floor and the shiny red and green ribbons scattered about like tripwires, and felt pity for the trash collectors of the world.

After this, they ate lunch. Turkey, ham, stuffing, collards, chicken salad, rolls drenched in butter, mashed potatoes. For dessert, Thomas’s mother’s famous coconut balls, pumpkin pie, key lime pie, chocolate chess pie, with organic yogurt as a Healthy Option, which everyone ignored. Lunch, with its mouthfulled conversations, passing of dishes, bathroom breaks, and reheating of food that had fallen below optimum temperature, took over two hours to eat. After the dining table was cleared and the dishes clean (Emily loudly insisted on doing both, but became agitated when everyone didn’t bully their way into helping), it was midafternoon, and most of the family agreed that it was time for a snack. They’d nibble on this and that and meander through the house, chatting or trying to avoid chatting, depending on their mood. In a short while, it would be dinner time, and the whole buffet would be brought out again. This meal, like lunch, would take roughly two hours to finish. Therefore, in Thomas’s mind, Christmas day consisted of approximately eight hours of continuous eating. At the end of it, his belly bulged and he felt as nimble as a beached whale. Soon, all that food dragged him down into sleep, where he dreamt of enormous gardens filled with god-blessed victuals and decanters filled with magical draughts. Then he woke up and had to shit out logs the size of power-poles.

On the 26th, everyone went home, after much arguing over who would take which portions of the leftovers.

For the past few days, Thomas had come home to find his Gmail account cluttered with e-conversations. His mother informed everyone they’d be leaving St. Augustine at 6:00 AM on the 24th, maybe 6:15, “depending on bodily functions,” because “you never know when you’ll have to take that last-minute trip to the bathroom.” Emily responded that they needed to be careful on Interstate 95, because it was “the worst highway in the country.” (Thomas had, over the years, heard her claim five different highways were the worst in the country, though he had to admit I-95 drew most of her ire.) Thomas’s mother had asked if Dennis needed a new Xbox controller, “because i saw one at wal-mart that was see thru and had bunches of buttons. i believe it was called the xx raptorslayer or something like that. we already have gifts for him, don’t you worry. you know we’re not last minute shoppers. but it might be a nice little extra something.” Emily had replied that “Dennis already controllers. Doesn’t need another one.” Emily then told Thomas to “text me when you leave home on the 24th.” Thomas replied that he’d do no such thing, that he’d show up between the hours of 1:00 and 4:00 PM, as he did every year. Emily: “Settle on a specific time. And text me.” Their mother: “yes thomas, it would be nice if you settled on a specific time and it wouldn’t hurt to send a courtesy text message to your waiting sister.” And so it went.