Matt Cowper - The Clerk

For his part, Frank Copeland didn’t know if he wanted Thomas to work at the store or not, so he didn’t force him to. On the one hand, he feared his lazy and surly employees would get all buddy-buddy with Thomas and turn his own son against him — well, turn him even more against him. On the other hand, he wanted Thomas and/or Emily to inherit the store one day, and if they were going to be good businesspeople, they needed to know how to run the place.

He vacillated between these two points, and so did nothing.

“Well, I wish you would’ve talked to me and your mother first,” Frank griped.

“Oh, I think it shows great initiative!” Jean beamed, grabbing Thomas by the shoulders and shaking him a few times. “I’m so proud of you for marching in there and putting on a good face and showing Mr. Oxendine you were worth hiring. Your first job! The first of many, I hope!”

“How are you getting there?” Frank asked. “I suppose you expect us to drive you there and pick you up at all hours of the day and night?”

“Oh, don’t be such a Gloomy Gus, Frank!” Jean said, lightly slapping her husband on his arm. “Of course I’ll drive him. It’s not a big deal at all.”

“What about the things that need doing around the house?” Frank persisted. “Are you still going to do those?”

“Well, yeah, I’m supposed to, right?” Thomas asked.

“Yes, you were, but I’m giving you the option to quit, if you want, since you have another job now. You’ll still be expected to help out a little around the house, as a matter of course, but you won’t have to do as much as you’re doing now. And you won’t, obviously, be paid.”

“Who’s going to mow the grass or pick up pinecones then?”

“Me and Emily will.”

Thomas mulled this over for about two seconds.

“OK, I quit.”

Frank Copeland banged out of the house and started sweeping off the driveway savagely. Since he had to do all this household and yard work now anyway, in addition to running a business and trying to feed and clothe his family, he might as well get a start on it.

Inside, Thomas was blissfully playing The Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo, trying to beat it for the eighth time. He was aware he’d failed some test of his father’s, but he saw no point in stressing about it. He’d failed so many tests by this point that he wished his father would just slap a big red F on every metaphorical bubble sheet he turned in and save them all the hassle.

He killed an Octoroc, a big-eyed rock-spitting enemy, with an arrow, and all was right in the world.

Both men were thinking of these memories now, but if either man suspected the thoughts of the other, they didn’t acknowledge it, and Thomas slipped out into the hall and shut himself in the bathroom.

As he pissed into the blue toilet-bowl water, and sniffed the overbearing Ocean Mist scent emitting from a Glade plug-in, he wondered why the hell his father was so goddamn stuffy. He was stuffy when Thomas was young, and he was only getting stuffier as he aged. Thomas supposed it was an incurable condition.

After drying his hands on the downy hand towel, he exited the bathroom and went in search of Dennis. He was already tired of adults, and although he’d never been able to establish a rapport with the teenager — or with any kid, really — perhaps this Christmas would be different.

Dennis was in his room, or so it sounded judging from the gunshots and explosions rattling out from behind the closed door. Thomas looked at the posters, signs, and other paraphernalia tacked to the door: there was a large red and white DO NOT ENTER sign, a poster of wrestler John Cena, a poster of the entire cast of Dragonball Z, and a photo of what looked vaguely like Dennis with an unidentified smolderingly-attractive female, possibly a girlfriend. Thomas thought back to what he’d had on his own door when he was young, how he’d evolved from G.I. Joe and Where’s Waldo? posters to ones of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kelly LeBrock.

Thomas knocked on the door and continued looking over the paraphernalia as he waited.

His knock, however, was barely a whisper compared to the sounds of warfare within the room. He banged louder, and the noise inside abruptly stopped. He heard movement, and the door was opened halfway. A shockingly mature face looked out at him. Thomas hadn’t seen Dennis since last Christmas, and, like adults everywhere, he’d forgotten to take into account the effects of puberty. The Dennis of last year had been a gawky string bean, with hair as thick as steel wool and a string of pimples on his forehead. The Dennis of today was solid and lantern-jawed, and his hair now looked like the unkempt lion’s mane of a wilderness he-man. His t-shirt and jeans hung on him as if they’d been specially tailored. He was obviously inheriting his mother’s good looks, and there was a hint of his father’s poise, which, if he chose to cultivate it, would benefit him greatly.

Thomas realized he should’ve looked closer at the photo on the door instead of dismissing it as the trickery of poor camerawork.

“Hey, Uncle Thomas,” Dennis said. His voice also astonished. It was still somewhat high-pitched, but in several more years, it would be a voice that could command legions.

“Hey, uh, hey there, nephew,” Thomas fumbled. “How’ve you been?”

“Good. Yourself?”

“Fine, just fine. What’re you up to in here?”

“In here?” He looked back into the room, as if he didn’t quite know how to answer the question. “Just playing some Call of Duty.” He smiled, but it was strained. He clearly wanted to return to his video games until his mother marched in and forced him to come out and visit with the family. Thomas knew he should leave the kid alone. When he was Dennis’s age, he certainly wouldn’t have wanted some forty-year-old uncle (or aunt, as the case was, since his father had five sisters) to barge into his room and try to “connect.” But, like the adult he was, he rationalized that he wasn’t really barging in, he was just hanging out for a few minutes.

“Mind if I watch for a bit?” Thomas asked. “I won’t bother you for long. I just want to see how things look on these new consoles. I haven’t had one since the Playstation — the first one.”

“Sure, come on in. I don’t mind you watching.” He said it with so much nearly-genuine sincerity that Thomas wanted to hug him.

He stepped into the maelstrom that was a fourteen-year-old’s room. Clothes were strewn everywhere. The sheets lay tangled on the bed, as if Dennis had been thrashing in his sleep, and the pillow, for some reason, was not covered with a pillowcase. The drawers of the sticker-covered dresser were open for no apparent purpose, and two socks hung from one drawer like white panting tongues. A strong odor pervaded the room, but the odor wasn’t exactly rank: it was the smell of sweat, earth, and various hefty colognes.

“Where can I sit?” Thomas asked.

Dennis had already picked up his controller and plopped back down onto the beanbag that was camped in front of the gigantic television. The question seemed to confuse him. Perhaps he expected Thomas to stand.

“Oh, uh, you can sit on the edge of the bed, if you want.”

Thomas did so, after brushing aside some blades of grass that had found their way onto the sheets. It wasn’t a very comfortable perch, but since he was only going to stay for a few minutes, he could stand it. He sipped on his eggnog and stared at the television.

Dennis unmuted the television, and the cacophony of war resumed. As Thomas soon figured out, Dennis was playing online, against other people who popped in and out of the battlefield so quickly that Thomas was soon dizzy from the action.