Matt Cowper - The Clerk

“Your father’s shot himself,” Frank’s mother said flatly, after his boss had handed him the phone.

“What? Uh, Mom?”

“Yes, it’s your mother. Your father has shot himself. He’d dead. I’m fine, but you should come home. There are things that need to be taken care of.”

“What?” Frank repeated dully. “This is… are you sure? I mean, this is out of the blue…”

“Really? Your father’s been depressed for years.”

“Yes, but… we never really… I mean… aren’t you upset?”

“I won’t lie to you, Frank. I’m not upset. Your father’s been gone a long time.”

“I… I guess so… but this is so sudden…”

“Just come home, Frank.”

“Alright, I’m on my way.”

He rushed out of the store, not bothering to tell Mr. McAllister or anyone else where he was going, hopped in his Falcon, and sped through town. Of course, the drawbridge into Beaufort was up, and he could do nothing but sweat and curse and wait until it dropped back down and the traffic finally moved ahead at a pace that made glaciers seem speedy.

(He would later apologize profusely to Mr. McAllister for leaving so abruptly, and his boss, knowing what had happened, would look at him like he had mackerels jumping out of his ears.)

Once on Highway 101, he passed five cars, one of which belonged to Mr. Bynum, his old science teacher. Mr. Bynum was very much concerned with the driver’s reckless speed and complete disregard for double-yellow lines, and he was fairly certain it was Frank Copeland behind the wheel. He might have to say something to Mrs. Copeland, the next time he saw her at church.

Frank crashed into the driveway of the Copeland home, slinging dirt and rocks, and stopped behind a deputy’s vehicle. He was inside in an instant. His mother and the deputy (was that Layton Lewis, his old classmate?) were talking calmly, and this didn’t seem right, especially since he now saw the blood spattered all over the living room.

“Mom? You OK?” he rasped, out of breath.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, looking at him like she’d done years ago when he refused to eat his green beans. “I told you I was.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“The coroner’s already been here and taken him away.”

“Oh… but… where did it… happen? How did he…?”

“He was sitting in the recliner. He used a shotgun.”

“Do you need anything else, Mrs. Copeland?” the deputy asked.

“No, thank you. Frank is here now. We’ll be fine.”

The deputy nodded and turned to Frank. “Sorry about this, Frank. Hell of a way to go.”

“Thanks for the concern,” Frank replied by rote.

The deputy — and Frank never learned if he was Layton Lewis or not — nodded again and then walked to the front door. The screen door slammed shut, and the noise seemed to seal the two Copelands off from the rest of the world. Thomas stared at his mother, who continued to look completely unruffled. He then stepped forward tentatively, surveying the aftermath. Blood everywhere — and was that brain matter on the floor and walls? Looking closely, some tiny skull fragments had even become embedded into the wall, like macabre ornamentations. And the smell: sickly pungent, like rotting fruit.

“Yes, it’s quite a mess,” Carol said, watching her son take it all in. “We’d better clean up.”

“Mom…”

But she was already in the kitchen, pulling out cleaning supplies from under the sink.

Frank stood alone, looking at the empty recliner. His mother was right: Wallace Copeland had been gone a long time. The hunk of wasted flesh that had sat in that recliner for years wasn’t really his father. Perhaps it was for the best, him being gone now. The years had been hard on his mother; maybe now, with all her kids grown, she’d have a chance to live a little, instead of navigating around the immovable shoal that was her husband. Maybe she’d even marry again, after she’d grieved — but then again, it seemed she’d already grieved in the short time since she discovered her dead husband, or maybe she’d dispensed with grief altogether.

What did all this mean to Frank? He’d sworn, after all, to escape this shameful family, which really meant he’d sworn to escape his father. He was doing well: Mr. McAllister was pleased with his work, and he had a talent for getting people to spend money on furniture, despite his less-boisterous personality. Most of his co-workers seemed to think he was “prickly,” but being reserved and knowledgeable was, in Frank’s opinion, preferable to howling about “unbeatable prices” and “impossibly high-quality” furniture and in general acting buffoonish. He was absorbing all the knowledge he could, in the hope of one day opening his own business.

But Wallace Copeland, his father, had always been there, staring at him when he woke up in the lonely darkness, staring at him when he made some blunder at work. He said: “This is your heritage, like it or not.” Frank didn’t like it; it terrified him. Suppose his father’s tragic flaws had been passed on to him? They said craziness skipped generations, but what if they were wrong?

And now Wallace Copeland was dead. On the one hand, Frank would never see his father sitting in the recliner again, a gross and contemptible symbol of total failure. His living presence could no longer frustrate or frighten him. Frank felt unfettered: the past had killed itself, and the future lay open like a fertile plain waiting to be explored and bent to the uses of man.

On the other hand, Wallace Copeland had not died naturally. He’d shot himself with the shotgun he’d had for years, the one he used to go quail hunting with. This fate might also be Frank’s, if he wasn’t careful. Suppose he made some mistakes, like his father had, and his entire life came crashing down? Would he be able to reassemble himself and march right back into the world that had disparaged and wrecked him? Of course he would, he told himself — and with a shiver he could almost feel the shotgun in his hands, could almost feel his finger inch towards the trigger. Damn Wallace Copeland, Frank thought. The living man had indeed tormented him, but his father’s shade may be even worse.

In short, Frank didn’t know what to think. The conflicting emotions and worries pounded against his mind, like ocean waves voraciously eroding a dune. When his mother returned with some rags, a bucket filled with cleaning fluid, and a trashcan, he began the cleanup with gusto, eager to lose himself in a menial task.

As the afternoon wore on and the blood was wiped away and the skull-ornaments were removed from the wall, the seas within him calmed, and he was able to think with remarkable lucidity. He knew what he had to do: exactly what he had been doing. Straying from the path of success would doom him, or at least consign him to poverty and humiliation. He would succeed, no matter what. He would not pause to rest or indulge in pointless reflection; idle hands were the devil’s playground, as his father had proved. He wouldn’t get into any situations that could sink him; if you gave people enough rope, they’d hang themselves, and Frank planned to have no ropes of any sort around him, ever.

His life philosophy reaffirmed, Frank Copeland cleaned up what was left of his father almost happily.

“And I still believe what I did back then, even though I’m retired now,” Frank Copeland said now, looking at Thomas meaningfully. “That philosophy may have saved my life.”

Thomas looked away, not because he was touched, but because he was bored. His father had gone through the whole rigmarole again ; Thomas had heard this tale at least five times. It was stirring the first two times, but now it was quite literally overkill. Wallace Copeland had been in the grave forty-five years, but Frank wanted to reanimate and kill him again and again to perversely validate his personal creed.