Matt Cowper - The Clerk

“Well, you gotta do something,” Thomas said in a comically scolding tone. “Man is made to work, haven’t you heard that?”

“I’ve heard it all my life, and every toime it makes me laugh. I’ll survive. Always have. I don’t need much.”

This was true. Rock had been living in a camper shell attached to his ancient but seemingly invincible Ford pickup for decades. When he was young, he’d tried living in various semi-derelict cottages tucked away on the area’s marshy and mosquito-infested back roads, but the thing about those places was the landlords wanted their rent on time. Next he’d tried cramming into slightly-better accommodations with roommates so the rent would be split four or five ways, but the roommates, the damn killjoys, wanted to sleep at least a few hours each night, while Rock wanted to stay up until dawn drinking and playing cards. He’d finally abandoned conventional living and bought the camper shell, which he loved more than anything on earth. Yes, it got cold in winter and hot in summer, but during spring and fall it was a snug piece of heaven.

He’d been coming into Oxendine’s for decades because he could talk to whoever he wanted for as long and as loudly as he wanted. The bigger stores were always so damn busy , and the employees just hustled you in and out with plastic courtesy. He wanted to talk to people — or more accurately, talk at people.

“Say, whaddaya know about that pale girl up front?” Rock asked. “She new?”

“Orianna?”

“Hell, I don’t know her name. I said the pale girl up front, and there’s only one up thar that fits that description. Peggy may be pale, but she ain’t a girl — fact, she’s never been a girl. Trust me, I knew her growin’ up. I could tell you some stories.”

“Yeah, I know who you mean. Her name’s Orianna, like I said, and she is pretty new here.”

“Orianna? That’s a new one on me. Mean anything?”

“I don’t know. Never asked.”

“Well, I’ll ask. I ain’t scare’t.”

“If you’re scare’t, say you’re scare’t.”

“That’s what they say, and like I said, I ain’t scare’t.”

“So, about you needing a job… what about working here?”

“Thomas, you ask me that ev’ry toime, and I tell you no ev’ry toime. Vernon ain’t gonna hire me. He knows better.”

“Vernon’s been known to hire some hopeless cases like yourself.”

“Haw! You say that ev’ry toime too. Naw, I wouldn’t want to work here and then foul everything up and have ya’ll mad at me. This is one of the few places left where people act neighborly. Everywhere else is gettin’ all reserved — feels like you’re in church or some goddamn place like it. It’s right sad.”

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. And the next time you come in here out of work, I’ll try again.”

“You’re a good kid, you know that? Good as gold. Wish I could stick things out like you have. Why, you were thin as a reed, still goin’ through puberty, voice all squawky and squeally, when you first started working here. And now look at ya!”

“Yeah, I’ve been here twenty-five years. Doesn’t feel like it though.”

“Shit, twenty-five days at some piece-o’-shit job drives me up the wall. You’ve got the fortitude, Thomas. Maybe when old Vernon keels over, you’ll get the store, hunh?”

Thomas would have been lying if he said that scenario had never occurred to him. The Oxendines were childless — Yolanda was evidently infertile — and, to his knowledge, neither Vernon nor Yolanda had any close relatives who cared about the store. Sure, Vernon might sell the store to the highest bidder when he was ready to retire, but it wasn’t outlandish to think Thomas might have a chance at getting it; after all, Vernon had gotten the store from Jack Caldwell, back when it was the Corner Grocery. Thomas knew most of that story.

Jack Caldwell had been married and divorced twice, and had a total of three children. He despised both his ex-wives (“Lazy, gold-digging whores who would steal the coins from a dead man’s eyes”) and all of his kids (“Lazy, good-for-nothing rabble-rousers who want to burn this fine country to the ground.”) He hadn’t got shot at by the Japs in Okinawa so that his own sons could torch American flags and insult Lyndon Johnson, who was only trying to keep the damn Reds from taking over all of Asia. He vowed that none of them would get his grocery store — which was fine by everyone, since his ex-wives had married richer and more tractable men, and his sons, after the requisite campus radicalism of the age, had all moved on to well-paying white-collar careers.

Who would get the store, though? Jack Caldwell didn’t want to sell to just anyone. Some jackass might just raze down his beloved store the first moment they got and build something tacky — and likely more profitable and easier to run. He wanted to sell to someone who “got it,” preferably one of his employees.

Vernon Oxendine, his long-time employee, got it. Yes, Jack Caldwell had employees who’d worked longer for him, but they were either shiftless sumbitches who he kept on the payroll out of charity; ball-breaking women who, riding feminism’s second wave, had come to believe themselves infallible; or ghost-like old men who, realizing their inadequacies, mumbled through the day and tried not to bother anyone.

Vernon had none of these flaws. He was a good man, an honest man, a garrulous man, and like Jack Caldwell, he believed in a day’s work for a day’s pay. Jack called Vernon into the office one day and told him what he was thinking. After telling his boss to stop pulling his leg, Vernon finally realized this was serious talk, and he wept uncontrollably. This slightly embarrassed Jack, but then he found himself sniffling too, so he said to hell with it and opened the floodgates.

Several years later, when Jack finally decided to retire, the store was sold to Vernon at a price jealously speculated upon by those who knew about the sale. Vernon did change the name to Oxendine’s Grocery, “since I’ve always wanted to shout out my name from a glowing sign,” but other than that, he kept things about like they’d always been.

Yes, history could repeat itself — but Vernon had never mentioned anything about giving him Oxendine’s Grocery, and so Thomas had pushed the idea into the back of his mind.

“Yeah,” Thomas replied, “maybe so.”

“Maybe I’ll put in a good word for ya. Actually, scratch that, my word ain’t worth two cents. But I’ll be rootin’ for ya, if he does up and die.”

“Thanks, Rock. Glad you’re in my corner.”

“I’m in everybody’s corner, provided they ain’t a stuck-up peckerhead. Speaking of, how’s your old man doing?”

Thomas laughed, as he always did when Rock lazily denigrated his father. There was history here. Years ago, Rock had worked for Frank Copeland at Copeland Furniture, but he hadn’t lasted long; turns out furniture was pretty heavy, and people got angry if you gouged their walls while carrying a bed frame or dining table into their home. After Rock had knocked over someone’s “priceless” glass angel sculpture in his hurry to get a couch where it was supposed to be and out of his damn hands, Frank had summoned Rock into his office, called him “shiftless, sorry, and scungy,” and told him never to come into his store again.

Rock had been impressed with the alliteration (though he would later call it “those repeating ‘ess’ sounds”), but his rebuttal was even more scathing: “You know, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Your paw was crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and so are you. I seen how you shave off a quarter hour here and there from our wages, and how you cut our lunch breaks short after you told us when we was hired that we’d have thirty minutes to eat. Bet if I could take a look at them books I’d find a lot more shenanigans. Well, you can fire me, sure, cuz I was gonna quit anyway.” He got up to leave as Frank Copeland clenched his desk and ground his teeth. As Rock opened the office door, he turned and said one last thing: “I hope you get yourself right before you get too much older. Remember what happened to your thievin’ old man. Wasted away to nothing, then shot hisself in the head. Turr’ble end. Wouldn’t want that to happen to you. Take care now.”