The Fiction of Owen Thomas

Precipitation Likely, Chance of Sun
(“The Might and the Will”)

A Novella

Excerpt A

Clement stared down at the pillar of wine. Four cases of pinot noir, one atop the other. He kicked the bottom of the pillar lightly with the toe of his boot. A man in a silver beard and a black baseball cap pushed open the door of the Willing Spirits Emporium with a six-pack in his hand and navigated his way around the pillar out into the mall heading in the general direction of The Book Nook.

Clement nodded congenially as the man passed, pulling one of the wine bottles out of its cardboard sleeve to read the label. The man in the hat nodded back warily, wondering perhaps whether the lanky man in the boots and the long, stoic face was planning to make off with a case of pinot noir once he turned his back. Clement watched him go, waited for him to turn back for a second look, then nodded again.

The man should have been less concerned about the wine and more concerned that Clement Merriwether might reach out and grab him by the wrist and take his six-pack of beer. Not to drink it—Clement had been clean and sober for fourteen years and six months—but, rather, to confiscate it until the man was ready to leave the mall. Technically, alcohol was not permitted in the mall proper and all patrons of the Willing Spirits Emporium were welcome to enter the store through the mall entrance but were required to take their purchases out through the exterior door that opened out into the mall parking lot. 

Clement had, in fact, thought of advising the man of the rule but had opted to let it go. He did not have the look of trouble and Clement knew trouble when he saw it. Experience had taught him that much. He’d keep an eye out as he walked the beat.

Wayne Kylie, the younger K of K&K Distributors, came back out of the liquor store for another load.

“Clem,” said Wayne with a slap on the arm. “How you been, friend?”

“Been fine,” said Clement.

“Looking for some wine? I figured you for a beer man.”

“Am a beer man. Was one anyway. You figured right. This good stuff?”

“Sol Ridge? It’s alright, I guess. I can’t much tell one from t’other tell you the truth about it, Clem. It’s gettin’ popular so it must be good stuff to some people.”

“Good way to lose some of it,” said Clem, nodding at the pillar under his arm. “Leaving it this way out in the mall.”

“Shoot, Clem. I’m not worried about thieves in here. Not your mall. Not with you makin’ the rounds.”

“Why not take it in through the front entrance?” Like you’re supposed to, Clement wanted to add but didn’t because he liked Wayne and Wayne’s father, Joseph Kylie, and because Clement was just kind of like that, not saying everything he could. Leaving one in the chamber.

“Aww,” said Wayne, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the outside world. “Some rascal parked his rig in the loading zone. This was just easier. Say, how’s Quinn? Haven’t seen him much since…well since he got back.”

Clement smiled to himself a little deep inside where Wayne couldn’t see. In hoping to change the uncomfortable subject of breaking the mall rules, Wayne had leapt headlong into the equally uncomfortable subject of young Quinn. He should’a taken a second to think that one through, Clement thought to himself but didn’t say.

“Oh. ‘Bout as good as can be expected.”

Clement could see that Wayne now wanted desperately to change the subject back to the pillar of wine cases he had loaded in through the wrong door, but that he could not so quickly abandon his interest in Quinn’s well-being.

“He’s gotta job now. So that’s good,” said Clement.

“Job huh? That is good. Where’s he workin’?”

Clement nodded his head in the same direction as the man in the baseball hat carrying the six-pack had gone, way past The Book Nook.

“Oh, down in F Block at The Shutter Shack. Sellin’ cameras.”

“No kiddin?” Wayne was bad at concealing his surprise. “How’d he get that gig? You pulled some strings, didn’t you Clem?”

“Nancy Havemeister needed some help. That’s all. You should go see him. No one in there but him most the time.”

“I will,” Wayne lied. “I will. Soon as I get two minutes to rub together. The old man never lets up. But you tell Quinn I said hey. Glad he’s back.”

Clement gave the tower of wine another kick and gave Wayne a meaningful, over-the-rim-of-his glasses look—even though he was not wearing glasses—that meant get the alcohol the hell out of the mall. When he saw that Wayne got the message, he waved casually and was off.

“Tell Joe I said h’lo,” he said.

He walked over to The Book Nook and stuck his head in looking for the man in the baseball hat. He was chatting up Calista May, who was behind the counter laughing in that way of hers, kind of a snorting sound from behind her hand that she used to keep people from seeing her teeth, which were probably worth hiding. The six-pack was on the counter.

“No alcohol in the mall, son,” said Clement.

The man broke off from Calista and looked over at the door towards Clement.

“Huh?” he said. “They’re not even open.”

“No alcohol in the mall.”

“I purchased them in the mall. Who are you, anyway?”

“Mall security. Not gonna tell you a third time. Glad you’re feelin’ better Calista.”

Clement moved on.

He called it walking the beat, and it was what he liked most about the job. His office, the mall security center, was a tenebrous cave that glowed a sickly glaucous green from the three video surveillance monitors that jutted out from the wall above his desk. If ever he wanted to, Clement could sit in his chair and cover every square inch of the premises, as well as the east and south parking lots and the back loading bays. Every place but the restrooms and the interiors of each store, although most of the common area cameras had the capacity to capture and magnify most of the retail spaces.

But sitting in a squeaky chair in a dark, stale, windowless room looking at a tv screen was not Clement’s idea of a good life. He liked to walk. He liked to see people and talk to them. He liked looking people in the eyes, which is the only way to tell what they’re up to. Windows to the soul and all of that. And if security was the goal, well then there was nothing better than walking the beat. And Clement Merriwether was no stranger to walking the beat. Inside or outside. Not just seeing, but being seen.

Of course, if he were really serious about being seen as a way to deter mischief, then he would have worn his uniform. Without the uniform—unless you worked at the mall and knew who he was—then Clement may just as well have been another anonymous shopper, just another tag along husband pretending to look at things in the windows but actually looking at the women half his age while the wife was busy maxing out the credit card in the Cozy Kitchen or the Yarn Barn.

No question; the uniform would have made the real difference. It was a starchy, blue and black get-up that Clement hated and had only ever worn three or four times in the eleven years he had had the job. He used to think that his police uniform had been unbearable. After that, he had complained to whoever would listen about his Department of Corrections uniform, almost envying the inmates for their loose, pajama-like attire and their slip-on shoes.

But as bad as those uniforms had been, the security uniform Clement had inherited from Henry Lancaster, the previous Security Director, was worse. Almost like a polyester straight-jacket that smelled like formaldehyde and burnt plastic and that chaffed the tender skin down his sides and under his arms and along his collarbone. It made all of his old uniforms seem like hotel bathrobes.

So walking the beat was mainly about security, but not enough so as to require that he endure the torture of the uniform. The real question was whether he would still choose to walk the beat if he had to wear the uniform, or whether he would, instead, choose to patrol the premises electronically from the confines of the security office. If the owner of the Summerfield Mall ever decided that his security director had to make his rounds in uniform, then he would probably not last much longer in the job.

Of course, that was a fairly ridiculous hypothetical since Diamond Pete lived in another state most of the year and was rarely around. Most of his contact with Diamond Pete (so named for the double studs in each ear) was by telephone or email. And whenever they had met face-to-face, Diamond Pete had never really seemed to care much about how Clement chose to dress himself as long as he did his job and kept the peace and didn’t bother him about any employee overtime.

Clement passed from blue into yellow, crossing the imaginary divide between Denim Denizens, which according to the large maps encased in glass at each entrance, was the last store in Zone C, and Gadgetopia, which was the first store in Zone D. Although Clement thought of them as blocks, not zones. Walking a beat was something one did back and forth across a series of blocks, from A Block to F Block and back again. To Clement the term “zones” was really a child of science, not law enforcement, denoting ecological sameness or climatological continuity. It was really a weather term. 

He knocked his knuckles on the entrance to Gadgetopia. Darryl Smoots looked up from the inverted helicopter cradled in his hands like an injured bird.

“Hey Clem,” Darryl called out in his high breaking voice, attempting a wave only to drop a battery. Clement raised a hand and kept on moving.

When he finally reached F Block, Clement made a slow beeline for the two men on tall yellow ladders. Diamond Pete, in all of his absentee landlord wisdom, had waited until the Tuesday before the annual Summerfield Mall Swap-n-Shop to finally upgrade the fire suppression system.

Fire suppression should not have been Clement’s problem, except that Pete had called him and told him that since his people could not always be on site, he needed Clement to keep an eye on the progress. Keep the pressure on, is what he had said, referring not to the water pressure which would actually have to be turned off periodically, but to the pressure on the system installers who in Diamond Pete’s estimation liked to drag the work out so as to pad the bill.

Cost concerns aside, the upgrade was a big job and the fire suppression technicians would need to stay focused in order to finish by Friday. Friday evening the Swap-n-Shop vendors would be setting up their kiosks in the halls and there would be no room at all for ladders. And by ten o’clock Saturday morning, and for the duration of the weekend, the entire Summerfield Mall would be so full of people that there would be no room for fire suppression technicians, with or without ladders. The system would need to be fully pressurized, back on line and ready to go.

Clement stood between the two ladders and stood with his hands on his hips looking up at the two headless men. Everything above their armpits was inserted up through two dark square holes in the drop ceiling, as if they were reaching up into a thick bank of cloud.

Clement lowered his head, waiting. Looking through one of the ladders he glanced over at The Shutter Shack. Quinn was behind the counter, looking blankly out into the mall.

It was a familiar, stuporous stare. The guards back in The Alley called it the glaze. As in, Rocky’s got the glaze this morning. As in, Digger be glazin’ so he won’t be no trouble. It was the way people looked when they were watching time itself, like the seconds and minutes and hours were walking around doing things out in the free world and all a man could do was watch them with a kind of forlorn envy.

Clement nodded and raised a hand. If there was any recognition in his son’s face, any effort to return the greeting with a smile or a wink, Clement told himself that he was too far away to see it.