Thomas spent his money as quickly as he earned it, mainly buying comic books and sweets, and so Frank Copeland did not believe his son had the discipline to save up the $199 a retail Nintendo console cost. And so, to him, the matter was closed.
But weeks passed, then months, and his wife occasionally reported that Thomas wasn’t spending his earnings as he had been. He’d spend a dollar or two here or there, but the bulk of it, she assumed, went into the shoebox he used for the storage of rocks, marbles, baseball cards, and interesting dead things. Suspicious, Frank confronted his son one day, and was alarmed when a reluctant Thomas opened the shoebox and counted off $175.30.
“What’re you saving up for?” Frank demanded.
“A Nintendo,” Thomas replied, as if his father were a numskull for asking such an obvious question.
“Son, don’t you think you could spend that money on better things? Or not spend it at all, save it for a rainy day. We can set up a savings account for you…”
“I’m going to spend it on what I want, and what I want is a Nintendo.”
The Nintendo was soon bought, and Frank Copeland sat in his recliner, reading the paper and stewing, while Mario blipped and blooped across an 8-bit wonderland on the living room’s television.
As the years passed, Thomas bought more and more games, but his $10 per week salary only went so far. His father wouldn’t raise it, claiming that Thomas “ought to be happy with what you get. When I was your age I went without.” Thomas pinched every penny until it squealed, then he pinched some more, until Old Abe was begging for mercy.
There were also other video game systems that enticed him: the Sega Genesis, the Game Boy, the TurboGrafx-16, but he recalled how hard it had been to save up for the Nintendo. He could do it again, sure, but it would be extremely difficult.
One day at school, Thomas overheard a fateful conversation at a nearby lunch table. One of the jocks was talking about his job at Oxendine’s Grocery: “It’s so fuckin’ easy, and Vernon Oxendine’s hilarious. Ya’ll should come work there. He’s hiring, you know.” The other people at the table demurred, claiming that working at a grocery store was for dumbasses, but Thomas was interested. A job would solve his money problems. He was a freshman by now; he was old enough to work. He imagined a massive video game library in his room, dozens of game cartridges stacked on a shelf in alphabetical order, and various consoles sitting by the small television he’d gotten for Christmas last year, ready to be fired up. His father wouldn’t buy him any games or consoles, but he could justify buying a television. This way, his son could play in his own room, and not pollute the living room with those damnably repetitive sound effects.
After school, he got Brandon, an older sort-of friend who had a car, to drive him over to Atlantic Beach, where the grocery store was located. The store was right on the corner of Atlantic Beach’s big intersection. Compared to the chain supermarkets, it was tiny, but, owing to its location, it did a brisk trade during the summer months; Thomas had been in there when it was crammed with tourists either going to or coming from the beach. Now, however, it was fall, and there were only four cars in the cracked, dusty parking lot.
Thomas went inside, his heart pounding. A few minutes later, he walked out, smiling and practically skipping.
“What happened?” Brandon asked as he blew smoke out of his nostrils. To Thomas, who’d never even smoked a cigarette, this looked very fucking cool. “Did you get hired?”
“Oh yeah,” Thomas said proudly. “Mr. Oxendine — Vernon — said he liked the looks of me. I start this weekend.”
“Congrats, man,” Brandon said, offering his hand for a high five.
“Thanks, Brandon.”
His father was not so congratulatory.
“Why are you going to work there?” he asked. “There’s plenty of work to be done at the furniture store.”
“I don’t want to work there.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
This wasn’t the first time Frank Copeland had asked his son to work at Copeland Furniture, and this wasn’t the first time Thomas had rejected such employment. Thomas had heard his father complain about his “lazy” and “surly” employees enough to know he’d be miserable working there. He already put up with enough shit as it was. If his father caught him sweeping pine straw without sufficient alacrity, he would yank the rake out of Thomas’s hands and show him how it was supposed to be done. It was the same for dishwashing, lawn-mowing, and every other task Thomas had to do to get his measly $10 a week.
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.