Empire of Nickels

A chime sounded through the small convenience store as the door, coated with ads for both the future and the past, swung open. The tired owner of this lonely stockpile of merchandise looked up to meet the invader of his light doze. Through heavy lids, bloodshot eyes focused on the young man holding out a handful of change for the gas he had just pumped. The young man looked to be about 16, his driving skills still fresh. The old man remembered his own time at that age. To have life so full of hope and potential at one moment in time. He saw himself in the boy.

The young man noticed the wistful stares of his elder. “You okay,” he paused to look at the plastic name tag on the old man's chest, “Joseph?”

Awakened at the use of his first name said by an unfamiliar tongue, Joseph broke his gaze. This child could not have been him. He had respected his elders in his day. Had he had the impertinence to address an older man like that, he would have felt the back of his father's hand. These kids were soft. Joseph again met the insolent child's eyes.

Without a word, he took the change from the boy's hand, never taking his eyes off him, and then attempting a brief smile. The young man felt like the old man might offer words of wisdom were he to stick around. However, thoughts of Tuesdays with Morrie and Fried Green Tomatoes were interrupted by the solid fact that this old man creeped the hell out of him. He walked from the counter slowly, into the July heat and out of this story.

Joseph watched him go, and then added the loose change to the meager treasures of the day. He lifted his coffee cup and drank the tepid contents, then setting it back down into the brown ring of condensation that had formed on the eviction notice he had received earlier that day. He glanced around the store that he had purchased with years of sweat and blood. As he felt his dream unraveling, he thought of Alice .

Alice stood in the snow, bathed in sunlight that peeked from behind clouds and reflected off the over-clichéd white. She laughed with joy and beckoned to Joseph. He walked toward her with the simple happiness in his face that only lovers know. At this time, they were both younger. His hair was a dark black and hers a soft auburn. They danced soundlessly in the snow, deep in their thoughts and in the other's embrace. Joseph relished in this fantasy, twenty years and two heart attacks ago.

Joseph stood alone in the store. The only noise was the ancient air conditioner, fighting the heat, and losing. Joseph forgot the machine and remembered the snow on his face, on hers, and went back to his Winter Wonderland.

He was in the snow again, this time alone. He was older than in the first dream; not all of the white flecked in his hair was snow. The only evidence of Alice 's existence was the name solemnly carved into the headstone before him. Joseph dropped to his knees in the icy wetness. He pressed his cheek into the granite and felt his tears freeze against his face in the bitter cold. Twenty years and two heart attacks ago, they had been happy, and Joseph had been content. Two heart attacks ago, only one of them had been his, and only one of them had been fatal.

His dreams of the past were shattered once again by the clanging store bell. He glanced in shock at the young girl who strutted across the threshold. The life reflected in her eyes was a distinct contrast to the lack of vitality in Joseph's eyes. He was shocked by her clothing, or lack thereof, for more than one reason. Yes, he did feel that a halter top and shorts were more underwear than anything, but his first objection was the disbelief that a girl, a child really, would dress that way in the dead of winter. The gust of hot air that followed her and the angry air conditioner reminded him that the snow was fantasy, and so was Alice , now. “Nameless here forevermore” as Poe had said.

The girl paid for her purchases and another handful of change was added to the starving register. Joseph's eyes rested on the eviction notice once again as the girl walked away, so caught up in her world that she failed to notice the sad, old man withering away with his dreams behind the stained counter.

If this was any kind of fairy tale, this would be the point where Alice would show up, bursting through the ad-clogged doors in a flood of white light with snow on her hair and face and carry him away to heaven like that little Match girl in the Christmas story his mother, gone these forty years, had told him an eternity ago.

But this was no fairy tale; no happy ending for Joseph, only boarded-up windows and a welfare check. The match girl still had a chance at life; she was only a child. Joseph's life was near complete.

Joseph walked over to the other side of the counter and locked the door. He took a pack of Salem 's from the overhead rack and, while humming the jingle that had been planted there over twenty years ago, added the first bills of the day to the register from his own pocket. “Number One customer” he muttered under his breath. It echoed harshly in the empty room. The only sound to contest his voice was the air conditioner, preparing to give up the ghost.

Under the counter was a length of rope. He had held it before, even once tied it into a noose, but had always backed down. He looked away from it and gazed at the store. Everywhere he looked seemed to offer an escape. All the various pills in their multicolored cases on one aisle, razor blades on the other. Gasoline outside, matches in his hand. A shotgun behind the counter, loaded and ready. And the rope in his clenched fists.

He relaxed his hands enough to tie the rope. His hands remembered the Boy Scout knots, and the loop was completed in moments. The girl's perfume still hung in the air as he secured the rope to an overhead rafter and stepped on top of the counter. The fingers that light the cigarette did not tremble in the least; He was unafraid, not at all nervous. You couldn't tell what effect the pills would have, and Joseph was too much of a coward to use blades or a bullet. He stood next to the almost empty register, reading the eviction notice one last time. They would take his store over his dead body.

“Or under it.” Joseph said out loud, then smiled. He pulled the rope taught around his neck. The eviction notice fluttered to the floor as Joseph looked over his domain again. He remembered the failed dreams. He remembered Alice .

The little match girl got off easy. She just drifted away in the cold, led to heaven by her loved ones. Joseph's mother had cried at this story, saying how sad it was, to die alone in the snow. He had never understood her. To drift away with your lover into bliss. Away from this harsh world of pain and loneliness, away from eviction notices and failed dreams. He wanted to just lie in the snow and wait for his demise. Joseph couldn't just do that, not now, not in July. Winter was too far off. The little match girl got off easy. Her life was granted merciful release. Why wouldn't God be as merciful to him? But when chance won't parlay to you, you must take control yourself. The little match girl didn't have to do this by herself.

“The little match girl got off easy.” said Joseph aloud, then he stepped off the desk.