Universal Harvester(3)

There was a television mounted above the racks in one corner of the store. During shop hours it showed movies continuously. By policy, these had to be movies with a PG rating or lower. Picking out the movie and starting it up was one of the duties listed on the A.M. OPEN sheet, a six-point list printed on neon-green paper and affixed to the counter by the register with clear tape whose corners had frayed and blackened over the years:

1. lights front and back





2. power up register


3. count cash on hand in strongbox, record in notebook and move to register





4. file slot returns, return cases to displays


5. pick tape (PG or lower) for in-store, start up computer

6. check database for tapes overdue 3+ plus days and make phone calls

The list was there to make the opening routine look like work, though in practice it took Jeremy about five minutes altogether. He went to the computer before even turning on the lights; it was a Gateway 2000. Gateway’d still been a more or less local company when the computer was new; it creaked through its start-up routine for a full five minutes now. By the time it was ready to use, Jeremy’d gone through everything else on the list except the overdues. He wasn’t going to call anybody about overdues before noon, anyway.

Underneath the counter there were six or seven tapes that got played in rotation—this was the “pick tape” step, almost entirely mechanical. The Muppet Movie, Bugsy Malone, A League of Their Own, Star Wars: most people working the opening shift just grabbed one without looking. There were a couple of newer ones that got traded in and out from month to month. Jeremy usually went for these, keeping the sound muted until customers started showing up.

He had Reindeer Games in his hand when he got to the store, so he put it on with the sound down and paid it no mind, letting it run while he leafed through a summer courses catalog from DMACC. Joan from Mary Greeley stopped in to trade out a couple of exercise tapes for new ones; the hospital got these tapes for free, which was fine, since nobody else rented them. Joan used them for classes on the convalescent ward. She came up to the counter and nodded over her shoulder toward the screen overhead: the picture went black and white for a second as Jeremy looked up, then stabilized.

“Not expecting a lot of customers today?” she said. Charlize Theron was in a swimming pool untying her bikini.

“What? Oh. Sorry, sorry,” said Jeremy, reaching for the remote.

Joan laughed. “No, it’s fine.” He stopped the tape just as things were starting to get explicit. “Sorry, I watched this last night, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s fine,” said Joan again, nodding encouragingly; Jeremy’s face was flushed. “I’m forty-six, I’ve seen it all before.”

“No, I know, I just—wasn’t thinking,” he said. He grabbed the two new exercise tapes from the shelf, brow still furrowed.

“You OK?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, shaking his head like a cat waking up. “I don’t think I slept well. Fell asleep on the couch.”

“Happens to me all the time!” said Joan, signing the rental slip with its crossed-through zero in the “amount” column and sliding her new tapes into her puffy oversized purse.

“Yeah,” said Jeremy, “me, too,” which wasn’t true. Neither was the part about falling asleep on the couch; he didn’t know why he’d said it. He was off his rhythm.

“See you next week,” said Joan.

“All right,” said Jeremy, and that sounded wrong, too.

*

The rest of the day was a winter day at a video store in the late 1990s: long stretches without any customers, a big rush between 5:30 and 7:00 as people were getting off work and heading home, and then the slowdown. Lindsey Redinius brought back a copy of She’s All That during the rush and said there was something wrong with it, that the movie cut out at some point, turned into something different and came back later. Jeremy set it aside. This was the second complaint about a tape in two days. Maybe they were making tapes from cheaper materials now? DVD players were supposed to be the next thing.

He looked around the store as he was shutting down. It was a heated Morton building, same materials they used for barns now: the same building exactly, just with different stuff in it. In the dark you could see how temporary it was. He rifled through the returns bin and grabbed another tape in case he couldn’t sleep, and he stopped at Taco John’s up the street for a family value pack. Then he got onto old Highway 30 and headed for home.

They’d plowed the road earlier that morning and several times throughout the afternoon. Everyone was driving a little slower, to be careful. This was the feel of the season for Jeremy. Slow cars moving over icy roads in the dark. Heavy branches on trees. Headlights. Mute and palpable, the melancholy would last at least through March. There was a melody to it you could catch if you weren’t trying too hard.

Dad was already home when he got there; they ate their tacos at the dinner table, like a family.





3

“Everything OK at work?”

“Sure. Big contract from a firm in Minnesota building a new motel over in Ames.”

“Yeah?”

“Just a Holiday Inn Express. They need everything at once, want to be up and running in time for Big 12.” Jeremy kept it to himself, but he was happy to hear his dad would be busy all winter, coordinating orders of resin from competing suppliers and ordering his team around, shipping pipe out on flatbeds. Dad seemed happiest when he was busy enough to be worn out by the end of the day.