The Fiction of Owen Thomas

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

A Novella

Summary

The arc of Clement Merriwether’s life is marked by a series of uncomfortable uniforms: cop, prison guard, and for the last few years, having sobered up after the traumatic death of his wife and daughter, shopping mall security. The Summerfield Mall has allowed Clement to walk a quieter beat, populated by bargain shoppers and bored teenagers rather than hardened criminals. But he still thinks of making his rounds as walking a beat, from Block A in the neighborhood of the Willing Spirits liquor store and The Book Nook, through Block C, with its Denim Denizens and Gadgetopia, to the movie theater and the food court offerings of Block F, like Jumpin’ Java and The Hotdog Hut. Clement understands that in commercial retail parlance these areas of the mall are properly referred to as zones, not blocks.  But old habits die hard and walking any beat – whether as a cop, a prison guard, or shopping mall security manager – is measured in blocks.

Clement’s son, Quinn, is freshly out of prison; in fact, the same prison in which only a few years before, Clement had walked a beat as a guard. Clement knew his son was no thief and had nearly gone bankrupt trying to prove it. Now the only thing Clement could do was to pull a few strings and get Quinn a job at the Summerfield Mall, selling cameras in Block F at The Shutter Shack. Clement’s hope is that selling cameras will give Quinn a boost back into the job market. At the very least, a job at the mall will keep his son close where Clement can keep an eye on him.

For Quinn, The Shutter Shack offers lots of empty time with very little stimulation, not unlike the eighteen months he spent locked up in the prison everyone in Summit County calls The Alley. He spends hours watching shoppers trickle past the windows of the empty store as he ruminates bitterly over the events that stole a year and a half of his freedom. He is left to wonder about the unfairness of a universe in which the likes of Roddy P and Mel and the man known as King Itch are all walking free while he, Quinn Meriwether, sits in prison. 

But even safely ensconced in the Summerfield Mall, Quinn’s brush with crime is far from over. On one of these forlorn afternoons, after his father has made his rounds, Quinn witnesses the local television meteorologist slip a jeweled watch from a display case into her purse. It is a shocking moment for Quinn. This, after all, was the same incompetent meteorologist who had failed to predict the cold snap that had effectively prevented Quinn’s escape from Roddy P and that had sent him skidding into handcuffs. This was the same glib television personality who had mocked him every night from up on her concrete perch in The Alley, chirping on and on about the weather outside that Quinn was not free to experience. For eighteen months the chirping had felt strangely personal and he had grown to despise the weathergirl.

And now, here she was. Clarissa Day. The weathergirl. Stealing a watch.

Revenge is only the first and most obvious thing to occur to Quinn. All the rest, including the weather, is completely unexpected.