Excerpt from “An Accurate Record”
Eric Roe
An Accurate Record
If not for the timing of the telephone call interrupting his afternoon dream, Barclay would never have consented to the interview. The faces of the Oster Family hung before him as he answered the call, and he blinked them away, found himself in his blind-darkened living room, a talk show playing on the television. The voice coming through the telephone was young and apologetic. Wanted to interview Barclay about his experiences during the Coup. “It’s for my history class,” the voice said.
“Who is this?” Barclay snapped.
“It’s Eric Roe. I mow your lawn.”
Barclay didn’t say anything for a moment, the dream still rampant, as if playing out in this very room. It had been a room like this one. He fixed his eyes to the television screen. The talk show was the kind on which guests sat with the pretty host, shed tears, and confessed their dark pasts and deep secrets.
Through the telephone, Eric Roe, who mowed Barclay’s lawn, said nervously, “It’ll just be an interview of you as a normal citizen during the Coup. I have to do it for a grade. I won’t get too personal or—”
“Yes,” Barclay said. “I will cooperate.” His heart was pounding. “When will you come?”
They made arrangements. As Barclay replaced the telephone, a strange calm came over him. He listened to a studio audience clap in sympathy as a man on television wept, and he realized there was a reason he did not typically remember his dreams: Forgetting was an act of will. But it exhausted him. He couldn’t do it anymore.
June 2021
The Oster Family
But this was where the telephone rang. Barclay flinched wildly in his armchair. He found himself in his blind-darkened living room, a talk show playing on the television, the telephone trilling on the table beside him. He snatched up the receiver to cut off the shrillness. “What is it?” he snapped.
The voice on the other end was young and apologetic. Too nervous to be selling anything. “Is this Barclay Schuyler?” it asked.
“You are saying it wrong,” Barclay told him. “It is sky-ler, not shew-yuh-ler.”
“Sorry,” the voice said.
“Say it,” Barclay commanded.
“Um, sky-ler.”
“Yes.”
There was a pause, and then: “So, um, I’m in a history class, and we’re supposed to interview somebody about their experiences during the War. We learned that the Coup in Toldania is what started the War in the first place, and so I was wondering, I mean, I heard that— It’s my understanding that you were a citizen of Toldania at the time of the Coup.” Clearly reading that last sentence from some note or such. The voice continued: “Would you be willing to let me interview you about your experiences back then? Just as a normal citizen? I have to do it for a grade.”
“Who told you I was a citizen of Toldania?” Barclay asked.
“My friend Enrique, he mows your lawn. He said he thought you were from Toldania.”
Barclay didn’t say anything for a moment. His eyes were fixed to the television screen. The pretty host of the talk show, Mandy Sanders, was sitting in a cushioned chair onstage beside a man in an identical chair. The man was tall, rail-thin, his face a wrinkled map of weariness, white hair crew-cut, ears sticking out from the sides of his head, veined hands clutching the arms of the chair. He must have been in his seventies. His face flushed and his shoulders trembled as he said, “I did it, this terrible thing, yes, I did it, for all time, I did it and can never take it back, and I’m so very sorry. I’ve done my penance, but it can’t be undone.” As he wept, Mandy Sanders reached out and touched his hand to provide solace. The man shook his head and covered his eyes with his free hand. The audience clapped sympathetically for his brave revelation and for Mandy Sanders’ kind consolation.
Through the telephone, the voice said, “It’ll just be normal questions. I mean, I won’t get too personal or anything like—”
“Yes, yes,” Barclay said. “I will cooperate.” He said it before he could not say it. His heart was pounding. “When will you come?” he asked.
They made arrangements. As Barclay replaced the receiver, a strange calm came over him, and as he sat in the dim living room, listening to a studio audience clap sympathetically as a grown man on the television wept, he knew with quiet certainty that he would tell, after all these years, his grim tale of the Oster family.
February 2015
An Accurate Record
The telephone rang, jolting Barclay out of his terrible dream. He found himself in his blind-darkened living room, in his armchair, a talk show playing on the television, the telephone ringing on the table beside him. He groped for the receiver to cut off the shrill ring. “What is it?” he snapped.
“Is this Mr. Barclay Skyler?” the young, nervous voice asked. Barclay said that it was. He listened as the voice described the school project. “We’re supposed to interview somebody, a normal citizen, about their experiences during the War. We, um, we learned that the Coup in Toldania is what started the War in the first place, and so I was wondering, I mean, I heard, I mean. It’s my understanding that you were a citizen of Toldania at the time of the Coup. Would you be willing to be interviewed about your experiences during that time? Just as a normal citizen? I have to do it for a grade,” the voice said.
“Who told you I was a citizen of Toldania?” Barclay asked.
“My friend Enrique, he mows your lawn. He said he thought you were from Toldania.”
Barclay didn’t say anything for a moment.
“It’s just, it’ll just be normal questions,” the voice said. “I mean, I won’t get too personal or anything like—”
“Yes, yes,” Barclay said brusquely. “I will cooperate. Tell Enrique he owes to me a free grass-mowing for this favor. When will you come?”
They made arrangements. As Barclay replaced the receiver, a strange calm came over him, and as he sat in the dim living room, listening to a studio audience clap sympathetically as a grown man on the television wept, he knew he would—
There is a detail we have left out. During that pause in the telephone conversation, Barclay’s eyes were fixed to the television screen. The pretty host of the talk show, Georgette Sanders, was sitting in a cushioned chair onstage beside a grown man in an identical chair. The man was tall and rail-thin, his face a wrinkled map of weariness, white hair crew-cut, ears sticking out from the sides of his head, veined hands clutching the arms of the chair. He must have been in his seventies. His face flushed and his shoulders trembled as he said, “I did it, this terrible thing, yes, I did it, for all time, I did it and can never take it back, and I’m so, so sorry. I’ve done my penance, but it can’t be undone.” As he wept, Georgette Sanders reached out and touched his hand to provide solace. The man shook his head and covered his eyes with his free hand. The audience clapped sympathetically for the man’s brave revelation and for Georgette Sanders’ kind consolation.
Perhaps this offers a clue as to why Barclay said, “Yes, yes, I will cooperate.” And why he knew, as he hung up the phone, that he would finally, after all this time, tell the ghastly tale of the Auster family.
April 2007
Process Statement
The seed for “An Accurate Record” came in 2004 in a history class. Giving us an interview assignment, our professor cautioned against being tied to our pre-written questions, relating an anecdote in which a student interviewed a woman about her experiences during World War II and completely missed the revelation that she’d been a member of Hitler Youth. I wondered how it would affect someone to reveal a dark, long-held secret only to have it blithely disregarded. I imagined a character (eventually Barclay) going out afterward, Ancient Mariner-like, telling everyone his secret but repeatedly having it ignored. When initially I tackled the story, I didn’t get far until another question occurred to me: What if it wasn’t some fictional history student interviewing Barclay; what if it was me? What if everyone he tried to confess to was a variation of me, each completely missing the point? That brought a new angle to the story, and, invigorated, I wrote the first draft in a single day in 2007, then revised it repeatedly over many years. My revision process consisted of cutting down to essential details, getting rid of whatever was distracting or unnecessary to the core of the story.
Eric Roe’s stories have won Chautauqua’s Editors Prize and The Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, have been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, and have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Story, Redivider, december, The Lemonwood Quarterly, and Best American Fantasy. He lives in Chapel Hill, NC, where he’s the editorial assistant at The University of North Carolina's Marsico Lung Institute. He can be found on Instagram (@ericroewriter) or on his website at ericroewriter.com.
The full story of “An Accurate Record” was originally published in the Summer 2021 issue of The Westchester Review.
Read Issue One