David Wallace - Broom of the System

/c/

One of the oars fell into the water and Neil Obstat, Jr., lunged for it, knocking over his can of beer so that beer fizzed on his pantleg. He struggled to get the heavy oar back in its lock.

“God damn it,” he said.

“Just keep the fucker still, Neil,” said Wang-Dang Lang.

“Shit,” said Obstat. Some people trying to fish over in the next rowboat were mad at the commotion and were giving Obstat the finger.

Lang was in the bow of the boat he and Obstat had rented at the Great Ohio Desert Fish License and Boat Rental Center for what Lang thought was a truly criminal amount of money.

“This whole thing’s just gettin’ too goddamn commercialized,” he’d said to Obstat. Obstat had shrugged and hefted the beer.

Lang had some binoculars through which he was watching Lenore Beadsman and Rick Vigorous wandering along the lake’s edge through one of the really blasted and forbidding parts of the Desert. Despite the weekend crowds, Lenore was easy to see in her bright white dress, and of course there was too the matter of Rick Vigorous’s beret. Lang and Obstat were way out in the lake. Obstat was supposed to be rowing the boat so that they stayed just even with Lenore and Rick.

“What do you see?” Obstat had asked from the oars.

When Rick and Lenore were turned the right way, Lang could see their faces, but he couldn’t yet make out what they were saying. They weren’t talking much. Lenore was moving pretty easily through the deep sand, but Lang could see Rick Vigorous having trouble and sometimes needing to trot to keep up. Lenore kept making him look at his watch, as if time were an issue. It was still only mid-morning, but it was hot for September. Crowds wove in and out around Lenore and Rick. Someone on the rim was hawking black tee-shirts in a voice Lang could hear clear out on the water.

Lang held the binoculars in one hand. His other hand hurt like hell today, from twirling his car keys on his injured finger last night. He thought his bird-bite might be getting infected.

“Fucking bird,” he said.

Obstat was grunting at the oars. He kept clunking them against the sides of the boat. Lang and Obstat were positively mowing over people’s fishing lines, and the people in the other boats were getting really pissed off, but Lang told Obstat not to pay them any mind.

“Just remember I get a gander or two at those unearthly legs, climbing dunes,” Obstat gasped as he pulled.

“They’ll start sayin’ important shit any minute now,” Lang said.

/d/

“I absolutely insist that you invite me to relate a story.”

“My shoes are full of this goddamned sand.”

“Lenore…”

“Hey! Watch where you’re going for Christ’s sake!”

“Dear. Excuse us, please.”

“For crying out loud.”

“Terribly sorry.”

“Hell of a place for a picnic.”

“If you want my opinion, Lenore, they should either obliterate this place or enlarge it. The touristiness of the whole thing is negating whatever marginal attractions this place had to offer.”

“People aren’t smelling too terrific in this sun, either, I notice.”

“Forget smells. You’re here to concentrate on potential grandmother-signs.”

“What kind of signs, Rick? I should look for Lenore neither climbing up nor sliding down a dune, all because of a game my brother made up when he was flapped? This has got to be a waste of time. I don’t understand your obsession with this. With getting me out here today.”

“Apparently Lang and his anus-eyed Sancho Panza are about, too. Lurking, et cetera.”

“How do you know where Andy and Obstat are supposed to be?”

“I know what I know.”

“Look, Rick, speaking of knowing, I think we maybe ought to just talk, right here, at some length.”

“I implore you first to implore me for a story.”

“What’s with this story stuff?”

“….”

“Look, you might have forgotten I have to read the things now. They’re work now. When I’m not working, I’d rather not do a work-related thing.”

“You won’t be called on to evaluate, merely to enjoy. To be caught up, engaged, and entertained. You should find this entertaining and engaging.”

“Rick, the thing is we really need to talk. You’re dealing with an upset person, here. We really need to have a long talk.”

“I’m almost convinced the issues here can be treated and perhaps even resolved in the context of the story I have in mind.”

“I really doubt it.”

“Just keep your eyes peeled for things covertly elderly, and I’ll take it from here.”

“So you’re deciding how the talk I want to have is going to be. That’s just super.”

“This story concerns a man who is presented as the most phenomenally successful theoretical dentist of the twentieth century.”

“Theoretical dentist?”

“A scientist specializing in dental theory and in high-level abstract reasoning from empirical cases involving anything at all dental.”

“Wonderful.”

“Do you recall that sweetener that was positively omnipresent for a while? SupraSweet? The one that was abruptly yanked from the supermarket shelves when they discovered that it made certain women give birth to children with antennae, and fangs like vampires?”

“Do I ever.”

“Here the theoretical dentist in question is presented as the man who cracked the antennae-and-fang problem, working as it were from the dental end and tracing matters back to the ubiquitous and malignant sweetener.”

“Jesus, Rick, look at this crowd. How are we supposed to get through all this?”

“They’re just waiting for the shuttle to the interior wastes. It’ll be here soon — see the dust cloud? Perhaps we might just wait over here, under this statue, in this bit of shade…”

“I remember this statue all right. I can’t stand this statue. It’s like Zusatz was trying to set himself up as god of the Desert or something. Sheesh.”

“So the man in question is a theoretical dentist of consummate skill.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And in his spare time he is also a thoroughly competent and experienced Scoutmaster.

“….”

“For the Boy Scouts of America.”

“Got it.”

“Having been himself in his youth a phenomenal Scout: a Ten derfoot at nine, a First Class Scout at eleven, a Star, Life, then finally an Eagle Scout at the amazing age of fourteen. Amazing for his era, anyhow. We may note for example that before my son, Vance, quit the Scouts he had been a Life Scout, the penultimate kind of Scout, at the age of twelve.”

“How nice for him.”

“But the point is that the theoretical dentist had been an exemplary Scout, and one so committed to Scouting in general that when he exited the Scouts because of his age he turned right around and became a Scoutmaster, while still training in theoretical dentistry. This was twenty years ago, fixing the dentist’s present age somewhere in his forties.”

“….”

“And one summer day the dentist is leading his troop of Scouts through some orientation and compass exercises in the dense and desolate interior regions of the coniferous forests that as you may or may not know cover vast portions of the state of Indiana. The whole story takes place in Indiana.”

“….”

“And the dentist is effortlessly leading the Scouts through the forest, preparing them for woodsman merit-badge tests, and now in the densest and most desolate interior section the dentist and his Scouts come on an exhausted and haggard-looking man, dressed exclusively in flannel, with many days’ growth of beard, and bright-red eyes, and white pine-pitch residue smeared around his mouth, who right away moans and faints in the arms of a Star Scout; and with him is an also haggard-looking but still achingly lovely woman, with her dress in a noticeable state of disarray, who immediately falls weeping on the neck of the theoretical dentist, crying that she has been saved. The woman tells the dentist that she and her unconscious companion, who is also it turns out her psychologist, had been lost in the desolate interior coniferous region for days, that the psychologist’s magnetic clipboard-and-pen set had ruined their compass, and that they had been wandering for days, losing hope steadily, sustaining themselves only by eating the truly nauseating white remains of the pine pitch that crusted the bark of the trees all around. The woman tells the dentist all this as they stare deeply into each other’s eyes, and as all around them the badge-happy Scouts are running here and there, positively radiating Competence In The Wild, raising and striking tents, building elaborate multi-tiered fires, detoxifying water with Halazone pellets, and administering to the still swooned psychologist every form of first aid you could possibly imagine. And now, if I may import a bit of context to save time, it is made clear that the woman and the psychologist have been out in the Indiana forests for ostensibly therapeutic reasons, that the woman suffers from a nearly debilitating neurosis under the rules of which she needs constant and prodigious sexual attention and activity, in order to stave off feelings of raving paranoia and loss of three-dimensionality.”