Dave Eggers - Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

— I don’t know what to tell you, son. I’ve been teaching the Bible for thirty-eight years and there is no Lake of God in that book. There’s a Lake of Fire, but I don’t think that’s the place you’re picturing.

— See, even that.

— Even what?

— Even that’s a sign that the world has misused people like me.

How could I not know that, the difference between the Lake of God and the Lake of Fire?

— I don’t know if that misunderstanding is symptomatic of a societal failure. You got your lakes confused.

— But it is symptomatic. You and I read the same books and hear the same sermons and we come away with different messages. That has to be evidence of some serious problem, right? I mean, I shouldn’t have been left to live among the rest of society. There were so many days I looked at it all and wanted it wiped away, wanted it on fire.

— Sounds like you had a radicalizing moment, son. Were you beaten as a child, something like that?

— No sir.

— Saw some terrible thing that changed you?

— Do you remember the other guy with us in that car that day?

— No, I can’t say that I do.

— You don’t? It was unusual for our town to have a kid like that. He was half Vietnamese. Don Banh. You remember a kid like that?

— I’m sorry, I don’t. He was a friend of yours?

— He’s dead now.

— I’m sorry to hear that.

— He was shot.

— He was a soldier?

— No. Just in his backyard.

— I’m sorry, son. That’s too young. I’m truly sorry.

— I’m not saying that was some radicalizing moment for me. I feel like I had some fairly apocalyptic thoughts before that.

— Most young men do.

— I’ve tried to explain these thoughts to people but they get scared. They don’t understand. Or they pretend they don’t understand.

— Try me.

— Well, every day, about half of every day I’m among people in a city, I picture my arm sweeping across the city, wiping it all clean. Like it was a model set up on a card table, and I could just sweep it all onto the floor. Okay?

— Okay.

— You want to hear more?

— Sure.

— I’ll be walking down some crowded street and I’ll start boiling inside and I picture myself parting all these people like Moses with the Red Sea. You know, the people disappear, the buildings dissolve and when I’m done there’s all this empty space, and it’s quieter, and there aren’t all those people and all their dirty thoughts and idiotic talking and opinions. And that vision actually gives me peace. When I picture the landscape bare, free of all human noise and filth, I can relax.

— Maybe you should live in the country.

— That’s not funny. I mean, that’s not the solution. I just wish I could function better in rooms, in buildings, in a line at the grocery store. And sometimes I do. But sometimes it makes me so fucking tense. I need to get out, drive awhile, get to the ocean as fast as I can.

— Son, I’m realizing I don’t know your name.

— Thomas.

— Thomas, nothing you say is unprecedented. There are others like you. Millions of men like you. Some women, too. And I think this is a result of you being prepared for a life that does not exist. You were built for a different world. Like a predator without prey.

— So why not find a place for us?

— What’s that?

— Find a place for us.

— Who should?

— You, the government. You of all people should have known that we needed a plan. You should have sent us all somewhere and given us a task.

— But not to war.

— No, I guess not.

— So what then?

— Maybe build a canal.

— You want to build a canal?

— I don’t know.

— No, I don’t get the impression you do.

— You’ve got to put this energy to use, though. It’s pent up in me and it’s pent up in millions like me. The only time I feel right is when I’m driving, or once in a while during a fight.

— So you box?

— No.

— Oh. Let me see your hands.

— They’re messed up right now.

— That they are. Son, who are you fighting?

— I don’t know. People.

— Do you win?

— Win what?

— These fights.

— No. Not really.

— Thomas, you know we can’t round up every confused young man and send them to some remote region. Even if I agreed with you, which I do, to some extent at least. I mean, this is why so many soldiers stay in the Army and why so many prisoners end up back in prison. They cannot hack polite society. They’re bored and they feel caged.

— But there’s no evidence of a plan, sir.

— What plan?

— Any plan. I mean, wasn’t that what Australia was all about? Some convict colony? We could have done that on the moon. All I ever wanted to do was get off this fucking planet and go to the next one, but there’s no way to do it. And Don, too. He didn’t belong in regular society after what happened to him.

— I don’t understand. After he died?

— No, before that. All along I knew what was going to happen. I knew something would happen but I didn’t know what. I mean, that’s when I first got the idea for all this. We used to mess around here at this base. We’d ride through these buildings on our bikes, and when we were older we’d sit around drinking here, and when Don was losing his shit a little, and he did a few rehabs, I used to think, You know, if I could just shackle him inside one of these buildings for a while, you know, keep him safe, dry him out, then maybe he could make it.

— Okay. I understand that. I truly do.

— But he was always just out there. In the world. Doing the wrong things, never doing anything I told him to do. I always knew what he needed to do, and I’d make a step-by-step for him, I’d even write that shit down. I’d write down a plan! A two-year plan, a five-year plan. And he wouldn’t even attempt it. I couldn’t make him do anything. I couldn’t keep him in rehab. I couldn’t lock him up. You know once I left him in jail for a month instead of bailing him out, because I thought it might be good for him? Jail was the safest place.

— Sometimes it truly is.

— I know he’d still be alive if I’d thought of this earlier, if I’d have brought him here and just locked him in one of these buildings until he had his shit straight.

— I understand that, too. This is familiar ground for me.

— I’m just pissed at myself I didn’t think of it sooner.

— Of chaining your buddy to a pole.

— Right.

— But you know that’s not a durable solution.

— Then what is?

— I don’t know. Rehab? Therapy?

— C’mon. Get serious.

—

— Really, why don’t we have some kind of plan for people like this? I guess the main government plan is to lock them all up, and I understand the impulse to keep them apart from decent society. I get that. But then there are guys like me and Don, who haven’t really done anything wrong, and there are soldiers like the ones you fought with, who come back with these terrible ideas and murdering skills, and there’s no place for any of us. We’ve been out in the wilderness and tasted raw meat, and now we can’t sit at the table using utensils. There’s got to be someplace for us. A place like this would actually work. This place is 28,000 acres, bordering the ocean. The ground’s fertile enough. I mean, you set this land aside for people like us, and I bet you’d reduce crime in this country by half.

— Where are we, did you say?

— I can’t tell you that.

— Thomas, what difference does it make?

— Okay. We’re at Fort Ord.

— Fort Ord? Like near Monterey?

— You should have deduced that, anyway, sir. There’s only one base this big on the coast of California.