George Saunders: Pastoralia

I never drag Janet around by the hair.

Too cliché.

Just then his wife poked in her head.

“Stinks in there,” she said, and yanked her head out.

“That’s the roasting goat,” her husband said. “Everything wasn’t all prettied up. When you ate meat, it was like you were eating actual meat, the flesh of a dead animal, an animal that maybe had been licking your hand just a few hours before.”

“I would never do that,” said the wife.

“You do it now, bozo!” said the man. “You just pay someone to do the dirty work. The slaughtering? The skinning?”

“I do not either,” said the wife.

We couldn’t see them, only hear them through the place where the heads poke in.

“Ever heard of a slaughterhouse?” the husband said. “Ha ha! Gotcha! What do you think goes on in there? Some guy you never met kills and flays a cow with what you might term big old cow eyes, so you can have your shoes and I can have my steak and my shoes!”

“That’s different,” she said. “Those animals were raised for slaughter. That’s what they were made for. Plus I cook them in an oven, I don’t squat there in my underwear with smelly smoke blowing all over me.”

“Thank heaven for small favors,” he said. “Joking! I’m joking. You squatting in your underwear is not such a bad mental picture, believe me.”

“Plus where do they poop,” she said.

“Ask them,” said the husband. “Ask them where they poop, if you so choose. You paid your dime. That is certainly your prerogative.”

“I don’t believe I will,” said the wife.

“Well, I’m not shy,” he said.

Then there was no sound from the head-hole for quite some time. Possibly they were quietly discussing it.

“Okay, so where do you poop?” asked the husband, poking his head in.

“We have disposable bags that mount on a sort of rack,” said Janet. “The septic doesn’t come up this far.”

“Ah,” he said. “They poop in bags that mount on racks.”

“Wonderful,” said his wife. “I’m the richer for that information.”

“But hold on,” the husband said. “In the old times, like when the cave was real and all, where then did they go? I take it there were no disposal bags in those times, if I’m right.”

“In those times they just went out in the woods,” said Janet.

“Ah,” he said. “That makes sense.”

You see what I mean about Janet? When addressed directly we’re supposed to cower shrieking in the corner but instead she answers twice in English?

I gave her a look.

“Oh, he’s okay,” she whispered. “He’s no narc. I can tell.”

In a minute in came a paper airplane: our Client Vignette Evaluation.

Under Overall Impression he’d written: A-okay! Very nice .

Under Learning Value he’d written: We learned where they pooped. Both old days and now .

I added it to our pile, then went into my Separate Area and put on my footies. I filled out my Daily Partner Performance Evaluation Form. Did I note any attitudinal difficulties? I did not. How did I rate my Partner overall? Very good. Were there any Situations which required Mediation?

There were not.

I faxed it in.

6.

This morning is the morning I empty our Human Refuse bags and the trash bags and the bag from the bottom of the sleek metal hole where Janet puts her used feminine items.

For this I get an extra sixty a month. Plus it’s always nice to get out of the cave.

I knock on the door of her Separate Area.

“Who is it?” she asks, playing dumb.

She knows very well who it is. I stick in my arm and wave around a trash bag.

“Go for it,” she says.

She’s in there washing her armpits with a washcloth. The room smells like her, only more so. I add the trash from her wicker basket to my big white bag. I add her bag of used feminine items to my big white bag. I take three bags labeled Caution Human Refuse from the corner and add them to my big pink bag labeled Caution Human Refuse.

I mime to her that I dreamed of a herd that covered the plain like the grass of the earth, they were as numerous as grasshoppers and yet the meat of their humps resembled each a tiny mountain etc. etc., and sharpen my spear and try to look like I’m going into a sort of prehunt trance.

“Are you going?” she shouts. “Are you going now? Is that what you’re saying?”

I nod.

“Christ, so go already,” she says. “Have fun. Bring back some mints.”

She has worked very hard these many months to hollow out a rock in which to hide her mints and her smokes. Mints mints mints. Smokes smokes smokes. No matter how long we’re in here together I will never get the hots for her. She’s fifty and has large feet and sloping shoulders and a pinched little face and chews with her mouth open. Sometimes she puts on big ugly glasses in the cave and does a crossword: very verboten.

Out I go, with the white regular trash bag in one hand and our mutual big pink Human Refuse bag in the other.

7.

Down in the blue-green valley is a herd of robotic something-or-others, bent over the blue-green grass, feeding I guess? Midway between our mountain and the opposing mountains is a wide green river with periodic interrupting boulders. I walk along a white cliff, then down a path marked by a yellow dot on a pine. Few know this way. It is a non-Guest path. No Attractions are down it, only Disposal Area 8 and a little Employees Only shop in a doublewide, a real blessing for us, we’re so close and all.

Inside the doublewide are Marty and a lady we think is maybe Marty’s wife but then again maybe not.

Marty’s shrieking at the lady, who’s writing down whatever he shrieks.

“Just do as they ask!” he shrieks, and she writes it down. “And not only that, do more than that, son, more than they ask! Excel! Why not excel? Be excellent! Is it bad to be good? Now son, I know you don’t think that, because that is not what you were taught, you were taught that it is good to be good, I very clearly remember teaching you that. When we went fishing, and you caught a fish, I always said good, good fishing, son, and when you caught no fish, I frowned, I said bad, bad catching of fish, although I don’t believe I was ever cruel about it. Are you getting this?”

“Every word,” the lady says. “To me they’re like nuggets of gold.”

“Ha ha,” says Marty, and gives her a long loving scratch on the back, and takes a drink of Squirt and starts shrieking again.

“So anyways, do what they ask!” he shrieks. “Don’t you know how much we love you here at home, and want you to succeed? As for them, the big-wigs you wrote me about, freak them big-wigs! Just do what they ask though. In your own private mind, think what you like, only do what they ask, so they like you. And in this way, you will succeed. As for the little-wigs you mentioned, just how little are they? You didn’t mention that. Are they a lot littler wig than you? In that case, freak them, ignore them if they talk to you, and if they don’t talk to you, go up and start talking to them, sort of bossing them around, you know, so they don’t start thinking they’re the boss of you. But if they’re the same wig as you, be careful, son! Don’t piss them off, don’t act like you’re the boss of them, but also don’t bend over for some little shit who’s merely the same wig as you, or else he’ll assume you’re a smaller wig than you really actually are. As for friends, sure, friends are great, go ahead and make friends, they’re a real blessing, only try to avoid making friends with boys who are the same or lesser wig than you. Only make friends with boys who are bigger wigs than you, assuming they’ll have you, which probably they won’t. Because why should they? Who are you? You’re a smaller wig than them. Although then again, they might be slumming, which would be good for you, you could sneak right in there.”