George Saunders - Pastoralia

Now those, those on that meter maid, those were some serious hooters. Although her face was sort of beat. But if you could take those hooters and slap them on Miss Hacienda, wow, then you’d be talking. Just the meter maid’s hooters and some decent clothes and a lip wax and the super sexy voice of the librarian who looked away whenever he ogled her, and you’d have his perfect woman, and wow would they ever be’ happy together forever, as long as she kept a positive attitude, which come to think of it might be an issue, because why the heck was she was crying in public?

Miss Hacienda passed through a gap in a hedge and disappeared into the Episcopal church.

Why was she going into church on a weekday? Maybe she had a problem. Maybe she was knocked up. Maybe if he followed her into the church and told her he knew a little about problems, having been born with no toes, she’d have coffee with him. He was tired of going home to just Ma. Lately she’d been falling asleep with her head on his shoulder while they watched TV. Sometimes he worried that somebody would look in the window and wonder why he’d married such an old lady. Plus sometimes he worried that Ma would wake up and catch him watching the black girl in the silver bikini riding her horse through that tidal pool in slow motion on 1–900-DREMGAL.

He wondered how Miss Hacienda would look in a silver bikini in slow motion. Although if she was knocked up she shouldn’t be riding a horse. She should be sitting down, taking it easy. Somebody should be bringing her a cup of tea. She should move in with him and Ma. He wouldn’t rub it in that she was knocked up. He’d be loving about it. He’d be a good friend to her and wouldn’t even try to screw her, and pretty soon she’d start wondering why not and start really wanting him. He’d be her labor coach and cheerfully change diapers in the wee hours and finally when she’d lost all the weight she’d come to his bed and screw his brains out in gratitude, after which he’d have a meditative smoke by the window and decide to marry her. He nearly got tears in his eyes thinking of how she’d get tears in her eyes as he went down on one knee to pop the question, a nice touch the dolt who’d knocked her up wouldn’t have thought of in a million years, the nimrod, and that SOB could drive by as often as he wanted, deeply regretting his foolishness as the baby frolicked in the yard, it was too late, they were a family, and nothing would ever break them up.

But he’d have to remember to stick a towel under the door while meditatively smoking or Ma would have a cow, because after he smoked she always claimed everything smelled like smoke, and made him wash every piece of clothing in the house. And they’d better screw quietly if they weren’t married, because Ma was old-fashioned. It was sort of a pain living with Ma. But Miss Hacienda had better be prepared to tolerate Ma, who was actually pretty good company when she stayed on her meds, and so what if she was nearly eighty and went around the house flossing in her bra? It was her damn house. He’d better never hear Miss Hacienda say a word against Ma, who’d paid his way through barber college, like for example asking why Ma had thick sprays of gray hair growing out of her ears, because that would kill Ma, who was always reminding the gas man she’d been a dish in high school. How would Miss Hacienda like it if after a lifetime of hard work she got wrinkled and forgetful and some knocked-up slut dressed like a Mexican cowgirl moved in and started complaining about her ear hair? Who did Miss Hacienda think she was, the Queen of Sheba? She could go into labor in the damn Episcopal church for all he cared, he’d keep wanking it in the pantry on the little milking stool for the rest of his life before he’d let Ma be hurt, and that was final.

As Miss Hacienda came out of the church she saw a thick-waisted, beak-nosed, middle-aged man rise angrily from a wooden bench and stomp into Mickey’s Hairport, slamming the door behind him.

2.

Next morning Ma wanted an omelet. When he said he was running late she said never mind in a tone that made it clear she was going to accidentally/on purpose burn herself again while ostensibly making her own omelet. So he made the omelet. When he asked was it good, she said it was fine, which meant it was bad and he had to make pancakes. So he made pancakes. Then he kissed her cheek and flew out the door, very very late for Driving School.

Driving School was being held in what had been a trendy office park in the Carter years and was now a flat white overgrown stucco bunker with tinted windows and a towable signboard that said: Dirving School . Inside was a conference table that filled most of a room that smelled like a conference table sitting in direct sunlight with some spilled burned coffee on it.

“Latecomers will be beaten,” said the Driving School instructor.

“Sorry,” said the barber.

“Joking!” said the instructor, thrusting a disorderly wad of handouts at the barber, who was trying to get his clipons off. “What I was just saying was that, our aim is, we’re going to be looking at some things or aspects, in terms of driving? Meaning safety, meaning, is speeding something we do in a vacuum, or could it involve a pedestrian or fatality or a family out for a fun drive, and then here you come, speeding, with the safety or destiny of that family not held firmly in your mind, and what happens next? Who knows?”

“A crash?” said someone.

“An accident?” said someone else.

“Crash or accident both could,” said the instructor. “Either one might or may. Because I’ve seen, in my CPR role, as a paramedic, when many times, and I’m sorry if you find this gross or too much, I’ve had to sit in our rescue vehicle with a cut-off arm or hand, even of a kid, a really small arm or even limb, just weeping as if I hadn’t been thoroughly trained, as I know none of you have, but I have, and why was I holding that small arm or limb and bawling? Because of someone like you yourselves, good people, I know you are, I’m not saying that, but you decided what? What did you decide? Or they. That person who cut off that kid’s arm I was carrying that day I was just saying?”

No one knew.

“They decided to speed is what you did,” said the instructor sadly, with pity for both the armless child and the otherwise good people who on that fateful day had decided to speed, and now sat before him, lives ruined.

“I didn’t hit nobody,” said a girl in a T-shirt that said Buggin’ . “Cop just stopped me.”

“But I’m talking the possibility aspect?” the instructor said kindly. “I’m talking what happens if you walk away from here a man or woman not changed in her thought patterns by the material I’m about to present you in terms of the visuals and graphics? Which some of the things are crashes and some are working wounds I myself have personally dressed and some are wounds we downloaded off the Internet so you could have a chance to see wounds that are national? Because why? Because consequences. Because are we on this earth or an island?”

“Oh,” said the Buggin’ girl, who now seemed chastened and convinced.

Outside the tinted window were a little forest and a stream and an insurance agency and a FedEx drop-off tilted by some pipeline digging. There were six students. One was the barber. One was a country boy with a briefcase, who took laborious notes and kept asking questions with a furrowed brow, as if, having been caught speeding, he was now considering a career in law enforcement. Did radar work via sonar beams? How snotty did someone have to get before you could stun them with your stun gun? Next to the country boy was the Buggin’ girl. Next to the Buggin’ girl was a very very happy crew-cut older man in a cowboy shirt and bolo tie who laughed at everything and seemed to consider it a great privilege to be here at the Dirving School on this particular day with this particular bunch of excellent people, and who by the end of the session had proposed holding a monthly barbecue at his place so they wouldn’t lose touch. Across the table from the Happy Man was a white-haired woman about the barber’s age, who kept making sly references to films and books the barber had never heard of and rolling her eyes at things the instructor said, while writing Help Me! and Beam Me Up! on her notepad and shoving it across the table for the Happy Man to read, which seemed to make the Happy Man uncomfortable.