George Saunders: Pastoralia

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” he said, and went outside and sat in his car, and when she came out with two Cokes pretended to be cleaning the ashtrays until she went away.

3.

Later that month the barber sat stiffly at a wedding reception at the edge of a kind of mock Japanese tearoom at the Hilton while some goofball inside a full-body PuppetPlayers groom costume, complete with top hat and tails and a huge yellow felt head and three-fingered yellow felt hands, made vulgar thrusting motions with his hips in the barber’s direction, as if to say: Do you like to do this? Have you done this? Can you show me how to do this, because soon I’m going to have to do this with that Puppet-Players bride over there who is right now flirting — hey! — flirting with that bass player! and the PuppetPlayers groom sprinted across the dance floor and began romping pugilistically around the bass player who’d been trying to cuckold him. Everyone was laughing and giving the barber inexplicable thumbs-ups as the PuppetPlayers groom dragged the PuppetPlayers bride across the dance floor and introduced her to the barber, and she appeared to be very taken with him, and sat on his lap and forced his head into her yellow felt cleavage, which was stained with wine and had a cigarette burn at the neckline. With many gestures she bade the barber look under her skirts, and overcome with embarrassment he did so, eventually finding a wrapped box which, when opened, revealed a wrapped cylinder which, when opened, shot a banner across the dance floor, and on the banner was written: BEST O’ LUCK ARNIE & EVELYN FROM MOM AND POP. The PuppetPlayers newlyweds sprinted across the room and bowed low before Arnie and Evelyn, who were sitting sullenly on the bandstand, apparently in the middle of a snit.

“Mickey!” Uncle Edgar shouted to the barber. “Mickey, you should’ve boffed that puppet broad! So what if she’s a puppet! You’re no prize! You’re going to be choosy? Think of it! Think of it! Arnie’s half your age!”

“Edgar for Christ’s sake you’re embarrassing him!” shouted Aunt Jean. “It’s like you’re saying he’s old! It’s like you’re saying he’s an old maid, only he’s a guy! See what I mean? You think that’s nice?”

“I am!” shouted Uncle Edgar, “I am saying that! He’s a damned old lady! I don’t mean no offense! I’m just saying get out and live! I love him! That’s why I’m saying! The sun’s setting! Pork some young babe, and if you like it, if you like the way she porks, what the hell, put down roots! What do you care? Love you can learn! But you gotta start somewhere! I mean my God, even these little so-and-sos here are trying to get some of it!”

And Uncle Edgar threw a dinner roll at a group of four adolescent boys the barber vaguely remembered having once pulled around the block in a little red wagon. The boys gave Uncle Edgar the finger and confirmed that not only were they trying to get some of it, they were actually getting some of it, and not always from the same chick, and sometimes more than once a day, and sometimes right after football practice, and quite possibly in the near future from a very hot Shop teacher they had reason to believe would probably give it to all of them at once if only they approached it the right way.

“Holy cow!” shouted Uncle Edgar. “Let me go to that school!”

“Edgar, you pig, be logical!” shouted Aunt Jean. “Just because Mickey’s not married don’t mean he ain’t getting any! He could be getting some from a lady friend, or several lady friends, lady friends his own age, who already know the score, whose kids are full-grown! You don’t know what goes on in his bed at night!”

“At least I don’t think he’s queer!” Uncle Edgar shouted to the adolescents the barber now remembered having loaded sleeping into a minivan on the evening of the day, years before, when he’d pulled them in the red wagon.

“If he is we don’t give a rat’s ass,” said one of the adolescents. “That’s his business.”

“We learned that in school,” said another. “Who You Do Is Up to You. We had a mini-session.”

Now the PuppetPlayers groom was trying to remove the real bride’s garter, and some little suited boys were walking a ledge along a goldfish stream that separated the Wedding Area from Okinawa Memories, where several clearly non-Japanese women in kimonos hustled drinks, sounding a huge metal gong whenever anyone ordered a double, at which time a bartender dressed like a sumo sent a plastic sparrow across the room on a guy wire. The little suited boys began prying up the screen that kept the goldfish from going over a tiny waterfall, to see if they would die in a shallow pond near the Vending Area.

“For example those kids torturing those fish,” shouted Uncle Edgar. “You know who those kids are? Them are Brendan’s kids. You know who Brendan is? He’s Dick’s kid. You remember who Dick is? Your second cousin the same age as you, man! Remember I took you guys to the ball-game and he threw up in my Rambler? So them kids are Dick’s grandkids and here Dick’s the same age as you, which means you’re old enough to be a grandpa, grandpa, but you ain’t even a pa yet, which I don’t know how you feel about it but I think is sort of sad or weird!”

“You do but maybe he don’t!” shouted Aunt Jean. “Why do you think everything you think is everything everybody else thinks? Plus Dick’s no saint and neither are those kids! Dick was a teen dad and Brendan was a teen dad and probably those kids on that ledge are going to be teen dads as soon as they finish killing those poor fish!”

“Agreed!” shouted Uncle Edgar. “Hey, I got no abiding love for Dick! You want to have a fight with me at a wedding over my feelings for Dick, who throwing up in my Rambler was just the start of the crap he’s pulled on me? All’s I’m saying is, there’s no danger of Mickey here being a teen dad, and he better think about what I’m saying and get on the stick before his shooter ain’t a viable shooter anymore!”

“I’m sure you start talking about the poor guy’s shooter at a wedding!” shouted Aunt Jean. “You’re drunk!”

“Who ain’t?” shouted Uncle Edgar, and the table exploded in laughter and one of the adolescents fell mock-drunk off his chair and when this got a laugh all the other adolescents fell mock-drunk off their chairs.

The barber excused himself and walked quickly out of the Wedding Area past three stunning girls in low-cut white gowns, who stood in what would have been shade from the fake overhanging Japanese cherry trees had the trees been outside and had it been daytime.

In the bathroom the Oriental theme receded and all was shiny chrome. The barber peed, mentally defending himself against Uncle Edgar. First off, he’d had plenty of women. Five. Five wasn’t bad. Five was more than most guys, and for sure it was more than Uncle Edgar, who’d married Jean right out of high school and had a lower lip like a fish. Who would Uncle Edgar have had him marry? Sara DelBianco, with her little red face? Ellen Wiest, that tall drink of water? Ann DeMann, who was swaybacked and had claimed he was a bad screw? Why in the world was he, a successful small businessman, expected to take advice from someone who’d spent the best years of his life transferring partial flanges from one conveyor belt to another while spraying them with a protective solvent mist? Uncle Edgar could take a flying leap, that drunk, why didn’t he mind his own beeswax and spray himself with a protective solvent mist and leave the ambitious entrepreneurs of the world alone, the lush?

The barber wet his comb the way he’d been wetting his comb since high school and prepared to slick back his hair. A big vital man with a sweaty face came in and whacked the barber on the back as if they were old pals. In the mirror was a skeletal mask of blue and purple and pink that the barber knew was his face but couldn’t quite believe was his face, because in the past his face had always risen to the occasion. In the past his face could always be counted on to amount to more than the sum of its parts when he smiled winningly, but now when he smiled winningly he looked like a corpse trying to appear cheerful in a wind tunnel. His eyes bulged, his lips were thin, his forehead wrinkles were deep as sticklines in mud. It had to be the lighting. He was ugly. He was old. How had this happened? Who would want him now?