George Saunders - CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - Stories and a Novella

At the eighth of the nine display cases explaining about diesels my knees give out and I sit down next to an empty popcorn box on a marble bench. At my age, every time you sit down you fall asleep. When I wake up Mitzi’s taking a photograph of me supine. She’s Mr. Spencer’s young tart. For months she’s been shopping around for a doctor willing to surgically lengthen her legs. Mr. Spencer never asks her to clean vomit. He never asks her to do anything but you-know-what in a bunk in the captured Nazi sub.

She says: When Matt sees this shot he’ll take you down to four an hour so fast it’ll make your head spin.

Then she goes off, practicing a sexy way of walking.

I picture her hanging on the meathook Bud and company kept in their gangster clubhouse, then proceed down to The Wonder That Is Our Body.

The Pickled Babies range in age from two weeks to full term. They float in green fluid in jars with black lids. Often in the Louis Pasteur Memorial Break Room we speculate on how they were obtained. I’m certain Dr. Cardilla would have had my stillborns disposed of in a Christian manner. Don’t think I haven’t closely inspected the face of the full-term. That poor fellow barely fits in his jar and the lid has made a flat place in his head but he looks nothing like me and nothing like Bud. How I remember Bud paying off Dr. Cardilla so I could hold each of them a few minutes longer. For all his horrible faults Bud made good money. He made good money doing odd jobs for the frightening Quinn brothers, such as killing a Chinese on our back lawn. I was making dinner when I witnessed that. When Bud fell asleep I snuck outside and looked at that poor Chinese in the moonlight. One leg was pulled up and his hands were in fists. The next morning when I went out to cut lilacs he was gone. I believe Tom Quinn took him away in his milk truck.

Of course not a cent of Bud’s money is left, because I was bilked by a nice boy claiming to be a Mormon. He’d certainly done his homework by studying the Charleston. We danced it for hours. He was no more Mormon than the man in the moon. What a fool I was. He brought his children over and I made them cookies shaped like their hands, using wax paper and a color crayon. I gave him my savings and for several months he sent me photos of a ski resort he said we owned together, and then he sent me one last photo, of himself naked atop a young woman in a steam-bath. That I feel was the cruelest part. That and a very filthy letter.

He seemed so nice.

As I approach the Babies I see that the vomit is the least of my worries. Six Months, Eleven Days has been knocked from his shelf. His jar is broken and a stream of formaldehyde is running towards the escalator.

Mr. Spencer comes around the corner with a Trustee and at the top of his lungs demands to know why I’m not wearing protective gloves. For a second I think he’s being considerate of my health but then he explains to the Trustee that oil from my hands will discolor the baby and require its replacement.

Then he says: Sometimes I think I should insist on an age cut-off, this is like working with human vegetables.

They walk off and I think: All right for you buster.

I do what I can for that poor little dead child, then stop by my locker for the rat poison and proceed to Our Nation’s Bounty to send another see-through cow to God.

Our Nation’s Bounty is a far cry from a meadow. I was once a farm girl myself. When Father came in smelling of compost my sisters and I would run for the closet. He would either beat us or stroke us excessively. Still, when he died I was sad. Our Nation’s Bounty has a barn façade and a few real tractors and a stuffed farmer but they’ve located it next to Riches from the Bowels of the Earth and in my opinion cows aren’t stupid. What I mean is to say is, certainly they are stupid, but they have sound enough instincts to know that a functioning scaled-down coal mine with collegiate tour guides in hard hats is not part of any farm.

The cow looks up at me kindly as I come in.

I kneel down and pretend to Windex her panel. Inside there’s plenty of activity. The idea was to provide school-children insight into the digestive process of a large mammal. They claim the dyes aren’t toxic. I would think however that the flesh/Plexiglas junction must be a source of constant irritation. But compassion is not why I’ve killed six to date. I’ve killed them because I like to make Mr. Spencer sad. Because of me he’s pinned down in Cleaning, and Curation is out of the question. Because of me the see-through cow is a boondoggle and a white elephant and Spencer is a laughingstock.

It feels good to finally be asserting oneself.

They must put artificial flavoring in the rat poison because every cow so far has gulped it down like candy. This one does too, while whipping around its tan tail. She swallows the last of the batch, then turns her head towards the geodesic dome and begins foaming at the mouth.

As fast as I can, which I admit isn’t very fast, I race down to the basement and take my break.

Within the hour Mr. O’Connell the cow contractor comes in with his briefcase, looking glad. Whenever a new cow comes in, he drives it through downtown in a pickup. Lawyers and businessmen sprint down the curb, shouting sayings at it. The cows arrive disoriented and nervous, then go in for surgery.

As he walks past he admits to no one in particular that for him the last few months have been salad days. Then he joins Mr. Spencer and they take the transparent elevator alongside the Foucault Pendulum up to where the cow is by now I would imagine lying with stiff legs. Mr. Spencer is pounding his fist into his palm and saying he suspects sabotage and Mr. O’Connell is trying hard not to look jubilant.

I start to worry. I go down to the Fairy Castle. It’s time for the daily blizzard. Two young black men climb into the rafters to refill the bags, and the snow starts to fall. It’s so restful and nice until Mr. Spencer comes in with all nine Trustees. He holds out my last pack of poison and asks how could I, then he hastens to add that locker spot-checks are fully legal.

He takes me by the collar and marches me out to the front door, through Photos to Bring Back Memories of a Lifetime and the Gallery of Astounding Communications. All along the way the Trustees talk in low tones about senility. We pass Mr. Jorgsen, who salutes me and starts singing the “Marseillaise.” Beneath the Flags of All Nations Mr. Spencer calls me a criminal and shoves me roughly out into the cold, and will not even allow me to fetch my coat. I walk down the umpteen stairs, my knees burning like hot coals. My ankles hurt and my piles hurt and the wind from the lake is stinging my cataracts. From the revolving door Mr. Spencer shouts that he hopes God will forgive me, and the Trustees applaud him.

In the plain blue day is my city, the city where I lived, the city that, in my own fashion, I loved. I remember when it was made entirely of wood, and men sold goods from carts, and this museum was a floodplain where we all picnicked.

I dodder shivering out along the cold cold pier, surrounded by staring Navy boys. The air smells of their hair tonic, and golden dead fish are bobbing in huge numbers against the chicken wire. I think of how lovely it all could have been had anything gone right, and then I think: Oh heavens, why prolong it, I’ve no income now.

I step off the pier, followed by nine or ten of the Navy boys, who want to save me, and do, and will not stop saving me although I beg and beg and beg. They deposit me on the frozen sand and cover me with their coats, and walk around patting each other on the back and shouting with triumph.

One has a radio and they begin to dance.

Tonight at last the nation votes. In defiance of top management Father Oswald’s set up his shortwave in the Rec Center. He says no matter how the vote turns out we’ve got to buck up. He says no matter what happens we’ve been blessed. Though it’s true, he admits, that our burdens are considerable crosses to bear, we still get three squares a day, not to mention a nice chunk of change to take home and mull over in the privacy and security of a bunkhouse for which we pay zippo rent.