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

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I got to do it. You was smart enough to put some food aside. Anybody that smart’ll be okay. Now get out. I got to go save my boy.”

We got out. The van pulled away. Mom went into hysterics. She bent over double and started snorting. Whenever Dad got near her she elbowed him in the gut and said his ineptitude had killed us all.

“How dare you say that?” Dad said. “How dare you lose faith in me at a time like this?”

“Lose faith?” Mom screamed. “I’ve had none for months. Look at your poor children. They’re as good as dead. Picture our babies in shrouds. Because of incompetence. Yours. Their father. Whom they’ve always looked up to.”

“Stop,” Dad said. “You can’t take those things back once you’ve said them.”

“Come on kids,” Mom said. “I’ll save you if this milquetoast won’t.”

And off we went.

“Goddamn it!” Dad screamed. “I’ve done my best!”

“Pitiful!” Mom screamed back.

Her words were lost in the wind. Hanging signs were blowing horizontal. Mom dragged us up University. Dad stood talking to himself in Sid’s lot.

“Look!” Mom screamed. “Look how he lets us leave!”

She stepped into the street and put out her thumb. A couple we would get to know well picked us up. These were the Winstons, also on their way west. It was perfect. They loved kids. They were glad to be of service. They had plenty of money. Winston was a banker who’d kept his ear to the tracks and split in the nick of time with a trunkful of other people’s money.

“Do you not have a father?” he asked.

“We do not,” Mom replied.

Just then Dad plastered himself across the windshield.

It was the beginning of a bad ride. Dad got in and Mom folded him up in her arms and they wept together. A day later the Winstons put us out in the middle of nowhere because Mom and Dad rejected the Winstons’ bright idea of a sexual foursome. I woke in the dead of night and heard Mr. Winston making the proposal.

“What I’m putting forth,” he said, “is that the four of us make some memories. Become fast friends and abandon starchy old mind-sets about monogamy. The world’s gone crazy. Let’s do the same.”

“The answer is no,” Dad said. “And I’m surprised I’m not punching you.”

“I’m afraid our hospitality is not being reciprocated, Mother,” Mr. Winston said.

“Some people don’t understand about reciprocity,” Mrs. Winston said.

“Then out now, you people,” Mr. Winston said, and hit the brakes. “End of the line.”

He too had a gun. Apparently in all the world only we didn’t.

So we got out.

“This is murder,” Dad yelled. “It’s freezing out here.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” said Mrs. Winston. “You had your chance. It would have been fun too, believe me.”

“Really fun,” said Mr. Winston. “Jeaninne’s a heckcat in the bunk department.”

We stood in the bitter wind and watched them pull away. As far as the eye could see was frozen marsh.

“Maybe we should have gone along with it,” Mom said.

“Bite your tongue,” Dad said. “There’ll be other rides.”

“Famous last words,” said Mom.

At midnight I wake to creaking floorboards in the dark bunkhouse. I hear the snores of my bunk bedmate, Phil Brent, an upbeat and effeminate swineherd ranked Class P, Visually Difficult to Bear, due to mottled tissue on his face and hands. He runs a workout program for other Class Ps and offers a miniseminar called Overcoming One’s Woes Via Hopeful Mental Imaging. He names and compliments his pigs and cries on slaughtering day. Once as I passed the Porcine Receptacle I heard him telling two sows fighting over a corncob the story of Job. Tonight he’s muttering optimistic slogans in his sleep and occasionally screaming out in abject terror.

I feel a tug on my toe and in the sudden candlelight see Doc Spanner himself, in our lowly bunkhouse for the first time ever. Spanner’s the facility doctor for Flaweds. Some people are put off by his drinking. Others are put off by his shoddy personal hygiene. I’m put off by his medical track record. Once when I found him soused in a ditch he admitted to being confused by the difference between hemorrhoids and piles. Still, he did a nice job with Connie’s tail infection.

“I can’t live with what I know,” he whispers. “Listen carefully: This Corbett’s a bad egg. When he tires of a woman he sells her to slave traders. It’s a pattern. There’ve been a number of cases. Oberlin told me. I had some deep talks with Connie at the clinic, and she struck me as a kind of a knockout and a nice girl. So I wanted you to know what she’s in for.”

“Can’t we get her back?” I say. “Can’t we just cancel the deal?”

“I expect you’d get some resistance to that from up-stairs,” he says. “Inasmuch as those turds have already spent the exit fee. My point is, someone working outside the system, exhibiting a little derring-do, motivated by strong emotions, might be able to effect a positive outcome. On the other hand, someone attempting to cross the Mississippi wearing a Flawed bracelet wouldn’t exactly be greeted with open arms, and might indeed be greeted with open shackles.”

He winces slightly at his wit, looks around, then pulls a key out of his pocket.

“My position has its little rewards,” he says. “Every Flawed bracelet in this facility is within my jurisdiction. In the case of chafing and so on I’m allowed to perform a temporary Removal and apply ointment. Mr. Big Shot, eh? For this I went to med school. At any rate, this is a service I’m prepared to offer you.”

I nod and hold out my wrist.

“Not so fast,” he says. “First I want you to go see Lucian Bentley in Hagstrom Grove. He’s recently taken sick days to visit his childhood home. He could give you an update on the state of the nation. The last thing I need is your death on my conscience. God knows I’ve got enough deaths on my conscience. Ha ha! So what do you say? Will you go see Lucian?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Super,” he says, then sighs heavily and disappears into the night.

Phil hangs his monstrous face down from above.

“I had such a dream,” he says. “I dreamed that Doc Spanner came in here sober and spoke to you as an equal. Is that wild or what? Heavens.”

“That’s wild,” I say.

At first light I take a few biscuits from my reserve and go over to Hagstrom Grove, where they send Employees who take things too much to heart and go nuts. The Grove is an untidy pen behind Administration with a dirt floor and a fifteen-foot chainlink. At mealtime they fling in sacks of black beans and let the mentally deficient slug it out. Consequently the fat loonies get fatter and the weak ones limp off to die under strips of cardboard.

I find Bentley behind a shed, wearing a filthy Hawaiian shirt and doing deep knee bends while grasping the fencing. I hold the biscuits in front of his face and he stands up.

“What do I have to do?” he says.

“Nothing,” I say. “They’re for you.”

“Are they poisoned?” he says.

“No,” I say.

“Eat one,” he says.

So I do.

“Probably the others are poisoned,” he says. “Eat a fraction of each.”

I eat a corner off each biscuit. He looks at the remainders suspiciously, then sniffs them.

“I’m not sure it’s worth it,” he says. “How I wish you’d never come. Perhaps you’ve left the poison off of just those corners.”

I begin to realize I’ll doubt whatever information he gives me.

“Lick the entire biscuit,” he says. “Then give them to me.”

So I lick each biscuit.

“Both sides,” he says.

I lick both sides of each biscuit. I give him the wet biscuits and he cracks them open and sniffs them. Then he puts them in his pocket.