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

“What do you want?” he says. “Now that you’ve failed to poison me to death.”

“Information,” I say. “About the outside.”

He glares and grips my wrist. He licks his lips and bats his eyes and tugs on his earlobes. He keeps looking behind him. The only thing back there is Mr. Cleary, the nutso tenor, who as usual is singing the national anthem while frantically adjusting his testicles.

“I don’t know you,” Bentley says, “but you’ve given me biscuits. So I’ll tell you the truth. It’s beautiful and wild and not worth the risk. Strong and crazy people prevail. Some of them strapped me to a U-Haul and made use of me. If you get my meaning. And me a grandfather. My sin? None. Walking along the road. This crew had taken control of a bridge. Left me in the sun for a fortnight until some missionaries unstrapped me and applied salve. Consequently I’ve got no zest left. Listen: Don’t budge from here. Learn to enjoy what little you have. Revel in the fact that your dignity hasn’t yet been stripped away. Every minute that you’re not in absolute misery you should be weeping with gratitude and thanking God at the top of your lungs.”

“Don’t believe him,” Cleary sings from behind us. “He is a liar out to confuse you. Ours is the finest nation on earth, filled with good-hearted lovers-of-life. I was out there fifteen years ago and found the rivers beautiful. At night the howling of dogs could be heard along the banks of crystalline rivers. I was young then, and in spite of my Flaw, Normal women snuck me in their back doors. Late at night they willingly showed me where on their bodies their moles were. They cooked me delicious meals and raked my back in bliss. The world was mine. The freedom made me dizzy. I’d go back in a heartbeat if I wasn’t so sickly. My advice to you is: Taste the sweetness of the world. Leave this death trap, get out and live!”

Meanwhile Bentley’s pulled a sheet of cardboard over his legs and is performing some additional sniffing of the biscuits. Obviously I’m going to have to decide for myself. How can you take the word of a man with biscuit crumbs under his nose and a habit of walking around holding his hand over his anus for fear of violation?

But it’s really no decision. You grow up sleeping a few feet from someone, you see her little Catholic jumpers crumpled up in the corner, hear her wheezing with croup, huddle with her in the closet playing Bend the Hanger, and then you’re supposed to sit idly by while she’s sold into slavery?

I find Doc Spanner drinking for free at a Drawbridge Fete. I hide behind a Peasant Hut and step out as he stumbles by. He makes an odd sound in the back of his throat and lurches into a hay bale.

“Holy crap!” he says. “Scared the snot out of me. I’ve had a few snorts. Thank God. But good sneaking. If you set out to do what I think you’re going to set out to do, you’ll need to be good at sneaking. Are you? Are you going to set out to do what I think you’re going to set out to do? I see by your eyes that the answer is yes! You swashbuckler! Have you ever got panache and verve and moxie! Exciting. I only wish my sister was a renegade whore about to be sold into slavery. You’ve talked to Bentley? Your mind’s at ease?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m ready.”

“Ah, youth!” he says, then removes my bracelet and hands me a prescription form with directions to Corbett’s Taos estate written on the back.

“Kindly keep quiet vis-à-vis your source,” he says. “If not, I may find myself Expelled and forced to care for the hateful rabble gratis in some real-world clinic. Yikes, would that ever bite! Best of luck, pal. Keep your head down. Don’t write me any letters or I might get nailed.”

Then he stumbles away and joins a group of Clients dropping bits of cheese down the mouthhole of a suit of armor being worn by the hapless Arnie Metz.

For the first time in twenty years I can see my entire forearm.

I go to the bunkhouse and put some bread crusts in a knapsack. I say goodbye to my bunk and shelving. Then I go out to the guardstation and climb up. What to do? Actually leave? Sacrifice my personal safety, my frame of reference, my few marginal friends, my job, my daily bread, my security, a lifetime of memories? My knees are shaking. I feel like throwing up, then hightailing it back to the bunkhouse for a nice bowl of black bean and my evening toot.

I think of Connie in shackles.

Then I jump.

And I’m free.

The stars jar as I sprint down the hill. Soon I’m down-wind of the tent-town stink and can hear their domestic disputes and their brats screaming in poor grammar. I’m not ten feet from their barbed wire when a few young toughs recognize my khaki as corporate issue and wrangle me down to the ground while giving me a ribbing about health care benefits and the amount of time I’ve spent in conference rooms.

I don’t fight back. Assuming they don’t kill me first, they’ll catch hell from Mayor John Garibasi. Last summer when his daughter got married I took a huge risk by stealing a cake from Baked Goods and lowering it to him on an ad hoc dumbwaiter. Unfortunately Garibasi’s nowhere to be seen, so for several minutes my face is down in the dirt. The toughs remove my clothes and appropriate them for their own use. They let me up and examine the cloth. I sit there gasping in my skivvies while some dispossessed women stand around gawking and critiquing my upper thighs.

“I want to talk to the mayor,” I say in a shaky voice.

“You and what army?” says one of the toughs.

“Yeah,” says another. “If we let everyone see the mayor who came here wanting to see the mayor, we’d have a whole lot of people seeing the mayor.”

“And that wouldn’t be good,” says a third. “Because then the mayor would always be seeing someone. And besides, you’re obviously a softie with bad motives. Or some kind of like spy guy.”

Finally Garibasi shows up, wearing a threadbare blazer and carrying a surveying rod.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he shouts at the toughs. “What the hell? How’d he get all bloody and naked like that?”

“We beat him up and stripped him,” says one of the toughs.

“You ignorant pigs. No wonder you’re not the fucking mayor,” Garibasi says. “This is the guy who got Heather her wedding cake.”

Talk about an awkward silence. Talk about a bunch of strapping lads blushing and hurriedly giving me my pants back, then retreating to their tents. Garibasi apologizes profusely. I get dressed.

“So what brings you out with us disgustos?” he says. “You taking vacation?”

“No,” I say. “I quit.”

“You quit that cushy gig?” he says. “You must have a screw loose. They taking applications? Ha ha! So what do you want? A little money? Food? What?”

“Whatever you can do,” I say.

“Tell you the truth,” he says, “I can’t do much. I got to think economy of scale. I got to think: What can you do for me? Fact is, nothing anymore. You got no inside connections now. Basically you’re a nobody. No offense. The cake thing, that was great. But that’s past. We’re not rich here. We’re fucking poor. You know that. You had it good for a long time. You could look out and see us struggling. But now you’re just like us. No pot to piss in. Hand-to-mouth. Wolf-at-the-door and so on. So all’s I can give you at this point is a handshake and a good-luck kick in the ass. And a bed for a week or so. A bed in a leaky tent. A tent we were going to throw out anyway.” Then he stops and looks at my wrist.

“Whoa up though,” he says. “I don’t see no bracelet, so I’m assuming you’re Normal?”

“Well,” I say. “Not exactly.”

“Christ!” he says. “I been standing here talking to a goddamned Flawed as if he had a lick of sense. Offer withdrawn. Get your infectious ass out of here and hit the road. Now. Jesus. Disgusting.”