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

“On the other hand,” his friend says, “if you’re now experiencing any pleasure thinking of your future Victors, that could mean you have to apply anti-Victors to your running total.”

“Shut your trap,” the cuticle puller says. “I’m not too keen on taking spiritual advice from someone who picks up cheap Victors by refusing to pee when he needs to.”

“It’s valid,” the friend says. “I looked it up. Anyway, there are no cheap Victors.”

“Says you,” says the cuticle puller. “Says you, the king of the cheap Victor. The guy who induces no pain on himself for weeks at a time, then claims Victors for worrying about being so lazy.”

“Ouch, Bryce,” the friend says. “That cuts to the quick.”

“Ha,” Bryce says to me. “Now watch him claim Victors because I hurt his feelings.”

“It’s valid,” his friend whines. “Pain is pain.”

“Here’s our ride,” Bryce says.

A kind of bandstand on wheels comes up the street, pulled by six junior Guilters on bikes.

“We’re going on a retreat,” Bryce says.

“Have fun,” I say.

“Not likely,” says Bryce.

Then they get on the bandstand and ride off around the corner.

I walk to the window of the church and take a peak. It must have been something to go into a place like that and see somebody dishing up nice warm food instead of several women sitting bare-bottomed on coarse Welcome mats, listening to a little boy playing horrible violin. Imagine ordering one of everything on the menu and not being told no. Imagine idling in the drive-through with your sweetheart while singing along with the radio. What a beautiful country this must have been once, when you could hop in a coupe and buy a bag of burgers and drive, drive, drive, stopping to swim in a river or sleep in a grove of trees without worrying about intaking mutagens or having the militia arrest you and send you to the Everglades for eternity. I can’t help but feel I was born in the wrong age. People then were giants, royalty, possessed of unimaginable largesse and unprecedented power to do good. What I wouldn’t give to be drinking a Dr Pepper while driving an Edsel and listening to Muzak on a Victrola. What I wouldn’t give to be allowed to procreate in a home of my own and toss a ball around with my offspring before heading off for a night on the town with my well-coiffed wife.

The country opens up, all dips and rises and cool shadowed blue places. Two tan dogs flee across a dam of sticks and mud. Birds swoop over and their shadows follow like quick black checkmarks. Just after three I reach the Thru way. Foot traffic predominates. Every so often some elite guy chugs by in a motor vehicle, windows rolled up tight, and people fall all over themselves to either genuflect before him or lay goobers on his windshield. Legions of the sick wait to die along the shoulder. Wandering undercover bureaucrats whip out clipboards and assess odd taxes, bridge taxes and sleep taxes and taxes for if they catch you eating weeds without permission. Any weed on public property is considered a government agricultural product. If you eat a weed you’re required to utilize a handy pre-addressed envelope to mail in your fee. The envelopes are kept in roadside racks that people keep pulling up to burn for firewood. What used to be exit signs are covered with government propaganda banners. One shows a smiling perfect blond girl flipping a burger. Sneaking up on her is a lustful hunchback wearing a Flawed bracelet.

KEEP THE AMERICAN GENE POOL PURE! the sign says.

If You Must Fuck a Flawed, Wear a Rubber, someone’s scrawled over it.

I follow a herd of thin cattle driven by armed riders who whip the little people out of the way while chanting the name of the multinational corporation that owns the cows. I watch a tyke fascinated by the cowboys. He’s so fascinated he wanders under a heifer and into the herd. His mom’s at a food stall trying to buy hardtack in bulk at a good price by agreeing with the vendor that far from being unattractive, facial moles impart character. The vendor has facial moles aplenty. The kid vanishes among the cow bellies. I wait for someone to notice but no one does. So I vault over the cows and grab the kid and vault back out.

The mother hugs my neck. A crowd gathers. The vendor tries to recoup his losses by shrieking insults at the cows.

“You’ll be steaks!” he shouts. “You’ll be steaks and I’ll gladly eat you, if you ever try to harm a human boy again! Hear me, fatties?”

“A man of courage,” the mother sobs, “who risked his all to save my Len.”

“Forget it,” I say. It’s embarrassing. People are gaping. A smartly dressed stout man comes over and takes my hand.

“In these times, strange times that they are,” he says, “seeing someone do something that’s not patently selfish and fucked-up is like a breath of fresh air, good clean fresh air, not that any one of us would know good clean fresh air if a vial of it swooped down and bit us on the ass! Haw haw!”

Pretty soon the whole crowd’s laughing. He hands out shiny quarters and confidently tweaks chins. He puts a big white arm around my shoulder.

“Life has been kind to me,” he says. “So very kind. Damned kind. When I was about your age, I had an idea. I thought: These hard times have taken the wind out of our collective sails. People live like pigs. Time for a dash of luxury. And do you know what I did?”

“No,” I say.

“I built mud huts for minimum wage for five grueling years,” he says. “Ate bread crusts and never had an alcoholic beverage or a minute of relaxation. I worked every minute of overtime I could, cautiously saving my wages. Then do you know what I did?”

“No,” I say.

“Just outside Erie, Pennsylvania, I built the most ass-kicking clean-air geodesic dome you’ve ever seen, and spent my last dime on rich soil and some ash saplings. Are you following me? Of course not, no offense, because that was my moment in the sun, the instantaneous showing-out of my genius, not yours. And the culmination? Do you know it, the culmination?”

“No,” I say.

“GlamorDivans,” he says. “A difficult period while my ashes came to maturity. Then whammo, Sector A gets buzz-sawed, my special team of overpaid but brilliant carpenters swoops in, and before long, do you know what occupied the center of my warehouse under a special spotlight?”

“No,” I say.

“Six damn GlamorDivans,” he says. “Were their cushions specially handsewn by an incredibly talented seamstress I found in a rinky-dink tailor shop in Milwaukee? Yes. Did the ash shine under my spotlight like something from an earlier and more sane age? You bet. Did I tromp my ass off to identify loaded potential buyers? Yes yes yes. Did I own a car? Nope. Did I walk over five hundred miles and ultimately succeed in selling all six and buying a whole other load of ash saplings et cetera until I was the loaded and very happy man you see before you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Yes!” he says. “I thank God every day for the saga he gave me to live out. And now I say to you, because of the courage you manifested in saving that nameless little brat: Want aboard? Want to change your life forever and for better? Want to be part of the GlamorDivan Team and earn five hundred dollars a month?”

At the facility I made fifty a month and was the envy of every dispossessed who stood outside the retaining wall gaping up and swearing.

“I’ll take that involuntary exhalation as an enthusiastic yes,” he says.

I stand there nodding my head with my eyes watering.

“Here’s the situation,” he says. “I blame love for my woes. Not my love, but a barge guider’s. Over seventy GlamorDivans, bought and paid for, hang in the proverbial lurch because my pal Sid, whom I literally dragged out of the gutter, has met the woman of his dreams and suddenly loathes travel. That’s neither here nor there. What’s here is, some of Buffalo’s wealthiest are sitting around in their parlors even as we now speak, thinking: I hope old Blay didn’t screw me out of four thousand bucks. And with each passing moment my name’s sinking deeper into the muck, because buddy, I’ve already cashed the checks. It’s routine. It’s a cash-flow thing. Totally aboveboard. But all the same. My not-thin ass is in a sling, not that it hasn’t been there a million times before in this catch-as-catch-can line of work, but at any rate my question to you is: Do you have a hankering to see Buffalo or make me very happy or accrue some serious money real quick? If yes to any of the above, it’s on the scooter with you and let’s see you use some of that coolheadedness and courage to make us some loot. Ha ha! Life is good!”