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

I drive home at lunch and pick the boys up for trick-or-treating. Marcus is a rancher and Howie’s an accountant. He’s wearing thick fake lips and carrying a ledger. The Park’s the only safe place to trick-or-treat anymore. Last year some wacko in a complex near our house laced his Snickers with a virus. I drove by the school and they were CPRing this little girl in a canary suit. So forget it.

I take them around to the various Structures and they pick up their share of saltwater taffy and hard tasteless frontier candy and wooden whistles and toy soldiers made of soap.

Then just as we start across the Timeless Green a mob of teens bursts out of the Feinstein Memorial Conifer Grove.

“Gangs!” I yell to the boys. “Get down!”

I hear a shot and look up and there’s Samuel standing on a stump at tree line. Thank God, I think. He lets loose another round and one of the teens drops. Marcus is down beside me whimpering with his nose in my armpit. Howie’s always been the slow one. He stands there with his mouth open, one hand in his plastic pumpkin. A second teen drops. Then Howie drops and his pumpkin goes flying.

I crawl over and beg him to be okay. He says there’s no pain. I check him over and check him over and all that’s wrong is his ledger’s been shot. I’m so relieved I kiss him on the mouth and he yells at me to quit.

Samuel drops a third teen, then runs yipping into the woods.

The ambulance shows up and the paramedics load up the wounded teens. They’re all still alive and one’s saying a rosary. I take the boys to City Hall and confront Mr. A. I tell him I’m turning Sam in. He asks if I’ve gone daft and suggests I try putting food on the table from a jail cell while convicts stand in line waiting to have their way with my rear.

At this point I send the boys out to the foyer.

“He shot Howie,” I say. “I want him put away.”

“He shot Howie’s ledger,” Mr. A says. “He shot Howie’s ledger in the process of saving Howie’s life. But whatever. Let’s not mince hairs. If Sam gets put away, we get put away. Does that sound to you like a desirable experience?”

“No,” I say.

“What I’m primarily saying,” he says, “is that this is a time for knowledge assimilation, not backstabbing. We learned a lesson, you and I. We personally grew. Gratitude for this growth is an appropriate response. Gratitude, and being careful never to make the same mistake twice.”

He gets out a Bible and says let’s swear on it that we’ll never hire a crazed maniac to perform an important security function again. Then the phone rings. Sylvia’s cross-referenced today’s Admissions data and found that the teens weren’t a gang at all but a bird-watching group who made the mistake of being male and adolescent and wandering too far off the trail.

“Ouch,” Mr. A says. “This could be a serious negative.”

In the foyer the kids are trying to get the loaches in the corporate tank to eat bits of Styrofoam. I phone Evelyn and tell her what happened and she calls me a butcher. She wants to know how on earth I could bring the boys to the Park knowing what I knew. She says she doesn’t see how I’m going to live with myself in light of how much they trusted and loved me and how badly I let them down by leaving their fates to chance.

I say I’m sorry and she seems to be thinking. Then she tells me just get them home without putting them in further jeopardy assuming that’s within the scope of my mental powers.

At home she puts them in the tub and sends me out for pizza. I opt for Melvin’s Pasta Lair. Melvin’s a religious zealot who during the Depression worked five jobs at once. Sometimes I tell him my troubles and he says I should stop whining and count my blessings. Tonight I tell him I feel I should take some responsibility for eliminating the Samuel problem but I’m hesitant because of the discrepancy in our relative experience in violence. He says you mean you’re scared. I say not scared, just aware of the likelihood of the possibility of failure. He gives me a look. I say it must have been great to grow up when men were men. He says men have always been what they are now, namely incapable of coping with life without the intervention of God the Almighty. Then in the oven behind him my pizza starts smoking and he says case in point.

He makes me another and urges me to get in touch with my Lord personally. I tell him I will. I always tell him I will.

When I get home they’re gone.

Evelyn’s note says: I could never forgive you for putting our sons at risk. Goodbye forever, you passive flake. Don’t try to find us. I’ve told the kids you sent us away in order to marry a floozy.

Like an idiot I run out to the street. Mrs. Schmidt is prodding her automatic sprinkler system with a rake, trying to detect leaks in advance. She asks how I am and I tell her not now. I sit on the lawn. The stars are very near. The phone rings. I run inside prepared to grovel, but it’s only Mr. A. He says come down to the Park immediately because he’s got big horrific news.

When I get there he’s sitting in his office half-crocked. He tells me we’re unemployed. The investors have gotten wind of the bird-watcher shootings and withdrawn all support. The Park is no more. I tell him about Evelyn and the kids. He says that’s the least of his worries because he’s got crushing debt. He asks if I have any savings he could have. I say no. He says that just for the record and my own personal development, he’s always found me dull and has kept me around primarily for my yes-man capabilities and because sometimes I’m so cautious I’m a hoot.

Then he says: Look, get your ass out, I’m torching this shithole for insurance purposes.

I want to hit or at least insult him, but I need this week’s pay to find my kids. So I jog off through the Park. In front of Information Hoedown I see the McKinnons cavorting. I get closer and see that they’re not cavorting at all, they’ve inadvertently wandered too close to their actual death site and are being compelled to act out again and again the last minutes of their lives. The girls are lying side by side on the ground and the Mr. is whacking at them with an invisible scythe. The Mrs. is belly-up with one arm flailing in what must have been the parlor. The shrieking is mind-boggling. When he’s killed everyone the Mr. walks out to his former field and mimes blowing out his brains. Then he gets up and starts over. It goes on and on, through five cycles. Finally he sits down in the dirt and starts weeping. The Mrs. and the girls backpedal away. He gets up and follows them, pitifully trying to explain.

Behind us the Visitor Center erupts in flames.

The McKinnons go off down the hill, passing through bushes and trees. He’s shouting for forgiveness. He’s shouting that he’s just a man. He’s shouting that hatred and war made him nuts. I start running down the hill agreeing with him. The Mrs. gives me a look and puts her hands over Maribeth’s ears. We’re all running. The Mrs. starts screaming about the feel of the scythe as it opened her up. The girls bemoan their unborn kids. We make quite a group. Since I’m still alive I keep clipping trees with my shoulders and falling down.

At the bottom of the hill they pass through the retaining wall and I run into it. I wake up on my back in the culvert. Blood’s running out of my ears and a transparent boy’s kneeling over me. I can tell he’s no McKinnon because he’s wearing sweatpants.

“Get up now,” he says in a gentle voice. “Fire’s coming.”

“No,” I say. “I’m through. I’m done living.”

“I don’t think so,” he says. “You’ve got amends to make.”

“I screwed up,” I say. “I did bad things.”

“No joke,” he says, and holds up his stump.