Джордж Сондерс - CommComm

I tell myself, If I’d been home, I’d be dead, too. The Latvians had guns. They came in quick, on crack, so whacked out they forgot to even steal anything.

Still. Mom’s sciatica was acting up. She’d just had two teeth pulled. At the end, on the steps, on her back, she kept calling my name, as in, Where is he? Did they get him too? Next day, on the landing, I found the little cotton swab the dentist had left in her mouth.

So if they want me home right after work I’m home right after work.

They’re standing at the kitchen window, looking out at the old ballbearing plant. All my childhood, discarded imperfect ball bearings rolled down the hill into our yard. When the plant closed, a lathe came sliding down, like a foot a day, until it hit an oak.

“Snowing like a mother,” Dad says.

“Pretty, but we can’t go out,” says Mom.

“Too old, I guess,” Dad says sadly.

“Or something,” says Mom.

I set three places. They spend the whole dinner, as usual, trying to pick up their forks. Afterward they crowd under the floor lamp, the best part of their night. When they stand in direct heat, it doesn’t make them warmer, just makes them vividly remember their childhoods.

“Smell of melted caramel,” Mom says.

“The way I felt first time I seen a Dodger uniform in color,” says Dad.

Dad asks me to turn up the dimmer. I do, and the info starts coming too fast for grammar.

“Working with beets purple hands Mother finds that funny,” says Mom.

“Noting my boner against ticking car, Mr. Klemm gives look of you-are-rubbing-your-boner, mixed sense of shame/pride, rained so hard flooded gutters, rat wound up in the dog bowl,” says Dad.

They step out of the light, shake it off.

“He’s always talking about boners,” says Mom.

“Having a boner is a great privilege,” says Dad.

“You had your share,” says Mom.

“I should say so,” says Dad. “And will continue to, I hope, until the day I die.”

Having said “die,” Dad blinks. Whenever we see a murder on TV, they cover their eyes. Whenever a car backfires, I have to coax them out from under the couch. Once a bird died on the sill and they spent the entire day in the pantry.

“Until the day you die,” Mom says, as if trying to figure out what the words mean.

Before they can ask any questions, I go outside and shovel.

From all over town comes the sound of snowplows, the scraping plus the beeping they do when reversing. The moon’s up, full, with halo. My phone rings in my parka pocket.

“We have a situation,” Rimney says. “Can you step outside?”

“I am outside,” I say.

“Oh, there you are,” he says.

The special van’s coming slowly up the street.

“New plan,” he says, still on the phone, parking now. “What’s done is done. We can save the Dirksen or lose it. Minimize the damage or maximize.”

He gets out, leads me around to the sliding door.

You didn’t, I think. You did not dig those poor guys up again. Does he think Historical is stupid? Does he think Historical, getting a report of mummies, finding only a recently filled hole, is going to think, Oh, Giff, very funny, you crack us up?

“Not the mummies,” I say.

“I wish,” he says, and throws open the door.

Lying there is Giff, fingers clenched like he’s trying to cling to a ledge, poor pink glasses hanging off one ear.

I take a step back, trip on the curb, sit in a drift.

“We took a walk, things got out of hand,” he says. “Shit, shit, shit. I tried to reason with him, but he started giving me all his Christian crap. Something snapped, honestly. It just got away from me. You’ve probably had that happen?”

“You killed him?” I say.

“An unfortunate thing transpired, after which he died, yes,” Rimney says.

Thrown in there with Giff is a big rock, partly wrapped in bloody paper towels.

I ask did he call the police. He says if he planned on calling the police, would he have thrown Giff in back of the freaking van? He says we’ve got to think pragmatic. He did it, he fucked up, he knows that. He’ll be paying for it the rest of his life, but no way is Val paying for it. If he goes to jail, what happens to Val? A state home? No, no, no, he says. Dead is dead, he can’t change that. Why kill Val as well?

“What do we do with this guy?” he says. “Think, think.”

“We?” I say. “You.”

“Oh God, oh shit,” he says. “I can’t believe I killed somebody. Me, I did it. Jesus, wow. O.K. O.K.”

Snow’s blowing in over Giff, melting on his glasses, clumping up between his pants and bare leg.

“You know Val, you like Val, right?” Rimney says.

I do like Val. I remember her at Mom and Dad’s funeral, in her wheelchair. She had Rimney lift one of her hands to my arm, did this sad little pat pat pat.

“Because here’s the thing,” Rimney says. “Dirksen-wise? You’re all set. I submitted my rec. It’s in the system. Right? Why not take it? Prosper, get a little something for yourself, find a wife, make some babies. The world’s shit on you enough, right? You did not do this, I did. I shouldn’t have come here. How about pretend I didn’t?”

I stand up, start to do a Moral Benefit Eval, then think, No, no way, do not even think about doing that stupid shit now.

The bandage on Giff’s underchin flips up, showing his shaving scar.

“Because who was he?” says Rimney. “Who was he really? Was he worth a Val? Was he even a person? He, to me, was just a dumb-idea factory. That’s it.”

Poor Giff, I think. Poor Giff’s wife, poor Giff’s baby.

Poor Val.

Poor everybody.

“Don’t fuck me on this,” Rimney says. “Are you going to fuck me on this? You are, aren’t you? Fine. Fine, then.”

He turns away, slams the van door shut, emits this weird little throat-sound, like he can’t live with what he’s done and would like to end it all, only can’t, because ending it all would make him even more of a shit.

“I feel I’m in a nightmare,” he says.

Then he crashes the Giff-rock into my head. I can’t believe it. Down I go. He swung so hard he’s sitting down too. For a second we both sit there, like playing cards or something. I push off against his face, crawl across the yard, get inside, bolt the door.

“I don’t like that,” says Dad, all frantic. “I did not like seeing that.”

“People should not,” Mom says. “That is not a proper way.”

When terrified, they do this thing where they flicker from Point A to Point B with no interim movement. Mom’s in the foyer, then in the kitchen, then at the top of the stairs.

“You better get to the hospital,” Dad says.

“Take this poor kid with you,” Mom says.

“He just suddenly showed up,” Dad says.

Somebody’s on the couch. It takes me a second to recognize him.

Giff.

Or something like Giff: fish-pale, naked, bloody dent in his head, squinting, holding his glasses in one hand.

“Whoa,” he says. “Is this ever not how I expected it would be like.”

“What what would be like?” says Dad.

“Death and all?” he says.

Dad flickers on and off: smiling in his chair, running in place, kneeling near the magazine rack.

“You ain’t dead, pal, you’re just naked,” says Dad.

“Naked, plus somebody blammed you in the head,” says Mom.

“Do they not know?” Giff says.

I give him a look, like, Please don’t. We’re just enjoying a little extra time. I’m listening to their childhood stories, playing records from their courtship days, staring at them when they’re not looking, telling them how good they were with me and Jean, how safe we always felt.