The Broom of the System

by David Foster Wallace

  Lang cleared his throat. “But then after some time went on like that, on one particular Saturday we didn’t go. We couldn’t go that time. My Daddy had some emergency, I had shit to do, so on. So we didn’t go that Saturday. And the next day I remember we couldn’t go that day either. There was just no two ways about it. But Monday we did go, to make up the visit, like surprise her with a visit, to make it up, which seemed fair and all. We all went ahead and piled in that Monday after I got off school. We went, and as we pull up that long drive up the hill we’re confused, ‘cause we can see her, hair all white and wheelchair shining, there on the porch, with everything looking all dark and nasty around her in the tinted glass. And my Daddy goes ’What the hell?‘ ’cause here it was Monday, not Saturday. And it was cool out, you know. It was like November, and things could get cool. But and so she’s sitting there anyway on the porch, in her chair, in blankets, so on.

  “And we get up there and get out of the car and go on up to the porch, and she’s glad as hell to see us, like I said her eyes were milky but the milk seemed like it went out of them when she was real happy. She was clapping her hands real slow and soft, and smiling, and trying to hurry to pull pot holders and shit out of the blankets in her lap to show my mother, and grabbing at us and all, and my Daddy says something like ‘Momma it’s Monday, it’s not Saturday, we couldn’t come Saturday so we come today instead to be fair, now you tell me how’d you know to be out here waiting for us today, we didn’t tell anybody we was coming,’ so on. And she looks at my Daddy I remember like she don’t understand, for a time, and then she smiles, real nice, and shrugs, and looks around at us and says well she waits for us every day. Then she nods. Every day, see. She says it like she thought we knew how she waited for us to maybe visit every goddamned day.”

  Lenore watched Lang.

  “Turned out she didn’t know Saturday from Adam anymore,” Lang said. “She didn’t know we had this shit down to a routine.” He looked out past Lenore. “Or else maybe she did know, but she waited anyway, thinkin’ maybe she’d get lucky and we’d want to see her even on some day when we didn’t have to. Even when it got real cool out on the porch of the place she’d wait, it turned out. She just kept looking at my Daddy like she didn’t see what the problem was, this was just her life, now, here, didn’t we know it? While all the while we just stood around feeling terrible. I remember I felt like shit after that. I was big-time sad.” Lang rubbed at an eye. “She died after that, too, ‘fore I got much older.”

  Lenore watched Lang rub one eye. She thought about his grandmother. Lang stopped rubbing his eye and looked at her. Lenore found her throat aching again. She began to cry, just a little bit.

  “Now I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Lang said. He smiled kindly. “That’s my sad, it’s not your sad.”

  He began kissing at Lenore’s eyes, to get the tears. He did it so gently that Lenore put her arms around his neck. After a minute Lang rolled her toward him and began with one hand to try to unhook the fastener on her bra. Lenore let him, and kept her arms around his neck. Lang played with Lenore’s breasts while she cried and held onto him and thought of a sky in Texas, in November, through tinted glass.

  18

  1990

  /a/

  “Good morning, Patrice.”

  “Good morning. How are you this morning?”

  “I’m just fine thank you. The nurse tells me you have something for me. ”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I ask what it is?” “Three men go camping in the woods. One of the men starts out doing all the cooking, but the three men make an arrangement where, if either of the other two complain about the man’s cooking, the complainer will automatically take over the cooking.”

  “I’m not sure I understand, Patrice.”

  “The cook cooks and cooks, and the other two campers smile and say it’s very good, and they all continue to camp. And by and by the cook gets tired of cooking, and wishes someone would complain and so have to take over for him, but there are still no complaints. So the cook begins overcooking things on purpose, or burning them, or hardly cooking them and having them be raw. But the other two campers still eat it all and manage to smile. Soon the cook begins putting soap in the coffee, sprinkling dirt on everything he cooks, but still the other two go out of their way not to complain.”

  “Is this a joke? This is a joke, Patrice, I can tell.”

  “So finally the cook gets angry, he’s so very tired of cooking, and he goes deep into the woods and finds a pile of moose droppings, and he takes them back to camp and roasts them, and serves them for dinner, along with soapy coffee. And the other two campers dig in, and the cook smiles at them expectantly, and they’re eating very slowly, and also looking at each other, with faces. Finally one of them puts down his fork and says to the cook, ‘Hey, Joe, I’m afraid I’ve got to tell you that these things taste like moose droppings. Good, though.’”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Patrice, that was splendid, that joke. Where did you hear that? Did you make that joke up?”

  “My son told it to me.”

  “Well isn’t that just good, Patrice.”

  “Yes.”

  “When exactly did he tell that joke to you?”

  “I think a joke like that ought to be worth some breathing, don’t you?”

  “I certainly do.”

  “I sure think so.”

  /b/

  11 September

  The End Is a Night Fire.

  It is another May night, because May never ever ends. Here is a street that should be dark. In a gust of light the cement of the street can be seen to be new and rough. Some of the homes do not yet have lawns. All the trees are young and thin and supported by networks of ropes and stakes. They flicker and whip in the wind of light.

  The wind is a wind of hot sparks. The sparks rise and whirl and die in the shrouds of light they make. At the end of the street sighs a burning home. The home looks the same as every other home on the street. It is on fire. Fire comes out of every opening in the home and rises. As the fire makes more openings in the home and rises from them, the home sighs and settles. The heat of the fire makes the fence in the lawn glow red, and the fence cooks the lawn around it.

  The home begins to fold into its fire. Fire comes out of all the openings. It sounds like paper crinkling. It tightens the skin of your face. The fire cannot be controlled, and the home draws in all the air on the street and with a sigh folds down into itself. It takes farever. Everything falls into itself, slow as feathers.

  Out the door of the home flies a bird with its tailfeathers on fire. It rises into the sky in circles. It spirals up and up into the sky until its light melts into a sparkle of stars. Down to the lawn floats a corkscrew pattern of burnt feathers.

  Feet run over the lawn, through the flaming feathers. Fieldbinder and Evelyn Slotnik, hand in hand, run into the night, their hair on fire. In the light of their own hair they are wind. They make glowing cuts in the black square blocks of the suburbs as they run the tiny miles to the Slotniks’ pool. Fences blush and fall away. An airplane is flying low overhead. The passengers look down and see it all. They see one shining pond of fire soaking out into the lawns and making shrouds of needled light that float up toward them, disappear when they touch. They see two surprised points of orange fire moving too fast through black backyards and waffled fences, making for a kidney of clean new blue water that lies ahead in a line lit up from below. It is captured forever on quality film.

  /c/

  One of the oars fell into the water and Neil Obstat, Jr., lunged for it, knocking over his can of beer so that beer fizzed on his pantleg. He struggled to get the heavy oar back in its lock.

  “God damn it,” he said.

  “Just keep the fucker still, Neil,” said Wang-Dang Lang.

  “Shit,” said Obstat. Some people trying to fish over in the next rowboat were mad at the commotion and were giving Obstat the finger. />
  Lang was in the bow of the boat he and Obstat had rented at the Great Ohio Desert Fish License and Boat Rental Center for what Lang thought was a truly criminal amount of money.

  “This whole thing’s just gettin’ too goddamn commercialized,” he’d said to Obstat. Obstat had shrugged and hefted the beer.

  Lang had some binoculars through which he was watching Lenore Beadsman and Rick Vigorous wandering along the lake’s edge through one of the really blasted and forbidding parts of the Desert. Despite the weekend crowds, Lenore was easy to see in her bright white dress, and of course there was too the matter of Rick Vigorous’s beret. Lang and Obstat were way out in the lake. Obstat was supposed to be rowing the boat so that they stayed just even with Lenore and Rick.

  “What do you see?” Obstat had asked from the oars.

  When Rick and Lenore were turned the right way, Lang could see their faces, but he couldn’t yet make out what they were saying. They weren’t talking much. Lenore was moving pretty easily through the deep sand, but Lang could see Rick Vigorous having trouble and sometimes needing to trot to keep up. Lenore kept making him look at his watch, as if time were an issue. It was still only mid-morning, but it was hot for September. Crowds wove in and out around Lenore and Rick. Someone on the rim was hawking black tee-shirts in a voice Lang could hear clear out on the water.

  Lang held the binoculars in one hand. His other hand hurt like hell today, from twirling his car keys on his injured finger last night. He thought his bird-bite might be getting infected.

  “Fucking bird,” he said.

  Obstat was grunting at the oars. He kept clunking them against the sides of the boat. Lang and Obstat were positively mowing over people’s fishing lines, and the people in the other boats were getting really pissed off, but Lang told Obstat not to pay them any mind.

  “Just remember I get a gander or two at those unearthly legs, climbing dunes,” Obstat gasped as he pulled.

  “They’ll start sayin’ important shit any minute now,” Lang said.

  /d/

  “I absolutely insist that you invite me to relate a story.”

  “My shoes are full of this goddamned sand.”

  “Lenore ...”

  “Hey! Watch where you’re going for Christ’s sake!”

  “Dear. Excuse us, please.”

  “For crying out loud.”

  “Terribly sorry.”

  “Hell of a place for a picnic.”

  “If you want my opinion, Lenore, they should either obliterate this place or enlarge it. The touristiness of the whole thing is negating whatever marginal attractions this place had to offer.”

  “People aren’t smelling too terrific in this sun, either, I notice.”

  “Forget smells. You’re here to concentrate on potential grandmother-signs.”

  “What kind of signs, Rick? I should look for Lenore neither climbing up nor sliding down a dune, all because of a game my brother made up when he was flapped? This has got to be a waste of time. I don’t understand your obsession with this. With getting me out here today.”

  “Apparently Lang and his anus-eyed Sancho Panza are about, too. Lurking, et cetera.”

  “How do you know where Andy and Obstat are supposed to be?”

  “I know what I know.”

  “Look, Rick, speaking of knowing, I think we maybe ought to just talk, right here, at some length.”

  “I implore you first to implore me for a story.”

  “What’s with this story stuff?”

  “....”

  “Look, you might have forgotten I have to read the things now. They’re work now. When I’m not working, I’d rather not do a work-related thing.”

  “You won’t be called on to evaluate, merely to enjoy. To be caught up, engaged, and entertained. You should find this entertaining and engaging.”

  “Rick, the thing is we really need to talk. You’re dealing with an upset person, here. We really need to have a long talk.”

  “I’m almost convinced the issues here can be treated and perhaps even resolved in the context of the story I have in mind.”

  “I really doubt it.”

  “Just keep your eyes peeled for things covertly elderly, and I’ll take it from here.”

  “So you’re deciding how the talk I want to have is going to be. That’s just super.”

  “This story concerns a man who is presented as the most phenomenally successful theoretical dentist of the twentieth century.”

  “Theoretical dentist?”

  “A scientist specializing in dental theory and in high-level abstract reasoning from empirical cases involving anything at all dental.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Do you recall that sweetener that was positively omnipresent for a while? SupraSweet? The one that was abruptly yanked from the supermarket shelves when they discovered that it made certain women give birth to children with antennae, and fangs like vampires?”

  “Do I ever.”

  “Here the theoretical dentist in question is presented as the man who cracked the antennae-and-fang problem, working as it were from the dental end and tracing matters back to the ubiquitous and malignant sweetener.”

  “Jesus, Rick, look at this crowd. How are we supposed to get through all this?”

  “They’re just waiting for the shuttle to the interior wastes. It’ll be here soon—see the dust cloud? Perhaps we might just wait over here, under this statue, in this bit of shade ...”

  “I remember this statue all right. I can’t stand this statue. It’s like Zusatz was trying to set himself up as god of the Desert or something. Sheesh.”

  “So the man in question is a theoretical dentist of consummate skill.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And in his spare time he is also a thoroughly competent and experienced Scoutmaster.

  “....”

  “For the Boy Scouts of America.”

  “Got it.”

  “Having been himself in his youth a phenomenal Scout: a Ten derfoot at nine, a First Class Scout at eleven, a Star, Life, then finally an Eagle Scout at the amazing age of fourteen. Amazing for his era, anyhow. We may note for example that before my son, Vance, quit the Scouts he had been a Life Scout, the penultimate kind of Scout, at the age of twelve.”

  “How nice for him.”

  “But the point is that the theoretical dentist had been an exemplary Scout, and one so committed to Scouting in general that when he exited the Scouts because of his age he turned right around and became a Scoutmaster, while still training in theoretical dentistry. This was twenty years ago, fixing the dentist’s present age somewhere in his forties.”

  “....”

  “And one summer day the dentist is leading his troop of Scouts through some orientation and compass exercises in the dense and desolate interior regions of the coniferous forests that as you may or may not know cover vast portions of the state of Indiana. The whole story takes place in Indiana.”

  “....”

  “And the dentist is effortlessly leading the Scouts through the forest, preparing them for woodsman merit-badge tests, and now in the densest and most desolate interior section the dentist and his Scouts come on an exhausted and haggard-looking man, dressed exclusively in flannel, with many days’ growth of beard, and bright-red eyes, and white pine-pitch residue smeared around his mouth, who right away moans and faints in the arms of a Star Scout; and with him is an also haggard-looking but still achingly lovely woman, with her dress in a noticeable state of disarray, who immediately falls weeping on the neck of the theoretical dentist, crying that she has been saved. The woman tells the dentist that she and her unconscious companion, who is also it turns out her psychologist, had been lost in the desolate interior coniferous region for days, that the psychologist’s magnetic clipboard-and-pen set had ruined their compass, and that they had been wandering for days, losing hope steadily, sustaining themselves only by eating the truly nauseating white remains of the pine pitch that cruste
d the bark of the trees all around. The woman tells the dentist all this as they stare deeply into each other’s eyes, and as all around them the badge-happy Scouts are running here and there, positively radiating Competence In The Wild, raising and striking tents, building elaborate multi-tiered fires, detoxifying water with Halazone pellets, and administering to the still swooned psychologist every form of first aid you could possibly imagine. And now, if I may import a bit of context to save time, it is made clear that the woman and the psychologist have been out in the Indiana forests for ostensibly therapeutic reasons, that the woman suffers from a nearly debilitating neurosis under the rules of which she needs constant and prodigious sexual attention and activity, in order to stave off feelings of raving paranoia and loss of three-dimensionality.”