God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

by Kurt Vonnegut

  They do not work and will not. Heads down, unmindful, they have neither pride nor self-respect. They are totally unreliable, not maliciously so, but like cattle who wander aimlessly. Foresight and the ability to reason have simply atrophied from long neglect. Talk to them, listen to them, work with them as I do and you realize with a kind of dull horror that they have lost all semblance of human beings except that they stand on two feet and talk--like parrots. "More. Give me more. I need more," are the only new thoughts they have learned....

  They stand today as a monumental caricature of Homo sapiens, the harsh and horrible reality created by us out of our own misguided pity. They are also, if we continue our present course, the living prophecy of what a great percentage of the rest of us will become.

  And so on.

  These sentiments were coals to Newcastle as far as Stewart Buntline was concerned. He was through with misguided pity. He was through with sex, too. And, if the truth be told, he was fed to the teeth with the Civil War.

  The conversation with McAllister that had set Stewart on the path of conservatism twenty years before was this:

  "So you want to be a saint, do you, young man?"

  "I didn't say that, and I hope I didn't imply it. You are in charge of what I inherited, money I did nothing to earn?"

  "I'll answer the first part of your question: Yes, we are in charge of what you inherited. In reply to the second part: If you haven't earned it yet, you will, you shall. You come from a family that is congenitally unable to fail to earn its way and then some. You'll lead, my boy, because you were born to lead, and that can be hell."

  "That may or may not be, Mr. McAllister. We'll have to wait and see about that. What I'm telling you now is: This world is full of suffering, and money can do a lot to relieve that suffering, and I have far more money than I can use. I want to buy decent food and clothing and housing for the poor, and right away."

  "And, after you've done that, what would you like to be called, 'St. Stewart' or 'St. Buntline'?"

  "I didn't come here to be made fun of."

  "And your father didn't name us your guardians in his will because he thought we would agree politely with anything you might say. If I strike you as impudent and irreverent on the subject of would-be saints, it's because I've been through this same silly argument with so many young people before. One of the principal activities of this firm is the prevention of saintliness on the part of our clients. You think you're unusual? You're not.

  "Every year at least one young man whose affairs we manage comes into our office, wants to give his money away. He has completed his first year at some great university. It has been an eventful year! He has learned of unbelievable suffering around the world. He has learned of the great crimes that are at the roots of so many family fortunes. He has had his Christian nose rubbed, often for the very first time, in the Sermon on the Mount.

  "He is confused, tearful, angry! He demands to know, in hollow tones, how much money he is worth. We tell him. He goes haggard with shame, even if his fortune is based on something as honest and useful as Scotch Tape, aspirin, rugged pants for the working man, or, as in your case, brooms. You have, if I'm not mistaken, just completed one year at Harvard?"

  "Yes."

  "It's a great institution, but, when I see the effect it has on certain young people, I ask myself, 'How dare a university teach compassion without teaching history, too?' History tells us this, my dear young Mr. Buntline, if it tells us nothing else: Giving away a fortune is a futile and destructive thing. It makes whiners of the poor, without making them rich or even comfortable. And the donor and his descendents become undistinguished members of the whining poor."

  "A personal fortune as great as yours, Mr. Buntline," old McAllister went on, those many fateful years ago, "is a miracle, thrilling and rare. You have come by it effortlessly, and so have little opportunity to learn what it is. In order to help you learn something about its miraculousness, I have to offer what is perhaps an insult. Here it is, like it or not: Your fortune is the most important single determinant of what you think of yourself and of what others think of you. Because of the money, you are extraordinary. Without it, for example, you would not now be taking the priceless time of a senior partner in McAllister, Robjent, Reed and McGee.

  "If you give away your money, you will become utterly ordinary, unless you happen to be a genius. You aren't a genius, are you, Mr. Buntline?"

  "No."

  "Um. And, genius or not, without money you'll surely be less comfortable and free. Not only that, but you will be volunteering your descendents for the muggy, sorehead way of life peculiar to persons who might have been rich and free, had not a soft-headed ancestor piddled a fortune away.

  "Cling to your miracle, Mr. Buntline. Money is dehydrated Utopia. This is a dog's life for almost everybody, as your professors have taken such pains to point out. But, because of your miracle, life for you and yours can be a paradise! Let me see you smile! Let me see that you already understand what they do not teach at Harvard until the junior year: That to be born rich and to stay rich is something less than a felony."

  Lila, Stewart's daughter, now went upstairs to her bedroom. The color scheme, selected by her mother, was pink and frost. Her casement windows looked out on the harbor, on the nodding Pisquontuit Yacht Club fleet.

  A forty-foot workboat named Mary was chugging her graceless, smoky way through the fleet, rocking the playthings. The playthings had names like Scomber and Skat and Rosebud II and Follow Me and Red Dog and Bunty. Rosebud II belonged to Fred and Caroline Rosewater. Bunty belonged to Stewart and Amanita Buntline.

  Mary belonged to Harry Pena, the trap fisherman. She was a gray, lapstreak tub whose purpose was to wallow home in all weather with tons of fresh fish on board. There wasn't any shelter on her, except for a wooden box to keep the big new Chrysler dry. The wheel and the throttle and the clutch were mounted on the box. All the rest of the Mary was a bare-boned tub.

  Harry was on his way to his traps. His two big sons, Manny and Kenny, lay head-to-head in the bow, murmuring in lazy lechery. Each boy had a six-foot tuna gaff beside him. Harry was armed with a twelve-pound mall. All three wore rubber aprons and boots. When they got to work, they would bathe in gore.

  "Stop talking about fucking," said Harry. "Think about fish."

  "We will, old man, when we're as old as you." This was a deeply affectionate reply.

  An airplane came over very low, making its approach to Providence Airport. On board, reading The Conscience of a Conservative, was Norman Mushari.

  The world's largest private collection of harpoons was displayed in a restaurant called The Weir, which was five miles outside of Pisquontuit. The marvellous collection belonged to a tall homosexual from New Bedford named Bunny Weeks. Until Bunny came down from New Bedford and opened his restaurant, Pisquontuit had nothing to do with whaling--ever.

  Bunny called his place The Weir because its Thermopane windows on the south looked out at the fish traps of Harry Pena. There were opera glasses on each table, in order that guests might watch Harry and his boys clean out their traps. And when the fisherfolk were performing out there on the briny deep, Bunny went from table to table, explaining with gusto and expertise what they were doing, and why. While disserting, he would paw women shamelessly, would never touch a man.

  If guests wished to participate even more vibrantly in the fishing business, they might order a Horse Mackerel Cocktail, which was rum, grenadine, and cranberry juice, or a Fisherman's Salad, which was a peeled banana thrust through a pineapple ring, set in a nest of chilled, creamed tuna and curly coconut shreds.

  Harry Pena and his boys knew about the salad and the cocktail and the opera glasses, though they had never visited The Weir. Sometimes they would respond to their involuntary involvement with the restaurant by urinating off the boat. They called this "... making cream of leek soup for Bunny Weeks."

  Bunny Weeks' harpoon collection lay across the rude rafters of the gift shop that
constituted the opulently mouldy entrance to The Weir. The shop itself was called The Jolly Whaler. There was a dusty skylight over the shop, the dusty effect having been achieved by spraying on Jet-Spray Bon Ami, and never wiping it off. The lattice of rafters and harpoons underneath the skylight was projected onto the merchandise below. The effect that Bunny had created was that real whalers, smelling of blubber and rum and sweat and ambergris, had stored their equipment in his loft. They would be coming back for it at any time.

  It was through the criss-crossed shadows of harpoons that Amanita Buntline and Caroline Rosewater now shuffled. Amanita led the way, set the tone, examined the stock greedily, barbarously. As for the nature of the stock: it was everything a cold bitch might demand of an impotent husband upon rising from a scalding bath.

  Caroline's manner was a wispy echo of Amanita's. Caroline was made clumsy by the fact that Amanita was forever between her and whatever seemed worth examining. The moment Amanita stopped looking at something, moved from between it and Caroline, the object somehow stopped being worth examining. Caroline was made clumsy by other facts, too, of course--that her husband worked, that she was wearing a dress that everybody knew had been Amanita's, that she had very little money in her purse.

  Caroline now heard her own voice saying, as though from afar, "He certainly has good taste."

  "They all do," said Amanita. "I'd rather go shopping with one than with a woman. Present company excepted, of course."

  "What is it that makes them so artistic?"

  "They're more sensitive, dear. They're like us. They feel."

  "Oh."

  Bunny Weeks now loped into The Jolly Whaler, his Topsiders squeaking as they squeegeed. He was a slender man in his early thirties. He had eyes that were standard equipment for rich American fairies-- junk jewelry eyes, synthetic star sapphires with winking Christmas-tree lights behind them. Bunny was the great grandson of the famous Captain Hannibal Weeks of New Bedford, the man who finally killed Moby Dick. No less than seven of the irons resting on the rafters overhead were said to have come from the hide of the Great White Whale.

  "Amanita! Amanita!" Bunny cried fondly. He threw his arms around her, hugged her hard. "How's my girl?"

  Amanita laughed.

  "Something's funny?"

  "Not to me."

  "I've been hoping you'd come in today. I have a little intelligence test for you." He wanted to show her a new piece of merchandise, have her guess what it was. He hadn't greeted Caroline yet, was now obliged to do so, for she was standing between him and where he thought the object he wanted was. "Excuse me."

  "I beg your pardon." Caroline Rosewater stepped aside. Bunny never seemed to remember her name, though she had been in The Weir at least fifty times.

  Bunny failed to find what he was looking for, wheeled to search elsewhere, again found Caroline in his way. "Excuse me."

  "Excuse me." Caroline, in getting of his way, tripped on a cunning little milking stool, went down with one knee on the stool and both hands grasping a post.

  "Oh my God!" said Bunny, annoyed with her. "Are you all right? Here! Here!" He hoisted her up, and did it in such a way that her feet kept slipping out from under her, as though she were wearing roller skates for the first time. "Are you hurt?"

  Caroline smiled sloppily. "Just my dignity is all."

  "Oh, the hell with your dignity, dear," he said, and he cast himself very strongly as another woman when he said it. "How are your bones? How are your little insides?"

  "Fine--thank you."

  Bunny turned his back on her, resumed his search.

  "You remember Caroline Rosewater, of course," said Amanita. It was a cruelly unnecessary thing to ask.

  "Of course I remember Mrs. Rosewater," said Bunny. "Any relation to the Senator?"

  "You always ask me that."

  "Do I? And what do you always reply?"

  "I think so--somehow--way far back--I'm almost sure."

  "How interesting. He's resigning, you know."

  "He is?"

  Bunny faced her again. He now had a box in his hands. "Didn't he tell you he was going to resign?"

  "No--he--"

  "You don't communicate with him?"

  "No," said Caroline bleakly, her chin pulled in.

  "I'd think he'd be a very fascinating man to communicate with."

  Caroline nodded. "Yes."

  "But you don't communicate."

  "No."

  "Now then, my dear--" said Bunny, placing himself before Amanita and opening the box, "here is your intelligence test." He took from the box, which was marked "Product of Mexico," a large tin can with one end removed. The can was covered with gay wallpaper both inside and out. Glued to the unopened end was a round lace doily, and glued to the doily was an artificial water lily. "I defy you to tell me what this is for. If you tell me, and this is a seventeen-dollar item, I will give it to you free, grotesquely rich though I know you are."

  "Can I guess, too?" said Caroline.

  Bunny closed his eyes. "Of course," he whispered tiredly.

  Amanita gave up at once, announcing proudly that she was dumb, that she despised tests. Caroline was about to make a chirping, bright-eyed, birdy guess, but Bunny didn't give her a chance.

  "It's a cover for a spare roll of toilet paper!" said Bunny.

  "That's what I was going to guess," said Caroline.

  "Were you now?" said Bunny apathetically.

  "She's a Phi Beta Kappa," said Amanita.

  "Are you now?" said Bunny.

  "Yes," said Caroline. "I don't talk about it much. I don't think about it much."

  "Nor do I," said Bunny.

  "You're a Phi Beta Kappa, too?"

  "Do you mind?"

  "No."

  "As clubs go," said Bunny, "I've found it's a rather big one."

  "Um."

  "Do you like this thing, little genius?" Amanita asked Caroline, speaking of the toilet paper cover.

  "Yes--it's--it's very pretty. It's sweet."

  "Do you want it?"

  "For seventeen dollars?" said Caroline. "It is darling." She became mournful about being poor. "Some day, maybe. Some day."

  "Why not today?" asked Amanita.

  "You know why not today." Caroline blushed.

  "What if I were to buy it for you?"

  "You mustn't! Seventeen dollars!"

  "If you don't stop worrying about money so much, little bird, I'm going to have to find some other friend."

  "What can I say?"

  "Wrap it as a gift, please, Bunny."

  "Oh, Amanita, thank you so much," said Caroline.

  "It's no more than you deserve."

  "Thank you."

  "People get what they deserve," said Amanita. "Isn't that right, Bunny?"

  "That's the First Law of Life," said Bunny Weeks.

  The work boat called the Mary now reached the traps she served, came into view for the many drinkers and diners in the restaurant of Bunny Weeks.

  "Drop your cocks and grab your socks," Harry Pena called to his snoozing sons.

  He killed the engine. The momentum of the Mary carried her through the gate of a trap, into a ring of long poles festooned with net.

  "Smell 'em?" he said. He was asking if his sons smelled all the big fish in the net.

  The sons sniffed, said they did.

  The big belly of the net, which might or might not hold fish, lay on the bottom. The rim of the net was in air, running from pole-tip to pole-tip in lank parabolas. The rim dipped under water at only one point. That point was the gate. It was also the mouth that would feed fish, if any, into the big belly of the net.

  Now Harry himself was inside the trap. He untied a line from a cleat by the gate, hoisted away, lifted the mouth of the net into air, tied the line to the cleat again. There was no way out of the belly now--not for fish. For fish it was a bowl of doom.

  The Mary rubbed herself gently against one side of the bowl. Harry and his sons, all in a row, reached into t
he sea with iron hands, pulled net into air, fed it back to the sea.

  Hand-over-hand, the three were making smaller, ever smaller, the place where fish could be. And, as that place grew ever smaller, the Mary crept sideways across the surface of the bowl.

  No one spoke. It was a magic time. Even the gulls fell silent as the three, purified of all thought, hauled net from the sea.

  The only place where the fish could be became an oval pool. A seeming shower of dimes flashed in the depths, and that was all. The men kept working, hand-over-hand.

  The only place where the fish could be now became a curving trough, a deep one, alongside the Mary. It now became a shallower trough as the three men continued to work, hand-over-hand. The father and the two sons paused. A goosefish, a prehistoric monstrosity, a ten-pound tadpole studded with chancres and warts, came to the surface, opened its needle -filled mouth, surrendered. And around the goosefish, the brainless, inedible horror of cartilage, the surface of the sea was blooming with dimpled humps. Big animals were in the dark below.

  Harry and his two big sons set to work again, hand-over-hand, pulling in net and feeding it back. There was almost nowhere for the fish to be. Paradoxically, the surface of the sea became mirror-like.

  And then the fin of a tuna slit the mirror, was gone again.

  In the fish trap moments later there was joyful, bloody hell. Eight big tuna were making the water heave, boil, split and roll. They shot past the Mary, were turned by the net, shot past again.

  Harry's boys grabbed their gaffs. The younger boy thrust his hook underwater, jerked the hook into the belly of a fish, stopped the fish, turned it on a point of pure agony.

  The fish came drifting alongside, languid with shock, avoiding any motion that might make the agony worse.

  Harry's younger boy gave the hook a wrenching yank. The new, deeper agony made the fish walk on his tail, topple into the Mary with a rubbery crash.

  Harry slammed the head of the fish with his mighty mall. The fish lay still.