In Persuasion Nation

by George Saunders

  “I thought it was they could live one year on what we throw out in one day,” says Grandma Sally.

  “I thought it was they could live ten years on what we throw out in one minute,” says Uncle Gus.

  “Well anyway,” says Doris. “We are very lucky.”

  “I like what you kids have done with the place,” says Aunt Lydia. “The corn and all?”

  “Very autumnal,” says Grandpa Kirk.

  Just then from the TV comes the brash martial music that indicates an UrgentUpdateNewsMinute.

  Americans are eating more quail. Special quail farms capable of producing ten thousand quail a day are being built along the Brazos River. The bad news is, Americans are eating less pig. The upside is, the excess pigs are being slaughtered for feed for the quail. The additional upside is, ground-up quail beaks make excellent filler for the new national trend of butt implants, far superior to the traditional butt-implant filler of ground-up dog spines. Also, there has been a shocking upturn in the number of African AIDS babies. Fifteen hundred are now dying each day. Previously, only four hundred a day were dying. An emaciated baby covered with flies is shown, lying in a kind of trough.

  “We are so lucky,” says Aunt Lydia.

  “There is no country in the history of the world as lucky as us,” says Grandpa Kirk. “No country where people lived as long or as well, with as much dignity and freedom. Not the Romans. Not the Grecos.”

  “Not to mention infant mortality,” says Uncle Gus.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” says Grandpa Kirk. “In other countries, you go to a graveyard, you see tons of baby graves. Here, you don’t see hardly any.”

  “Unless there was a car accident,” says Uncle Gus.

  “A car accident involving a daycare van,” says Grandpa Kirk.

  “Or if someone fell down the steps holding infant twins,” suggests Grandma Sally.

  Some additional babies covered with flies are shown in additional troughs, along with several grieving mothers, also covered with flies.

  “That is so sad,” says Aunt Lydia. “I can hardly stand to watch it.”

  “I can’t stand to watch it,” says Uncle Gus, turning away.

  “So why not change it?” says Grandma Sally.

  Doris changes it.

  On TV six women in prison shirts move around a filthy house.

  “Oh I know this one,” says Grandma Sally. “This is Kill the Ho.”

  “Isn’t it Kill Which Ho?” says Aunt Lydia.

  “Isn’t it Which Ho Should We Kill?” says Grandpa Kirk.

  “All six are loose, poor, and irresponsible!” the announcer says. “But which Ho do you hate the most? Which should die? America decides, America votes, coming this fall, on Kill the Ho!”

  “Told you,” says Grandma Sally. “Told you it was Kill the Ho.”

  “They don’t actually kill them though,” says Grandpa Kirk. “They just do it on computers.”

  “They show how it would look if they killed that particular Ho,” says Uncle Gus.

  Then it starts to rain, and from the backyard comes a horrible scream. Brad tenses. He waits for someone to say: What the hell is that screaming?

  But nobody seems to hear it. Everyone just keeps on eating.

  We see from the concerned look on Brad’s face, and the way he throws back his chair, and the concerned look Doris shoots him for throwing back his chair in the middle of dinner, that it’s time for a commercial.

  Back at the Carrigans’, Brad is struggling through a downpour in the familiar Carrigan backyard.

  “What is it?” Brad shouts. “Why are you screaming?”

  “It’s the rain,” screams the corpse who died fending off blows. “We find it unbearably painful. The dead do. Especially the dead not at peace at the time of their deaths.”

  “I never heard that before,” says Brad.

  “Trust me,” says the corpse who died fending off blows.

  The corpses, on their backs, are doing the weirdest craziest writhing dance. They do it ceaselessly, hands opening and closing, feet bending and straightening. With all that motion, their dried hides are developing surficial cracks.

  “What can I do?” says Brad.

  “Get us inside,” gasps the woman corpse.

  Brad drags the corpses inside. Because the house is a ranch house and has no basement, he puts the corpses in the back entry, near a bag of grass seed and a sled.

  “Is that better?” Brad says.

  “We can’t even begin to tell you,” says the corpse who died fending off blows.

  Brad goes back to the dining room, where Doris is serving apple pie, peach pie, raspberry pie, sherbet, sorbet, coffee, and tea.

  “Anything wrong, hon?” says Doris. “We’re just having second dessert. Say, what’s that on your shirt?”

  On Brad’s shirt is a black stain, which looks like charcoal but is actually corpse mud.

  “Go change, silly,” says Doris. “You’re soaked to the bone. I can see your nipples.”

  Doris gives him a double-raise of her eyebrows, to indicate that the sight of his nipples has put her in mind of last night.

  Brad goes into the bedroom, puts on a new button-down. Then he hears something heavy crashing to the floor and rushes out to find Doris sprawled in the back entry, staring in horror at the charred corpses.

  “Bradley, how could you?” she hisses. “Is this your idea of a joke? Is this you getting revenge on me in a passive-aggressive way because I wouldn’t let you waste our corn?”

  “The rain hurts them,” Brad says.

  “Having my entry full of dead corpses hurts me, Brad,” Doris says. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “No, I mean it physically hurts them,” says Brad.

  “After all we shared last night, you pull this stunt?” Doris says. “Oh, you break my heart. Why does everything have to be so sad to you? Why do you have so many negative opinions about things you don’t know about, like foreign countries and diseases and everything? Why can’t you be more like Chief Wayne? He has zero opinions. He’s just upbeat.”

  “Doris, I-” says Brad.

  “I want them out,” Doris says. “I want them out now, dumbass, and I want you to mop this entry, and then I want you to mop it again, shake out the rug, and also I may have you repaint that wall. Why do I have to live like this? The Elliots don’t have corpses in their yard. Millie doesn’t. Kate Ronston doesn’t. The Winstons don’t have any Filipinos trying to plunder their indoor vegetables. Only us. Only me. It’s like I’m living the wrong life.”

  Doris storms back to the kitchen, high heels clicking sexily on the linoleum.

  Dumbass? Brad thinks.

  Doris has never spoken so harshly to him, not even when he accidentally threw her favorite skirt in the garbage and had to dig it out by flashlight and a racoon came and looked at him quizzically.

  Brad remembers when old Mrs. Giannelli got Lou Gehrig’s disease and began losing the use of her muscles, and Doris organized over three hundred people from the community to provide round-the-clock care. He remembers when the little neighborhood retarded boy, Roger, was being excluded from ball games, and Doris herself volunteered to be captain and picked Roger first.

  That was Doris.

  This woman, he doesn’t know who she is.

  “Your wife has a temper,” says the corpse who died fending off blows. “I mean, no offense.”

  “She is pretty, though,” says the one-armed corpse.

  “The way they say it here?” says the woman corpse. “They say: ‘She is hot.”’

  “Your wife is hot,” says the one-armed corpse.

  “Are you really going to put us back out there, Brad?” says the woman corpse, her voice breaking.

  It seems to be raining even harder.

  Once, back in Brad’s childhood, Brad knows, from one of his eight Childhood Flashbacks, his grizzled grandfather, Old Rex, took him to the zoo on the Fourth of July. Near the bear cage they found a sparrow wi
th its foot stuck in a melted marshmallow. When Old Rex stopped to pull the sparrow out, Brad felt embarrassed. Everyone was watching. Hitching up his belt, Old Rex said: Come on, pardner, we’re free, we’re healthy, we’ve got the time who’s gonna save this little dude, if not us?

  Then Old Rex used his pocketknife to gently scrape away the residual marshmallow. Then Old Rex took the sparrow to a fountain and rinsed off its foot, and put it safely on a high branch. Then Old Rex lifted little Brad onto his shoulders and some fireworks went off and they went to watch the dolphins.

  Now that was a man, Brad thinks.

  Maybe the problem with their show is, it’s too smallhearted. It’s all just rolling up hoses and filling the birdfeeder and making smart remarks about other people’s defects and having big meals while making poop jokes and sex jokes. For all its charms, it’s basically a selfish show. Maybe what’s needed is an enlargement of the heart of their show. What would that look like? How would one go about making that kind of show?

  Well, he can think of one way right now.

  He goes into the shed, finds a tarp and, using the laundry line and the tarp, makes a kind of tent. Then, using an umbrella, he carries the corpses out.

  “Easy, easy,” says the one-armed corpse. “Don’t break my leg off by hitting it on that banister.”

  Just then the back door flies violently open.

  “Bradley!” Doris shouts from inside. “Did I say build the ghouls a playhouse or put the ghouls in the yard?”

  “The ghouls?” says the one-armed corpse.

  “That isn’t very nice,” says the woman corpse. “We don’t call her names.”

  Brad looks apologetically at the corpses. Apparently it’s time for a little marital diplomacy, time to go inside and have a frank heart-to-heart with Doris.

  Look, Doris, he’ll say. What’s happened to you, where has your generosity gone? Our house is huge, honey, our refrigerator is continually full. However much money we need, we automatically have that much in the bank, and neither of us even works outside of the home. There doesn’t seem to be any physical limit to what we can have or get. Why not spread some of that luck around? What if that was the point of our show, sweetie, the radical spreading-around of our good fortune? What if we had, say, a special helicopter? And special black jumpsuits? And code names? And huge stores of food and medicine, and a team of expert consultants, and wherever there was need, there they would be, working to bring to bear on the problem whatever resources would be exactly most helpful?

  Talk about positive. Talk about entertaining.

  Who wouldn’t want to watch that?

  Brad has goose bumps. His face is suddenly hot. What an incredible idea. Will Doris get it? Of course she will. This is Doris, his Doris, the love of this life.

  He can’t wait to tell her.

  Brad tries the door, finds it locked.

  We see from the sheepish look on Brad’s face, and the sudden comic wah-wah of the music, that convincing Doris may turn out to be a little harder than he thought, and also, that it’s time for a commercial.

  Back at the Carrigans’, Grandpa Kirk, Grandma Sally, Uncle Gus, and Aunt Lydia, suddenly in formalwear, have been joined by Dr. and Mrs. Ryan, the Menendezes, the Johnsons, and Mrs. Diem, also in formalwear.

  Just then the doorbell rings.

  Doris, in a skimpy white Dior dress and gold spike heels, hands Grandma Sally a plate of meatballs and walks briskly toward the door.

  At the door is Brad.

  “Somehow I got locked out,” he says.

  “Hi Brad,” says Doris. “Here to borrow butter?”

  “Very funny,” says Brad. “Hey, is that a new dress? Did you just now change dresses?”

  Then Brad notices that Chief Wayne is over, and Dr. and Mrs. Ryan, the Menendezes, the Johnsons, and Mrs. Diem are over, and everyone is dressed up.

  “What’s all this?” he says.

  “Things are kind of crazy around here at the moment, Brad,” says Chief Wayne. “You could say we’re in a state of transition.”

  “Doris, can we talk?” says Brad. “In private?”

  “I’m afraid we aren’t in any shape to be talking about anything in private, Bradster,” says Chief Wayne. “As I said, we’re in a state of transition.”

  “We’ve been so busy lately, things are so topsy-turvy lately, hardly a minute to think,” Doris says. “Who knows what to think about what, you know?”

  “The way I’d say it?” says Chief Wayne. “We’re in a state of transition. Let’s leave it at that, babe.”

  Brad notices that Chief Wayne is not wearing his headdress or deerskin leggings, but a pair of tight Gucci slacks and a tight Armani shirt.

  Just then, from the place near the china cabinet from which their theme song and the occasional voiceover comes, comes a deep-voiced voiceover.

  “Through a script error!” it says, “turns out that Chief Wayne is actually, and has actually been all along, not Chief Wayne, but Chaz Wayne, an epileptic pornographer with a taste for the high life and nightmarish memories of Vietnam!”

  A tattooed young man Brad has never seen before steps out of the broom closet.

  “I’m Whitey, Chaz Wayne’s son from a disastrous previous marriage, who recently served time for killing a crooked cop with a prominent head goiter,” he says.

  “And I’m Buddy, their dog,” says Buddy, who, Brad notices, is wearing a tiny pantless tuxedo. “I have recurring rabies and associated depression issues.”

  Then Chaz Wayne puts his arm around Doris.

  “And this is my wife Doris, a former stripper with an imploded breast implant,” says Chaz Wayne.

  “I’d like to propose a toast,” says Grandpa Kirk. “To the newlyweds!”

  “To Doris and Chaz,” says Uncle Gus.

  “To Doris and Chaz!” everyone says together.

  “Now wait just a minute,” says Brad.

  “Brad, honestly,” Doris hisses. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble already?”

  “Here’s your butter, Carrigan,” says Grandma Sally, handing Brad a stick of butter. “Skedaddle on home.”

  Brad can’t seem to breathe. It was love at first sight, he knows from their First Love Montage, when he saw Doris in a summer dress on the far side of a picket fence. On their first date, the ice cream fell off his cone. On their honeymoon, they kissed under a waterfall.

  What should he do? Beg Doris’s forgiveness? Punch Wayne? Start rapidly making poop jokes?

  Just then the doorbell rings.

  It’s the Winstons.

  At least Brad thinks it’s the Winstons. But Mr. Winston has an arm coming out of his forehead, and impressive breasts, a vagina has been implanted in his forehead, and also he seems to have grown an additional leg. Mrs. Winston, short a leg, also with impressive breasts, has a penis growing out of her shoulder and what looks like a totally redone mouth of shining white teeth.

  “May? John?” Brad says. “What happened to you?”

  “Extreme Surgery,” says Mrs. Winston.

  “Extreme Surgery happened to us,” says Mr. Winston, sweat running down his forehead-arm and into his cleavage.

  “Not that we mind,” says Mrs. Winston tersely. “We’re just happy to be, you know, interesting.”

  “It’s wonderful to see everyone doing their part,” says Chaz Wayne.

  “Nearly everyone,” says Uncle Gus, frowning at Brad.

  Just then from the living room comes the sound of hysterical barking.

  Everyone rushes in to find Buddy staring down in terror at a naked emaciated black baby covered with open sores.

  “It just magically appeared,” says Buddy.

  From the tribal cloth which is serving as a diaper, and the open lesions on its legs, face, and chest, Dr. Ryan concludes that the baby is an HIV-positive baby from sub-Saharan Africa.

  “What should we name him?” says Buddy. “Or her?”

  “Him,” says Dr. Ryan, after a quick look under the tribal cloth.


  “Can we name him Doug?” says Buddy.

  “Don’t name him anything,” says Doris.

  “Buddy,” says Chaz Wayne. “Tell us again how this baby got in here?”

  “It just magically appeared,” says Buddy.

  “Could you be more specific, Buddy?” says Chaz Wayne.

  “It like fell in through the ceiling?” says Buddy.

  “Well, that suggests an obvious solution,” says Chaz Wayne. “Why not simply put it back on the roof where it came from?”

  “Sounds fair to me,” says Mr. Winston.

  “Although that roof’s got quite a pitch to it,” says Grandpa Kirk. “Poor thing might roll right off.”

  “Maybe we could rig up a kind of mini-platform?” says Uncle Gus.

  “Then duct-tape the baby in place?” suggests Mrs. Diem.

  “What do you say, Brad?” says Chaz Wayne. “Would you do the honors? After all, we didn’t ask for this baby, we don’t know this baby, we didn’t make this baby sick, we had nothing to do with the deeply unfortunate occurrence that occurred to this baby back wherever its crude regressive culture is located.”

  “How about it, Carrigan?” says Grandpa Kirk.

  Brad looks into the baby’s face. It’s a beautiful face. Except for the open lesions. How did this beautiful little baby come to be here? He has no idea. But here the baby is.

  “Come on, guys,” says Brad. “He’ll starve to death up there. Plus he’ll get sunburned.”

  “Well, Brad,” says Aunt Lydia. “He was starving to death when he got here. We didn’t do it.”

  “Plus he’s an African, Brad,” says Grandma Sally. “The Africans have special pigments.”

  “I’m not putting any baby on any roof,” Brad says.

  A strange silence falls on the room.

  Then we hear the familiar music that indicates the backyard has morphed again, and see that the familiar Carrigan backyard is now a bleak desert landscape full of rooting feral pigs, ferociously feeding on the corpses.

  “Brad!” yells the corpse who died fending off blows. “Brad, please help us!”

  “Pigs are eating us!” yells the one-armed corpse.

  “A pig is eating my hip!” shouts the corpse who died fending off blows.