In Persuasion Nation

by George Saunders

  “Home, home, home,” says Mrs. Gregg.

  “pids, pids, pids,” I say.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” says Mrs. Gregg.

  “If I had to stand up in front of all those people,” says Jonkins, “I’d put a bullet in my head.”

  Then there’s a long silence.

  “Shit, man, sorry,” he says to me.

  The Farragut’s full. Iadmit, concede, explain, and pledge. During the Q &A, somebody says if the base is closing, why spend big bucks on a Beaver Habitat? I say because the Air Force is committed to insuring that, post-Closure, all Air Force sites remain environmentally viable, prioritizing both species health and a diverse life-form mix.

  Afterward Rimney’s back by the snacks. He says is there anything I can’t pids? I say probably not. I’ve pidsed sexual-harassment cases, a cracked hazardous-waste incinerator, half a dozen jet-fuel spills. I pidsed it when General Lemaster admitted being gay, retracted his admission, then retracted his retraction, all in the same day, before vanishing for a week with one of his high-school daughter’s girlfriends.

  “You might have noticed earlier that I was not actually calling Odors,” Rimney says.

  “I did notice that,” I say.

  “Thing I like about you, you’re a guy who understands life gets complicated,” he says. “Got a minute? I need to show you something.”

  I follow him back to CommComm. Which still stinks. I follow him into the copier closet, which stinks even worse.

  In the closet is something big, in bubble wrap.

  “Note to self,” he says. “Bubble wrap? Not smell-preventing.”

  He slits open the bubble wrap. Inside is this giant dirt clod. Sticking out of the clod is a shoe. In the shoe is a foot, a rotted foot, in a rotted sock.

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “Found down in the Dirksen excavation,” he says. “Thought I could stash them in here a few days, but phew. Can you believe it?”

  He slits open a second bubble-wrap package. There’s another guy, not enclodded, cringed up, in shredded pants, looking like he’s been dipped in mustard. This one’s small, like a jockey.

  “They look old-timey to me,” Rimney says.

  They do look old-timey. Their shoes are big crude shoes with big crude nails.

  “So you see our issue,” he says. “Dirksen-wise.”

  I don’t. But then I do.

  The Racquetball Facility was scrapped due to someone found an Oneida nosering portion on the site. Likewise the proposed Motor Pool Improvement, on account of a shard of Colonial crockery.

  If a pottery shard or partial nose ring can scrap a project, think what a couple of Potentially Historical corpses/mummies will do.

  “Who else knows?” I say.

  “The contractor,” Rimney says. “Rick Granis. You know Rick?”

  I’ve known Rick since kindergarten. I remember how mad he’d get if anyone called his blanket anything but his binkie. Now he’s got an Escalade and a summer house on Otissic Lake.

  “But Rick’s cool with it,” he says. “He’ll do whatever.”

  He shows me Rick’s Daily Historical-Resource Assessment Worksheet. Under “Non-Historical Detritus,” Rick’s written, “Two contemp soda bottles, one contemp flange.” Under “Evidence of Pre-Existing Historical/Cultural Presence,” he’s written, “Not that I know of.”

  Rimney says that a guy like me, master of the public-presentation aspect, could be a great fit at the Dirksen. As I may know, he knows somebody who knows somebody. Do I find the idea of Terror work at all compelling?

  I say sure, yes, of course.

  He says, thing is, they’re just bodies. The earth is full of bodies. Under every building in the world, if you dig deep enough, is probably a body. From the looks of it, someone just dumped these poor guys into a mass grave. They’re not dressed up, no coffins, no dusty flower remains, no prayer cards.

  I say I’m not sure I totally follow.

  He says he’s thinking a respectful reburial, somewhere they won’t be found, that won’t fuck up the Dirksen.

  “And tell the truth,” he says, “I could use some help.”

  I think of Tape 4, Living the Now. What is the Now Situation? How can I pull the pearl from the burning oyster? How can the “drowning boy” be saved? I do an Actual Harm Analysis. Who would a reburial hurt? The mummy guys? They’re past hurt. Who would it help? Rimney, Val Rimney, all future Dirksen employees.

  Me.

  Mom, Dad.

  Dad worked thirty years at Gallup Chain, with his dad. Then they discontinued Automotive. Only Bike remained. A week after his layoff, Grandpa died. Day of the wake, Dad got laid off too. Month later, we found out Jean was sick. Jean was my sister, who died at eight. Her last wish was Disneyland. But money was tight. Toward the end, Dad borrowed money from Leo, the brother he hated. But Jean was too sick to travel. So Dad had an Army friend from Barstow film all of Disney on a Super-8. The guy walked the whole place. Jean watched it and watched it. Dad was one of these auto-optimists. To hear him tell it, we’d won an incredible last-minute victory. Hadn’t we? Wasn’t it something, that we could give Jeanie such a wonderful opportunity?

  But Jean had been distilled down to like pure honesty.

  “I do wish I could have gone, though,” she said.

  “Well, we practically did,” Dad said, looking panicked.

  “No, but I wish we really did,” she said.

  After Jean died, we kept her room intact, did a birthday thing for her every year, started constantly expecting the worst. I’d come home from a high-school party and Mom would be sitting there with her rosary, mumbling, praying for my safe return. Even a dropped shopping bag, a broken jar of Prego, would send them into a funk, like: Doom, doom, of course, isn’t this the way it always goes for us?

  Eight years later came the night of the Latvians.

  So a little decent luck for Mom and Dad doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

  “About this job thing,” I say.

  “I will absolutely make it happen,” he says.

  The way we do it is we carry them one at a time out to his special van. He’s got a lift in there for Val. Not that we need the lift. These guys are super-light. Then we drive out to the forest behind Missions. We dig a hole, which is not easy, due to roots. I go in, he hands them down very gentle. They’re so stiff and dry it’s hard to believe they can still smell.

  We backfill, kick some leaves around, drag over a small fallen tree.

  “You O.K.?” he says. “You look a little freaked.”

  I ask should we maybe say a prayer.

  “Go ahead,” he says. “My feeling is, these guys have been gone so long they’re either with Him or not. If there even is a Him. Might be real, might not. To me? What’s real? Val. When I get home tonight, there she’ll be, waiting. Hasn’t eaten yet, needs her bath. Been by herself the whole day. That, to me? Is real.”

  I say a prayer, lift my head when done.

  “I thank you, Val thanks you,” he says.

  In the van, I do a Bad Feelings Acknowledgment re the reburial. I visualize my Useless Guilt as a pack of black dogs. I open the gate, throw out the Acknowledgment Meat. Pursuing the Meat, the black dogs disappear over a cliff, turning into crows (i.e., Neutral/Non-Guilty Energy), which then fly away, feeling Assuaged.

  Back at CommComm, we wash off the shovels, Pine-Sol the copier closet, throw open the windows, check e-mail while the place airs out.

  Next morning, the stink is gone. The office just smells massively like Pine-Sol. Giff comes in around eleven, big bandage on his humongous underchin.

  “Hey, smells super in here today,” he says. “Praise the Lord for that, right? And all things.”

  “What happened to your chin?” says Rimney. “Zonk it on a pew while speaking in tongues?”

  “We don’t speak in tongues,” says Giff. “I was just shaving.”

  “Interesting,” Rimney says. “Goodbye.”

  “Not goodb
ye,” says Giff. “I have to do my Situational Follow-Up. What in your view is the reason for the discontinued nature of that crappo smell you all previously had?”

  “A miracle,” says Rimney. “Christ came down with some Pine-Sol.”

  “I don’t really go for that kind of talk,” says Giff.

  “Why not pray I stop?” says Rimney. “See if it works.”

  “Let me tell you a like parable,” Giff says. “This one girl in our church? Had this like perma-smile? Due to something? And her husband, who was non-church, was always having to explain that she wasn’t really super-happy, it was just her malady. It was like the happier she looked, the madder he got. Then he came to our church, guess what happened?”

  “She was miraculously cured and he was miraculously suddenly not angry,” says Rimney. “God reached down and fixed them both, while all over the world people who didn’t come to your church remained in misery, weeping.”

  “Well, no,” says Giff.

  “And that’s not technically a parable,” says Verblin.

  “See, but you’re what happens when man stays merely on his own plane,” says Giff. “Man is made bitter. Look, I’m not claiming I’m not human and don’t struggle. Heck, I’m as human as you. Only I struggle, when I struggle, with the help of Him that knows no struggle. Which is why sometimes I maybe seem so composed or, you might say, together. Everyone in our church has that same calm. It’s not just me. It’s just Him, is how we say it.”

  “How calm would you stay if I broke your neck?” says Rimney.

  “Ron, honestly,” Jonkins says.

  “Quiet, Tim,” Rimney says to Jonkins. “If we listen closely, we may hear the call of the North American extremist loony.”

  “Maybe you’re the extremist due to you think you somehow created your own self,” says Giff.

  “Enough, this is a place of business,” says Rimney.

  Then Milton Gelton comes in. Gelton’s a GS- 5 in Manual Site Aesthetics Improvement. He roams the base picking up trash with a sharp stick. When he finds a dead animal, he calls Animals. When he finds a car battery, he calls Environmental.

  “Want to see something freaky?” he says, holding out his bucket. “Found behind Missions?”

  In the bucket is a yellow-black human hand.

  “Is that a real actual hand of someone?” says Amber.

  “At first I thought glove,” Gelton says. “But no. See? No hand-hole. Just solid.”

  He pokes the hand with a pen to demonstrate the absence of a hand-hole.

  “You know what else I’m noting as weird?” Giff says. “In terms of that former smell? I can all of a sudden smell it again.”

  He sniffs his way down to the bucket.

  “Yoinks, similar,” he says.

  “I doubt this is a Safety issue,” says Rimney.

  “I disagree,” says Giff. “This hand seems like it might be the key to our Possible Source of your Negative Odor. Milton, can you show me the exact locale where you found this at?”

  Out they go. Rimney calls me in. How the hell did we drop that fucker? Jesus, what else did we drop? This is not funny, he says, do I realize we could go to jail for this? We knowingly altered a Probable Historical Site. At the very least, we’ll catch hell in the press. As for the Dirksen, this gets out, goodbye Dirksen.

  I eat lunch in the Eating Area. Little Bill’s telling about his trip to Omaha. He stayed at a MinTel. The rooms are closet-size. They like slide you in. You’re allowed two Slide-Outs a night. After that it’s three dollars a Slide-Out.

  Rimney comes out, says he’s got to run home. Val’s having leg cramps. When she has leg cramps, the only thing that works is hot washrags. He’s got a special pasta pot and two sets of washrags, one blue, one white. One set goes on her legs, while the other set heats.

  With Rimney gone, discipline erodes. Out the window I see Verblin sort of mincing to his car. A yardstick slides out of his pants. When he stoops to get the yardstick, a print cartridge drops out of his coat. When he bends to pick up the cartridge, his hat falls off, revealing a box of staples.

  At three, Ms. Durrell from Environmental calls. Do we have any more of those dioxin coloring books? Do I know what she means? It’s not a new spill, just reawakened concern over an old spill. I know what she means. She means Donnie Dioxin: Badly Misunderstood But Actually Quite Useful Under Correct Usage Conditions.

  I’m in Storage looking for the books when my cell rings.

  “Glad I caught you,” Rimney says stiffly. “Can you come out to Missions? I swung by on the way back and, boy, oh boy, did Elliot ever find something amazing.”

  “Is he standing right there?” I say.

  “O.K., see you soon,” he says, and hangs up.

  I park by the Sputnik-era jet-on-a-pedestal. The fake pilot’s head is facing backward and a twig’s been driven up his nose. Across the fuselage some kid’s painted, “This thing looks like my pennis if my pennis has wings.”

  It starts to flurry. Giff’s been at the grave with a shovel. So far, it’s just the top of the jockey’s head sticking out, and part of the enclodded guy’s foot.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Wow is correct,” Rimney says.

  “Thanks be to Scouts,” Giff says. “See? Footprints galore. Plus tire tracks. To me? It’s like a mystery or one of those deals where there’s more than meeting the eyes. Because where did these fellows come from? Who put them here? Why did your office smell so bad, in an off way similar to that gross way that hand smelled? In my logic? I ask, Where locally is somewhere deep that’s recently been unearthed or dug into? What I realized? The Dirksen. That is deep, that is new. What do you think? I’ll get with Historical tomorrow, see what used to be where the Dirksen is at now.”

  I helped Rimney get Val home from the hospital after the stroke, watched the two of them burst into tears at the sight of her mechanical bed.

  He looks worse than that now.

  “Fuck it. I’m going to tell him, trust him. What do you think?” he says.

  My feeling is no, no, no. Giff’s not exactly the King of Sense of Humor. Last year, I was the only non-church person at his Christmas party. The big issue was, somebody on Giff’s wife’s side had sent their baby a stuffed DevilChild from Hell from the cartoon “HellHood.” The DevilChild starts each episode as a kindly angel with a lisp. Then something makes him mad and he morphs into a demon and starts speaking with an Eastern European accent while running around stabbing uptight people in the butt with a red-hot prod.

  “As for me and my house, this little guy has no place here,” Giff had said. “Although Cyndi apparently feels otherwise.”

  Cyndi I would describe as pretty but flinchy.

  “Andy doesn’t see it as the Devil,” she said. “He just likes it.”

  “Well, I do see it as the Devil,” Giff said. “And I don’t like it. And here in this house a certain book tells us the role of the father/husband. Am I right?”

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “You guessing so, like Pastor Mike says, is sympromatic of your having an imperfect understanding of what the Lord has in mind for our family, though,” he said. “Right? Right, Pastor Mike?”

  “Well, it’s certainly true that a family can only have one head,” said a guy in a Snoopy sweater who I guessed was Pastor Mike.

  “O.K., tough guy,” Cyndi said to Giff, and stomped off, ringing the tree ornaments.

  I can see Giff’s wheels turning. Or trying to. He’s not the brightest. I once watched him spend ten minutes trying to make a copy on a copier in the Outer Hall which was unplugged and ready for Disposal.

  “Wait, are you saying you guys did this?” he says.

  Rimney says Giff has a wife, Giff has a baby-would a transfer to the Dirksen be of interest? Maybe Giff’s aware that he, Rimney, knows somebody who knows somebody?

  “Oh, my gosh, you guys did do it,” Giff says.

  He lets the shovel fall and walks toward the woods, as if so shocked he has
to seek relief in the beauty of nature. Out in the woods are three crushed toilets. Every tenth bush or so has a red tag on it, I have no idea why.

  “All’s I can say is wow,” Giff says.

  “They’re dead, man,” Rimney says. “What do you care?”

  “Yes, but who was it shaped these fellows?” says Giff. “You? Me? Look, I’m going to speak frank. I think I see what’s going on here. Both you guys took recent hard hits. One had a wife with a stroke, the other a great tragic loss of their parents. So you got confused, made a bad call. But He redeemeth, if only we open our hearts. Know how I know? It happened to me. I also took a hard hit this year. Because guess what? In terms of my wife? I’m just going to say it. Our baby is not my baby. Cyndi had a slipup with this friend of ours, Kyle. I found out just before Christmas, which was why I was such a fart at our party. That put me in a total funk-we were like match and gas. I was so mad there was a darkness upon me. Poor thing had bruises all up her arms, due to I started pinching her. In her sleep, or sometimes I would get so mad and just come up quick and do it. Then, January tenth, I’d had enough, and I prayed, I said, ‘Lord, I am way too small, please take me up into You, I don’t want to do this anymore.’ And He did it. I dropped as if shot. And when I woke? My heart was changed. All glory goes to Him. I mean, it was a literal release in my chest. All my hate about the baby was gone and all of a sudden Andy was just my son for real.”

  “Nice story,” says Rimney.

  “It’s not a story. It happened to me for real in my life,” says Giff. “Point is? I had it in me to grow. We all do! I’m not all good, but there’s a good part of me. My fire may be tiny, but it’s a fire just the same. See what I mean? Same like you. Do you know that good part? Have you met it, that part of you that is all about Truth, that is called, in how we would say it, your Christ-portion? My Christ-portion knew that pinching was wrong. How does your Christ-portion feel about this sneaky burial thingy? I mean honestly. In a perfect world, is that what you would have chose to do?”

  This catches me a little off guard.

  “Is this where I go into a seizure and you heal me by stroking my dick?” Rimney says.

  Giff blinks at this, turns to me.