by Kluwe, Chris
“Two: Your fingernails are scuffed and dirty and your hair is oily, though neatly combed around the edges in an attempt to hide that fact. The comb itself is a cheap plastic version, the end of which I can see barely sticking out of your right pocket, and multiple teeth are missing. A fastidious man, one who aligns both shirtsleeves to be geometrically precise with his jacket, would keep his hands and hair clean unless he had no other option, and he would replace such a comb at the earliest possible opportunity. The fact you are unable to do so suggests a severe lack of funds, as well as a lack of access to common utilities.
“Three: I can see the outline of several coins and crumpled banknotes in your left trouser pocket but no wallet bulge anywhere, which tells me that you’re running on empty. A wealthy man wouldn’t bother with the coins and wouldn’t be without access to at least some of his wealth at a moment’s notice, especially if he was planning on using that wealth. You’ve tracked in some oil on the bottom of your shoe, yet I don’t hear any keys jingling when you walk, which means you didn’t pick up the oil when you were in a gas station filling up your car; you got it while asking for the change that I mentioned earlier. Except I don’t think you asked for the change, because that brings me to point four.
“Point four is the revolver sitting in a shoulder holster underneath your left arm. The sweat pattern is distributed in the silhouette of a .356 Magnum, and the powder burns peppering your right hand tell me you’ve used it recently. Your demeanor and appearance don’t indicate any signs of a mugging or other attack, so you must have been the aggressor, and your nonchalant attitude means it’s not a new behavior. Hopefully, for your sake, you didn’t actually use the gun on somebody today.”
I clasped my hands behind my head and continued staring into his now beady eyes. “That is where I ‘get off,’ as you so eloquently put it. You’ve neither the intention to pay me nor the means to do so. Now, I’ll repeat the question one more time: Why should I help you?”
He grinned unpleasantly, drew the revolver, held it waist high, and aimed it at my head. “Because if you don’t, I’ll shoot you.”
“Ahh, I see, so now we get to the heart of the matter. Very well, if that is your price, let us see if I can pay it. Tell me, what is it that you’re looking for?” I swung my feet down and leaned forward, propping my elbows on the desk while steepling my fingers together under my chin.
He took a step toward me, gun still aimed at my temple, and began to speak. “I’ve lost my way,” he stated simply, flatly, angrily. “I used to have the finest houses, the most expensive cars, piles of money, and I can’t find them anymore! They’re all in the hands of foreigners and merchants, taken from under my nose! My family was industrious and hardworking, but now all they do is lie about all day complaining that I’m not providing enough for them—as if I have any choice in the matter! That’s why I had to shoot that poor towelhead! It was for my family! I keep giving them more and more and it’s never enough!”
I sighed and shook my head. “I think I begin to see the problem here. All of your misfortune, all of your complaints, they’re all things someone has perpetrated on you, correct?”
He nodded emphatically, lips pursed together in a thin line.
“Well, it seems that we need to discover whoever this person is, and then we shall have an idea as to how we can recover your well-being. Tell me, why does your family no longer work to provide for themselves?”
“I told you, they can’t work! All the jobs have been taken by the foreigners! No one wants to pay a decent wage anymore for an honest day’s work plus benefits!”
“Surely they must eat, though, correct? Do they grow their own food? Craft their own clothes?”
“Of course not!” He looked shocked. “What do you take us for, savages? There’s a wonderful store we use called Mal-Wart, carries everything we need at the only prices we can afford. I tell you, it’s an absolute lifesaver. Without those low, low deals, there’s no way we’d be able to get by.”
“I see. And how do they pay for these wonderful deals?”
“Well, I give my family money, obviously, though it’s getting harder and harder to find. Most of what I have goes to supply this beautiful girl.” He patted the revolver lovingly. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“I meant how does the store pay for the deals.”
“Oh. Well, um, I guess I never thought about it. That’s a good question.”
I permitted myself a small eye roll while his attention was distracted. “Never mind, never mind, let’s move on. Now, you said that merchants were also to blame, is this correct?”
“Yes, that’s right!” His voice rose in excitement. “I bet it was one of them what took my fortune, turned it to their own scheming means!” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “A lot of companies are run by those Jews, you know.”
“Right. Questions of ownership aside, how, exactly, did these merchants steal from you?”
“Hmm. I couldn’t really point to any particulars, but I know they did it somehow.” He frowned. “They all needed so much help—to make sure their businesses were established; develop new products, land, and resources for exploitation—so of course I gave it to them. They promised me so much in return, you see, and for a while, I got a little back, and life was good, but then all of a sudden, they said they didn’t have any money and couldn’t afford to pay me anymore.”
“And you believed them?”
“They were very convincing. They’re the experts, after all; why should I doubt what they tell me? You should see their office buildings—there’s no way an idiot would be able to afford something like that. No, these gentlemen are much more intelligent on these affairs than we’ll ever be, trust me. If they say they don’t have any money, they don’t.”
“Did they do anything illegal? Fraud? Murder?”
“Of course not! They helped write all those laws; there’s no way they could’ve broken them! They know the law back to front! Illegality? Pshaw!”
“What about making them sell some of those buildings to pay you back, or requiring them to pay a percentage of their profit to you?”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that!” He looked shocked. “Why, they’d leave here in an instant and take all their money with them, and then where would I be? No, no, the only way is to help them out a little bit more and hope that will get things turned around properly. They keep telling me it’ll all start trickling down eventually, and soon it’ll be a gushing fountain of wealth! We just have to have faith.”
“…”
“Why are you staring at me?”
“I just wanted to make sure I’d processed all of that correctly in my mind. No money; they’ll take all their wealth; it’s all completely legal—got it. Moving on!”
I tapped my fingers together under my chin, brow furrowed in concentration. “Now, this last question is important and should help me narrow down exactly who is the cause of your misfortune, so I need you to answer completely honestly.”
He nodded eagerly, eyes alight with intensity at the thought of finally discovering the malefactor.
“How educated is your family?”
A quizzical expression flitted around his face before his features settled into a scowl. “Education? What the hell do you need to know that for? I don’t see how that has anything to do with my problem; it’s a case of theft, pure and simple!” He raised the revolver threateningly again, and I could see his finger tighten on the trigger.
“If you could humor me, please, I would greatly appreciate it. One must consider all the facts of a case before making a judgment.”
A tense silence ensued for several seconds before he lowered the gun halfway; the scowl remained on his face. “Well, little Jack and Diane had five years of Sunday schooling and twelve years of high school, but they never really understood much more than their ABC’s. They’re good with the TV theme songs, though. My son Kennedy went to one of those fancy prep schools but got kicked out for molesting som
e poor girl—luckily, we found a good lawyer to hush that up. Think he graduated from Kennedy’s school actually. Splendid fellow. The rest of the family doesn’t really do a whole lot; they mainly study daytime talk shows. Did you know they do all kinds of science on those? DNA tests and everything.”
“And yourself?”
He sighed heavily. “I graduated magna cum laude from MIT and Harvard, was captain of the debate team and president of the ethics club, and I’m a physician with fifteen different specialties. I also built a spaceship. The family—well, they don’t seem to appreciate learning as much as I did. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why.” His expression grew morose.
“When the children were younger, I gave them all the stimulation they could ask for—television, movies, video games, the best nannies money could buy. I told them over and over how successful they would be if they could just master Wall Street or land in an advertising agency somewhere—look at all their cousins! But they just wanted to live off my achievements, skate by on my success—”
“And you let them?”
“They’re family! If I don’t take care of them all, some of them might not succeed, and then how would I be able to live with myself? I simply cannot believe how heartless you are! Should I let them fail when I have the means to provide for them? Clearly, you don’t know the first thing about raising a dependent.”
Sweat rivulets trickled down his brow as he finished yelling, and I leaned back in my chair, once again clasping my hands behind my head and stretching out my legs. The sun had slowly gone down during our conversation, and now the orange rays of dusk filled the office and dust motes danced in the air. I stared at him in silence for several minutes, watching him fidget and twitch. Finally, I spoke.
“After reviewing all the facts, both clear and unclear, it seems obvious to me who is responsible for your downward spiral, my good man. However, before we get to that conclusion, I have one more question for you.”
I paused for a moment, taking in the haunting atmosphere of the fading light. There is a truly majestic quality in the shadows that overtake our world in such a regular rhythm, the ebb and flow as old as time. Who truly knows what lurks beneath darkness’s mantle?
“Why are honest men so hard to find?” I asked.
He smiled, and tightened his finger on the trigger.
“Because,” he said, “they keep telling me the truth.”
It Ain’t All Fame and Fortune
This piece originally ran on The Trenches at http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/it-aint-all-fame-and-fortune.
You want to hear some shit? Let me tell you about my average day. It starts off with waking up at 6:45 in the morning, which is waaaaaay before the sun comes up, which means it’s cold. Real cold. So cold that the steering-wheel heater in my BMW takes at LEAST five minutes to warm up. Sometimes I even have to hit the three-zone seat heater, which is not a step I take lightly. That thing chews right through ultra-premium gas.
Once the climate problems are dealt with, I have to fight my way through ten, maybe fifteen minutes of light traffic. Occasionally there’s an accident, some person in an Oldsmobile or something, and I have to drop down to fifty-five miles an hour. Let me tell you, there is nothing more depressing than driving past a broken-down minivan filled with screaming children when you can only do fifty-five. Just awful.
Finally I get to work. My clothes are freshly laundered and hanging in my locker, but the industrial-strength drying machine they use shrinks my pants sometimes and then I have to ask for a new pair. They always give it to me, but it’s just so humiliating to actually have to talk to the equipment managers. Rarely, they make eye contact, and what am I supposed to do then? Acknowledge them? Pretend to remember their names?
After the pants disaster, the only way to calm myself down is to head up to the cafeteria and order some freshly made pancakes and scrambled egg whites, but the kitchen staff create a very hostile environment. They also put out biscuits, gravy, waffles, hash browns, thick-cut bacon, thin-cut bacon, and sausage patties, and there’s a fruit and yogurt bar, a cereal stand, croissants, English muffins, more bacon, and fully made breakfast sandwiches. How am I supposed to look at all that and eat healthy at the same time? Some people just don’t get it.
Once breakfast is out of the way (and I’ve been forced to bus my own dishes over to the dishwasher), it’s time for meetings. Then there’s an agonizing forty-five minutes before I can finally escape, and if I fall asleep during the meetings, I get yelled at. It’s so unfair—don’t they know how early I have to wake up? Then I have to somehow find a way to fill the next two hours before lunch; usually the only option is to play dominoes, but sometimes I lose and that really sucks. It’s super hard to stay focused at work once you lose a domino game. It can ruin your entire day.
After lunch (with a measly selection of four entrées, three side courses, a salad bar, a sandwich bar, a dessert bar, and an ice cream freezer), there’s another hour of dead time that I’m supposed to fill. Usually I’ll sneak into the equipment room and read the paper, but the couch there is getting old, and the dryers are moderately loud, so it’s a less-than-ideal environment. It’s really hard to focus on the crossword puzzle with a dryer rattling around. Other times, I’ll go take a nap in the lounge, but there’s only the two couches, so if it fills up, it’s a real bummer.
Then comes the worst part of the day: practice. I have to actually put on my cleats and go punt a football for THIRTY MINUTES.
Thirty minutes. I’ll let that sink in a little bit.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m done when the punting ends either—then I have to go inside and pretend to lift weights so I can sit down. The coaches don’t let us sit down on the field, and I think you’ll all agree that that’s basically indentured servitude. I’m considering filing an OSHA complaint.
After all that grueling work, practice finally ends and I have to hurry up and head home at three so I can avoid traffic. Exhausting. My only relief is to sit on the couch and play games until midnight to unwind from the stress.
So when you video-game testers think you have it hard, in your air-conditioned rooms with your fancy electronics, take a minute and think about us poor NFL punters. We deal with the real shit, out in the real world. Our trenches run deep.
Just Deserts
You get the government you deserve.
What do I mean by this? Simple. The governing body of a country is a direct representation of what the citizenry of that country is willing to tolerate. Your government reflects you; it is the power-wielding mirror of your desires.
Right now in the United States, that mirror shines darkly. People may rail against the passage of bills like SOPA, PIPA, NDAA, and other rights-encroaching tyrannies of the state, but why are politicians proposing them in the first place?
The answer is: You let them. You decided that you’d rather have cheap mass-produced shit from Walmart or Target because it cost ten cents less to buy. You decided that the quick-cash grab of the housing bubble was worth fucking the economy; that trucks that get eight miles to the gallon were a good idea and to hell with the environment; that being in a union automatically entitled you to cushy benefits and the right to just show up and put in your time because who gives a fuck if that road gets finished three days from now or three weeks from now, you’re getting paid either way, and—oh, whoops, another bridge fell down.
You decided that your instant gratification was worth ignoring the long-term problems that corporate-manufacturing abuse of the environment entails. You decided that global warming was just some nonsense cooked up by crackpot tree-humpers, never mind that 99 fucking percent of the scientific community agrees that it’s a serious problem with serious consequences that we need to address NOW. You decided you’d rather pay $500 million for another hundred cruise missiles than fund scientific exploration and education and teach your children about the future.
You know what else you decided? You decided that m
oney was more important than intelligence. You decided that being smart was something to be afraid of rather than something to be celebrated. You decided your role models were athletes and reality-TV stars, not scientists and philosophers. I mean, who gives a shit about Socrates when you can watch the Situation, amirite?
And you know what? You can’t deny this, because that’s the government we have. We have politicians whose only concern is money and how they can use it to get reelected and what kind of pork they can funnel over to their states. We have Supreme Court justices who think that a faceless conglomeration of ideas that exists solely to make money should have the same rights as a person but without any of the responsibilities like, oh, taxes and accountability. We have presidents who start wars without considering the ramifications of what will happen based on information they didn’t want to have to think too hard about. We have bills and laws and detention centers where we’ve shat upon the things this country was founded on, things like the right to a speedy trial and the right not to be tortured. We have literal war criminals (as defined by the Geneva convention, which we are very much a signatory to) living in this country who no one has the goddamned balls to prosecute, because God forbid someone gets his feelings hurt that the people he supported turned out to be power-grubbing assholes. We have the audacity of hope and the reality of business as usual, thanks so much for the vote, hope you enjoy your vacation in Guantanamo.
So complain all you want, but until you decide to educate yourself, until you develop the will to learn, until you see other people as human beings and not as objects to be exploited, until you realize that settling for the banal mediocrity of mindless consumption is the root cause of all your problems—well, until that day, you’ll keep getting the government you deserve.