CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

by George Saunders

  “I don’t know you,” Bentley says, “but you’ve given me biscuits. So I’ll tell you the truth. It’s beautiful and wild and not worth the risk. Strong and crazy people prevail. Some of them strapped me to a U-Haul and made use of me. If you get my meaning. And me a grandfather. My sin? None. Walking along the road. This crew had taken control of a bridge. Left me in the sun for a fortnight until some missionaries unstrapped me and applied salve. Consequently I’ve got no zest left. Listen: Don’t budge from here. Learn to enjoy what little you have. Revel in the fact that your dignity hasn’t yet been stripped away. Every minute that you’re not in absolute misery you should be weeping with gratitude and thanking God at the top of your lungs.”

  “Don’t believe him,” Cleary sings from behind us. “He is a liar out to confuse you. Ours is the finest nation on earth, filled with good-hearted lovers-of-life. I was out there fifteen years ago and found the rivers beautiful. At night the howling of dogs could be heard along the banks of crystalline rivers. I was young then, and in spite of my Flaw, Normal women snuck me in their back doors. Late at night they willingly showed me where on their bodies their moles were. They cooked me delicious meals and raked my back in bliss. The world was mine. The freedom made me dizzy. I’d go back in a heartbeat if I wasn’t so sickly. My advice to you is: Taste the sweetness of the world. Leave this death trap, get out and live!”

  Meanwhile Bentley’s pulled a sheet of cardboard over his legs and is performing some additional sniffing of the biscuits. Obviously I’m going to have to decide for myself. How can you take the word of a man with biscuit crumbs under his nose and a habit of walking around holding his hand over his anus for fear of violation?

  But it’s really no decision. You grow up sleeping a few feet from someone, you see her little Catholic jumpers crumpled up in the corner, hear her wheezing with croup, huddle with her in the closet playing Bend the Hanger, and then you’re supposed to sit idly by while she’s sold into slavery?

  I find Doc Spanner drinking for free at a Drawbridge Fete. I hide behind a Peasant Hut and step out as he stumbles by. He makes an odd sound in the back of his throat and lurches into a hay bale.

  “Holy crap!” he says. “Scared the snot out of me. I’ve had a few snorts. Thank God. But good sneaking. If you set out to do what I think you’re going to set out to do, you’ll need to be good at sneaking. Are you? Are you going to set out to do what I think you’re going to set out to do? I see by your eyes that the answer is yes! You swashbuckler! Have you ever got panache and verve and moxie! Exciting. I only wish my sister was a renegade whore about to be sold into slavery. You’ve talked to Bentley? Your mind’s at ease?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m ready.”

  “Ah, youth!” he says, then removes my bracelet and hands me a prescription form with directions to Corbett’s Taos estate written on the back.

  “Kindly keep quiet vis-à-vis your source,” he says. “If not, I may find myself Expelled and forced to care for the hateful rabble gratis in some real-world clinic. Yikes, would that ever bite! Best of luck, pal. Keep your head down. Don’t write me any letters or I might get nailed.”

  Then he stumbles away and joins a group of Clients dropping bits of cheese down the mouthhole of a suit of armor being worn by the hapless Arnie Metz.

  For the first time in twenty years I can see my entire forearm.

  I go to the bunkhouse and put some bread crusts in a knapsack. I say goodbye to my bunk and shelving. Then I go out to the guardstation and climb up. What to do? Actually leave? Sacrifice my personal safety, my frame of reference, my few marginal friends, my job, my daily bread, my security, a lifetime of memories? My knees are shaking. I feel like throwing up, then hightailing it back to the bunkhouse for a nice bowl of black bean and my evening toot.

  I think of Connie in shackles.

  Then I jump.

  And I’m free.

  The stars jar as I sprint down the hill. Soon I’m down-wind of the tent-town stink and can hear their domestic disputes and their brats screaming in poor grammar. I’m not ten feet from their barbed wire when a few young toughs recognize my khaki as corporate issue and wrangle me down to the ground while giving me a ribbing about health care benefits and the amount of time I’ve spent in conference rooms.

  I don’t fight back. Assuming they don’t kill me first, they’ll catch hell from Mayor John Garibasi. Last summer when his daughter got married I took a huge risk by stealing a cake from Baked Goods and lowering it to him on an ad hoc dumbwaiter. Unfortunately Garibasi’s nowhere to be seen, so for several minutes my face is down in the dirt. The toughs remove my clothes and appropriate them for their own use. They let me up and examine the cloth. I sit there gasping in my skivvies while some dispossessed women stand around gawking and critiquing my upper thighs.

  “I want to talk to the mayor,” I say in a shaky voice.

  “You and what army?” says one of the toughs.

  “Yeah,” says another. “If we let everyone see the mayor who came here wanting to see the mayor, we’d have a whole lot of people seeing the mayor.”

  “And that wouldn’t be good,” says a third. “Because then the mayor would always be seeing someone. And besides, you’re obviously a softie with bad motives. Or some kind of like spy guy.”

  Finally Garibasi shows up, wearing a threadbare blazer and carrying a surveying rod.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” he shouts at the toughs. “What the hell? How’d he get all bloody and naked like that?”

  “We beat him up and stripped him,” says one of the toughs.

  “You ignorant pigs. No wonder you’re not the fucking mayor,” Garibasi says. “This is the guy who got Heather her wedding cake.”

  Talk about an awkward silence. Talk about a bunch of strapping lads blushing and hurriedly giving me my pants back, then retreating to their tents. Garibasi apologizes profusely. I get dressed.

  “So what brings you out with us disgustos?” he says. “You taking vacation?”

  “No,” I say. “I quit.”

  “You quit that cushy gig?” he says. “You must have a screw loose. They taking applications? Ha ha! So what do you want? A little money? Food? What?”

  “Whatever you can do,” I say.

  “Tell you the truth,” he says, “I can’t do much. I got to think economy of scale. I got to think: What can you do for me? Fact is, nothing anymore. You got no inside connections now. Basically you’re a nobody. No offense. The cake thing, that was great. But that’s past. We’re not rich here. We’re fucking poor. You know that. You had it good for a long time. You could look out and see us struggling. But now you’re just like us. No pot to piss in. Hand-to-mouth. Wolf-at-the-door and so on. So all’s I can give you at this point is a handshake and a good-luck kick in the ass. And a bed for a week or so. A bed in a leaky tent. A tent we were going to throw out anyway.” Then he stops and looks at my wrist.

  “Whoa up though,” he says. “I don’t see no bracelet, so I’m assuming you’re Normal?”

  “Well,” I say. “Not exactly.”

  “Christ!” he says. “I been standing here talking to a goddamned Flawed as if he had a lick of sense. Offer withdrawn. Get your infectious ass out of here and hit the road. Now. Jesus. Disgusting.”

  I’m shocked. We always got along so well. In the notes he used to throw over the wall he was always saying how much he envied and admired me, and telling me long personal anecdotes about his love for his daughter. That’s why I stole the cake. That’s why I risked my job.

  “Did you hear me, shithead?” he says. “What’s your Flaw, big balls of wax in your ears? No wonder nobody respects you people. Hit the road, freak. Be thankful I’m too busy to have you rebraceleted.”

  I walk through the camp. Filthy babies are sitting in the mud, swatting at passing dogs. Some entrepreneur drags in a muffler and men start pounding it into sheet metal with old shoes. On the perimeter is an immaculate tent surrounded by flowers. A shrunken old woman minds a pot on
a healthy little fire.

  “Hello!” she says. “I can sense a hungry youngster. Come sit down and have something to eat.”

  “Garibasi said I shouldn’t loiter,” I say.

  “That pup,” she says. “Look at my tent and look at his town, then tell me who’s got more sense, me or the mayor. I tell him: Just because we’re down on our luck doesn’t mean we have to live like animals. But he doesn’t listen. He’s too busy having dance parties and naming dirt streets after his mother.”

  She hands me a bowl made of cardboard and duct tape. In the bowl is stew. She says she got the vegetables in exchange for sewing and the meat in exchange for a home boil remedy. We eat at a table she earned midwifing. Afterwards she offers me a handmade toothbrush, then tells me to lie down so she can relax me with a soothing dulcimer melody.

  “Pardon my boldness,” she says, “but the pinkness of your wrist tells me that you’re one of our Special people.”

  “You mean a Flawed,” I say in a self-pitying tone.

  “Flawed my eye,” she says. “There’s not a person on this earth who’s not Flawed in one way or another.”

  Suddenly Garibasi’s standing in the tent doorway.

  “For example,” she says. “Look at the size of this man’s rear. If that’s not a Flaw I don’t know what is.”

  “Out, pal,” Garibasi says to me. “You’ve had your meal. You’ve had your pep talk from Miss Know-It-All here. Now get going.”

  “You do have a whopping big bottom, Johnny,” she says, laughing. “And you have no authority over me. Only I do.”

  “I got the authority,” he says. “I got the fucking authority. Trash her tent.”

  The toughs pull up her stakes and dump what’s left of her stew on the ground. Her matronly bun comes loose and her white hair falls down. They stomp on her dulcimer and shred her old photos. They splinter her hope chest and break her mosquito-repellent sticks, then stand around waiting for her to go into hysterics.

  “You jokers,” she says. “Do you really think you’ve damaged anything of value? I’ll have this place looking better than any of yours again in no time. How sad. How sad that men like you exist and believe yourself strong.”

  “Easy for you to say,” says one tough.

  “Yeah, old bat,” says another, and blows his nose on her comforter.

  She gives him a look and he slithers away.

  “I’m sorry, Sara,” Garibasi says. “But you have to respect my authority.”

  “When you get some,” she says, “I will.”

  She digs through the wreckage for a brush and reinstates her bun. Garibasi and his crew go off, whooping and playfully goosing one another.

  “Now tell me,” she says. “Where are you bound, and why?”

  “New Mexico,” I say. “A family matter.”

  “Good God,” she says. “You Special people must stay out of the West at all costs. Believe me, I know, from bitter experience. My husband was Special. For years before he was born, his parents had been unwittingly drawing their water from a mutagenic well. Perhaps you have a similar story. He was born with a withered leg and a hearing loss, but a sweeter man you never met. Our son got the withered-leg gene only. But it never slowed him down any. He drew cartoon characters on his Flawed bracelet, played ball, wrestled, flirted with the girls. A blessing. So self-confident. So energetic. Too much so. The day he turned eighteen he left us a note: Mother, Dad, it said, I’m off to see the world. While he was gone the Thirteenth Amendment was repealed and the Slave Edict went into effect. A year later his body showed up on our doorstep in a wooden box. He looked ninety. A slaver in Alton, Illinois, had drugged him and sold him to an Idaho rancher.”

  She stops to regain her composure. I awkwardly pat her age-humped back. She regards me fiercely.

  “Now what makes you think you’re any different from my Addie?” she says. “Are you smarter? Stronger? Better prepared?”

  “I can hide my Flaw by always wearing shoes?” I say feebly.

  “Pshaw,” she says. “It’s these people’s business to know a Flawed. They can smell a Flawed coming. They eat Flaweds for breakfast.”

  “She’s my sister,” I say. “I have to go.”

  “Then get out of my sight,” she says in a trembling voice. “I consider you a suicide. Goodbye, dear dead boy. Our Lord has reserved a special place in Limbo for those who put an end to themselves.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I say.

  “No,” she says firmly. “You won’t.”

  Then she turns away and starts putting her tent back together, singing “Simple Gifts” at the top of her ancient lungs.

  That night I sleep a troubled sleep beside a fetid stream. I dream of Limbo, a tiny room full of dull people eternally discussing their dental work while sipping lukewarm tea. I wake at first light and hike through miles of failing forest and around noon arrive in a village of paranoiacs standing with rifles in the doorways of flapper-era homes. It’s a nice town. No signs of plunder or panic. The McDonald’s has been occupied by the radical Church of Appropriate Humility. Everyone calls them Guilters. The ultimate Guilter ritual is when one of them goes into a frenzy and thrusts his or her hand into a deep fryer. A mangled hand is a badge of honor. All the elders have two, and need to be helped on and off with their coats. There was a rash a few years ago of face-thrusting, until the national Guilter Council ruled it vain and self-aggrandizing. Guilters believe in quantifying pain. Each pain unit is called a Victor, after their Founder, Norm Victor. Each Victor earned is a step towards salvation. Having a loved one die tragically earns big Victors. Sometimes for a birthday present a wife will cheat on her husband with one of his friends in such a manner that the husband walks in and catches a painful eyeful. Once at the facility we got hold of a bootleg video of a group of cuckolded Guilter husbands talking about the difficulties of living with simultaneous rage and gratitude.

  Two Guilter guys are standing against a golden arch painted gray. In Guilter epistemology the arches represent the twin human frailties of arrogance and mediocrity. One of the Guilters is violently pulling off his cuticles. Every few minutes he takes out his notebook and logs in some Victors. I say hi as I pass and he nods and winces and rips off another.

  “Which direction is the Thruway?” I say.

  “I’m not worthy to tell you,” he says. “I’d probably get it all wrong. I’m lowly.”

  “Could you take your best guess?” I say.

  “I don’t think so,” he says, and tears off a cuticle. “What if I misled you and you wandered for hours in the wrong direction? I’d feel horrible.”

  “Go ahead,” his partner says. “If you feel really bad about it, to the point where you can’t sleep, that’s three Victors an hour.”

  The cuticle puller stops pulling.

  “Seriously,” his friend says. “New regulations.”

  “In that case,” the cuticle puller says, “I believe you’re going the right way.”

  “On the other hand,” his friend says, “if you’re now experiencing any pleasure thinking of your future Victors, that could mean you have to apply anti-Victors to your running total.”

  “Shut your trap,” the cuticle puller says. “I’m not too keen on taking spiritual advice from someone who picks up cheap Victors by refusing to pee when he needs to.”

  “It’s valid,” the friend says. “I looked it up. Anyway, there are no cheap Victors.”

  “Says you,” says the cuticle puller. “Says you, the king of the cheap Victor. The guy who induces no pain on himself for weeks at a time, then claims Victors for worrying about being so lazy.”

  “Ouch, Bryce,” the friend says. “That cuts to the quick.”

  “Ha,” Bryce says to me. “Now watch him claim Victors because I hurt his feelings.”

  “It’s valid,” his friend whines. “Pain is pain.”

  “Here’s our ride,” Bryce says.

  A kind of bandstand on wheels comes up the street, pulled by six junior Gu
ilters on bikes.

  “We’re going on a retreat,” Bryce says.

  “Have fun,” I say.

  “Not likely,” says Bryce.

  Then they get on the bandstand and ride off around the corner.

  I walk to the window of the church and take a peak. It must have been something to go into a place like that and see somebody dishing up nice warm food instead of several women sitting bare-bottomed on coarse Welcome mats, listening to a little boy playing horrible violin. Imagine ordering one of everything on the menu and not being told no. Imagine idling in the drive-through with your sweetheart while singing along with the radio. What a beautiful country this must have been once, when you could hop in a coupe and buy a bag of burgers and drive, drive, drive, stopping to swim in a river or sleep in a grove of trees without worrying about intaking mutagens or having the militia arrest you and send you to the Everglades for eternity. I can’t help but feel I was born in the wrong age. People then were giants, royalty, possessed of unimaginable largesse and unprecedented power to do good. What I wouldn’t give to be drinking a Dr Pepper while driving an Edsel and listening to Muzak on a Victrola. What I wouldn’t give to be allowed to procreate in a home of my own and toss a ball around with my offspring before heading off for a night on the town with my well-coiffed wife.

  The country opens up, all dips and rises and cool shadowed blue places. Two tan dogs flee across a dam of sticks and mud. Birds swoop over and their shadows follow like quick black checkmarks. Just after three I reach the Thru way. Foot traffic predominates. Every so often some elite guy chugs by in a motor vehicle, windows rolled up tight, and people fall all over themselves to either genuflect before him or lay goobers on his windshield. Legions of the sick wait to die along the shoulder. Wandering undercover bureaucrats whip out clipboards and assess odd taxes, bridge taxes and sleep taxes and taxes for if they catch you eating weeds without permission. Any weed on public property is considered a government agricultural product. If you eat a weed you’re required to utilize a handy pre-addressed envelope to mail in your fee. The envelopes are kept in roadside racks that people keep pulling up to burn for firewood. What used to be exit signs are covered with government propaganda banners. One shows a smiling perfect blond girl flipping a burger. Sneaking up on her is a lustful hunchback wearing a Flawed bracelet.