CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella (12 page)

Connie’s Flaw is a slight, very slight, vestigial tail. You can barely see it. After her jilting she went through a bad
depression and tried to sand it off. She got a serious infection and was in the clinic for a week with compresses on her rear. When she came out she was humiliated and refused to speak. A week later she turned her first trick.

Sometimes I remember her at three years old on Easter morning, wearing a little coolie hat in the yard of the house on Marigold. We had a swing set. We had a bird feeder. We had a dog named Sparky. How we’d laugh as he’d caper around the yard digging at his anus with his mouth. When times got hard he was eaten against our will by our neighbor Mr. DeAngelo. Maybe it was for the best. A week later the militia took the house and we were driven out onto the road. Sparky would have been just one more mouth to feed. But still. Is it right that a couple of little kids should have to watch a grown overweight Italian man coldcock their father in order to bludgeon their dog to death with an eight-iron and roast it over an open fire? This was a man we’d seen swoon over a Christmas train set. This was a man who for laughs once ran through our sprinkler with a pair of underwear on his head. And there he was, weeping, dragging Sparky away by the paw. There he was, bellowing for his wife, cursing her for mislocating the Sterno cups, hacking up our pet with a cleaver in the shade of his bass boat. Who could forget his red-stained mouth? Who could forget him, satiated and contrite, offering Mom a shank?

Connie’s a prostitute, I’m a thirty-year-old virgin, but all things considered, we could have turned out a lot worse.

I walk past the beanfields and the Corporate Porcine Receptacle to cry on Connie’s shoulder in the women’s
bunkhouse. The Receptacle is for the Dietary Supplement Pigs, hardened bits of which ultimately end up in the black bean soup. The Dietary Supplement Pigs are distinct from the Ambience Enhancement Pigs, which we breed special to resemble the coarse varieties extant during the actual Middle Ages, and whose primary function is to stand around the castle courtyard looking realistic.

The bunkhouse is empty. Then the lowly Ramirez twins come in from a morning of hand-lugging dirt clods in the beanfields. Connie considers Lupe and Maria a couple of excellent arguments for remaining a floozy. They’re moral but not bright. They’ve got holy cards plastered all over their metal bedframes. They rarely speak and when they do are either proselytizing or claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary hovering above a moat. Last fall Mr. Oberlin suggested that Lupe might like to supplement her paycheck by spending some time in the Reward Suite with a high-school friend of his who’d done well in the arms trade. When she refused he made her work overtime. She kept panting by my window with her basket full of clods. Finally I went out to help and she gave me her holy scapular. Since then she’s wanted me. She sends me drawings of Saint Francis with my Employee Yearbook picture taped over his face. She’s sweet but too apocalyptic. You try kissing someone good-night who’s just told you for the umpteenth time that the world’s experiencing its last disgusting paroxysm before Rapture.

Connie comes in and I tell her I’m a Table Boy. She says it serves me right. She takes off her blouse and says that in spite of being bombarded with rocks, Corbett’s decided to stay, and desires Bookish Queen Mother instead of the
scheduled Ferryman’s Mentally Feeble Daughter. She asks if by way of apology I’ll help her suit up. I tell her no way She puts on a push-up bra and a fake ermine robe and some horn-rims. She says Corbett’s better than most, in that he’s nonabusive and buys her gifts off the record. She says she thinks he’s fallen for her. I accuse her of self-delusion. I ask her to reconsider for my sake and not have sex with him.

She takes my face between her hands.

“I am never, ever starving or being made a fool of again,” she says. “No matter what. I’ll sleep with the entire universe before I ever pick up another horse turd in a bucket.”

Then she goes out the door and the Ramirez twins cross themselves in tandem and take out their checkerboard.

The Gleasons are regulars. They’ve got a tidy nest egg that allows them to patronize us three times a year. Mr. Gleason’s an undertaker. When the first wave of mass death swept over the Northeast he got rich by inventing the Mobile Embalmer. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of chemistry could preserve a loved one on the spot, and for a fraction of the cost associated with traditional methods.

I go in wearing my Table Boy duds and he’s stretched out on a couch being fed grapes by Lydia Bell, a closet radical feminist born without eyelids who’s always telling me about her secret plan to eventually slaughter some male Clients. For now she’s saving like crazy and biding her time. She gets revenge in small ways, like leaving bits of stem on Gleason’s grapes. Every time she does it she gives me a look. Gleason doesn’t notice because he’s too busy
miming licking her navel whenever she reaches for her eye-drops.

After the Feast we all hustle down to the walk-in as usual to wolf down the leftovers. Before long Gleason comes wandering in drunk with a gravy splotch on his tunic and gives a speech about how fair free enterprise is. He asks what percentage of us are Flawed. I say all. He says the fact that we’re not at each other’s throats fighting for our daily bread but instead are squatting in a walk-in enjoying food he’s paid for is testimony to the workability of this beautiful system. He leers and asks Lydia if she’d like to do some grape-feeding in a less formal setting.

Then the Perimeter Violation Alarm sounds. Lydia rushes out ahead of me, gnawing on a roaster and shading her lidless eyes. Per specs we dash to the front gate, where a dozen members of Austerity are singing minor-key hymns and throwing buckets of black paint at our retaining wall. As usual one of them is dressed as Death Eating Chips to protest the reemergence of wasteful packaging practices. Austerity considers us decadent. They hate the fact that we market opulence. They kill a cow per family per year and use every single part. They make candles from the bone marrow and pudding from the brains. They boil the fat to make soap and use the leftovers to grease their looms. Their faces are pale and they have bony knuckles from so often going around with their fists clenched. The women all look depressed and wear bonnets. In their camps everybody works. The children work and the elderly work and the handicapped work. At one camp they had a baldheaded lunatic who paced and paced while reciting Browning, so they tethered him to the water well and
he wore a circular trough into the ground, but not before producing hundreds of useful gallons.

They’re screaming up at us to reduce our Clients’ per capita caloric intake. They’re imploring us to refuse our allocated narcotics so we can see the power structure more clearly. They’re calling us brothers and sisters and asking why we honor the very mind-set responsible for the world’s sorry state.

Oberlin’s screaming back that they’re only austere because they’ve got no other options. Gerard, Oberlin’s behemoth Security stooge, says let’s turn the firehoses on the loudmouths. I fall in with the others and we wrestle the hose to the top of the wall. Gerard turns on the water and we blast Austerity back to tree line. Death Eating Chips stumbles and because of the weight of his head can’t get up.

“Immerse that particular sucker in water!” Oberlin screams. “I desire you to make that costume inoperable.”

So every time the guy gets up we blast him in the legs and he goes down in the mud again. The costume’s coming apart. When it comes all the way apart we see that Death Eating Chips is a girl. In deference to Austerity’s policy of eschewing anything even vaguely degrading to women she’s shaved off her hair and plucked her eyebrows and is wearing a chest-flattening harness. Still, her beauty shines through.

We stop blasting her.

“Think!” she shouts. “Extrapolate your daily actions one-million-fold. Ask yourself if the things you do make sense. Then walk out of that Babylon and join us.”

“Oh, shut up,” Oberlin shouts. “Honestly.”

She picks up what’s left of her enormous head, then flips
us off and rejoins her cowering wet friends in the grove. Singing “We Shall Overcome,” they march back to their camp carrying lit homemade candles.

Gerard rolls up the hose and passes out our bonus cocaine.

“Heads out of butts, everybody,” Oberlin says. “Fun’s over. Unless I’m mistaken we still have valued Clients to transport back to a time of quaint enchantment.”

So we toot up while jogging towards the Corkboard of Assignments, and when we get there everyone laughs at me and pelts me with their empty vials because according to the Corkboard my next Table Boy gig is a SafeOrgy.

Nobody likes a SafeOrgy. A SafeOrgy fills you with longing and repulses you at the same time. We supply a sexy room modeled after a posh nineteen-fifties hotel. We offer BodyCons, since even the rich aren’t above the sexually transmitted disease epidemic. They like to let it all hang out and express themselves without any worries, like in the old days. Today I walk in with my tray and seven shrink-wrapped Clients are rolling around on a heart-shaped bed with crooner music playing. We’re not supposed to linger, just set the cold cuts down and get the hell out. But unfortunately a gorgeous overenthusiastic Client ruptures her seal. Our Employee Handbook requires us to perform a quick decon on the spot. There’s a tank of soap mounted above the fireplace. She’s all worked up however and starts groping me. I try to resist but she’s strong. Nothing much really happens. She gets my earlobe in her mouth and starts sucking. That’s about it. It’s not unpleasant but I’m too scared to enjoy it. Finally I get her off me and manage
to spray her from head to toe with soap. That cools her down. Maybe too much. As soon as she becomes aware that her boob is protruding from the shrink-wrap her cultural encoding gets the best of her and she starts looking down her nose at me.

“You reprobate Flawed animal!” she says, backpedaling and folding her arms over her chest. “This is going directly into the written summary portion of your Evaluation!”

Luckily the other members of her party are too soused to catch what she’s saying so I manage to get out without being lynched. I immediately go over to Administration to explain it all to Oberlin and Albert. This could be real trouble. They could claim I molested a paying Client. They could demote me even further, to Gravedigger or Septic Tank Tech.

But to my surprise Albert tousles my hair and gives me a cube of fried meat, a true facility rarity. The last time I had meat was four years ago, when a drunken Client singled me out for my subservient attitude. Talk about a feast. Talk about being blocked up for weeks afterwards.

“Never mind about her,” Albert says. “She’ll live. We’ve got something more important to discuss with you.”

“Respect,” Oberlin says. “That’s the quantity I hope to imbibe to you during the confab that is to follow this present preface I’m extolling. Because my feeling is strongly that a man has a right to know the whereabouts of, say, immediate family members, should their lifeplans take a strong hiatus. So congratulations! Don’t therefore think of it as losing an erstwhile sister, but rather as having her gain her dream of off-site cohabitation with someone richer than any of us, is my read on this.”

“What’s he talking about?” I ask Albert.

“Connie,” Albert says. “Corbett’s bought her out of Bounty Land.”

“Bought her out?” I say. “What does that mean?”

“Albert’s putting this thing in a non-romantic light,” Oberlin says. “Surely there’s love there.”

“Oh, there’s love there,” Albert says. “Considerable love.”

“And think if you will of the ranch to which he’ll take her!” Oberlin says. “A finer ranch none of us will ever see, much less have as a love nest of sorts.”

“When are they leaving?” I say. “Where are they going?”

“Six hours ago,” Oberlin says. “His spacious estate, you lovable boob! Taos, New Mexico! Affluent as all get-out. He’s got more livestock than you can shake a stick at, and from there runs his antiseptic-swab empire! Your lucky sibling! You don’t think she’ll be waited on hand and foot, and eat like a true nouveau riche or captain of industry? She’ll literally I feel be enmeshed in bonbons, not to mention a staff that loves her like one of their own and praises her personal attributes to the sky or what have you!”

“Are they getting married?” I say.

“Ho ho,” Oberlin says. “What sweet naïveté of existing law you manifest, chum! But they’re living together, and he’s paying all her expenses, including the release fee due our facility, which will allow us to make considerable renovations to the Castle Six edifice, which is crumbling, so don’t give me whining. This is a boon, for us and for you and for her.”

“As next of kin, you’ll need to sign this release,” Albert says. “A mere formality.”

“In her best interests,” Oberlin says.

“No biggie,” Albert says.

“If I don’t sign,” I say, “does he have to bring her back?”

“Haw,” Oberlin says. “No. I fake your John Hancock, then boot your sorry heinie over the wall whence you came in over, leaving you to free-associate with the hateful rabble for an untold future time period.”

“Just sign,” Albert says. “It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s what she wanted. Here. Read this.”

The letter’s in Connie’s hand. I can tell because all the i’s are dotted with smiley faces.

“Cole honey” the letter says, “can you believe all my hard work finally paid off? He says he loves me! A rich Normal and he loves ME! He says the other men in my past don’t matter, and that he wants to possess me totally forever. I’ll miss you, but I know in my heart we’ll meet again, hopefully at my place. A ranch! He said I could even have an economy car! Not to be haughty, but listen: Knuckle down and get something for yourself like I did. Don’t be a dopey space cadet like Dad!”

She’s signed it: “Love forever.”

What can I do? Nothing’s bringing her back. Maybe he really does love her. Maybe he’s freethinker enough to see past her Flaw. Stranger things have happened. She’s pretty and good-hearted and devoted and smart. Who wouldn’t love her?