CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella (13 page)

Oberlin rolls his eyes. Albert purses his lips.

I sign.

Goodbye Connie.

I never considered Dad a dopey space cadet. He was a simple man whose only marketable skill was selling
home water-filtration units via sincerity. Finally, when the Third Panic was in full swing and every water source in the county became suspect, he started giving the units away. Mom said she considered herself as compassionate as the next person, but given our household expenses and the scarcity of the filters, a price increase seemed more in order than a giveaway. Dad said she should try to understand that other people, even ignorant people, even poor people, loved their children every bit as much as she loved hers.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said. “The point is, I don’t love their kids as much as I love mine. And mine are fed with the money you make from those goddamned filters.”

Dad sat on the couch, looking wistful and kooky.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said, staring out at the swing set, where Sparky as usual sat in the glider, his days numbered. “The old criteria such as cash will have no meaning within a few weeks. Good works are the ticket.”

“We need a gun,” Mom said. “For if someone tries to take the house.”

“The people who come to take the house,” Dad said, “will have more guns than you can imagine.”

And he was right. They had guns and riding crops and mortars. They had a sense of high moral purpose. They had the sanction of the provisional government and a portable sound system that blared “Homogeneity, Sweet Homogeneity” as they blockaded the home of any family with a Flawed member, meaning every family but the Quinces, who they blockaded for fraternizing with Flaweds, based on photographs they had of Mr. Quince teaching me to
throw a knuckler. Soon the food ran out and DeAngelo ate our dog. Soon the militia wandered in without firing a shot and drove us into the night.

Mom led us on foot to Sid Pornoy’s Jovial Bowling, where for months she’d been stashing food and water in a locker. Dad followed meekly, making inane guesses at the windchill.

“We’re taking the Greyhound to Indiana,” Mom said. “It’s prosperous there. Flaweds are safe. Aunt Melanie wrote me.”

“Why wasn’t I consulted,” Dad mumbled.

Obviously nobody was bowling. A man with a billy club was pushing a man in a silk jacket away from the snack bar.

“No kielbasa, Joel,” the billy-club man said. “Not a link. No milk. Not a bun.”

“You’ve known me my whole life,” Joel said. “I’m your friend.”

“Not a Pepsi,” said the billy-club man. “Not a spoonful of relish. Not a sugar packet. The time has come for me to look out for me and mine.”

“I am you and yours,” Joel said. “We were school-friends. Remember the caroling parties? Remember when Oscar called Sister Nan a tub? Remember?”

“No,” the billy-club man said. “I mean really me and mine. I mean Bonnie and little Kyle and me. Period. Not you. Don’t touch my counter, Joel. Hit the road.”

Mom loaded up the supplies and strapped the pack to Dad’s back.

“Out of here,” she whispered. “Out of here quickly.”

In spite of the strife the stars were bright as crystal. A tailor squatted in his shopwindow with a machete and a
Newsweek,
waiting for looters. As we crossed the parking lot a van pulled up and the driver called Dad over.

“Keep walking,” Mom said. “Ignore him.”

“He’s a fellow human being,” Dad said. “Perhaps he needs our help.”

The driver was a laid-off boilermaker. He talked to Dad nostalgically about what a friendly city Syracuse had been in the old days. Then he pulled a .22 and forced us into the van. He made us empty our pack. He seemed excited by our cinnamon rolls. He called Mom ma’am and let her keep her personal-hygiene effects. He took our money and he took our food.

“I’m sorry for this,” he said. “I’m not a bad man. But my Leon. His little ribs are sticking way the hell out. You ever seen a starving kid?”

“Not yet,” Mom said dryly.

The boilermaker’s eyes teared up and the gun he was holding to Dad’s head shook.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I got to do it. You was smart enough to put some food aside. Anybody that smart’ll be okay. Now get out. I got to go save my boy.”

We got out. The van pulled away. Mom went into hysterics. She bent over double and started snorting. Whenever Dad got near her she elbowed him in the gut and said his ineptitude had killed us all.

“How dare you say that?” Dad said. “How dare you lose faith in me at a time like this?”

“Lose faith?” Mom screamed. “I’ve had none for months. Look at your poor children. They’re as good as dead. Picture our babies in shrouds. Because of incompetence. Yours. Their father. Whom they’ve always looked up to.”

“Stop,” Dad said. “You can’t take those things back once you’ve said them.”

“Come on kids,” Mom said. “I’ll save you if this milquetoast won’t.”

And off we went.

“Goddamn it!” Dad screamed. “I’ve done my best!”

“Pitiful!” Mom screamed back.

Her words were lost in the wind. Hanging signs were blowing horizontal. Mom dragged us up University. Dad stood talking to himself in Sid’s lot.

“Look!” Mom screamed. “Look how he lets us leave!”

She stepped into the street and put out her thumb. A couple we would get to know well picked us up. These were the Winstons, also on their way west. It was perfect. They loved kids. They were glad to be of service. They had plenty of money. Winston was a banker who’d kept his ear to the tracks and split in the nick of time with a trunkful of other people’s money.

“Do you not have a father?” he asked.

“We do not,” Mom replied.

Just then Dad plastered himself across the windshield.

It was the beginning of a bad ride. Dad got in and Mom folded him up in her arms and they wept together. A day later the Winstons put us out in the middle of nowhere because Mom and Dad rejected the Winstons’ bright idea of a sexual foursome. I woke in the dead of night and heard Mr. Winston making the proposal.

“What I’m putting forth,” he said, “is that the four of us make some memories. Become fast friends and abandon starchy old mind-sets about monogamy. The world’s gone crazy. Let’s do the same.”

“The answer is no,” Dad said. “And I’m surprised I’m not punching you.”

“I’m afraid our hospitality is not being reciprocated, Mother,” Mr. Winston said.

“Some people don’t understand about reciprocity,” Mrs. Winston said.

“Then out now, you people,” Mr. Winston said, and hit the brakes. “End of the line.”

He too had a gun. Apparently in all the world only we didn’t.

So we got out.

“This is murder,” Dad yelled. “It’s freezing out here.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” said Mrs. Winston. “You had your chance. It would have been fun too, believe me.”

“Really fun,” said Mr. Winston. “Jeaninne’s a heckcat in the bunk department.”

We stood in the bitter wind and watched them pull away. As far as the eye could see was frozen marsh.

“Maybe we should have gone along with it,” Mom said.

“Bite your tongue,” Dad said. “There’ll be other rides.”

“Famous last words,” said Mom.

At midnight I wake to creaking floorboards in the dark bunkhouse. I hear the snores of my bunk bedmate, Phil Brent, an upbeat and effeminate swineherd ranked Class P, Visually Difficult to Bear, due to mottled tissue on his face and hands. He runs a workout program for other Class Ps and offers a miniseminar called Overcoming One’s Woes Via Hopeful Mental Imaging. He names and compliments his pigs and cries on slaughtering day. Once as I passed the Porcine Receptacle I heard him telling two sows fighting
over a corncob the story of Job. Tonight he’s muttering optimistic slogans in his sleep and occasionally screaming out in abject terror.

I feel a tug on my toe and in the sudden candlelight see Doc Spanner himself, in our lowly bunkhouse for the first time ever. Spanner’s the facility doctor for Flaweds. Some people are put off by his drinking. Others are put off by his shoddy personal hygiene. I’m put off by his medical track record. Once when I found him soused in a ditch he admitted to being confused by the difference between hemorrhoids and piles. Still, he did a nice job with Connie’s tail infection.

“I can’t live with what I know,” he whispers. “Listen carefully: This Corbett’s a bad egg. When he tires of a woman he sells her to slave traders. It’s a pattern. There’ve been a number of cases. Oberlin told me. I had some deep talks with Connie at the clinic, and she struck me as a kind of a knockout and a nice girl. So I wanted you to know what she’s in for.”

“Can’t we get her back?” I say. “Can’t we just cancel the deal?”

“I expect you’d get some resistance to that from up-stairs,” he says. “Inasmuch as those turds have already spent the exit fee. My point is, someone working outside the system, exhibiting a little derring-do, motivated by strong emotions, might be able to effect a positive outcome. On the other hand, someone attempting to cross the Mississippi wearing a Flawed bracelet wouldn’t exactly be greeted with open arms, and might indeed be greeted with open shackles.”

He winces slightly at his wit, looks around, then pulls a key out of his pocket.

“My position has its little rewards,” he says. “Every Flawed bracelet in this facility is within my jurisdiction. In the case of chafing and so on I’m allowed to perform a temporary Removal and apply ointment. Mr. Big Shot, eh? For this I went to med school. At any rate, this is a service I’m prepared to offer you.”

I nod and hold out my wrist.

“Not so fast,” he says. “First I want you to go see Lucian Bentley in Hagstrom Grove. He’s recently taken sick days to visit his childhood home. He could give you an update on the state of the nation. The last thing I need is your death on my conscience. God knows I’ve got enough deaths on my conscience. Ha ha! So what do you say? Will you go see Lucian?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Super,” he says, then sighs heavily and disappears into the night.

Phil hangs his monstrous face down from above.

“I had such a dream,” he says. “I dreamed that Doc Spanner came in here sober and spoke to you as an equal. Is that wild or what? Heavens.”

“That’s wild,” I say.

At first light I take a few biscuits from my reserve and go over to Hagstrom Grove, where they send Employees who take things too much to heart and go nuts. The Grove is an untidy pen behind Administration with a dirt floor and a fifteen-foot chainlink. At mealtime they fling in sacks of black beans and let the mentally deficient slug it out.
Consequently the fat loonies get fatter and the weak ones limp off to die under strips of cardboard.

I find Bentley behind a shed, wearing a filthy Hawaiian shirt and doing deep knee bends while grasping the fencing. I hold the biscuits in front of his face and he stands up.

“What do I have to do?” he says.

“Nothing,” I say. “They’re for you.”

“Are they poisoned?” he says.

“No,” I say.

“Eat one,” he says.

So I do.

“Probably the others are poisoned,” he says. “Eat a fraction of each.”

I eat a corner off each biscuit. He looks at the remainders suspiciously, then sniffs them.

“I’m not sure it’s worth it,” he says. “How I wish you’d never come. Perhaps you’ve left the poison off of just those corners.”

I begin to realize I’ll doubt whatever information he gives me.

“Lick the entire biscuit,” he says. “Then give them to me.”

So I lick each biscuit.

“Both sides,” he says.

I lick both sides of each biscuit. I give him the wet biscuits and he cracks them open and sniffs them. Then he puts them in his pocket.

“What do you want?” he says. “Now that you’ve failed to poison me to death.”

“Information,” I say. “About the outside.”

He glares and grips my wrist. He licks his lips and bats
his eyes and tugs on his earlobes. He keeps looking behind him. The only thing back there is Mr. Cleary, the nutso tenor, who as usual is singing the national anthem while frantically adjusting his testicles.

“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.