CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella (16 page)

“Guys, don’t fight!” one little girl cries out.

“Dad, God,” the boy with the tools says. “Mom does so much for all of us.”

“Don’t correct your father,” the mother screams.

“Don’t scream at him,” the father shouts.

“She can!” the tool boy yells. “She can scream at me if she wants! I don’t mind!”

“Ah jeez,” the father says, rolling his eyes at us.

“Daddy, goodness,” the little girl says. “Please don’t use Jesus’ name as a cuss!”

“Don’t correct your father,” the mother says.

“Family,” the father says tensely. “We have guests.”

“Not many,” the wife says. “Not nearly enough of them.”

“Are we going to lose the house?” the little girl says. “Oh no!”

“We’ve got to pull together,” the father says. “I call for a silent prayer moment.”

They huddle in the yard. They hold hands and bow their heads. We stop eating, except for Buddy, who redoubles his efforts since it’s family-style.

“Yes,” the father says tearfully once they’ve finished praying. “With love there’s always hope. With hope there’s a Ways healing. Yes. Yes.”

“Honey,” the wife calls as she goes back inside. “Shall we serve these gentlemen the dessert they paid for, or let them starve and then spread the bad word about our place up and down the Canal?”

“Yes,” the father says. “No.”

“All right then,” the mother says. “Why not get back to work like the rest of us? Perhaps I’m missing the halo over your head that disqualifies you from having to do your share.”

“This is exactly why I’m still single,” Buddy says while vigorously gumming an eighth potato and catching the drool in his palm.

That night on the barge I dream of Dad. I dream the iceballs on his cuffs and the dried blood on his face from when he fell trying to get us cornmeal from the Red Cross checkpoint. I dream him knee-deep in snow and cursing the Winstons.

When I dream it, I’m Dad.

Imagine: You’re walking through a frozen marsh. Your kids are delirious with hunger and keep speaking aloud to imaginary savior-figures. Sitting against a tree is a snowfrosted corpse. Wild dogs have been at it. Your son puts on the corpse’s coat. It’s bloody and hangs to his knees. You’re too tired to tell him take it off. Your wife sits on a rock to rest. You make the kids walk in circles to stay warm. You make them slap their hands against their thighs and recite the alphabet. You’re scared. You love them so much. If only you could keep them safe.

Then through the trees you see lights. Up on a hillside is a neon sign and a floodlit castle tower.

BOUNTYLAND
, the sign says,
WHERE MERIT IS KING — AND SO ARE YOU
!

Under the words is a picture of a crown with facial features, smiling and snapping its fingers. The sounds from inside are jovial. You smell roasting meat and hear a girls’ choir rehearsing Bach. You run back to fetch your wife. She says she can’t go on.

“It’s all right,” you say. “We’re saved.”

You drag your tired family up the slope. Because of the snow it’s slick and the kids keep sliding down. At the gate a guard with a tattoo on his neck asks for your monthly income. You say things have been rough lately. He asks for an exact figure. You say zero. He snorts and says get lost. You start to beg.

“Christ,” he says, “I would never beg in front of my wife and kids. That’s degrading.”

You keep begging. He shuts the gate and walks away fast. You stand there a minute, then start back down the hill. The kids lag behind, staring up at the sign and hating you for being so powerless. The girl picks up a frozen clod and gnaws at it. Your wife tells her stop but she doesn’t listen. You hate your wife for being so powerless.

Kill me, God, you think, get me out of this.

Then there’s an explosion and you tackle your family into a ditch and lie in the muck looking at the sky above the place on the hill:

Fireworks.

The fireworks get your goat and you drag the kids back up. At the retaining wall you tell them they’ll understand someday. You hug them. They’re so beautiful. Then you take the boy by an arm and a leg and heave him over the
wall. He lands on the other side and shouts that his arm’s broken.

“Daddy, don’t leave me,” he screams. “Why are you doing this?”

Your wife starts up the hill in despair, then gives up and sits in the snow.

Your daughter smiles sadly and offers her wrist.

Over she goes. She weighs very little. Your darling.

“He’s telling the truth,” she yells from the other side. “The bone’s sticking out.”

You must be a man of great courage to then turn and sprint down the hill weeping to rejoin your wife. You must be a man with great courage and a broken heart. Because until that day my father had never done a thing to hurt us. To hurt Connie or me. He loved us. On that we’ve always agreed. He threw us over to save us from death. He believed in people. He believed in the people on the other side of the wall.

We often wonder if he and Mom made it, and if so where they live.

We pull all the next day through a region of discolored reeds. At dinnertime we decide to eat ashore. You can get lard cubes or bundles of spiced grass at Canalside stands. At a family operation near Lock 32 they serve raccoon on a stick, with a lemon slice. Where they get lemons in this day and age I have no idea. Lowlifes are lined up behind the stand, hoping to suck a discarded rind. Raccoon bits are laid out on a card table. The vendor guarantees low heavy-metal content in the flesh. I ask how he can be so sure and he says he used to be a toxicologist. His wife confirms
this and goes on and on about the number of skylights they used to have in their den. He produces a fading photo of himself holding a cage of lab rats. Meanwhile their daughter’s giving me crazy eyes while skinning raccoons. The toxicologist sees me looking. He says a beautiful woman is a joy forever. He says a dad can’t be too choosy these days. Anybody Normal who’ll treat a woman reasonably well is a catch. He says it’s amazing how quickly moral standards eroded once the culture collapsed. He says: Look at your marriage rate. He says: A young fellow these days doesn’t think family, he thinks pokey-pokey continually.

When he says “pokey-pokey,” his daughter crinkles up her eyes at me.

“Best raccoon in New York State,” the mother says. The daughter nods and takes off her filthy jacket and reclines and stretches in a provocative way, managing to continue skinning raccoons. The paws go in a cardboard box. Likewise the heads. The pelts are piled neatly on the towpath for later sale to furriers.

“So,” the mother says. “That’s a nice shirt you have on.”

“You’re traveling as part of your job?” the father says hopefully.

“Not exactly,” I say. “I’m going to visit my sister.”

“He’s going home,” the mother says. “Isn’t that nice? A family boy. A family boy returning home after some kind of success. You have nice clothes. Your mother will be pleased.”

“A young man out in the world, making the grade,” the father says. “Such a young man was I, back in the toxicology days.”

“Where will you stay tonight?” the mother says. “Probably a hotel. A very nice one?”

“They stay on their boat, dodo,” the father says.

“This may sound nervy ” the mother says, “but we would be pleased to have you stay with us. Why not sleep on dry land?”

“Don’t push him,” the father says. “Let him decide.”

“I’m not pushing,” the mother says. “I’m inviting.”

“He’s not interested,” the father says. “Can you blame him? We’ve failed to provide her with decent clothes. What man would want her?”

“She’s desirable,” the mother says. “But you’re right. It’s all a matter of presentation. Do you see the form on him? Nice clothing does that. Highlights those good strong muscles. A healthy kid.”

“Yum,” the daughter says.

“Appearing wanton won’t help,” the mother says.

“It might,” the father says.

“You’ll stay?” the mother says. “One night? Please? Who wants to sleep on a smelly old boat when he can have some good home cooking and play some cards?”

“Why insult him by calling his boat smelly?” the father says.

“Oh God,” the mother says. “Did I ever not mean that.”

“Spend some time!” the father says. “Why rush across the country without absorbing the local flavor? Nellie will take you to see the Boyhood Home of Frank Shenarkis.”

“Boy will I,” Nellie says, and licks her lips. Dad nudges Mom in the ribs.

“Just so a man cares for her and respects her in the
proper fashion,” he says. “That’s all I want for my little sweetie pie.”

“Take a walk, you two,” the mother says. “Why the heck not? Get better acquainted. Make hay while the sun’s still shining and all.”

So we go for a walk.

The Boyhood Home is a pastel ranch on a street of pastel ranches. It’s hard to believe America’s Last Star was raised here. Just after the collapse of the national infrastructure, Shenarkis, an overweight Normal, reigned supreme on prime time with his depiction of Snappo the comical Flawed. Three times a week the entire nation tuned in. Snappo’s Flaw was that he had a Siamese twin named Tubby growing out of his waist. Shenarkis, a master ventriloquist, handcrafted Tubby from polyurethane and then made a fortune kowtowing to the least common denominator. Every week Snappo and Tubby vied in vain for the love of Carmen Entwhistle, the Normal knockout who employed them to maintain her grounds. Snappo was always either getting tangled up in her vines or knocking something irreplaceable into the pool. He was a fool who knew it. He was gentle and acquiescent and mispronounced many words. All intelligent Flaweds hated him for selling us so short. Carmen came to like him for his simplicity. At the end of each episode they hugged. Whenever they hugged, Tubby would roll his eyes suggestively at Snappo. Sometimes the hugging went on and on. Finally around the time of the Detroit purges the feds yanked the show off the air because of the Flawed/Normal sexual overtones.

We walk through the Home hand in hand. We see the
actual Tubby in a display case in the master bedroom, as well as the complicated harness system used to conjoin Tubby to Snappo. We hear a tape of Shenarkis doing Tubby’s voice. It’s an extremely frank Boyhood Home, in that they’ve documented Shenarkis’s addiction-related demise and suicide. In his sister’s room they’ve got the actual suit he was wearing when he wrapped his mouth around an exhaust pipe in despair over his cancellation. Nellie trembles at the photographs of his bloated corpse at Boca Raton. I pull her close. Over the PA comes Frank’s familiar voice singing his theme, “Two Heads and Hearts Falling for You, Dear.” I can’t concentrate. She smells too good. Her lower back is too rock-hard.

Finally they shut down the Home for the night.

“I never liked his dumb show,” Nellie says as we leave. “Dad said he got what he deserved for making Flaweds look halfway intelligent. But I did like the one where he thought the trombone was a scientific instrument. That one I liked because he was such a butthole.”

“I know what you mean,” I say.

At this point I’d say anything. Her brown arms are hot. Our palms have a little river between them. She keeps veering into me with her muscular hip.

“Through the woods?” she says.

“Is it a shortcut?” I say.

“Nope,” she says.

Ten steps in she pulls her blouse over her head. Her chest is sun-dappled and her pit hair is blond. It all happens too fast to follow. Her breath thunders in my ear. She mounts me and screams with her mouth on mine. I feel a pebble being driven into my rear but I don’t care.

Afterwards she immediately says I’m the best she’s ever had. She says our kids will be darling. She says she wants me again, only naked. She pulls off my shirt. I basically lie there like a flounder on a shore. So far letting her do what she wants has been rewarding. My shoes come off. Then my socks.

She stands up naked and starts wailing at the sight of my claws.

“Jesus Christ!” she screams. “I just boinked a Flawed, Dad!”

I pick up my clothes and run through the woods. Acorns lodge in my heels. Manly fluids sail off me. In spite of the fact that she was repulsed by the real me, I find myself thinking in wonder of her breasts and the ripples in her belly. I’d gladly marry her. Doing that every night would be a reason for living. But apart from the fact that I disgust her, I’m a fugitive. I’ve violated Disclosure of Flaws legislation. I long to hold her tight and say: You took my virginity and made me forget my Flaw. Let me stay. I’ll tape my claws, or file them down daily. We could adopt. But what’s the use? I saw the look in her eyes. For the first time in years I’m truly ashamed of my claws. How I hate them. Oh for a pliers and the resolve to pluck them out once and for all.

I sneak back to the Canal. Her folks are standing in front of the barge, along with a shouting mob of townies and a sheriff with a rifle.

“The way I see it,” her father says, “we’re entitled to whatever’s on that barge.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Buddy says, almost in tears. “This barge belongs to Mr. Blay.”

“Take what you want, folks,” the sheriff says. “I have no abiding love for Flaweds.”

“Blay’s not Flawed, sir,” Mike pleads. “He’s Normal as the day is long, and a nice, nice man. Fax him. Ask him. Please. I beg you.”

“He hires Flaweds,” the sheriff says. “He hires Flaweds who haven’t been fitted with bracelets and go around raping Normals.”

Rape? I think. Rape? But I don’t budge. I like Blay but no way I’m getting lynched for a bargeful of GlamorDivans.

The mob strips the barge clean. Buddy and Mike weep. I feel so bad. Poor Blay. No wonder Normals don’t trust us. We’re always screwing them over.

There’s nothing to do. I could kick myself. I had sure transport west. I had a fat paycheck coming. I’ve let Connie down for a meaningless romp. I start walking. Far off I hear a train whistle. Then I hear bloodhounds. I run like hell through the woods and then along the tracks. A freight pulls through going slow and I run beside it. Holy cow, I think, I’m jumping a freight. I’m in a boxcar that smells like hay. I’m flying by a dark field full of baying dogs. The air smells like water and stars shine in the black Canal as we fly across a bridge.