CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella (6 page)

“Forgive me,” I say in tears.

“No,” he says, also in tears.

Near dawn he sighs, tucks in the parts of his body that have been gradually leaking out over the course of the night, pats my neck with his cold little palm, and tells me to have a nice day. Then he fades, producing farts with a wet hand under his armpit.

Simone sleeps through the whole thing, making little puppy sounds and pushing her rear against my front to remind me even in her sleep of how long it’s been. But you try it. You kill a nice little kid via neglect and then enjoy having sex. If you can do it you’re demented.

Simone’s an innocent victim. Sometimes I think I should give her her space and let her explore various avenues so her personal development won’t get stymied. But I could never let her go. I’ve loved her too long. Once in high school I waited three hours in a locker in the girls’ locker room to see her in her panties. Every part of me cramped up, but when she finally came in and showered I resolved to marry her. We once dedicated a whole night to pretending I was a household invader who tied her up. In my shorts I stood outside our sliding-glass door shouting, “Meter man!” At dawn or so I made us eggs but was so high on her I ruined our only pan by leaving it on the burner while I kept running back and forth to look at her nude.

What I’m saying is, we go way back.

I hope she’ll wait this thing out. If only Clive would resume living and start dating some nice-smelling cheerleader
who has no idea who Benny Goodman is. Then I’d regain my strength and win her back. But no. Instead I wake at night and Simone’s either looking over at me with hatred or whisking her privates with her index finger while thinking of God-knows-who, although I doubt very much it’s me.

At noon next day a muscleman shows up with four beehives on a dolly. This is Leon’s stroke of genius for the Kiper wedding. The Kipers are the natural type. They don’t want to eat anything that ever lived or buy any product that even vaguely supports notorious third-world regimes. They asked that we run a check on the ultimate source of the tomatoes in our ketchup and the union status of the group that makes our floaties. They’ve opted to recite their vows in the Waterfall Grove. They’ve hired a blind trumpeter to canoe by and a couple of illegal aliens to retrieve the rice so no birds will choke.

At ten Leon arrives, proudly bearing a large shrimp-shaped serving vat full of bagels coated with fresh honey. Over the weekend he studied honey extraction techniques at the local library. He’s always calling himself a Renaissance man but the way he says it it rhymes with “rent-a-dance fan.” He puts down the vat and takes off the lid. Just then the bride’s grandmother falls out of her chair and rolls down the bank. She stops faceup at the water’s edge and her wig tips back. One of the rice-retrievers wanders up and addresses her as señora. I look around. I’m the nearest Host. According to the manual I’m supposed to initiate CPR or face a stiff payroll deduction. The week I took the class the dummy was on the fritz. Of course.

I straddle her and timidly start chest-pumping. I can feel her bra clasp under the heel of my hand. Nothing happens. I keep waiting for her to throw up on me or come to life. Then Leon vaults over the shrimp-shaped vat. He shoos me away, checks her pulse, and begins the Heimlich Maneuver.

“When your victim is elderly,” he says loudly and remonstratively, “it’s natural to assume heart attack. Natural, but, in this case, possibly deadly.”

After a few more minutes of Heimlich he takes a pen from his pocket and drives it into her throat. Almost immediately she sits up and readjusts her wig, with the pen still sticking out. Leon kisses her forehead and makes her lie back down, then gives the thumbs-up.

The crowd bursts into applause.

I sneak off and sit for about an hour on the floor of the Control Hut. I keep hoping it’ll blow up or a nuclear war will start so I’ll die. But I don’t die. So I go over and pick up my wife.

Leon wants to terminate me but Simone has a serious chat with him about our mortgage and he lets me stay on in Towel Distribution and Collection. Actually it’s a relief. Nobody can get hurt. The worst that could happen is maybe a yeast infection. It’s a relief until I go to his office one day with the Usage Statistics and hear moans from inside and hide behind a soda machine until Simone comes out looking flushed and happy. I want to jump out and confront her but I don’t. Then Leon comes out and I want to jump out and confront him but I don’t.

What I do is wait behind the soda machine until they
leave, then climb out a window and hitchhike home. I get a ride from a guy who sells and services Zambonis. He tells me to confront her forcefully and watch her fall to pieces. If she doesn’t fall to pieces I should beat her.

When I get home I confront her forcefully. She doesn’t fall to pieces. Not only does she not deny it, she says it’s going to continue no matter what. She says I’ve been absent too long. She says there’s more to Leon than meets the eye.

I think of beating her, and my heart breaks, and I give up on everything.

Clive shows up at ten. As he keeps me awake telling me what his senior prom would have been like, Simone calls Leon’s name in her sleep and mutters something about his desk calendar leaving a paper cut on her neck. Clive follows me into the kitchen, wanting to know what a nosegay is. Outside, all the corn in the cornfield is bent over and blowing. The moon comes up over Delectable Videos like a fat man withdrawing himself from a lake. I fall asleep at the counter. The phone rings at three. It’s Clive’s father, saying he’s finally shaken himself from his stupor and is coming over to kill me.

I tell him I’ll leave the door open.

Clive’s been in the bathroom imagining himself some zits. Even though he’s one of the undead I have a lot of affection for him. When he comes out I tell him he’ll have to go, and that I’ll see him tomorrow. He whines a bit but finally fades away.

His dad pulls up in a Land Cruiser and gets out with a big gun. He comes through the door in an alert posture and sees me sitting on the couch. I can tell he’s been drinking.

“I don’t hate you,” he says. “But I can’t have you living on this earth while my son isn’t.”

“I understand,” I say.

Looking sheepish, he steps over and puts the gun to my head. The sound of our home’s internal ventilation system is suddenly wondrous. The mole on his cheek possesses grace. Children would have been nice.

I close my eyes and wait. Then I urinate myself. Then I wait some more. I wait and wait. Then I open my eyes. He’s gone and the front door’s wide open.

Jesus, I think, embarrassing, I wet myself and was ready to die.

Then I go for a brisk walk.

I hike into the hills and sit in a graveyard. The stars are blinking like cat’s eyes and burned blood is pouring out of the slaughterhouse chimney. My crotch is cold with the pee and the breeze. The moon goes behind a cloud and six pale forms start down from the foothills. At first I think they’re ghosts but they’re only starving pronghorn come down to lick salt from the headstones. I sit there trying to write Simone off. No more guys ogling her in public and no more dippy theories on world hunger. Then I think of her and Leon watching the test pattern together nude and sweaty and I moan and double over with dread, and a doe bolts away in alarm.

A storm rolls in over the hills and a brochure describing a portrait offer gets plastered across my chest. Lightning strikes the slaughterhouse flagpole and the antelope scatter like minnows as the rain begins to fall, and finally, having lost what was to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels, saying enough already, enough, this is as low as I go.

A
t noon another load of raccoons comes in and Claude takes them out back of the office and executes them with a tire iron. Then he checks for vitals, wearing protective gloves. Then he drags the cage across 209 and initiates burial by dumping the raccoons into the pit that’s our little corporate secret. After burial comes prayer, a personal touch that never fails to irritate Tim, our ruthless CEO. Before founding Humane Raccoon Alternatives, Tim purposely backed his car over a frat boy and got ten-to-twelve for manslaughter. In jail he earned his MBA by designing and marketing a line of light-up Halloween lapel brooches. Now he gives us the brooches as performance incentives and sporadically trashes a bookshelf or two to remind us of his awesome temper and of how ill-advised we would be to cross him in any way whatsoever.

Post-burial I write up the invoices and a paragraph or
two on how overjoyed the raccoons were when we set them free. Sometimes I’ll throw in something about spontaneous mating beneath the box elders. No one writes a better misleading letter than me. In the area of phone inquiries I’m also unsurpassed. When a client calls to ask how their release went, everyone in the office falls all over themselves transferring the call to me. I’m reassuring and joyful. I laugh until tears run down my face at the stories I make up regarding the wacky things their raccoon did upon gaining its freedom. Then, as per Tim, I ask if they’d mind sending back our promotional materials. The brochures don’t come cheap. They show glossies of raccoons in the wild, contrasted with glossies of poisoned raccoons in their death throes. You lay that on a housewife with perennially knocked-over trash cans and she breathes a sigh of relief. Then she hires you. Then you get a 10 percent commission.

These days commissions are my main joy. I’m too large to attract female company. I weigh four hundred. I don’t like it but it’s beyond my control. I’ve tried running and rowing the stationary canoe and hatha-yoga and belly staples and even a muzzle back in the dark days when I had it bad for Freeda, our document placement and retrieval specialist. When I was merely portly it was easy to see myself as a kind of exuberant sportsman who overate out of lust for life. Now no one could possibly mistake me for a sportsman.

When I’ve finished invoicing I enjoy a pecan cluster. Two, actually. Claude comes in all dirty from the burial and sees me snacking and feels compelled to point out that even my sub-rolls have sub-rolls. He’s right but still it isn’t nice to say. Tim asks did Claude make that observation after having wild sex with me all night. That’s a comment I’m not
fond of. But Tim’s the boss. His T-shirt says:
I HOLD YOUR PURSE STRINGS IN MY HOT LITTLE HAND.

“Ha, ha, Tim,” says Claude. “I’m no homo. But if I was one, I’d die before doing it with Mr. Lard.”

“Ha, ha,” says Tim. “Good one. Isn’t that a good one, Jeffrey?”

“That’s a good one,” I say glumly.

What a bitter little office.

My colleagues leave hippo refrigerator magnets on my seat. They imply that I’m a despondent virgin, which I’m not. They might change their tune if they ever spoke with Ellen Burtomly regarding the beautiful night we spent at her brother Bob’s cottage. I was by no means slim then but could at least buy pants off the rack and walk from the den to the kitchen without panting. I remember her nude at the window and the lovely seed helicopters blowing in as she turned and showed me her ample front on purpose. That was my most romantic moment. Now for that kind of thing it’s the degradation of Larney’s Consenting Adult Viewing Center. Before it started getting to me I’d bring bootloads of quarters and a special bottom cushion and watch hours and hours of Scandinavian women romping. It was shameful. Finally last Christmas I said enough is enough, I’d rather be sexless than evil. And since then I have been. Sexless and good, but very very tense. Since then I’ve tried to live above the fray. I’ve tried to minimize my physical aspects and be a selfless force for good. When mocked, which is nearly every day, I recall Christ covered with spittle. When filled with lust, I remember Gandhi purposely sleeping next to a sexy teen to test himself. After work I go home, watch a little TV, maybe say a rosary or two.

Thirty more years of this and I’m out of it without hurting anybody or embarrassing myself.

But still. I’m a human being. A little companionship would be nice. My colleagues know nothing of my personal life. They could care less that I once had a dog named Woodsprite who was crushed by a backhoe. They could care less that my dad died a wino in the vicinity of the Fort Worth stockyards. In his last days he sent me a note filled with wonder:

“Son,” he wrote, “are you fat too? It came upon me suddenly and now I am big as a house. Beware, perhaps it’s in our genes. I wander cowboy sidewalks of wood, wearing a too-small hat, filled with remorse for the many lives I failed to lead. Adieu. In my mind you are a waify-looking little fellow who never answered when I asked you a direct question. But I loved you as best I could.”

What do my colleagues know of Dad? What do they know of me? What kind of friend gets a kick out of posting in the break room a drawing of you eating an entire computer? What kind of friend jokes that someday you’ll be buried in a specially built container after succumbing to heart strain?

I’m sorry, but I feel that life should offer more than this.

As a child my favorite book was
Little Red-Faced Cop on the Beat.
Everyone loved the Little Red-Faced Cop. He knew what was what. He donned his uniform in a certain order every morning. He chased bad guys and his hat stayed on. Now I’m surrounded by kooks. I’m a kook myself. I stoop down and tell raccoons to take it like a man. I drone on and on to strangers about my weight. I ogle salesgirls. I double back to pick up filthy pennies. When no one’s around I dig
and dig at my earwax, then examine it. I’m huge, and terrified of becoming bitter.

Sometimes I sense deep anger welling up, and have to choke it back.

Sadly, I find my feelings for Freeda returning. I must have a death wish. Clearly I repulse her. Sometimes I catch her looking at my gut overhangs with a screwed-up face. I see her licking her lips while typing, and certain un-holy thoughts go through my head. I hear her speaking tenderly on the phone to her little son, Len, and can’t help picturing myself sitting on a specially reinforced porch swing while she fries up some chops and Len digs in the muck.