The Twenty-Seventh City

by Jonathan Franzen

  Up here on the ridge the trees held their peace. Their bare crowns were studded with squirrel nests and galls and bluejays chattering at the dusty sunbeams. Today would have been perfect for just walking. Except for a short-lived inch of snow last week, there had been no precipitation since well before Thanksgiving. The land was dry. The leaves sighed and fluttered when you kicked through them, the warmth shimmering up from the red clay underneath.

  Norris banged the door shut behind him and mopped his forehead and his gray-blond eyebrows with a handkerchief the size of a guest towel. “Let’s go shoot us some wildlife. You got a rope?”

  “Darn. I left it in the bungalow.”

  “We’ll do without. I wanna git.”

  At the top of the ridge they turned and headed west at a good clip, the General striding along in visibly higher spirits and Buzz tagging after him. His machete slapped his thigh, and his high Wellingtons, not made for forced marches, bit the beginnings of blisters into his ankles. The ground was just a tawny blur. Buzz’s idea of a hunt was sitting in a blind while the sun came up, drinking coffee, chatting with his son-in-law Eric and then, maybe, aiming at a deer. The General stopped. Buzz caught up with him in time to hear his question. “This Osage country?”

  “Uh, not really.”

  The General started walking again. “I assume there was such a tribe.”

  “Oh yes. Yes. There were actually two tribes, and then…the Missouris. Who were related.” Buzz drove a wedge of air into his lungs. “They were in the lower Missouri valley when the French came. The Missouris and the Little Osages, they stayed by the river. They got pretty much wiped out by smallpox, and by the Great Lakes tribes—”

  “And whiskey,” Norris said, staring straight ahead.

  “Sure, by whiskey too. But the Big Osages, they hung on right into the twentieth century. Down in the Ozarks. Then Oklahoma. They got rich. They got rich from oil leases. Can we stop a minute?”

  Norris stopped.

  “At one point they were the richest Indian tribe in the world. Although maybe the new generation—”

  Norris sniffed. “How do you know all this?”

  “Don’t you read the Post-Dispatch?”

  “Savages.”

  “Well. They weren’t all that savage.”

  “I haven’t seen much evidence to the contrary,” Norris said. “They were savages.”

  “Well, of course. Although that’s a judgmental way of looking at it.”

  “Bloodthirsty, naked savages.”

  “They were that, yes, it’s true, although—”

  “There was twelve folks injured in the stadium, Buzz. Twelve serious injuries. And what do we read in the Post-Dispatch? How thankful we all should be these Warriors’ bark is worse than their bite. I bet those twelve people in the hospital—”

  “Thirteen, actually. Martin Probst was there—”

  “Probst.” The General spat and hit a sweetgum tree.

  “Yeah. He got really busted up. He broke his finger and gashed open his neck. He thinks he lost about a pint of blood, and Barbara took him—”

  “He have a measuring cup with him?”

  “Seriously. He was right in the thick of it.”

  “Entertaining the ladies in the box seats.”

  “No, General. They had to take him to the hospital. I don’t see what you have against him.”

  “He’s a little dandified for my taste.”

  “I thought you were friends.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “Aw, don’t tell me you’re letting that little argument at Municipal Growth stand between you two? I’m sure he’s forgotten all about it. There’s absolutely no—”

  “A little too faggified.”

  “Now wait just a minute, General. Give the man a chance. I’m on your side, don’t forget, and I say you’re taking this Indian thing too seriously. Now pardon me, but Martin Probst happens to be one of the most patriotic, generous and masculine men I know. He was at the stadium on Sunday, he was fairly badly hurt, it took twelve stitches—”

  “So wait. He—bled?”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “Well if he bled…” Norris frowned. “Maybe I’ve. Maybe I’ve. Hmmm.”

  Buzz owed a lot to Martin and Barbara, if only for having been kind to Bev when many of his other friends were beginning to strike her and Buzz from their dinner-party lists. He pressed on. “I don’t think there’s any point in spurning an ally like Martin. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Norris fingered the muzzle of his rifle reflectively. “He bled for the cause…”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “For the cause.”

  “Give him another chance, General, what do you say?”

  The General set out walking, and again Buzz had to trot to keep up. The woods were growing thicker, the land sloping downhill. They’d covered half a mile. Soon the mud bank overlooking the big western meadow came in sight, and Norris hopped nimbly down the slope, planting his feet sideways. Buzz staggered after him. The dried mud, a maze of cracks, sent up dust plumes as they crossed it. The land needed rain. Buzz smelled smoke, possibly from the farmhouse just outside the northwest corner of his property. A young couple had recently bought the land and did subsistence farming. The smoke had a refreshing tang.

  “Ssst!” The General beckoned urgently.

  Buzz joined him on a gravelly outcropping and looked down on the meadow spread out before them. There were deer in the weeds. Four, six, eight of them. The larger of the two stags had a prizewinning set of antlers.

  The General stole back up the mud bank and out of sight. Buzz watched the deer. They were leaving the meadow, bounding without hurry towards the woods on the meadow’s western fringe. The larger stag hung back. If Buzz shot from a standing position he couldn’t possibly hit him. But if he sat down he couldn’t see. He braced himself against a maple trunk and spread his legs, shouldered the gun and followed the stag with the scope. The cross hairs wandered freely. The stag’s shoulders disappeared in weeds at the edge of the meadow. Buzz unlatched the safety, stared hard, and fired.

  The butt kicked him nastily. The stag, untouched, was leaping into the dense underbrush. It ducked its antlers under low branches, leaped again and lurched sideways, falling with a crash.

  The shot had come from Buzz’s left. A red jacket flashed farther up the slope. The General was racing down towards Buzz, who led the way.

  The stag was lying on its side on a bed of oak leaves and pine needles. Blood trickled from a hole in its neck just above the shoulder blade. It wheezed. Buzz had never heard a deer breathe. It lay still, then pawed in the leaves with its horizontal front legs. Its hind legs were plainly paralyzed. The antlers tipped back and forth. Bright blood beaded on fur and glittered on the leaves. The smell of smoke, of wood smoke, hot smoke, grew stronger in Buzz’s nose.

  Norris was catching his breath through his teeth.

  “Good shot,” Buzz said.

  “This baby can shoot. You wanna do the honors?”

  Buzz’s stomach jumped. “No. Go ahead.”

  Norris extended his hand like a surgeon. Buzz fumbled with the thong and placed the machete in the waiting hand. When Norris knelt Buzz shut his eyes. He heard the rip of flesh and connective tissue. He opened one eye. Blood was falling in a fat, fast, lumpy stream from the stag’s opened jugular. Norris smiled. “C’mere.”

  Buzz shook his head.

  The smile intensified. “C’mere.”

  Buzz looked blankly away. His eyes burned. The air seemed to be hazing up with smoke. He heard another long rip of flesh. The General had slit the deer’s belly. He stood and put an arm around Buzz’s shoulders. “Your trophy, too,” he said, and led him to the carcass, and pulled him to his knees. The blood steamed, ferric, pungent. Buzz’s old thighs shook and gave way. He slumped back onto his heels.

  Dust speckled the deer’s staring eyes.

  “Feel the heart,” the General s
aid.

  “What?”

  “Feel it. Hotter than any Injun bitch.”

  Buzz watched the wave of blood sliding from the slit belly. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Feel it.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  “Feel it, Buzz.” The General grabbed his wrist and thrust his hand into the animal, under the rib cage and through the ruptured peritoneum. It was hot. Buzz groped. He located the unbeating heart. It was hot and his whole body grew sick with transformation, heat barreling up through his chest into his brain, the smoke in his lungs and face, throbbing in the passages, searing skin. The animal had defecated. Everything smoked, and Buzz, unhinged by the heat, thrust his other hand in, too. IT WAS HOT.

  “All right.” The General was standing over him, smoking a bloody cigar. Buzz pulled away from the gore. His sleeves were crimson and sticky all the way up past the elbows. His fingers began to stiffen in the cold air. “You pass, Buzz boy,” the General said. “You hang this sucker in the den, and remember this the next time she go scratching your palm.”

  Buzz looked up with a guilt that felt like love. He’d passed. The General, towering above him, drew heavily on the cigar and exhaled. But the smoke was invisible. The air was white. Buzz’s eyes wandered.

  “Oh my,” he croaked.

  A giant column of nimbus-gray smoke was rising in the east, from the center of his land. His land was burning.

  The General turned. “Jesus.”

  Buzz tried to stand up, tipped back, shoved off the ground with his arms, and rose unsteadily.

  The General was already running. Buzz ran after him, leaving everything behind, gun, machete, trophy. The General carried his rifle above his head like a spear. His speed was incredible for a sixty-year-old businessman. He left Buzz in the dust.

  “General, wait!”

  The red jacket swerved and bobbed, receding up the hill on the far side of the meadow.

  “Wait!” It was pointless. Buzz stopped and coughed and retched. Big clouds tumbled across the meadow. The sun had dwindled to a hazy beige star.

  Call the county fire marshal.—The closest phone?

  Kids in the farmhouse. He’d seen the phone lines.

  He ran for the corner of his property and fell a dozen times in two hundred yards, landing in briars. Fresh pink slashes opened on the stained skin of his hands. He reached the fence, found the deer gate, and plodded desperately down the old weeded-over road to the farm.

  Faded work clothes and yellowed underwear hung on sagging lines behind the farmhouse. He rapped on the back door and looked over his shoulder. The smoke column was widening and slanting south in the gentle, seasonable wind. On a day like this a fire would spread faster than a man could walk. Buzz rapped again, tried the door, and found it unlocked. He went inside. There was a nasty smell in the kitchen that seemed to come from the sink, where the remains of a bright orange stew were floating in a pot. Buzz saw cookbooks on the windowsill. Whole-Grain Treasures. Laurel’s Kitchen. Staples of India. Deena’s Guide to Cooking with the Weed. On the wall by the stove was a phone. He dialed zero and asked for the fire marshal.

  The marshal said the fire had been reported. Local departments had been notified and a man had been sent up to dust.

  “A plane?” Buzz said.

  “Yes sir. What’s the water situation?”

  “Not good. The streams are pretty low.”

  “Firebreaks?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  The line went dead. Buzz ran out of the house and retraced his steps across the pasture and up the road. In the meadow, he stopped. The smoke had thickened, piling on in layers, shifting, settling, choking. Manpower, neighbors: he needed help with the fire, but he didn’t know his neighbors. There was too much wood, not enough field, and apple trees were growing in the middle of the only roads in. It took a plane…

  He heard it. Approaching from behind him, the plane cut into view above the trees, still high but dropping. Tufts of orange fire retardant fell from its pipes. Reverently he watched it glide overhead and dive towards the smoke. The engine quieted, and as the wings cut into the downwind fringes of the column, he heard a gunshot. He heard two more, at two-second intervals. He dropped to his knees and clutched his hair.

  Another shot.

  “General, stop!” he yelled.

  Another shot.

  Its engine groaning afresh, the plane banked up and away from the smoke without releasing its load. It veered off to the south at a dangerous angle. Buzz lost it in the trees, and the General, his magazine empty, ceased his fire.

  “Martin? It’s Norris.”

  “Oh.” Probst’s eyes fell shut. “Morning.” Saturday morning, eight o’clock. Raindrops were inching down the windows, the gutters were creaking, and water splashed quietly in the bathroom as Barbara showered. “What can I do for you, General?”

  “Martin, are you busy?”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “Reason I’m calling so early—you mind looking out your front window?”

  “Maybe you could just tell me what’s out there,” Probst said.

  “My car. I’m speaking from my car. Are you busy?”

  “I have a tennis date at eleven.”

  “We should be back by three or four.”

  “I see.” Probst stretched his leg into the cool territory on Barbara’s side of the bed. “Where are we going?”

  “Mexico.”

  “Mexico. I see.”

  “I’ll explain,” the General said. “Don’t worry about breakfast. I’ve got that under control.”

  “You’re under the impression I’m going to Mexico with you?”

  “Just come on out. I’ll explain.”

  “Look, General. I can’t go waltzing off for the entire day.”

  “I would’ve called yesterday, Martin, but the element of surprise.”

  “I’m surprised all right.”

  “Not you. Them. It won’t take but a few hours. This is important.”

  “If it’s about Jammu again—”

  The General hung up. Probst kicked back the covers and rolled out of bed. His head ached. Last night they’d had hot Szechuan platters and a lot of beer with Bob and Jill Montgomery, out in Chesterfield. He strode to the bathroom and turned the doorknob.

  Locked? Locked?

  “Just a minute!” Barbara sang.

  What the hell? Locked the door?

  He stormed back across the room, around the corner, down the hall, and burst into the bathroom through its unlocked flank. The Vitabath-saturated steam took his breath. Barbara poked her head through the shower curtain and gave him a puzzled, smiling frown. “What?”

  “I want to shave.”

  She frowned more deeply, hurt. “Go ahead.”

  “Haven’t you been in there long enough?”

  Her head disappeared. The water stopped. She never gave a thought to how much of it she used. “Hand me a towel.”

  He grabbed a towel from her rack and parted the curtains. She jumped, shuddering, to make him feel like a stranger and a brute.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “General Norris is sitting in his car out in front.”

  She wrapped herself in the towel without drying off and left with a slam. He opened the door and called after her, “I’m sorry!”

  “Whatever for?”

  Things had been bad since Luisa left.

  He wet his beard with an inefficient one-handed tossing motion. Water coursed down his chest to the waistband of his pajamas, and he tried to hip-check it into the sink, but it had already gained the inside of his leg, trickling down as if unzipping him. He squirted a blob of shaving cream onto his left wrist, above the curved aluminum splint, and lathered his face with his right hand. He’d always used his left hand for lathering. His face felt unfamiliar, full of inaccessible nooks and crannies.

  After he’d fought his way into the clothes he�
��d worn the night before (they smelled like restaurant), he went down to the kitchen and had Barbara tie his laces. She double-knotted them. The General honked the horn of his Rolls long and loud.

  Probst was halfway down the front walk when Barbara spoke his name. He turned back. “Call me?” she said.

  The horn honked again. He smiled in her direction and nodded. The door shut, and Barbara walked into the green gloom of the living room. She watched the car, the black hearse, swallow her husband. Alone, she let her gaze travel the length of the living room and back, and wished Luisa might step out of the closet, might step out and say anything, anything at all, say, “The big bowl was too hot, the middle bowl was too cold, but the little bowl, it was ju-u-u-u-u-u-st right”: Luisa, the conditional Goldilocks who’d arrived to steal the porridge and break the chair and left again to live happily ever after elsewhere, in the land of human beings…. Mama Bear padded through the enchanted forest to the kitchen and poured herself some coffee. She sat down at the table, and wiped her eyes, and sniffed. She would write Goldilocks another letter. Although they spoke on the phone every day, she and Goldilocks, it wasn’t enough. She wrote the date on the top page of her letter pad, December 9, and smoked a Winston, reworking her addiction, doing it consciously this time, noticing how. She never begged Goldilocks to come back. Goldilocks wasn’t an object, wasn’t an appliance. She was a person. She was acting one way now, but someday, soon, she’d act another way. For now, it pleased Mama Bear to see Papa Bear’s equilibrium upset. She wasn’t going to fix his life for him. But she wasn’t going to shut up, either. In an hour she’d call. For now, Dear Luisa. I’ve been Christmas shopping.

  The smoke was bothering Probst. “Can I open a window?”