Pastoralia

by George Saunders

  After a number of slides of terrible wounds, the instructor asked did anyone know how many g’s a person pulled when he or she went through a windshield at eighty miles per after hitting a bridge abutment or cow. No one knew. The instructor said quite a few. The Happy Man said he’d had a feeling it was quite a few, which was why, wasn’t it, that people died? The instructor said either that or flying debris or having one’s torso absolutely crushed.

  “I guess that would do it,” said the Happy Man, grinning.

  “So what’s my point?” the instructor said, pointing with his pointer to an overhead of a cartoon man driving a little car toward a tombstone while talking gaily on a car phone. “Say we’re feeling good, very good, or bad, which is the opposite, say we’ve just had a death or a promotion or the birth of a child or a fight with our wife or spouse, but my point is, we’re experiencing an emotional peak? Because what we then maybe forget, whether happy or fighting or sad or glad, whatever, is that two tons of car is what, is the thing you are in, inside of, driving, and I hope not speeding or otherwise, although for the sake of this pretend example I’m afraid we have to assume yes, you are, which is how this next bad graphic occurs.”

  Now on the overhead the cartoon man’s body parts were scattered and his car phone was flying up to heaven on little angel wings. The barber looked at the pretty girl again. She smiled at him. His heart began to race. This never happened. They never smiled back. Well, she was young. Maybe she didn’t know better than to smile back at an older guy you didn’t want. Or maybe she wanted him. It was possible. Maybe she’d had it with young horny guys just out for quick rolls in the hay. Maybe she wanted someone old enough to really appreciate her, who didn’t come too quickly and owned his own business and knew how to pick up after himself. He hoped she was a very strict religious virgin who’d never even had a roll in the hay. Not that he hoped she was frigid. He hoped she was the kind of strict religious virgin who, once married, would let it all hang out, and when not letting it all hang out would move with quiet dignity in conservative clothes so that no one would suspect how completely and totally she could let it all hang out when she chose to, and that she came from a poor family and could therefore really appreciate the hard work that went into running a small business, and maybe even had some accounting experience and could help with the books. Although truthfully, even if she’d had hundreds of rolls in the hay and couldn’t add a stinking row of figures, he didn’t care, she was so pretty, they’d work it out, assuming of course she’d have him, and with a sinking heart he remembered his missing toes. He remembered that day at the lake with Mary Ellen Kovski, when it had been over a hundred and he’d sat on a beach chair fully dressed, claiming to be chilly. A crowd of Mary Ellen’s friends had gathered to help her undress him and throw him in, and in desperation he’d whispered to her about his toes, and she’d gone white and called off her friends and two months later married Phil Anpesto, that idiotic beanpole. Oh, he was tired of hiding his toes. He wanted to be open about them. He wanted to be loved in spite of them. Maybe this girl had a wisdom beyond her years. Maybe her father had a deformity, a glass eye or facial scar, maybe through long years of loving this kindly but deformed man she had come to almost need the man she loved to be somewhat deformed. Not that he liked the idea of her trotting after a bunch of deformed guys, and also not that he considered himself deformed, exactly, although, admittedly, ten barely discernible bright-pink nubs were no picnic. He pictured her lying nude in front of a fireplace, so comfortable with his feet that she’d given each nub a pet name, and maybe sometimes during lovemaking she got a little carried away and tried to kiss or lick his nubs, although certainly he didn’t expect that, and in fact found it sort of disgusting, and for a split second thought somewhat less of her, then pictured himself gently pulling her up, away from his feet, and the slightly shamed look on her face made him forgive her completely for the disgusting thing she’d been about to do out of her deep deep love for him.

  The instructor held up a small bloodied baby doll, which he then tossed across the room into a trunk.

  “Blammo,” he said. “Let’s let that trunk represent a crypt or tomb, and it’s your fault, from speeding, how then do you feel?”

  “Bad,” said the Buggin’ girl.

  The pretty girl passed the barber the Attendance Log, which had to be signed to obtain Course Credit and Associated Conviction Waivers / Point Reductions.

  They looked frankly at each other for what felt like a very long time.

  “Hokay!” the instructor said brightly. “I suppose I don’t have to grind you into absolute putty, so now it’s a break, so you don’t view me as some sort of Marquis de Sade or harsh taskmaster requiring you to watch gross visuals and graphics until your mind rots out.”

  The barber took a deep breath. He would speak to her. Maybe buy her a soda. The girl stood up. The barber got a shock. Her face was the same lovely exotic intelligent slim Cleopatran face, but her body seemed scaled to a head twice the size of the one she had. She was a big girl. Her arms were round and thick. Her mannerisms were a big girl’s mannerisms. She hunched her shoulders and tugged at her smock. He felt a little miffed at her for having misled him and a little miffed at himself for having ogled such a fatty. Well, not a fatty, exactly, her body was okay, it seemed solid enough, it was just too big for her head. If you could somehow reduce the body to put it in scale with the head, or enlarge the head and shrink down the entire package, then you’d have a body that would do justice to that beautiful beautiful face that, even now, tidying up his handouts, he was regretting having lost.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hello,” he said, and went outside and sat in his car, and when she came out with two Cokes pretended to be cleaning the ashtrays until she went away.

  3.

  Later that month the barber sat stiffly at a wedding reception at the edge of a kind of mock Japanese tearoom at the Hilton while some goofball inside a full-body PuppetPlayers groom costume, complete with top hat and tails and a huge yellow felt head and three-fingered yellow felt hands, made vulgar thrusting motions with his hips in the barber’s direction, as if to say: Do you like to do this? Have you done this? Can you show me how to do this, because soon I’m going to have to do this with that PuppetPlayers bride over there who is right now flirting—hey!—flirting with that bass player! and the PuppetPlayers groom sprinted across the dance floor and began romping pugilistically around the bass player who’d been trying to cuckold him. Everyone was laughing and giving the barber inexplicable thumbs-ups as the PuppetPlayers groom dragged the PuppetPlayers bride across the dance floor and introduced her to the barber, and she appeared to be very taken with him, and sat on his lap and forced his head into her yellow felt cleavage, which was stained with wine and had a cigarette burn at the neckline. With many gestures she bade the barber look under her skirts, and overcome with embarrassment he did so, eventually finding a wrapped box which, when opened, revealed a wrapped cylinder which, when opened, shot a banner across the dance floor, and on the banner was written: BEST O’ LUCK ARNIE & EVELYN FROM MOM AND POP. The PuppetPlayers newlyweds sprinted across the room and bowed low before Arnie and Evelyn, who were sitting sullenly on the bandstand, apparently in the middle of a snit.

  “Mickey!” Uncle Edgar shouted to the barber. “Mickey, you should’ve boffed that puppet broad! So what if she’s a puppet! You’re no prize! You’re going to be choosy? Think of it! Think of it! Arnie’s half your age!”

  “Edgar for Christ’s sake you’re embarrassing him!” shouted Aunt Jean. “It’s like you’re saying he’s old! It’s like you’re saying he’s an old maid, only he’s a guy! See what I mean? You think that’s nice?”

  “I am!” shouted Uncle Edgar, “I am saying that! He’s a damned old lady! I don’t mean no offense! I’m just saying get out and live! I love him! That’s why I’m saying! The sun’s setting! Pork some young babe, and if you like it, if you like the way she porks, what the hell, put down r
oots! What do you care? Love you can learn! But you gotta start somewhere! I mean my God, even these little so-and-sos here are trying to get some of it!”

  And Uncle Edgar threw a dinner roll at a group of four adolescent boys the barber vaguely remembered having once pulled around the block in a little red wagon. The boys gave Uncle Edgar the finger and confirmed that not only were they trying to get some of it, they were actually getting some of it, and not always from the same chick, and sometimes more than once a day, and sometimes right after football practice, and quite possibly in the near future from a very hot Shop teacher they had reason to believe would probably give it to all of them at once if only they approached it the right way.

  “Holy cow!” shouted Uncle Edgar. “Let me go to that school!”

  “Edgar, you pig, be logical!” shouted Aunt Jean. “Just because Mickey’s not married don’t mean he ain’t getting any! He could be getting some from a lady friend, or several lady friends, lady friends his own age, who already know the score, whose kids are full-grown! You don’t know what goes on in his bed at night!”

  “At least I don’t think he’s queer!” Uncle Edgar shouted to the adolescents the barber now remembered having loaded sleeping into a minivan on the evening of the day, years before, when he’d pulled them in the red wagon.

  “If he is we don’t give a rat’s ass,” said one of the adolescents. “That’s his business.”

  “We learned that in school,” said another. “Who You Do Is Up to You. We had a mini-session.”

  Now the PuppetPlayers groom was trying to remove the real bride’s garter, and some little suited boys were walking a ledge along a goldfish stream that separated the Wedding Area from Okinawa Memories, where several clearly non-Japanese women in kimonos hustled drinks, sounding a huge metal gong whenever anyone ordered a double, at which time a bartender dressed like a sumo sent a plastic sparrow across the room on a guy wire. The little suited boys began prying up the screen that kept the goldfish from going over a tiny waterfall, to see if they would die in a shallow pond near the Vending Area.

  “For example those kids torturing those fish,” shouted Uncle Edgar. “You know who those kids are? Them are Brendan’s kids.You know who Brendan is? He’s Dick’s kid. You remember who Dick is? Your second cousin the same age as you, man! Remember I took you guys to the ballgame and he threw up in my Rambler? So them kids are Dick’s grandkids and here Dick’s the same age as you, which means you’re old enough to be a grandpa, grandpa, but you ain’t even a pa yet, which I don’t know how you feel about it but I think is sort of sad or weird!”

  “You do but maybe he don’t!” shouted Aunt Jean. “Why do you think everything you think is everything everybody else thinks? Plus Dick’s no saint and neither are those kids! Dick was a teen dad and Brendan was a teen dad and probably those kids on that ledge are going to be teen dads as soon as they finish killing those poor fish!”

  “Agreed!” shouted Uncle Edgar. “Hey, I got no abiding love for Dick! You want to have a fight with me at a wedding over my feelings for Dick, who throwing up in my Rambler was just the start of the crap he’s pulled on me? All’s I’m saying is, there’s no danger of Mickey here being a teen dad, and he better think about what I’m saying and get on the stick before his shooter ain’t a viable shooter anymore!”

  “I’m sure you start talking about the poor guy’s shooter at a wedding!” shouted Aunt Jean. “You’re drunk!”

  “Who ain’t?” shouted Uncle Edgar, and the table exploded in laughter and one of the adolescents fell mock-drunk off his chair and when this got a laugh all the other adolescents fell mock-drunk off their chairs.

  The barber excused himself and walked quickly out of the Wedding Area past three stunning girls in low-cut white gowns, who stood in what would have been shade from the fake overhanging Japanese cherry trees had the trees been outside and had it been daytime.

  In the bathroom the Oriental theme receded and all was shiny chrome. The barber peed, mentally defending himself against Uncle Edgar. First off, he’d had plenty of women. Five. Five wasn’t bad. Five was more than most guys, and for sure it was more than Uncle Edgar, who’d married Jean right out of high school and had a lower lip like a fish. Who would Uncle Edgar have had him marry? Sara DelBianco, with her little red face? Ellen Wiest, that tall drink of water? Ann DeMann, who was swaybacked and had claimed he was a bad screw? Why in the world was he, a successful small businessman, expected to take advice from someone who’d spent the best years of his life transferring partial flanges from one conveyor belt to another while spraying them with a protective solvent mist? Uncle Edgar could take a flying leap, that drunk, why didn’t he mind his own beeswax and spray himself with a protective solvent mist and leave the ambitious entrepreneurs of the world alone, the lush?

  The barber wet his comb the way he’d been wetting his comb since high school and prepared to slick back his hair. A big vital man with a sweaty face came in and whacked the barber on the back as if they were old pals. In the mirror was a skeletal mask of blue and purple and pink that the barber knew was his face but couldn’t quite believe was his face, because in the past his face had always risen to the occasion. In the past his face could always be counted on to amount to more than the sum of its parts when he smiled winningly, but now when he smiled winningly he looked like a corpse trying to appear cheerful in a wind tunnel. His eyes bulged, his lips were thin, his forehead wrinkles were deep as sticklines in mud. It had to be the lighting. He was ugly. He was old. How had this happened? Who would want him now?

  “You look like hell,” thundered the big man from a stall, and the barber fled the mirror without slicking back his hair.

  As he rushed past the stunning girls, a boy in a fraternity sweatshirt came over. Seeing the barber, he made a comic geriatric coughing noise in his throat, and one of the girls giggled and adjusted her shoulder strap as if to keep the barber from seeing down her dress.

  4.

  A few weeks before the wedding, the barber had received in the mail a greeting card showing a cowboy roping a steer. The barber’s name was scrawled across the steer’s torso, and Me (Mr. Jenks) across the cowboy.

  Here’s hoping you will remember me from our driving school, said a note inside, and attend a small barbecue at my home. My hope being to renew those acquaintances we started back then, which I found enjoyable and which since the loss of my wife I’ve had far too few of. Please come and bring nothing. As you can see from the cover, I am roping you in, not to brand you, but only to show you my hospitality, I hope.Your friend, Larry Jenks.

  Who was Jenks? Was Jenks the Happy Man? The barber threw the card in the bathroom trash, imagining the Driving School kooks seated glumly on folding chairs in a trailer house. For a week or so the card sat there, cowboy-side up, vaguely reproaching him. Then he took out the trash.

  A few days after the wedding he received a second card from Jenks, with a black flower on the front.

  A good time was had by all, it said. Sorry you were unable to attend. Even the younger folks, I think, enjoyed. Many folks took home quite a few sodas, because as I am alone now, I never could have drank that many sodas in my life. This note, on a sadder note, and that is why the black flower, is to inform you that Eldora Ronsen is moving to Seattle.You may remember her as the older woman to your immediate right. She is high up in her company and just got higher, which is good for her, but bad for us, as she is such a super gal. Please join us Tuesday next, Corrigan’s Pub, for farewell drinks, map enclosed, your friend, Larry Jenks.

  Tuesday next was tomorrow.

  “Well, you can’t go,” Ma said. “The girls are coming over.”

  The girls were the Altar and Rosary Society. When they came over he had to wait on them hand and foot while they talked about which priest they would marry if only the priests weren’t priests. When one lifted her blouse to show her recent scar, he had to say it was the worst scar ever. When one asked if her eye looked rheumy he had to get very close to he
r rheumy eye and say it looked non-rheumy to him.

  “Well, I think I might want to go,” he said.

  “I just said you can’t,” she said. “The girls are coming.”

  She was trying to guilt him. She was always trying to guilt him. Once she’d faked a seizure when he tried to go to Detroit for a hair show. No wonder he had no friends. Not that he had no friends. He had plenty of friends. He had Rick the mailman. Every day when Rick the mailman came in, he asked the barber how it was hanging, and the barber said it was hanging fine. He had old Mr. Mellon, at Mellon Drugs, next door to the shop, who, though sort of deaf, was still a good friend, when not hacking phlegm into his little red cup.

  “Ma,” he said. “I’m going.”

  “Mr. Bigshot,” she said. “Bullying an old lady.”

  “I’m not bullying you,” he said. “And you’re not old.”

  “Oh, I’m young, I’m a tiny baby,” she said, tapping her dentures.

  That night he dreamed of the pretty but heavy girl. In his dream she was all slimmed down. Her body looked like the body of Daisy Mae in the Li’l Abner cartoon, who he had always found somewhat attractive. She came into the shop in cut-off jeans, chewing a blade of grass, and said she found his accomplishments amazing, especially considering the hardships he’d had to overcome, like his dad dying young and his mother being so nervous, and then she took the blade of grass out of her mouth and put it on the magazine table and stretched out across the Waiting Area couch while he undressed, and seeing his unit she said it was the biggest unit she’d ever seen, and arched her back in a sexy way, and then she called him over and gave him a deep warm kiss on the mouth that was so much like the kiss he’d been waiting for all his life that it abruptly woke him.

  Sitting up in bed, he missed her. He missed how much she loved and understood him. She knew everything about him and yet still liked him. His gut sort of ached with wanting.