And Morse stopped in his tracks, wondering what in the world two little girls were doing alone in a canoe speeding toward the Falls, apparently oarless.
CUMMINGS WALKED ALONG, gazing into a mythic dusky arboreal Wood that put him in mind of the archetypal vision he had numbered 114 in his “Book of Archetypal Visions,” on which Mom that nitwit had recently spilled grape pop.Vision 114 concerned standing on the edge of an ancient dense Wood at twilight, with the safe harbor of one’s abode behind and the deep Wild ahead, replete with dark fearsome bears looming from albeit dingy covens. What would that twitching nervous wage-slave Morse think if he were to dip his dim brow into the heady brew that was the “Archetypal Visions”? Morse, ha, Cummings thought, I’m glad I’m not Morse, a dullard in corporate pants trudging home to his threadbare brats in the gathering loam, born, like the rest of his ilk, with their feet of clay thrust down the maw of conventionality, content to cheerfully work lemminglike in moribund cubicles while comparing their stocks and bonds between bouts of tedious lawn-mowing, then chortling while holding their suckling brats to the Nintendo breast. That was a powerful image, Cummings thought, one that he might develop some brooding night into a herculean proem that some Hollywood smoothie would eat like a hotcake, so he could buy Mom a Lexus and go with someone leggy and blowsy to Paris after taking some time to build up his body with arm curls so as to captivate her physically as well as mentally, and in Paris the leggy girl, in perhaps tight leather pants, would sit on an old-time bed with a beautiful shawl or blanket around her shoulders and gaze at him with doe eyes as he stood on the balcony brooding about the Parisian rain and so forth, and wouldn’t Morse and his ilk stew in considerable juice when he sent home a postcard just to be nice!
And wouldn’t the Village fall before him on repentant knees when T-shirts imprinted with his hard-won visage, his heraldic leonine visage, one might say, were available to all at the five-and-dime and he held court on the porch in a white Whitmanesque suit while Mom hovered behind him getting everything wrong about his work and proffering inane snacks to his manifold admirers, and wouldn’t revenge be sweet when such former football players as Ned Wentz began begging him for lessons in the sonnet? And all that was required for these things to come to pass was some paper and pens and a quixotic blathering talent the likes of which would not be seen again soon, the critics would write, all of which he had in spades, and he rounded the last bend before the Falls, euphoric with his own possibilities, and saw a canoe the color of summer leaves ram the steep upstream wall of the Snag. The girls inside were thrown forward and shrieked with open mouths over frothing waves that would not let them be heard as the boat split open along some kind of seam and began taking on water in doomful fast quantities. Cummings stood stunned, his body electrified, hairs standing up on the back of his craning neck, thinking, I must do something, their faces are bloody, but what, such fast cold water, still I must do something, and he stumbled over the berm uncertainly, looking for help but finding only a farm field of tall dry corn.
MORSE BEGAN TO RUN. In all probability this was silly. In all probability the girls were safe onshore, or if not, help was already on its way, although certainly it was possible that the girls were not safe onshore and help was not on its way, and in fact it was even possible that the help that was on its way was him, which was worrisome, because he had never been good under pressure and in a crisis often stood mentally debating possible options with his mouth hanging open. Come to think of it, it was possible, even probable, that the boat had already gone over the Falls or hit the Snag. He remembered the crew of the barge Fat Chance, rescued via rope bridge in the early Reagan years. He hoped several sweaty, decisive men were already on the scene and that one of them would send him off to make a phone call, although what if on the way he forgot the phone number and had to go back and ask the sweaty, decisive man to repeat it? And what if this failure got back to Ruth and she was filled with shame and divorced him and forbade him to see the kids, who didn’t want to see him anyway because he was such a panicky screw-up? This was certainly not positive thinking. This was certainly an example of predestining failure via negativity. Because, who could tell, maybe he would stand in line assisting the decisive men and incur a nasty rope burn and go home a hero wearing a bandage, which might cause Ruth to regard him in a more favorable sexual light, and they would stay up all night celebrating his new manhood and exchanging sweet words between bouts of energetic lovemaking, although what kind of thing was that to be thinking at a time like this, with children’s lives at stake? He was bad, that was for sure. There wasn’t an earnest bone in his body. Other people were simpler and looked at the world with clearer eyes, but he was self-absorbed and insincere and mucked everything up, and he hoped this wasn’t one more thing he was destined to muck up, because mucking up a rescue was altogether different from forgetting to mail out the invitations to your son’s birthday party, which he had recently done, although certainly they had spent a small fortune rectifying the situation, stopping just short of putting an actual pony on Visa, but the point was, this was serious, and he had to bear down. And throwing his thin legs out ahead of him, awkwardly bent at the waist, shirttails trailing behind and bum knee hurting, he remonstrated with himself to put aside all self-doubt and negativity and prepare to assist the decisive men in whatever way he could once he had rounded the bend and assessed the situation.
But when he rounded the bend and assessed the situation, he found no rope bridge or decisive men, only a canoe coming apart at the base of the Snag and two small girls in matching sweaters trying to bail with a bait bucket. What to do? This was a shocker. Go for help? Sprint to the Outlet Mall and call 911 from Knife World? There was no time. The canoe was sinking before his eyes. The girls would be drowned before he reached Route 8. Could one swim to the Snag? Certainly one could not. No one ever had. Was he a good swimmer? He was mediocre at best. Therefore he would have to run for help. But running was futile. Because there was no time. He had just decided that. And swimming was out of the question. Therefore the girls would die. They were basically dead. Although that couldn’t be. That was too sad. What would become of the mother who this morning had dressed them in matching sweaters? How would she cope? Soon her girls would be nude and bruised and dead on a table. It was unthinkable. He thought of Robert nude and bruised and dead on a table. What to do? He fiercely wished himself elsewhere. The girls saw him now and with their hands appeared to be trying to explain that they would be dead soon. My God, did they think he was blind? Did they think he was stupid? Was he their father? Did they think he was Christ? They were dead. They were frantic, calling out to him, but they were dead, as dead as the ancient dead, and he was alive, he was needed at home, it was a no-brainer, no one could possibly blame him for this one, and making a low sound of despair in his throat he kicked off his loafers and threw his long ugly body out across the water.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Saunders is the author of the story collection CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a finalist for the 1996 PEN/ Hemingway Award and a NewYork Times Notable Book for that year. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip. His work, which has appear ed in The New Yorker, Harper’ s, and Stor y, has received three National Magazine Awards and four times been included in O. Henry Awards collections. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TYPE
The text of this book is set in Bembo. The display types are Trade Gothic and Bodoni Bold. The book was designed by Judith Stagnitto Abbate, and printed and bound by R. R. Donnelley & Sons in Bloomsburg, Virginia.
ALSO BY GEORGE SAUNDERS
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
In Persuasion Nation
The Braindead Megaphone
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George Saunders, Pastoralia
Pastoralia Page 15
