In Persuasion Nation

by George Saunders

  “Go home, man,” I said to John out on the street. “You at least got your bonus, right?”

  “Can’t, can’t,” John huffed. “Got to get all that back. No way that man’s taking my Christmas money for my babies.”

  “You’re not going to get it back, John,” I said.

  “Ain’t I, though,” he said.

  The same law that had broken him the first time broke him again. Rick took it and took it.

  “Rick, Rick,” I said, so drunk I was unsure I was actually speaking.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Rick said, glaring at me. “He’s a man, right? He wants to play. Ain’t nobody forcing him.”

  “Ain’t nobody forcing me,” John said.

  Rick had a fat round face and little black glasses. He was Polish but looked Kamikaze. His cheeks were red and his glasses were fogged, it seemed to me, from the gross extent of his trickery.

  “You want to quit, John?” Rick said. “Great White Dope here thinks I’m hustling you. Maybe you should quit. So what if you suck as a gambler? Just walk away, right?”

  “Nobody hustling nobody here,” said John.

  “See, Dope?” Rick said to me. “John’s a man.”

  “I am that,” said John.

  Soon John was wadding and throwing his last ten.

  “Fair’s fair,” he gasped, and lurched out.

  I followed. Should I offer him mine? If I offered him mine, he might take it. So I offered him a portion of mine in a way that simultaneously offered and made it clear I was not offering. He said he didn’t want none of mine. He had to get home. His babies were waiting. He didn’t know what his wife would say, or what he would say to her.

  “I’ll have to just tell her, I guess,” he said. “Just up and say it, get it over with: Baby, they ain’t no Christmas. And don’t give me no lip about it.”

  He wiped his face top to bottom, the saddest gesture I’d ever seen.

  Then he walked off into the side-blowing snow.

  I was sad yet happy. I was drunk. I was deeply, deeply glad I wasn’t him.

  Back inside, Rick was protesting, though nobody was asking him to.

  “A man’s a man,” he was saying. “You play, you lose, you accept it. John’s a man. He knows that. He gets that. I admire that.”

  “He’s gonna have a shit Christmas, though,” somebody said.

  “These people live for shit Christmases,” Rick said. “They run right directly toward shit Christmases. It’s all they know. It’s in their blood.” Then he put his wad back in his pocket.

  The craps box was cast aside, and the roofers bent to their drinks. Somebody hauled over a length of gutter and a few of them went at it with tin snips, proving some point or other.

  I stumbled out to my Nova, putty-knifed myself a sight-hole, drove home.

  There comes that phase in life when, tired of losing, you decide to stop losing, then continue losing. Then you decide to really stop losing, and continue losing. The losing goes on and on so long you begin to watch with curiosity, wondering how low you can go.

  All that winter, once a week or so, I’d been stopping at a pay phone off Stony Island to call the Field Museum, where a kind woman had once praised my qualifications.

  “Anything yet?” I’d say.

  “Not yet,” she’d say. Once, she said, “We need a security guard, ha-ha, but that, of course, is way beneath your level.”

  “Oh, ha-ha, right,” I said.

  But I was thinking, Could I work my way up? Could I, in my security-guard uniform, befriend a doddering curator, impress him with my knowledge of fossils, my work ethic, my quiet respect for science?

  “Keep calling, though,” she said.

  “Oh, I will,” I said.

  And I did, until finally it got too embarrassing, and I stopped.

  Early spring, I fled town, leaving my aunt unrepaid, my girlfriend convinced, forever, I suppose, that this snivelling lesser Me was the real one.

  I went somewhere else and started over, pulled head out of ass, made a better life. Basically, I’ve got stores. If you’ve ever had a store that supports a family, a family that actually brightens when you come in at night, you know what a good thing that is. And I wouldn’t go back to that roofing Me or that roofing time for anything in the world.

  But sometimes I imagine myself standing at that pay phone, in my tar-hardened clothes.

  “This is so great,” the Field Museum woman is saying. “Come down, come down, we finally have something suitable for you. I’m so happy to finally be able to tell you this.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I say.

  Then it’s a few weeks later, after first payday, and I pull up to my then-girlfriend’s house, wearing clean clothes. All day long, I have been, say, writing about the brontosaurus. I have certainly, at this point, learned a lot about brontosauri. In fact, I have been selected to go to a Brontosaurus Conference in, say, Miami, Florida. We go out to dinner. My aunt meets us there. I have by now repaid her for all the food she fed me those many months. Also, I’ve bought her a new dress, just to be nice. The dinner is excellent. I pay. After dinner, the three of us sit there laughing, laughing about the fact that I, an Assistant Curator at the famous Field Museum, was once a joke of a roofer, a joke of a roofer so beat down he once stood by watching as a nice man got cheated out of his Christmas.

  adams

  I never could stomach Adams and then one day he’s standing in my kitchen, in his underwear. Facing in the direction of my kids’ room! So I wonk him in the back of the head and down he goes. When he stands up, I wonk him again and down he goes. Then I roll him down the stairs into the early-spring muck and am like, If you ever again, I swear to God, I don’t even know what to say, you miserable fuck.

  Karen got home. I pulled her aside. Upshot was: Keep the doors locked, and if he’s home the kids stay inside.

  But after dinner I got to thinking: Guy comes in in his shorts and I’m sitting here taking this? This is love? Love for my kids? Because what if? What if we slip up? What if a kid gets out or he gets in? No, no, no, I was thinking, not acceptable.

  So I went over and said, Where is he?

  To which Lynn said, Upstairs, why?

  Up I went and he was standing at the mirror, still in his goddam underwear, only now he had on a shirt, and I wonked him again as he was turning. Down he went and tried to crab out of the room, but I put a foot on his back.

  If you ever, I said. If you ever again.

  Now we’re even, he said. I came in your house and you came in mine.

  Only I had pants on, I said, and mini-wonked him in the back of his head.

  I am what I am, he said.

  Well, that took the cake! Him admitting it! So I wonked him again, as Lynn came in, saying, Hey, Roger, hey. Roger being me. And then he rises up. Which killed me! Him rising up? Against me? And I’m about to wonk him again, but she pushes in there, like intervening. So to wonk him again I had to like shove her back, and unfortunately she slipped, and down she went, and she’s sort of lying there, skirt hiked up-and he’s mad! Mad! At me! Him in his underwear, facing my kids’ room, and he’s mad at me? Many a night I’ve heard assorted wonks and baps from Adams’s house, with her gasping, Frank, Jesus, I Am a Woman, You’re Hurting Me, the Kids Are Watching, and so on.

  Because that’s the kind of guy he is.

  So I wonked him again, and when she crawled at me, going, Please, Please, I had to push her back down, not in a mean way but in a like stay-there way, which is when, of course, just my luck, the kids came running in-these Adams kids, I should say, are little thespians, constantly doing musicals in the back yard, etc., etc.-so they’re, you know, all dramatic: Mummy, Daddy! And, O.K., that was unfortunate, so I tried to leave, but they were standing there in the doorway, blocking me, like, Duh, we do not know which way to turn, we are stunned. So I shoved my way out, not rough, very gentle-I felt for them, having on more than one occasion heard Adams whaling on them, too-but one did go do
wn, just on one knee, and I helped her up, and she tried to bite me! She did not seem to know what was what, and it hurt, and made me mad, so I went over to Adams, who was just getting up, and gave him this like proxy wonk on top of his head, in exchange for the biting.

  Keep your damn, I said. Keep your goddam kids from-

  Then I needed some air, so I walked around the block, but still it wasn’t sitting right. Because now it begins, you know? Adams over there all pissed off, saying false things about me to those kids, which, due to what they had seen (the wonking) and what they had not seen (him in his underwear, facing my kids’ room), they were probably swallowing every mistruth, and I was like, Great, now they hate me, like I’m the bad guy in this, and all summer it’s going to be pranks, my hose slit and syrup in my gas tank, or all of a sudden our dog has a burn mark on her belly.

  So I type up these like handbills, saying, Just So You Know, Your Dad Was Standing Naked in My Kitchen, Facing My Kids’ Room. And I tape one inside their screen door so they’ll be sure and see it when they go to softball later, then I stuff like nine in their mailbox, and on the rest I cross out “Your Dad” and put in “Frank Adams” and distribute them in mailboxes around the block.

  All night it’s call after call from the neighbors, saying, you know, Call the cops, Adams needs help, he’s a goof, I’ve always hated him, maybe a few of us should go over there, let us work with you on this, do not lose your cool. That sort of thing. Which was all well and good, but then I go out for a smoke around midnight and what is he looking at, all hateful? Their houses? Don’t kid yourself. He is looking at my house, with that smoldering look, and I am like, What are you looking at?

  I am what I am, he says.

  You fuck, I say, and rush over to wonk him, but he runs inside.

  And, as far as cops, my feeling was: What am I supposed to do, wait until he’s back in my house, then call the cops and hope he stays facing my kids’ room, in his shorts, until they arrive?

  No, sorry, that is not my way.

  The next day my little guy, Brian, is standing at the back door, with his kite, and I like reach over and pop the door shut, going, Nope, nope, you know very well why not, Champ.

  So there’s my poor kid, kite in lap all afternoon, watching some dumb art guy on PBS saying, Shading Is One Way We Make Depth, How About Trying It Relevant to This Stump Here?

  Then Monday morning I see Adams walking toward his car and again he gives me that smoldering look! Never have I received such a hateful look. And flips me the bird! As if he is the one who is right! So I rush over to wonk him, only he gets in the car and pulls away.

  All day that look was in my mind, that look of hate.

  And I thought, If that was me, if I had that hate level, what would I do? Well, one thing I would do is hold it in and hold it in and then one night it would overflow and I would sneak into the house of my enemy and stab him and his family in their sleep. Or shoot them. I would. You would have to. It is human nature. I am not blaming anybody.

  I thought, I have to be cautious and protect my family or their blood will be on my hands.

  So I came home early and went over to Adams’s house when I knew nobody was home, and gathered up his rifle from the basement and their steak knives and also the butter knives, which could be sharpened, and also their knife sharpener, and also two letter openers and a heavy paperweight, which, if I was him and had lost all my guns and knives, I would definitely use that to bash in the head of my enemy in his sleep, as well as the heads of his family.

  That night I slept better until I woke in a sweat, asking myself what I would do if someone came in and, after shoving down my wife and one of my kids, stole my guns and knives and knife sharpener as well as my paperweight. And I answered myself: What I would do is look around my house in a frenzy for something else dangerous, such as paint, such as thinner, such as household chemicals, and then either ring the house of my enemy with the toxics and set them on fire or pour some into the pool of my enemy, which would (1) rot the liner and (2) sicken the children of my enemy when they went swimming.

  Then I looked in on my sleeping kids and, oh my God, nowhere are there kids as sweet as my kids, and standing there in my pajamas, thinking of Adams standing there in his underwear, then imagining my kids choking and vomiting as they struggled to get out of the pool, I thought, No, no way, I am not living like this.

  So, entering through a window I had forced earlier that afternoon, I gathered up all the household chemicals, and, believe me, he had a lot, more than I did, more than he needed, thinner, paint, lye, gas, solvents, etc. I got it all in like nine Hefty bags and was just starting up the stairs with the first bag when here comes the whole damn family, falling upon me, even his kids, whipping me with coat hangers and hitting me with sharp-edged books and spraying hair spray in my eyes, the dog also nipping at me, and rolling down the stairs of their basement I thought, They are trying to kill me. Hitting my head on the concrete floor, I saw stars, and thought, No, really, they are going to kill me, and if they kill me no more little Melanie and me eating from the same popcorn bowl, no more little Brian doing that wrinkled-brow thing we do back and forth when one of us makes a bad joke, never again Karen and me lying side by side afterward, looking out the window, discussing our future plans as those yellow-beaked birds come and go on the power line. And I struggled to my feet thinking, Forget how I got here, I am here, I must get out of here, I have to live. And I began to wonk and wonk, and once they had fallen back, with Adams and his teenage boy huddled over the littlest one, who had unfortunately flown relatively far due to a bit of a kick I had given her, I took out my lighter and fired up the bag, the bag of toxics, and made for the light at the top of the stairs, where I knew the door was, and the night was, and my freedom, and my home.

  III.

  Our enemies will set among us individuals whose primary function is to object, to dissent, to find fault with our traditional mode of living, until that which we know to be right, begins to feel suspect, and we are reduced to a state of perpetual uncertainty, a situation our enemies will be only too happy to exploit. Who are these individuals, really, and what makes them so vociferous in their criticism of our ways? They are, if we examine them closely: outcasts, chronic complainers, individuals incapable of thriving within a perfectly viable, truly generous system, a system vastly superior to all other known ways of organizing effort and providing value.

  – Bernard “Ed” Alton,

  Taskbook for the New Nation,

  Chapter 5. “The Tyranny of the Negative: Procedural

  Methodology and the Pathology of Dissent”

  (93990)

  A ten-day acute toxicity study was conducted using twenty male cynomolgous monkeys ranging in weight from 25 to 40 kg. These animals were divided into four groups of five monkeys each. Each of the four groups received a daily intravenous dose of Borazidine, delivered at a concentration of either 100, 250, 500, or 10,000 mg/kg/day.

  Within the high-dose group (10,000 mg/kg/day) effects were immediate and catastrophic, resulting in death within 20 mins of dosing for all but one of the five animals. Animals 93445 and 93557, pre-death, exhibited vomiting and disorientation. These two animals almost immediately entered a catatonic state and were sacrificed moribund. Animals 93001 and 93458 exhibited vomiting, anxiety, disorientation, and digging at their abdomens. These animals also quickly entered a catatonic state and were sacrificed moribund.

  Only one animal within this high-dose group, animal 93990, a diminutive 26 kg male, appeared unaffected.

  All of the animals that had succumbed were removed from the enclosure and necropsied. Cause of death was seen, in all cases, to be renal failure.

  No effects were seen on Day 1 in any of the three lower-dose groups (i.e., 100, 250, or 500 mg/kg/day).

  On Day 2, after the second round of dosing, animals in the 500 mg/kg/day group began to exhibit vomiting, and, in some cases, aggressive behavior. This aggressive behavior most often consisted of a d
irected shrieking, with or without feigned biting. Some animals in the two lowest-dose groups (100 and 250 mg/kg/day) were observed to vomit, and one in the 250 mg/kg/day group (animal 93002) appeared to exhibit self-scratching behaviors similar to those seen earlier in the high-dose group (i.e., probing and scratching at abdomen, with limited writhing).

  By the end of Day 3, three of five animals in the 500 mg/kg/day group had entered a catatonic state and the other two animals in this dose group were exhibiting extreme writhing punctuated with attempted biting and pinching of their fellows, often with shrieking. Some hair loss, ranging from slight to extreme, was observed, as was some “playing” with the resulting hair bundles. This “playing” behavior ranged from mild to quite energetic. This “playing” behavior was adjudged to be typical of the type of “play” such an animal might initiate with a smaller animal such as a rodent, i.e., out of a curiosity impulse, i.e., may have been indicative of hallucinogenic effects. Several animals were observed to repeatedly grimace at the hair bundles, as if trying to elicit a fear behavior from the hair bundles. Animal 93110 of the 500 mg/kg/day group was observed to sit in one corner of the cage gazing at its own vomit while an unaffected animal (93222) appeared to attempt to rouse the interest of 93110 via backpatting, followed by vigorous backpatting. Interestingly, the sole remaining high-dose animal (93990, the diminutive male), even after the second day’s dosage, still showed no symptoms. Even though this animal was the smallest in weight within the highest-dose group, it showed no symptoms. It showed no vomiting, disinterest, self-scratching, anxiety, or aggression. Also no hair loss was observed. Although no hair bundles were present (because no hair loss occurred), this animal was not seen to “play” with inanimate objects present in the enclosure, such as its food bowl or stool or bits of rope, etc. This animal, rather, was seen only to stare fixedly at the handlers through the bars of the cage and/or to retreat rapidly when the handlers entered the enclosure with the long poking sticks to check under certain items (chairs, recreational tire) for hair bundles and or deposits of runny stool.