CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella

by George Saunders

  “We know all about you, mister,” the mother says. “We’ve had occasion to see you shoeless, Kenny and Benny and I.”

  “Very ugly claws,” Benny says. “I almost blew chunks first time I saw them.”

  “That is, until Ave noticed the dollar signs on them,” the mother says.

  “What dollar signs?” Benny says dully.

  “I don’t mean literal dollar signs, son,” his mother says. “I mean if we take this freak to Slavetown and sell him, we’ll be on easy street, and we can hire someone competent to care for us instead of Mr. Sieve-Brain here. And Mr. Sieve-Brain can go back to working at the slaughterhouse and we’ll be able to afford a radio and an occasional night out, like every other family on the block. But we won’t invite Mr. Sieve-Brain out with us.”

  “Mr. Doofus,” Benny says.

  “Mr. Disappointing Son,” the mother says. “No way will we take him with us.”

  “Too embarrassing,” Benny says.

  Kenny kneels wet-eyed, blinking madly.

  “You must be hungry,” he says to me in a quavering voice.

  “You’ll rue the day you put some Flawed ahead of your own mother!” the mother bellows. “If your father were dead he’d roll over in his grave. When I think of all the times I let you suck my breast, I’m disgusted. What a waste of milk. Oh, this is so frustrating! Fish, Kenny, fish, damn you! Get off your knees and bring me fish! I wish I could get out of this bed and spank your butt like I used to. Benny, give him one in the ass for me.”

  “Okay, Ma,” Benny says, and nails Kenny in the rear with his foot.

  “My sweet, obedient Benny,” she says. “If only I would have had two sons as good. Now it’s off to find a buyer for this disquieting mutant. Chair, Kenny, chair!”

  Kenny quickly pulls a wheelchair from a cramped closet and awkwardly loads her in while Benny licks her broth bowl. She pulls Kenny’s hair and bites his arm and curses him for being cavalier about her torso soreness. Finally Benny wheels her out while telling her how saintly she is and what a hard life she’s had.

  Kenny sits disconsolately on the bed.

  “Boy oh boy,” he says. “Am I ever the guy they love to hate. They sure can say mean things. And they sure do want me to go back to the slaughterhouse. But no way. Because I’m too dumb to keep up on bone load-up. Don’t think I don’t know I’m dumb. I’m dumb all right, and no doubt about it. Filbert put me on bloodsweeping, but that was hard, using squeegees and all. After that came killfloor. On killfloor they make you help them kill, and that was sad. Heck, I like collies. I like to pet them, not wave a pork chop in their faces so Terry can cut their throats. No sir, I won’t go back and they can’t make me. I’ll run away. No I won’t. That takes money. And I don’t have any money. I can’t run away without money because then if I get hungry I won’t have any money to buy food with. So I can’t run away until I get some money. And how am I supposed to?”

  Then he looks at me and his eyes brighten.

  “Hey,” he says, “wait a minute. You’re worth a lot. I could sell you. But that wouldn’t be right. You’re no different from me except for your feet and all. I can’t do something wrong. That would be bad. But maybe I could. I could sell you. Then I’d have money. But then you’d be a slave. And that would be bad. Because I’ve seen them whipping those guys before. That would be mean of me to do that to you. I wonder what I should do. I can’t do something mean and selfish. But if I don’t, I’ll have to stay here with Ma and Benny forever, and that would be bad for me. I’d be being mean to myself. And that wouldn’t be good. I should love me. I should love me at least as much as I love you. And I don’t even really know you. Hmm. I wonder what I should do, anyway?”

  “Untie me?” I suggest. “Let me go?”

  “No,” he says. “That would be bad because then there’d be no hope for me and I’d get cranky and sad. You’d get sad and cranky too if your mom and brother were as mean as mine. Maybe yours are, though. How should I know? But if they are, I’ll bet they sure make you sad. And when someone’s sad, they want to be happy. I sure do. I sure do want to be happy. And the thing of it is, if I don’t sell you, Ma and Benny will. No lie. So you’re in the same boat either way. And I’m either really happy or really sad. So there you go. So I’ll sell you. Ma and Benny are walking to Slavetown, so we can take the car and beat them easy. Okay? Okay? Does that sound good?”

  Before I can answer he hefts my stretcher onto his back and stumbles out of the apartment. In the driveway is a ploughhorse tethered to an ancient roofless Nova. Kenny slides me into the backseat and stuffs an oily rag in my mouth.

  “Sorry about the bad taste of this rag and all,” he says. “But we’re still in Illinois and I don’t want you to blow this for me. Do you know I’ve never even kissed a girl? Do you know I’ve never spent a night away from home? Because of Ma. Because of Benny, that turd. I can’t believe I finally got up the nerve to call Benny a turd. What a big day for me! I wish I could call Ma a turd. But maybe that’s asking too much. After all, she did give birth to me and everything. But maybe someday I’ll just call her a turd without thinking, and won’t that be something! I might even call her some other bad things, but I hope not, because that would be mean of me, and there’s no reason to be mean or sad, now that I’m going to be free as the breeze from those two turds, Ma and Benny!”

  Lying on my back I watch the sky glide by. Soon the air smells like river and I hear chattering street merchants and the clang of pots. Kenny ties the horse to a picnic table and takes the rag out of my mouth and loads me into a moldering skiff. Birds come alive on both banks as the sun drops into the river and Kenny’s paddles break the pink water.

  On the far bank is a fenced-in complex of trailers.

  “Slavetown,” Kenny says.

  “I beg you, Kenny,” I say. “Don’t do this.”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” he says pitifully. “Why make me feel bad just when I’m finally about to do something good for myself? Please be quiet. Because I’m a softie. I’ll do something dumb like let you go. I’m a dumb softie and you could easily trick me. Anyone could. Everyone does. People always have. I’ve taken it and taken it. It’s made me sad in the heart, and that can’t be good. I’m just sure God sent you to me so I could have a happier heart and really start living!”

  I frantically tell my story as he rows. I tell about Mom and Dad. I tell about Connie. He sticks bits of life-jacket stuffing in his ears and sings at the top of his lungs. When we reach the bank he calls out to the guards, who wrestle me ashore.

  “I don’t have his paperwork and all,” Kenny says. “But he’s definitely Flawed. If you don’t believe me, take a look at his feet.”

  “Please, Kenny,” I say.

  “Probably it won’t be so bad,” he says, chucking me on the wrist rope. “These folks seems nice enough.”

  A few buyers slide down the bank. In keeping with Disclosure of Flaws legislation one of the guards hangs around my neck a poster of a generic naked man and marks both feet with yellow highlighter. Occasionally someone asks to see my claws, then gives a low whistle and moves on as I stare out red-faced at the river. A thick man with long orange hair and bad acne pokes me in the ribs. He makes me lift a large stone and do jumping jacks and inspects my claws with a hand lens.

  “Will he have his own bed?” Kenny says. “Will he get lots of time off?”

  “Absolutely,” the man says. “Oh my God am I ever generous with my Employees. I prefer to call them Employees. Either that or Involuntary Labor Associates. Name’s Chick Krennup. For this prospective Involuntary Labor Associate, who frankly doesn’t appear particularly strong, I’m prepared to offer you ninety dollars, tops.”

  “I was thinking more like two hundred,” Kenny timidly ventures.

  “Gasp!” Krennup says. “No offense, but have you been committing substance abuse on your boat? Eighty tops.”

  “Well, okay,” Kenny says uncertainly. “Okay. I’ll take eighty.”


  “You mean seventy,” says Krennup.

  “Oh,” Kenny says. “I thought you said eighty.”

  “You’re smooth,” Krennup says. “Nice try. But seventy it is.”

  Kenny beams, proud to have been called smooth. Krennup counts three twenties into his hand. Whistling happily, Kenny rows the skiff away.

  “Gracious!” Krennup says jovially once Kenny’s out of earshot. “Did I ever take that asshole to the cleaners! At any rate, welcome to Missouri. You must be stiff as a board. Want out of that contraption? How about a little exercise and some lunch?”

  I nod. He unstraps me, then flattens me with one blow of the oar. I struggle to my feet and he knocks me down again. He asks what I like best about myself and hits me until I admit I like nothing. Then he asks what I want from life and keeps hitting until I admit I want nothing. He asks what I treasure and love above all else and I say Connie. He hits. I say Connie. He hits. Finally I admit I love nothing. Wonderful, he says, then hits me once just for fun. Who is this Connie slut? he asks. Nobody, I say. Wrong answer, he says, she’s a worthless dirtbag and you despise her. All right, all right, I say, she’s a worthless dirtbag and I despise her. Then he hits me three times quick for selling Connie out so easily. He tells me to bark like a dog. I bark like a dog. He tells me to call him Most High and eat a handful of dirt. I do so. He fits me with a new Flawed bracelet and asks me who took off my old one. I immediately implicate Doc Spanner. He scribbles Docs name down and pledges to get it to the proper authorities.

  “Now,” he says. “I should tell you that, appearances notwithstanding, I am neither an angry nor a cruel man. I do not dislike you and, if truth be told, do not for an instant buy into the idea that you and your kind are somehow inferior to me, or deserving of subjugation. Nevertheless, you will observe me to be, to say the least, the proverbial harsh taskmaster. Why? you might ask. In a word: Carlotta Bins. The most beautiful woman in Missouri, who because of my rough-hewn appearance has declared herself out of my reach, unless I impress her in some less aesthetic-based arena. And I have chosen my arena, and it is to be slave trading, which will garner me money, money, money, which will translate into power, power, power, and houses, houses, houses, and a wardrobe suitable for my lady, the charmed, raven-tressed, irrepressible Carlotta. And you, sir, you are important to me, wildly important, in that the price I get for you will enter my coffers, where it will sit garnering interest until such time as it is part of an absolutely undeniable nest egg. In keeping with my stated intentions, you will spend this evening in unpleasant solitude, thereby becoming further distanced from your true self and more amenable to my every whim. This regimen of daytime beatings and lonely nights will continue until such time as there is nothing remaining of your free will and you have become the oft-cited putty in my hands, after which we will set out for Sarcoxie, where I will sell you and others of your ilk at tremendous markup.”

  He helps me up and guides me to a dank cage at tree line. He throws in some moldy ancient airline peanuts, then jabs me with the oar for not saying thanks. Finally he goes away. I sit ashamed in my cage. Who am I? I would have done anything to stop the hitting. Anything. So much for human dignity, I think, a few whacks in the ribs and you’re calling a fat guy God and eating soil at his request. He was hitting me, I think: me. A nice guy. A friendly guy. The guy voted Least Likely to Object for three years running. Who in the world is he to be hitting me?

  I long for a kind word, for a meal, for my bunk and locker, for Bounty Land.

  At dawn Krennup’s leaning against my cage with a doughnut in his mouth. He sets his coffee down and opens the door and tells me to step out. I do so. He cracks me in the back of the legs until I’m on my knees, then tells me to get up because I’m on the clock. Then he knocks me down again and with his foot on my chest explains that per Federal Mandate 12 I’m to be compensated for my involuntary servitude. However I’m also to be charged for my food and water and for every minute he has to spend reprimanding me or beating me senseless or even thinking about me. Whatever money is left, which invariably will be exactly nothing, will be deposited in his bank account, for disbursement whenever he sees fit, which will typically be never.

  He asks do I understand. Before I can answer he whacks me. After he whacks me I say I understand and it’s all fine with me. He whacks me for volunteering information he didn’t request, then ties me to a post near six Porta Pottis slanting like bad lime-green teeth. Every half hour he comes out and beats me up. I get no food. I get no water. Whenever I fall asleep he sends over a lackey to burn me with a match. He parades his other Flaweds by and they make fun of my claws and spit on me and tell me to quit being snotty and join the club so we can head west. I humiliate myself by telling them I’d very much like to join the club and begging Krennup to untie me. Finally after three days he does. I’m so happy I try to hug him and he knocks me down in the dirt with his oar and says my cheekiness has just earned me two additional days.

  And when those two days are up I don’t hug or thank him, I meekly shuffle, I flinch, I hear voices, I drool, I follow him into the trailer and stand on a milk crate in a crap-coated stall, where four elderly Flaweds check me for body lice, then dress me in coarse baggies and lead me to a wagon driven by Mollie, a hag whose Flaw is a colossal turkeyneck.

  She gives me a friendly smile while smearing antibiotic on her wattles, then hops down and adds me to a line of thirty Flaweds chained to the back of the wagon.

  And off we go.

  We plod through Eureka and Pacific, camp in a foundry parking lot, get up at the crack of dawn and start south again, past porches overgrown with lilac and piles of junk bikes being sold piecemeal for shack frames. It’s Sullivan, Rolla, Hazelgreen, and Sleeper, where a field behind a former mall is full of singing teens digging roots by torchlight. The days are a blur of fences, distant hills, senior citizens selling moist towelettes on the shoulder. The air smells of fried chicken and coffee, there are laughing girls on porches, tumbling puppies chasing ducks, long tables of steaming food in the sunlight, but none of it’s for us. We get eight Sterno-warmed pork nuggets and a sip of water a day. We get Mollie chirping about the beauty of the land while rubbing bagbalm into our shacklesores. You’d think we’d devise an escape plan or share childhood memories while developing bonds of camaraderie to last a lifetime. But no. We slander one another. We bicker. We victimize an asthmatic ex-database guru from Detroit by stealing his nuggets whenever he has a coughing fit.

  By Lebanon I’m bleeding at the claws and Krennup’s composing love songs to Carlotta while slugging brandy on the back of the wagon. We double-time through Marshfield and Strafford and get pelted with eggs by frat boys in Springfield and drenched to the bone in Mt. Vernon while waiting for Krennup to come out of a tavern. When he does it’s with a mob of drunks and he makes me show my feet so they can compare my claws with an almond held by the tallest drunk, and the drunks conclude that every one of my claws is indeed bigger than the almond and give Krennup a dollar each, then tromp inside cackling while I stand barefoot in the freezing rain.

  Next morning he wakes us before dawn and marches us out to the Sarcoxie slavemart, a fenced-in mudpatch behind a firebombed Wendy’s.

  “Best foot forward, folks,” he says, giving Mollie a playful tug on the wattles. “The sooner I sell you misanthropes, the sooner I get home and wow Carlotta with the profits.”

  All morning I stand on a stump as buyers file by. They take souvenir photos of my claws, using pens and matchbooks for scale. They note the cracked flesh and the swelling and doubt aloud my ability to handle fieldwork. They ask can I cook. I say no. They ask can I build furniture or supervise a cleaning staff or create interesting pastries. I say no no no. By dinnertime it’s just me and a set of Siamese twins and a few double amputees sitting hopefully on crates.

  Krennup and Mollie glare at me from across the Sterno fire.

  “Are we not going to be able to get anything for you?” Krennup says. “Are you literally worth
less? Those feet are so off-putting. It’s frustrating.”

  “Maybe we could rent a power sander,” Mollie says.

  “Not to intrude, folks,” says a buyer nearby wearing a wool vest, “but you’ve talking to this man in awfully derogatory terms. I don’t even talk to my sheep so negatively. I have half a mind to buy this fellow and turn him into a shepherd.”

  “If you’ve got fifty bucks you can turn him into dog food for all I care,” Krennup says.

  “Oh, come now,” the man says. “What does a comment like that tell us about your self-image? Talk about an inhibitory belief system. You see yourself as someone who needs to sell someone else to a dog-food factory in order to validate yourself. And yet it seems to me that you have some very fine qualities. If nothing else, the fact that you own property says some positive things about your organizational skills and your will to power. Cut yourself some slack, friend. Come down off that cross of your own making, and believe in you!”

  “Whatever,” Krennup says. “Do you want him or not? Fifty, firm.”

  “Frankly, I abhor this slavery thing,” the man says to me. “But you can’t fight it. So I do my part to treat my people like human beings. My name’s Ned Ventor. I consider myself to be working for change from within the system.”

  He shakes my hand, then slips Krennup a fifty and leads me to a wagon with padded seats, where four other Flaweds are sitting unchained drinking lemonade.

  “Care for some lemonade?” he says. “Bagel? I hope these seats are neither too soft nor too hard. Please fill out a name tag. Attention all! What I usually like to do is hold a brief philosophical orientation session to get us all on the same wavelength. Any objections? Is this a good time for it? Great! Then let’s begin with principle number one: I trust you. I’m not going to treat you like a slave and I don’t expect you to act like one, not that I think for a minute that you would. Second principle: My sheep are your sheep. I realize that without you, the shepherds, my sheep would tend to wander all over the mountainside, being eaten by wolves or the dispossessed, not that I have anything against the dispossessed, only I don’t like them eating my sheep. Principle three: If we get through the year without a lost sheep, it’s party time. We’ll have couscous and tortilla chips and dancing and, for the main course, what else, a barbecued sheep. Principles four and five: Comfort and dignity. You’ll be getting hot meals three times a day, featuring selections from every food group, plus dessert, plus a mint. You’ll each be getting a cottage, which you may decorate as you like, using a decoration allowance I’ll distribute upon our arrival. Buy a lounge chair, or some nice prints, maybe even a coffeemaker, whatever, have some Flawed friends over for cards, I don’t care. In fact I think it’s great. You come out to the meadow next morning feeling empowered, you give your sheep that little extra bit of attention, all the better for me. My take on this is: I can’t set you free, but if I could, I would. That is, I can’t set you literally free. My business would be ruined, wouldn’t it? But spiritually free, that’s another matter. So I’ll be offering meditation classes and miniseminars on certain motivational principles we can all put to work in our lives, even shepherds. For that matter, even sheep. We’ll be doing some innovative sheep-praising, which you might think is nutty, but after you see the impressive gains in wool yields, I think you’ll do a one-eighty. They come up and lick your hands as if to say: Hey, I like who I am. It’s touching. I think you’ll be moved. Any questions?”