CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

by George Saunders

  You probably like to party, the Nether had cracked to Suzanne moments earlier as they passed this very spot.

  No, I don’t, Suzanne said. I like to play. And I like to hug.

  Hoo boy, the Nether said. Sounds like Dullsville.

  Somewhere there is a man who likes to play and hug, Suzanne said.

  He came out of the woods now to the prettiest vista he knew. The pond was a pure frozen white. It struck him as somewhat Switzerlandish. Someday he would know for sure. When the Swiss threw him a parade or whatnot.

  Here the Nether’s tracks departed from the path, as if he had contemplatively taken a moment to gaze at the pond. Perhaps this Nether was not all bad. Perhaps he was having a debilitating conscience-attack vis-à-vis the valiantly struggling Suzanne atop his back. At least he seemed to somewhat love nature.

  Then the tracks returned to the path, wound around the pond, and headed up Lexow Hill.

  What was this strange object? A coat? On the bench? The bench the Nethers used for their human sacrifices?

  No accumulated snow on coat. Inside of coat still slightly warm.

  Ergo: the recently discarded coat of the Nether.

  This was some strange juju. This was an intriguing conundrum, if he had ever encountered one. Which he had. Once, he’d found a bra on the handlebars of a bike. Once, he’d found an entire untouched steak dinner on a plate behind Fresno’s. And hadn’t eaten it. Though it had looked pretty good.

  Something was afoot.

  Then he beheld, halfway up Lexow Hill, a man.

  Coatless bald-headed man. Super-skinny. In what looked like pajamas. Climbing plodfully, with tortoise patience, bare white arms sticking out of his p.j. shirt like two bare white branches sticking out of a p.j. shirt. Or grave.

  What kind of person leaves his coat behind on a day like this? The mental kind, that was who. This guy looked sort of mental. Like an Auschwitz dude or sad confused grandpa.

  Dad had once said, Trust your mind, Rob. If it smells like shit but has writing across it that says Happy Birthday and a candle stuck down in it, what is it?

  Is there icing on it? he’d said.

  Dad had done that thing of squinting his eyes when an answer was not quite there yet.

  What was his mind telling him now?

  Something was wrong here. A person needed a coat. Even if the person was a grown-up. The pond was frozen. The duck thermometer said ten. If the person was mental, all the more reason to come to his aid, as had not Jesus said, Blessed are those who help those who cannot help themselves but are too mental, doddering, or have a disability?

  He snagged the coat off the bench.

  It was a rescue. A real rescue, at last, sort of.

  Ten minutes earlier, Don Eber had paused at the pond to catch his breath.

  He was so tired. What a thing. Holy moley. When he used to walk Sasquatch out here they’d do six times around the pond, jog up the hill, tag the boulder on top, sprint back down.

  Better get moving, said one of two guys who’d been in discussion in his head all morning.

  That is, if you’re still set on the boulder idea, the other said.

  Which still strikes us as kind of fancy-pants.

  Seemed like one guy was Dad and the other Kip Flemish.

  Stupid cheaters. They’d switched spouses, abandoned the switched spouses, fled together to California. Had they been gay? Or just swingers? Gay swingers? The Dad and Kip in his head had acknowledged their sins and the three of them had struck a deal: he would forgive them for being possible gay swingers and leaving him to do Soap Box Derby alone, with just Mom, and they would consent to giving him some solid manly advice.

  He wants it to be nice.

  This was Dad now. It seemed Dad was somewhat on his side.

  Nice? Kip said. That is not the word I would use.

  A cardinal zinged across the day.

  It was amazing. Amazing, really. He was young. He was fifty-three. Now he’d never deliver his major national speech on compassion. What about going down the Mississippi in a canoe? What about living in an A-frame near a shady creek with the two hippie girls he’d met in 1968 in that souvenir shop in the Ozarks, when Allen, his stepfather, wearing those crazy aviators, had bought him a bag of fossil rocks? One of the hippie girls had said that he, Eber, would be a fox when he grew up, and would he please be sure to call her at that time? Then the hippie girls had put their tawny heads together and giggled at his prospective foxiness. And that had never—

  That had somehow never—

  Sister Val had said, Why not shoot for being the next JFK? So he had run for class president. Allen had bought him a Styrofoam straw boater. They’d sat together, decorating the hatband with Magic Markers. WIN WITH EBER! On the back: GROOVY! Allen had helped him record a tape. Of a little speech. Allen had taken that tape somewhere and come back with thirty copies, “to pass around.”

  “Your message is good,” Allen had said. “And you are incredibly well spoken. You can do this thing.”

  And he’d done it. He’d won. Allen had thrown him a victory party. A pizza party. All the kids had come.

  Oh, Allen.

  Kindest man ever. Had taken him swimming. Had taken him to découpage. Had combed out his hair so patiently that time he came home with lice. Never a harsh, etc., etc.

  Not so once the suffering begat. Began. God damn it. More and more his words. Askew. More and more his words were not what he would hoped.

  Hope.

  Once the suffering began, Allen had raged. Said things no one should say. To Mom, to Eber, to the guy delivering water. Went from a shy man, always placing a reassuring hand on your back, to a diminished pale figure in a bed, shouting CUNT!

  Except with some weird New England accent so it came out KANT!

  The first time Allen had shouted KANT! there followed a funny moment during which he and Mom looked at each other to see which of them was being called KANT. But then Allen amended, for clarity: KANTS!

  So it was clear he meant both of them. What a relief.

  They’d cracked up.

  Jeez, how long had he been standing here? Daylight was waiting.

  Wasting.

  I honestly didn’t know what to do. But he made it so simple.

  Took it all on himself.

  So what else is new?

  Exactly.

  This was Jodi and Tommy now.

  Hi, kids.

  Big day today.

  I mean, sure, it would have been nice to have a chance to say a proper good-bye.

  But at what cost?

  Exactly. And see—he knew that.

  He was a father. That’s what a father does.

  Eases the burdens of those he loves.

  Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.

  Soon Allen had become THAT. And no one was going to fault anybody for avoiding THAT. Sometimes he and Mom would huddle in the kitchen. Rather than risk incurring the wrath of THAT. Even THAT understood the deal. You’d trot in a glass of water, set it down, say, very politely, Anything else, Allen? And you’d see THAT thinking, All these years I was so good to you people and now I am merely THAT? Sometimes the gentle Allen would be inside there too, indicating, with his eyes, Look, go away, please go away, I am trying so hard not to call you KANT!

  Rail-thin, ribs sticking out.

  Catheter taped to dick.

  Waft of shit smell.

  You are not Allen and Allen is not you.

  So Molly had said.

  As for Dr. Spivey, he couldn’t say. Wouldn’t say. Was busy drawing a daisy on a Post-it. Then finally said, Well, honestly? As these things grow, they can tend to do weird things. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be terrible. Had one guy? Just always craved him a Sprite.

  And Eber had thought, Did you, dear doctor/savior/lifeline, just say craved him a Sprite?

  That’s how they got you. You thought, Maybe I’ll just crave me a Sprite. Next thing you knew, you
were THAT, shouting KANT!, shitting your bed, swatting at the people who were scrambling to clean you.

  No, sir.

  No sirree bob.

  Wednesday he’d fallen out of the med bed again. There on the floor in the dark it had come to him: I could spare them.

  Spare us? Or spare you?

  Get thee behind me.

  Get thee behind me, sweetie.

  A breeze sent down a sequence of linear snow puffs from somewhere above. Beautiful. Why were we made just so, to find so many things that happened every day pretty?

  He took off his coat.

  Good Christ.

  Took off his hat and gloves, stuffed the hat and gloves in a sleeve of the coat, left the coat on the bench.

  This way they’d know. They’d find the car, walk up the path, find the coat.

  It was a miracle. That he’d gotten this far. Well, he’d always been strong. Once, he’d run a half-marathon with a broken foot. After his vasectomy he’d cleaned the garage, no problem.

  He’d waited in the med bed for Molly to go off to the pharmacy. That was the toughest part. Just calling out a normal good-bye.

  His mind veered toward her now, and he jerked it back with a prayer: Let me pull this off. Lord, let me not fuck it up. Let me bring no dishonor. Leg me do it cling.

  Let. Let me do it cling.

  Clean.

  Cleanly.

  Estimated time of overtaking the Nether, handing him his coat? Approximately nine minutes. Six minutes to follow the path around the pond, an additional three minutes to fly up the hillside like a delivering wraith or mercy angel, bearing the simple gift of a coat.

  That is just an estimate, NASA. I pretty much made that up.

  We know that, Robin. We know very well by now how irreverent you work.

  Like that time you cut a fart on the moon.

  Or the time you tricked Mel into saying, “Mr. President, what a delightful surprise it was to find an asteroid circling Uranus.”

  That estimate was particularly iffy. This Nether being surprisingly brisk. Robin himself was not the fastest wicket in the stick. He had a certain girth. Which Dad prognosticated would soon triumphantly congeal into linebackerish solidity. He hoped so. For now he just had the slight man boobs.

  Robin, hurry, Suzanne said. I feel so sorry for that poor old guy.

  He’s a fool, Robin said, because Suzanne was young, and did not yet understand that when a man was a fool he made hardships for the other men, who were less foolish than he.

  He doesn’t have much time, Suzanne said, bordering on the hysterical.

  There, there, he said, comforting her.

  I’m just so frightened, she said.

  And yet he is fortunate to have one such as I to hump his coat up that big-ass hill, which, due to its steepness, is not exactly my cup of tea, Robin said.

  I guess that’s the definition of “hero,” Suzanne said.

  I guess so, he said.

  I don’t mean to continue being insolent, she said. But he seems to be pulling away.

  What would you suggest? he said.

  With all due respect, she said, and because I know you consider us as equals but different, with me covering the brainy angle and special inventions and whatnot?

  Yes, yes, go ahead, he said.

  Well, just working through the math in terms of simple geometry—

  He saw where she was going with this. And she was quite right. No wonder he loved her. He must cut across the pond, thereby decreasing the ambient angle, ergo trimming valuable seconds off his catch-up time.

  Wait, Suzanne said. Is that dangerous?

  It is not, he said. I have done it numerous times.

  Please be careful, Suzanne implored.

  Well, once, he said.

  You have such aplomb, Suzanne demurred.

  Actually never, he said softly, not wishing to alarm her.

  Your bravery is irascible, Suzanne said.

  He started across the pond.

  It was actually pretty cool walking on water. In summer, canoes floated here. If Mom could see him, she’d have a conniption. Mom treated him like a piece of glass. Due to his alleged infant surgeries. She went on full alert if he so much as used a stapler.

  But Mom was a good egg. A reliable counselor and steady hand of guidance. She had a munificent splay of long silver hair and a raspy voice, though she didn’t smoke and was even a vegan. She’d never been a biker chick, although some of the in-school cretins claimed she resembled one.

  He was actually quite fond of Mom.

  He was now approximately three-quarters, or that would be sixty percent, across.

  Between him and the shore lay a grayish patch. Here in summer a stream ran in. Looked a tad iffy. At the edge of the grayish patch he gave the ice a bonk with the butt of his gun. Solid as anything.

  Here he went. Ice rolled a bit underfoot. Probably it was shallow here. Anyways he hoped so. Yikes.

  How’s it going? Suzanne said, trepidly.

  Could be better, he said.

  Maybe you should turn back, Suzanne said.

  But wasn’t this feeling of fear the exact feeling all heroes had to confront early in life? Wasn’t overcoming this feeling of fear what truly distinguished the brave?

  There could be no turning back.

  Or could there? Maybe there could. Actually there should.

  The ice gave way and the boy fell through.

  Nausea had not been mentioned in The Humbling Steppe.

  A blissful feeling overtook me as I drifted off to sleep as the base of the crevasse. No fear, no discomfort, only a vague sadness at the thought of all that remained undone. This is death? I thought. It is but nothing.

  Author, whose name I cannot remember, I would like a word with you.

  A-hole.

  The shivering was insane. Like a tremor. His head was shaking on his neck. He paused to puke a bit in the snow, white-yellow against the white-blue.

  This was scary. This was scary now.

  Every step was a victory. He had to remember that. With every step he was fleeing father and father. Farther from father. Stepfarther. What a victory he was wresting. From the jaws of the feet.

  He felt a need at the back of his throat to say it right.

  From the jaws of defeat. From the jaws of defeat.

  Oh, Allen.

  Even when you were THAT you were still Allen to me.

  Please know that.

  Falling, Dad said.

  For some definite time he waited to see where he would land and how much it would hurt. Then there was a tree in his gut. He found himself wrapped fetally around some tree.

  Fucksake.

  Ouch, ouch. This was too much. He hadn’t cried after the surgeries or during the chemo, but he felt like crying now. It wasn’t fair. It happened to everyone supposedly but now it was happening specifically to him. He’d kept waiting for some special dispensation. But no. Something/someone bigger than him kept refusing. You were told the big something/someone loved you especially but in the end you saw it was otherwise. The big something/someone was neutral. Unconcerned. When it innocently moved, it crushed people.

  Years ago at The Illuminated Body he and Molly had seen this brain slice. Marring the brain slice had been a nickel-sized brown spot. That brown spot was all it had taken to kill the guy. Guy must have had his hopes and dreams, closet full of pants, and so on, some treasured childhood memories: a mob of koi in the willow shade at Gage Park, say, Gram searching in her Wrigley’s-smelling purse for a tissue—like that. If not for that brown spot, the guy might have been one of the people walking by on the way to lunch in the atrium. But no. He was defunct now, off rotting somewhere, no brain in his head.

  Looking down at the brain slice Eber had felt a sense of superiority. Poor guy. It was pretty unlucky, what had happened to him.

  He and Molly had fled to the atrium, had hot scones, watched a squirrel mess with a plastic cup.

  Wrapped fetally around
the tree Eber traced the scar on his head. Tried to sit. No dice. Tried to use the tree to sit up. His hand wouldn’t close. Reaching around the tree with both hands, joining his hands at the wrists, he pulled himself up, leaned back against the tree.

  How was that?

  Fine.

  Good, actually.

  Maybe this was it. Maybe this was as far as he got. He’d had it in mind to sit cross-legged against the boulder at the top of the hill, but really what difference did it make?

  All he had to do now was stay put. Stay put by force-thinking the same thoughts he’d used to propel himself out of the med bed and into the car and across the soccer field and through the woods: MollyTommyJodi huddling in the kitchen filled with pity/loathing, MollyTommyJodi recoiling at something cruel he’d said, Tommy hefting his thin torso up in his arms so that MollyJodi could get under there with a wash—

  Then it would be done. He would have preempted all future debasement. All his fears about the coming months would be mute.

  Moot.

  This was it. Was it? Not yet. Soon, though. An hour? Forty minutes? Was he doing this? Really? He was. Was he? Would he be able to make it back to the car even if he changed his mind? He thought not. Here he was. He was here. This incredible opportunity to end things with dignity was right in his hands.

  All he had to do was stay put.

  I will fight no more forever.

  Concentrate on the beauty of the pond, the beauty of the woods, the beauty you are returning to, the beauty that is everywhere as far as you can—

  Oh, for shitsake.

  Oh, for crying out loud.

  Some kid was on the pond.

  Chubby kid in white. With a gun. Carrying Eber’s coat.

  You little fart, put that coat down, get your ass home, mind your own—

  Damn. Damn it.

  Kid tapped the ice with the butt of his gun.

  You wouldn’t want some kid finding you. That could scar a kid. Although kids found freaky things all the time. Once he’d found a naked photo of Dad and Mrs. Flemish. That had been freaky. Of course, not as freaky as a grimacing cross-legged—

  Kid was swimming.

  Swimming was not allowed. That was clearly posted. no swimming.