CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella by George Saunders

Author:George Saunders [Saunders, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, Humour, contemporary
ISBN: 9780307822222
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The stars jar as I sprint down the hill. Soon I’m down-wind of the tent-town stink and can hear their domestic disputes and their brats screaming in poor grammar. I’m not ten feet from their barbed wire when a few young toughs recognize my khaki as corporate issue and wrangle me down to the ground while giving me a ribbing about health care benefits and the amount of time I’ve spent in conference rooms.

I don’t fight back. Assuming they don’t kill me first, they’ll catch hell from Mayor John Garibasi. Last summer when his daughter got married I took a huge risk by stealing a cake from Baked Goods and lowering it to him on an ad hoc dumbwaiter. Unfortunately Garibasi’s nowhere to be seen, so for several minutes my face is down in the dirt. The toughs remove my clothes and appropriate them for their own use. They let me up and examine the cloth. I sit there gasping in my skivvies while some dispossessed women stand around gawking and critiquing my upper thighs.

“I want to talk to the mayor,” I say in a shaky voice.

“You and what army?” says one of the toughs.

“Yeah,” says another. “If we let everyone see the mayor who came here wanting to see the mayor, we’d have a whole lot of people seeing the mayor.”

“And that wouldn’t be good,” says a third. “Because then the mayor would always be seeing someone. And besides, you’re obviously a softie with bad motives. Or some kind of like spy guy.”

Finally Garibasi shows up, wearing a threadbare blazer and carrying a surveying rod.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he shouts at the toughs. “What the hell? How’d he get all bloody and naked like that?”

“We beat him up and stripped him,” says one of the toughs.

“You ignorant pigs. No wonder you’re not the fucking mayor,” Garibasi says. “This is the guy who got Heather her wedding cake.”

Talk about an awkward silence. Talk about a bunch of strapping lads blushing and hurriedly giving me my pants back, then retreating to their tents. Garibasi apologizes profusely. I get dressed.

“So what brings you out with us disgustos?” he says. “You taking vacation?”

“No,” I say. “I quit.”

“You quit that cushy gig?” he says. “You must have a screw loose. They taking applications? Ha ha! So what do you want? A little money? Food? What?”

“Whatever you can do,” I say.

“Tell you the truth,” he says, “I can’t do much. I got to think economy of scale. I got to think: What can you do for me? Fact is, nothing anymore. You got no inside connections now. Basically you’re a nobody. No offense. The cake thing, that was great. But that’s past. We’re not rich here. We’re fucking poor. You know that. You had it good for a long time. You could look out and see us struggling. But now you’re just like us. No pot to piss in. Hand-to-mouth. Wolf-at-the-door and so on. So all’s I can give you at this point is a handshake and a good-luck kick in the ass.

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