Pastoralia by George Saunders

Author:George Saunders [Saunders, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2001-02-01T22:00:00+00:00

Joysticks reopens on friday. It’s a madhouse. They’ve got the fog on. A bridge club offers me fifteen bucks to oil-wrestle Mel Turner. So I oil-wrestle Mel Turner. They offer me twenty bucks to feed them chicken wings from my hand. So I feed them chicken wings from my hand. The afternoon flies by. Then the evening. At nine the bridge club leaves and I get a sorority. They sing intelligent nasty songs and grope my Simulator and say they’ll never be able to look their boyfriends’ meager genitalia in the eye again. Then Mr. Frendt comes over and says phone. It’s Min. She sounds crazy. Four times in a row she shrieks get home. When I tell her calm down, she hangs up. I call back and no one answers. No biggie. Min’s prone to panic. Probably one of the babies is puky. Luckily I’m on FlexTime.

“I’ll be back,” I say to Mr. Frendt.

“I look forward to it,” he says.

I jog across the marsh and through FedEx. Up on the hill there’s a light from the last remaining farm. Sometimes we take the boys to the adjacent car wash to look at the cow. Tonight however the cow is elsewhere.

At home Min and Jade are hopping up and down in front of Aunt Bernie, who’s sitting very very still at one end of the couch.

“Keep the babies out!” shrieks Min. “I don’t want them seeing something dead!”

“Shut up, man!” shrieks Jade. “Don’t call her something dead!”

She squats down and pinches Aunt Bernie’s cheek.

“Aunt Bernie?” she shrieks. “Fuck!”

“We already tried that like twice, chick!” shrieks Min. “Why are you doing that shit again? Touch her neck and see if you can feel that beating thing!”

“Shit shit shit!” shrieks Jade.

I call 911 and the paramedics come out and work hard for twenty minutes, then give up and say they’re sorry and it looks like she’s been dead most of the afternoon. The apartment’s a mess. Her money drawer’s empty and her family photos are in the bathtub.

“Not a mark on her,” says a cop.

“I suspect she died of fright,” says another. “Fright of the intruder?”

“My guess is yes,” says a paramedic.

“Oh God,” says Jade. “God, God, God.”

I sit down beside Bernie. I think: I am so sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when it happened and sorry you never had any fun in your life and sorry I wasn’t rich enough to move you somewhere safe. I remember when she was young and wore pink stretch pants and made us paper chains out of DrugTown receipts while singing “Froggie Went A-Courting.” All her life she worked hard. She never hurt anybody. And now this.

Scared to death in a crappy apartment.

Min puts the babies in the kitchen but they keep crawling out. Aunt Bernie’s in a shroud on this sort of dolly and on the couch are a bunch of forms to sign.

We call Ma and Freddie. We get their machine.

“Ma, pick up!” says Min. “Something bad happened! Ma, please freaking pick up!”

But nobody picks up.

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