CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella by George Saunders Read Free Book Online Page A

pegged.
    Leon came by and told me to turn the music down. So I turned it up. Consequently I never heard Clive screaming or Leon shouting at me to kill the waves. My first clue was looking out the Control Hut porthole and seeing people bolting towards the ladders, choking and with bits of Clive all over them. Guests were weeping while wiping their torsos on the lawn. In the Handicapped Section the chaired guys had their eyes shut tight and their heads turned away as the gore sloshed towards them. The ambulatories were clambering over the ropes, screaming for their physical therapists.
    Leon hates to say he told me so but does it all the time anyway. He constantly reminds me of how guilty I am by telling me not to feel guilty and asking about my counseling.My counselor is Mr. Poppet, a gracious and devout man who’s always tightening his butt cheeks when he thinks no one’s looking. Mr. Poppet makes me sit with my eyes closed and repeat, “A boy is dead because of me,” for half an hour for fifty dollars. Then for another fifty dollars he makes me sit with my eyes closed again and repeat, “Still, I’m a person of considerable value,” for half an hour. When the session’s over I go out into the bright sun like a rodent that lives in the earth, blinking and rubbing my eyes, and Mr. Poppet stands in the doorway, clapping for me and intoning the time of day of our next appointment.
    The sessions have done me good. Clive doesn’t come into my room at night all hacked up anymore. He comes in pretty much whole. He comes in and sits on my bed and starts talking to me. Since his death he’s been hanging around with dead kids from other epochs. One night he showed up swearing in Latin. Another time with a wild story about an ancient African culture that used radio waves to relay tribal myths. He didn’t use those exact words of course. Even though he’s dead, he’s still basically a kid. When he tries to be scary he gets it all wrong. He can’t moan for beans. He’s scariest when he does real kid things, like picking his nose and wiping it on the side of his sneaker.
    He tries to be polite but he’s pretty mad about the future I denied him. Tonight’s subject is what the Mexico City trip with the perky red-haired tramp would have been like. He dwells on the details of their dinner in the catacombs and describes how her freckles would have looked as daylight streamed in through the cigarette-burned magenta curtains. Wistfully he says he sure would like to have tastedthe sauce she would have said was too hot to be believed as they crossed the dirt road lined with begging cripples.
    “Forgive me,” I say in tears.
    “No,” he says, also in tears.
    Near dawn he sighs, tucks in the parts of his body that have been gradually leaking out over the course of the night, pats my neck with his cold little palm, and tells me to have a nice day. Then he fades, producing farts with a wet hand under his armpit.
    Simone sleeps through the whole thing, making little puppy sounds and pushing her rear against my front to remind me even in her sleep of how long it’s been. But you try it. You kill a nice little kid via neglect and then enjoy having sex. If you can do it you’re demented.
    Simone’s an innocent victim. Sometimes I think I should give her her space and let her explore various avenues so her personal development won’t get stymied. But I could never let her go. I’ve loved her too long. Once in high school I waited three hours in a locker in the girls’ locker room to see her in her panties. Every part of me cramped up, but when she finally came in and showered I resolved to marry her. We once dedicated a whole night to pretending I was a household invader who tied her up. In my shorts I stood outside our sliding-glass door shouting, “Meter man!” At dawn or so I made us eggs but was so high on her I ruined our only pan by leaving it on the burner while I kept running back and forth to look at her nude.
    What