CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella

BOUNTY

Tonight at last the nation votes. In defiance of top management Father Oswald’s set up his shortwave in the Rec Center. He says no matter how the vote turns out we’ve got to buck up. He says no matter what happens we’ve been blessed. Though it’s true, he admits, that our burdens are considerable crosses to bear, we still get three squares a day, not to mention a nice chunk of change to take home and mull over in the privacy and security of a bunkhouse for which we pay zippo rent.

We try to go through our regular Counseling agenda. We talk about ways in which we feel neglected or trampled underfoot. We pair off and exchange neckrubs while praising one another for being so unique. Then Father leads us in cheerful songs from musicals. But nobody can concentrate. Finally he gives in and turns on the news: Poll riots in Cleveland and three Flaweds lynched outside Topeka. The early returns are discouraging. The Western vote will decide it. Out there genetic purity is highly valued and Flaweds are generally considered subhuman trash, so things look bleak.

Father gathers us around him in a circle and encourages us to visualize losing so that when we actually do it won’t hurt so much. Then he chucks each of us on the temple and says he’s proud of our restraint.

By midnight it’s clear we’ve lost. In spite of our Preemptive Visualization we’re devastated. Beatrice Connally falls on the floor weeping. She’s forty-two and sees the vote as a death knell for her baby hopes. Her wig goes askew and we can all see her huge scalp veins.

Father climbs up on a folding chair and gives us his The World Has Changed But Not Christ speech. He reminds us that what tortures us is desire. He suggests we take what comes and avail ourselves of the beauties present even in our reduced circumstances. Instead of having children, he says, plant and savor flowers. Instead of owning property, say a kind word to a neighbor with poor self-esteem.

“Bear in mind,” he says, “that in time you meek shall inherit the earth.”

“How can you possibly believe that line at a time like this?” Beatrice says from the floor, as several of her cronies hustle to get her wig back on.

“It is at times like these,” he says, “that I believe most firmly.”

“Easy for you to say,” Beatrice says. “You’re Normal.”

“He’s not normal,” someone says. “He’s a priest.”

“No need for personal invective,” Father says. “Although certainly I understand your frustrations.”

Allan Burns makes a farting noise with his mouth from the back of the room. Allan’s a cynical rebel with benign polyps all over his torso. He’s nobody’s favorite. Even sans polyps he’d be a pariah.

“In the best interests of all,” Father says, seeming to enjoy ignoring Allan, “I suggest we go about our business as usual, observing the regular and sanctioned coping rituals.”

The rest of us agree.

So he goes into the safe for our vials and we all toot up.

Later that night in the Castle 4 courtyard Bill Tiney’s screaming at a group of Clients for letting his son die of cholera. Little Scotty Tiney’s lying motionless on a wooden cart near the goat-udder bagpipist. He’s not really dead, he’s Performing. Makeup’s done a super job of making him look decayed. The Clients titter and check their Events Schedules and a few who are really in the spirit of the thing start laying coins on Scotty’s chest. I’m slated for Ribald Highwayman. When the Tineys are through I’m supposed to bound in and rob the women of the fake jewelry they received at Admission, while comically ogling their cleavages.

Just then Connie comes up the trail with Mr. Corbett. I duck into a fake shrub. Connie’s my sister. Corbett’s a gigantic bachelor who made his fortune in antiseptic swabs.

“Say your husband’s a burly peasant who’ll kick my butt if I screw you,” he says.

“My husband’s a burly peasant who’ll kick your butt if you screw me,” Connie says.

“Wonderful,” Mr. Corbett says. “Now fall down and let me catch up.”

Connie pretends to trip. Corbett stands over her in his king’s robe with his hands on his hips.

“You peasant girls,” he says. “You peasant girls are all robust but naïve as to the ways of the world.”

Lying there Connie scratches the side of her nose.

“Say my harsh words frighten you,” Mr. Corbett says.

“Sire, your harsh words frighten me,” Connie says.

“I like that,” Mr. Corbett says. “I like that sire bit.”

In violation of all specs I clip him in the neck with a rock. He just stands there looking stupid so I clip him again.

“I don’t go for this,” he says loudly.

So I clip him again.

“I’m not the kind of man who pays good money to be insulted,” he says.

I clip him again and he makes a perturbed sound with his wet lips and stomps off. Connie gets up and looking out into the woods asks who’s the smart-ass. She’s mad because of the possible negative impact on her Performance Evaluation. But who cares. I’m still her brother. If she insists on having sex with rich guys for pay she can at least do it where I don’t have to watch.

“I know it’s you, Cole,” she says. “If you love me, mind your own business.”

Then she tromps back up the trail, cussing a blue streak and pleading with Corbett to come back and feel free to kick dirt on her. Meanwhile I’ve missed my cue by a mile. The courtyard’s empty and the Clients are inside the castle making pigs of themselves while watching a troupe of Thespians bait an animatronic bear. I suspect my ass is in a sling. My experience has been that when the rich pay for Highwayman they expect damn Highwayman.

I go out to the retaining wall and climb into the guard station. Down in the tent town the dispossessed are having a hoedown. It’s basically some floodlights mounted on gutted cars and pointed at a place where the dirt’s been raked. For music they’ve got a fiddler and five or six earnest teens playing spoons. Some of the dispossessed kids are floating paper boats in our offal stream. It may be offal but in the moonlight it looks poignant enough.

After a while a few of the kids get bold and come skulking up to the wall. I search the guard station, then fling down some contingency dinner rolls. The kids squeal and fill their pockets and stand there yelling thanks and begging for more on the basis of how many infants they have at home.

Finally I shout down that I’m all out. They’re sad about it and start back to the tent town with their crappy-looking shirts stuffed full of rolls.

“Smell one,” one says as they go. “They smell so good.”

The moon rises. The adult dispossessed wander off in pairs to their little shacks of packing material, as the fiddler stands on the hood of a car playing a sad good-night tune.

In the morning Mr. Oberlin wakes me by paging me in a stern tone. I go down to Administration and he’s sitting at his desk with residual black bean soup on his lips. He eats the black bean every Tuesday to prove he’s a man of the people. The black bean’s an Employee staple. All day long the intrafacility PA touts its down-home hickory flavor. They don’t have to sell us on it, since there’s nothing else for us to eat. Mr. Albert’s there too, wearing some kind of arts-and-crafts cardigan courtesy of his squeaky-clean wife. Albert’s so stable and nice and generous he makes everyone uncomfortable. Oberlin points at a footstool with his nail file and says sit.

So I sit.

“Just for grins,” he says, “paraphrase me our Statement of Corporate Mission.”

“Give it your best try,” Albert says kindly.

“To allow the deserving to experience an historical epoch unlike our own in terms of personal comfort,” I read directly off their thirtieth-anniversary corporate ties.

“Whoa,” Albert says. “Verbatim.”

“Would you classify getting hit in the neck with a rock as experiencing comfort?” Oberlin says.

“I suppose what Mr. Oberlins asking is,” Albert says, “do you think that actual medieval royalty members were frequently hit in their necks with rocks?”

“Yes, my friend,” Oberlin says, “the Corbett cat is out of the bag.”

“Tell me,” Albert says, scooting his chair close. “Was this a political reaction to last night’s vote?”

“No,” I say. “He was degrading my sister.”

“Albeit with her permission,” Albert says, handing me a mint. “We have her signed consent form.”

“Another incident of this ilk and you may well find yourself wandering the wide world sans income my friend,” Oberlin says. “And no joke. Bear in mind that in your case we’re talking about a young man who was practically frigging born here, and who has apparently forgotten the considerable deprivations and pains-in-the asses of existing without a potable water source, not to mention security from rampaging gangs that mean him harm.”

“Wow,” Albert says.

“In many senses,” Oberlin says expansively, “I used to more or less like you in some ways. That’s why I’m asking you to objectively regard your situation. Take off your shoes.”

I give him a look.

“Just do it,” he says.

So I take off my shoes. He sits next to me and takes off his.

“What I’ve got going here are toes,” he says. “In your case, those may be fairly described as claws. Am I wrong?”

“No,” I say. I could kill him for this. If there’s one thing I’m well aware of it’s the distinction between toes and claws.

“These feet identify you forever and always as Flawed,” he says. “So even if you could somehow rid yourself of your Flawed bracelet, your deformed feet would scream out from every treetop the pertinent information on your unfortunate condition, by virtue of which, in the western portion of our nation, a man like yourself may literally be purchased and enslaved. Do I talk sense? Is this line of thought making a dent on your self-perception?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Then why the offbeat actions?” he says. “Why the continual flying in the face of the hand that feeds you? One more chance, mother, and I’m going to put you on the road to knowledge of how lucky you truly are in your present employment circumstance. And don’t think I won’t.”

Clearly he’s threatening Expulsion. My stomach tightens. I try to look resolved and chastened and like I have a secret plan for corporate bravado. Out the window I see the McKremmer boys practicing their act on the Field of Battle by whacking each other with polyurethane jousting sticks while guffawing like idiots.

“And if you insist on sighing while I’m talking sense,” Oberlin says, “that too will contribute to my overall assessment of you as some kind of squeaky wheel seeking grease. As for your sister, you yourself should strive to be such an admirable team player or noncomplaining spunky trooper. Which, mon frère, you are sadly not.”

“And now for the bad news,” Albert says.

“Inverse congratulations,” Oberlin says. “You are hereby demoted to Table Boy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say.

“Company spirit, lad,” Albert says. “It’s the rudder on the otherwise wild boat of personal self-interest.”

“Gleason party, Castle Two, three o’clock,” Oberlin says. “Immerse yourself in your role. Try not to screw it up.”

I can’t believe it. Table Boy’s the worst Assignment I’ve had since I was six and a Wandering Gypsy. Back then we’d approach some picnicking rich and Heloise Bremmer would start in on her sexy fortune-teller routine. Next came the Freaks, namely me and Brian Rumbley. Brian had an eye in the back of his head and would read Chaucer from a book I held behind him. In truth his third eye was a nonfunctional glutinous mass and he’d memorized the passage. Still it was effective. Then I’d do my dance. It’s a hard dance to describe but it involved my claws and a sheet of plywood. Whenever she was mad at me Connie used to call it Tapping Without Tap Shoes. Because of my tender age the tips poured in. No one stopped to consider what the degradation might be doing to my psyche. At night Connie would sing me to sleep and tell me not to worry, because the real me was deep inside and safe. I love her dearly but in retrospect she had no idea what she was talking about. The real me was out there in tights, tripping the light fantastic for a bunch of soused rich vacationers. The real me was pining for my mother while showcasing my disability for a lousy buck.

Connie’s lot was no better. At the time hayrides through the Peasant Village were all the rage. Her job was to run behind a horse named Maid Marian with a shovel and a plastic pail. The constant fecal contact made her sickly. Whenever she missed her poundage quota they made her scoop poop after dark. Then she fell for a Client, the Normal son of a transportation mogul. They met at the fake stream. He was having a smoke and reflecting on life and she was doing our laundry. By wearing baggy blouses over her bracelet she was able to deceive him into thinking she was Normal. For a week they snuck off into the woods and made big stupid promises. Then while touring with his parents he saw her hunched over a steaming mound with a look of concentration on her face and that was that. Her heart was broken. Shortly afterwards she started going wrong. I’d find her drunk and wandering along the moat in just a corset, shouting obscenities at members of Grounds.

And that was nothing compared to the going-wrong that followed.

If you want to feel depressed, try watching your only remaining family member go off into the woods for a romp with a trio of law enforcement bigwigs from Mahwah.

Connie’s Flaw is a slight, very slight, vestigial tail. You can barely see it. After her jilting she went through a bad depression and tried to sand it off. She got a serious infection and was in the clinic for a week with compresses on her rear. When she came out she was humiliated and refused to speak. A week later she turned her first trick.

Sometimes I remember her at three years old on Easter morning, wearing a little coolie hat in the yard of the house on Marigold. We had a swing set. We had a bird feeder. We had a dog named Sparky. How we’d laugh as he’d caper around the yard digging at his anus with his mouth. When times got hard he was eaten against our will by our neighbor Mr. DeAngelo. Maybe it was for the best. A week later the militia took the house and we were driven out onto the road. Sparky would have been just one more mouth to feed. But still. Is it right that a couple of little kids should have to watch a grown overweight Italian man coldcock their father in order to bludgeon their dog to death with an eight-iron and roast it over an open fire? This was a man we’d seen swoon over a Christmas train set. This was a man who for laughs once ran through our sprinkler with a pair of underwear on his head. And there he was, weeping, dragging Sparky away by the paw. There he was, bellowing for his wife, cursing her for mislocating the Sterno cups, hacking up our pet with a cleaver in the shade of his bass boat. Who could forget his red-stained mouth? Who could forget him, satiated and contrite, offering Mom a shank?

Connie’s a prostitute, I’m a thirty-year-old virgin, but all things considered, we could have turned out a lot worse.

I walk past the beanfields and the Corporate Porcine Receptacle to cry on Connie’s shoulder in the women’s bunkhouse. The Receptacle is for the Dietary Supplement Pigs, hardened bits of which ultimately end up in the black bean soup. The Dietary Supplement Pigs are distinct from the Ambience Enhancement Pigs, which we breed special to resemble the coarse varieties extant during the actual Middle Ages, and whose primary function is to stand around the castle courtyard looking realistic.

The bunkhouse is empty. Then the lowly Ramirez twins come in from a morning of hand-lugging dirt clods in the beanfields. Connie considers Lupe and Maria a couple of excellent arguments for remaining a floozy. They’re moral but not bright. They’ve got holy cards plastered all over their metal bedframes. They rarely speak and when they do are either proselytizing or claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary hovering above a moat. Last fall Mr. Oberlin suggested that Lupe might like to supplement her paycheck by spending some time in the Reward Suite with a high-school friend of his who’d done well in the arms trade. When she refused he made her work overtime. She kept panting by my window with her basket full of clods. Finally I went out to help and she gave me her holy scapular. Since then she’s wanted me. She sends me drawings of Saint Francis with my Employee Yearbook picture taped over his face. She’s sweet but too apocalyptic. You try kissing someone good-night who’s just told you for the umpteenth time that the world’s experiencing its last disgusting paroxysm before Rapture.

Connie comes in and I tell her I’m a Table Boy. She says it serves me right. She takes off her blouse and says that in spite of being bombarded with rocks, Corbett’s decided to stay, and desires Bookish Queen Mother instead of the scheduled Ferryman’s Mentally Feeble Daughter. She asks if by way of apology I’ll help her suit up. I tell her no way She puts on a push-up bra and a fake ermine robe and some horn-rims. She says Corbett’s better than most, in that he’s nonabusive and buys her gifts off the record. She says she thinks he’s fallen for her. I accuse her of self-delusion. I ask her to reconsider for my sake and not have sex with him.

She takes my face between her hands.

“I am never, ever starving or being made a fool of again,” she says. “No matter what. I’ll sleep with the entire universe before I ever pick up another horse turd in a bucket.”

Then she goes out the door and the Ramirez twins cross themselves in tandem and take out their checkerboard.

The Gleasons are regulars. They’ve got a tidy nest egg that allows them to patronize us three times a year. Mr. Gleason’s an undertaker. When the first wave of mass death swept over the Northeast he got rich by inventing the Mobile Embalmer. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of chemistry could preserve a loved one on the spot, and for a fraction of the cost associated with traditional methods.

I go in wearing my Table Boy duds and he’s stretched out on a couch being fed grapes by Lydia Bell, a closet radical feminist born without eyelids who’s always telling me about her secret plan to eventually slaughter some male Clients. For now she’s saving like crazy and biding her time. She gets revenge in small ways, like leaving bits of stem on Gleason’s grapes. Every time she does it she gives me a look. Gleason doesn’t notice because he’s too busy miming licking her navel whenever she reaches for her eye-drops.

After the Feast we all hustle down to the walk-in as usual to wolf down the leftovers. Before long Gleason comes wandering in drunk with a gravy splotch on his tunic and gives a speech about how fair free enterprise is. He asks what percentage of us are Flawed. I say all. He says the fact that we’re not at each other’s throats fighting for our daily bread but instead are squatting in a walk-in enjoying food he’s paid for is testimony to the workability of this beautiful system. He leers and asks Lydia if she’d like to do some grape-feeding in a less formal setting.

Then the Perimeter Violation Alarm sounds. Lydia rushes out ahead of me, gnawing on a roaster and shading her lidless eyes. Per specs we dash to the front gate, where a dozen members of Austerity are singing minor-key hymns and throwing buckets of black paint at our retaining wall. As usual one of them is dressed as Death Eating Chips to protest the reemergence of wasteful packaging practices. Austerity considers us decadent. They hate the fact that we market opulence. They kill a cow per family per year and use every single part. They make candles from the bone marrow and pudding from the brains. They boil the fat to make soap and use the leftovers to grease their looms. Their faces are pale and they have bony knuckles from so often going around with their fists clenched. The women all look depressed and wear bonnets. In their camps everybody works. The children work and the elderly work and the handicapped work. At one camp they had a baldheaded lunatic who paced and paced while reciting Browning, so they tethered him to the water well and he wore a circular trough into the ground, but not before producing hundreds of useful gallons.

They’re screaming up at us to reduce our Clients’ per capita caloric intake. They’re imploring us to refuse our allocated narcotics so we can see the power structure more clearly. They’re calling us brothers and sisters and asking why we honor the very mind-set responsible for the world’s sorry state.

Oberlin’s screaming back that they’re only austere because they’ve got no other options. Gerard, Oberlin’s behemoth Security stooge, says let’s turn the firehoses on the loudmouths. I fall in with the others and we wrestle the hose to the top of the wall. Gerard turns on the water and we blast Austerity back to tree line. Death Eating Chips stumbles and because of the weight of his head can’t get up.

“Immerse that particular sucker in water!” Oberlin screams. “I desire you to make that costume inoperable.”

So every time the guy gets up we blast him in the legs and he goes down in the mud again. The costume’s coming apart. When it comes all the way apart we see that Death Eating Chips is a girl. In deference to Austerity’s policy of eschewing anything even vaguely degrading to women she’s shaved off her hair and plucked her eyebrows and is wearing a chest-flattening harness. Still, her beauty shines through.

We stop blasting her.

“Think!” she shouts. “Extrapolate your daily actions one-million-fold. Ask yourself if the things you do make sense. Then walk out of that Babylon and join us.”

“Oh, shut up,” Oberlin shouts. “Honestly.”

She picks up what’s left of her enormous head, then flips us off and rejoins her cowering wet friends in the grove. Singing “We Shall Overcome,” they march back to their camp carrying lit homemade candles.

Gerard rolls up the hose and passes out our bonus cocaine.

“Heads out of butts, everybody,” Oberlin says. “Fun’s over. Unless I’m mistaken we still have valued Clients to transport back to a time of quaint enchantment.”

So we toot up while jogging towards the Corkboard of Assignments, and when we get there everyone laughs at me and pelts me with their empty vials because according to the Corkboard my next Table Boy gig is a SafeOrgy.

Nobody likes a SafeOrgy. A SafeOrgy fills you with longing and repulses you at the same time. We supply a sexy room modeled after a posh nineteen-fifties hotel. We offer BodyCons, since even the rich aren’t above the sexually transmitted disease epidemic. They like to let it all hang out and express themselves without any worries, like in the old days. Today I walk in with my tray and seven shrink-wrapped Clients are rolling around on a heart-shaped bed with crooner music playing. We’re not supposed to linger, just set the cold cuts down and get the hell out. But unfortunately a gorgeous overenthusiastic Client ruptures her seal. Our Employee Handbook requires us to perform a quick decon on the spot. There’s a tank of soap mounted above the fireplace. She’s all worked up however and starts groping me. I try to resist but she’s strong. Nothing much really happens. She gets my earlobe in her mouth and starts sucking. That’s about it. It’s not unpleasant but I’m too scared to enjoy it. Finally I get her off me and manage to spray her from head to toe with soap. That cools her down. Maybe too much. As soon as she becomes aware that her boob is protruding from the shrink-wrap her cultural encoding gets the best of her and she starts looking down her nose at me.

“You reprobate Flawed animal!” she says, backpedaling and folding her arms over her chest. “This is going directly into the written summary portion of your Evaluation!”

Luckily the other members of her party are too soused to catch what she’s saying so I manage to get out without being lynched. I immediately go over to Administration to explain it all to Oberlin and Albert. This could be real trouble. They could claim I molested a paying Client. They could demote me even further, to Gravedigger or Septic Tank Tech.

But to my surprise Albert tousles my hair and gives me a cube of fried meat, a true facility rarity. The last time I had meat was four years ago, when a drunken Client singled me out for my subservient attitude. Talk about a feast. Talk about being blocked up for weeks afterwards.

“Never mind about her,” Albert says. “She’ll live. We’ve got something more important to discuss with you.”

“Respect,” Oberlin says. “That’s the quantity I hope to imbibe to you during the confab that is to follow this present preface I’m extolling. Because my feeling is strongly that a man has a right to know the whereabouts of, say, immediate family members, should their lifeplans take a strong hiatus. So congratulations! Don’t therefore think of it as losing an erstwhile sister, but rather as having her gain her dream of off-site cohabitation with someone richer than any of us, is my read on this.”

“What’s he talking about?” I ask Albert.

“Connie,” Albert says. “Corbett’s bought her out of Bounty Land.”

“Bought her out?” I say. “What does that mean?”

“Albert’s putting this thing in a non-romantic light,” Oberlin says. “Surely there’s love there.”

“Oh, there’s love there,” Albert says. “Considerable love.”

“And think if you will of the ranch to which he’ll take her!” Oberlin says. “A finer ranch none of us will ever see, much less have as a love nest of sorts.”

“When are they leaving?” I say. “Where are they going?”

“Six hours ago,” Oberlin says. “His spacious estate, you lovable boob! Taos, New Mexico! Affluent as all get-out. He’s got more livestock than you can shake a stick at, and from there runs his antiseptic-swab empire! Your lucky sibling! You don’t think she’ll be waited on hand and foot, and eat like a true nouveau riche or captain of industry? She’ll literally I feel be enmeshed in bonbons, not to mention a staff that loves her like one of their own and praises her personal attributes to the sky or what have you!”

“Are they getting married?” I say.

“Ho ho,” Oberlin says. “What sweet naïveté of existing law you manifest, chum! But they’re living together, and he’s paying all her expenses, including the release fee due our facility, which will allow us to make considerable renovations to the Castle Six edifice, which is crumbling, so don’t give me whining. This is a boon, for us and for you and for her.”

“As next of kin, you’ll need to sign this release,” Albert says. “A mere formality.”

“In her best interests,” Oberlin says.

“No biggie,” Albert says.

“If I don’t sign,” I say, “does he have to bring her back?”

“Haw,” Oberlin says. “No. I fake your John Hancock, then boot your sorry heinie over the wall whence you came in over, leaving you to free-associate with the hateful rabble for an untold future time period.”

“Just sign,” Albert says. “It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s what she wanted. Here. Read this.”

The letter’s in Connie’s hand. I can tell because all the i’s are dotted with smiley faces.

“Cole honey” the letter says, “can you believe all my hard work finally paid off? He says he loves me! A rich Normal and he loves ME! He says the other men in my past don’t matter, and that he wants to possess me totally forever. I’ll miss you, but I know in my heart we’ll meet again, hopefully at my place. A ranch! He said I could even have an economy car! Not to be haughty, but listen: Knuckle down and get something for yourself like I did. Don’t be a dopey space cadet like Dad!”

She’s signed it: “Love forever.”

What can I do? Nothing’s bringing her back. Maybe he really does love her. Maybe he’s freethinker enough to see past her Flaw. Stranger things have happened. She’s pretty and good-hearted and devoted and smart. Who wouldn’t love her?

Oberlin rolls his eyes. Albert purses his lips.

I sign.

Goodbye Connie.

I never considered Dad a dopey space cadet. He was a simple man whose only marketable skill was selling home water-filtration units via sincerity. Finally, when the Third Panic was in full swing and every water source in the county became suspect, he started giving the units away. Mom said she considered herself as compassionate as the next person, but given our household expenses and the scarcity of the filters, a price increase seemed more in order than a giveaway. Dad said she should try to understand that other people, even ignorant people, even poor people, loved their children every bit as much as she loved hers.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said. “The point is, I don’t love their kids as much as I love mine. And mine are fed with the money you make from those goddamned filters.”

Dad sat on the couch, looking wistful and kooky.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said, staring out at the swing set, where Sparky as usual sat in the glider, his days numbered. “The old criteria such as cash will have no meaning within a few weeks. Good works are the ticket.”

“We need a gun,” Mom said. “For if someone tries to take the house.”

“The people who come to take the house,” Dad said, “will have more guns than you can imagine.”

And he was right. They had guns and riding crops and mortars. They had a sense of high moral purpose. They had the sanction of the provisional government and a portable sound system that blared “Homogeneity, Sweet Homogeneity” as they blockaded the home of any family with a Flawed member, meaning every family but the Quinces, who they blockaded for fraternizing with Flaweds, based on photographs they had of Mr. Quince teaching me to throw a knuckler. Soon the food ran out and DeAngelo ate our dog. Soon the militia wandered in without firing a shot and drove us into the night.

Mom led us on foot to Sid Pornoy’s Jovial Bowling, where for months she’d been stashing food and water in a locker. Dad followed meekly, making inane guesses at the windchill.

“We’re taking the Greyhound to Indiana,” Mom said. “It’s prosperous there. Flaweds are safe. Aunt Melanie wrote me.”

“Why wasn’t I consulted,” Dad mumbled.

Obviously nobody was bowling. A man with a billy club was pushing a man in a silk jacket away from the snack bar.

“No kielbasa, Joel,” the billy-club man said. “Not a link. No milk. Not a bun.”

“You’ve known me my whole life,” Joel said. “I’m your friend.”

“Not a Pepsi,” said the billy-club man. “Not a spoonful of relish. Not a sugar packet. The time has come for me to look out for me and mine.”

“I am you and yours,” Joel said. “We were school-friends. Remember the caroling parties? Remember when Oscar called Sister Nan a tub? Remember?”

“No,” the billy-club man said. “I mean really me and mine. I mean Bonnie and little Kyle and me. Period. Not you. Don’t touch my counter, Joel. Hit the road.”

Mom loaded up the supplies and strapped the pack to Dad’s back.

“Out of here,” she whispered. “Out of here quickly.”

In spite of the strife the stars were bright as crystal. A tailor squatted in his shopwindow with a machete and a Newsweek, waiting for looters. As we crossed the parking lot a van pulled up and the driver called Dad over.

“Keep walking,” Mom said. “Ignore him.”

“He’s a fellow human being,” Dad said. “Perhaps he needs our help.”

The driver was a laid-off boilermaker. He talked to Dad nostalgically about what a friendly city Syracuse had been in the old days. Then he pulled a.22 and forced us into the van. He made us empty our pack. He seemed excited by our cinnamon rolls. He called Mom ma’am and let her keep her personal-hygiene effects. He took our money and he took our food.

“I’m sorry for this,” he said. “I’m not a bad man. But my Leon. His little ribs are sticking way the hell out. You ever seen a starving kid?”

“Not yet,” Mom said dryly.

The boilermaker’s eyes teared up and the gun he was holding to Dad’s head shook.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I got to do it. You was smart enough to put some food aside. Anybody that smart’ll be okay. Now get out. I got to go save my boy.”

We got out. The van pulled away. Mom went into hysterics. She bent over double and started snorting. Whenever Dad got near her she elbowed him in the gut and said his ineptitude had killed us all.

“How dare you say that?” Dad said. “How dare you lose faith in me at a time like this?”

“Lose faith?” Mom screamed. “I’ve had none for months. Look at your poor children. They’re as good as dead. Picture our babies in shrouds. Because of incompetence. Yours. Their father. Whom they’ve always looked up to.”

“Stop,” Dad said. “You can’t take those things back once you’ve said them.”

“Come on kids,” Mom said. “I’ll save you if this milquetoast won’t.”

And off we went.

“Goddamn it!” Dad screamed. “I’ve done my best!”

“Pitiful!” Mom screamed back.

Her words were lost in the wind. Hanging signs were blowing horizontal. Mom dragged us up University. Dad stood talking to himself in Sid’s lot.

“Look!” Mom screamed. “Look how he lets us leave!”

She stepped into the street and put out her thumb. A couple we would get to know well picked us up. These were the Winstons, also on their way west. It was perfect. They loved kids. They were glad to be of service. They had plenty of money. Winston was a banker who’d kept his ear to the tracks and split in the nick of time with a trunkful of other people’s money.

“Do you not have a father?” he asked.

“We do not,” Mom replied.

Just then Dad plastered himself across the windshield.

It was the beginning of a bad ride. Dad got in and Mom folded him up in her arms and they wept together. A day later the Winstons put us out in the middle of nowhere because Mom and Dad rejected the Winstons’ bright idea of a sexual foursome. I woke in the dead of night and heard Mr. Winston making the proposal.

“What I’m putting forth,” he said, “is that the four of us make some memories. Become fast friends and abandon starchy old mind-sets about monogamy. The world’s gone crazy. Let’s do the same.”

“The answer is no,” Dad said. “And I’m surprised I’m not punching you.”

“I’m afraid our hospitality is not being reciprocated, Mother,” Mr. Winston said.

“Some people don’t understand about reciprocity,” Mrs. Winston said.

“Then out now, you people,” Mr. Winston said, and hit the brakes. “End of the line.”

He too had a gun. Apparently in all the world only we didn’t.

So we got out.

“This is murder,” Dad yelled. “It’s freezing out here.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” said Mrs. Winston. “You had your chance. It would have been fun too, believe me.”

“Really fun,” said Mr. Winston. “Jeaninne’s a heckcat in the bunk department.”

We stood in the bitter wind and watched them pull away. As far as the eye could see was frozen marsh.

“Maybe we should have gone along with it,” Mom said.

“Bite your tongue,” Dad said. “There’ll be other rides.”

“Famous last words,” said Mom.

At midnight I wake to creaking floorboards in the dark bunkhouse. I hear the snores of my bunk bedmate, Phil Brent, an upbeat and effeminate swineherd ranked Class P, Visually Difficult to Bear, due to mottled tissue on his face and hands. He runs a workout program for other Class Ps and offers a miniseminar called Overcoming One’s Woes Via Hopeful Mental Imaging. He names and compliments his pigs and cries on slaughtering day. Once as I passed the Porcine Receptacle I heard him telling two sows fighting over a corncob the story of Job. Tonight he’s muttering optimistic slogans in his sleep and occasionally screaming out in abject terror.

I feel a tug on my toe and in the sudden candlelight see Doc Spanner himself, in our lowly bunkhouse for the first time ever. Spanner’s the facility doctor for Flaweds. Some people are put off by his drinking. Others are put off by his shoddy personal hygiene. I’m put off by his medical track record. Once when I found him soused in a ditch he admitted to being confused by the difference between hemorrhoids and piles. Still, he did a nice job with Connie’s tail infection.

“I can’t live with what I know,” he whispers. “Listen carefully: This Corbett’s a bad egg. When he tires of a woman he sells her to slave traders. It’s a pattern. There’ve been a number of cases. Oberlin told me. I had some deep talks with Connie at the clinic, and she struck me as a kind of a knockout and a nice girl. So I wanted you to know what she’s in for.”

“Can’t we get her back?” I say. “Can’t we just cancel the deal?”

“I expect you’d get some resistance to that from up-stairs,” he says. “Inasmuch as those turds have already spent the exit fee. My point is, someone working outside the system, exhibiting a little derring-do, motivated by strong emotions, might be able to effect a positive outcome. On the other hand, someone attempting to cross the Mississippi wearing a Flawed bracelet wouldn’t exactly be greeted with open arms, and might indeed be greeted with open shackles.”

He winces slightly at his wit, looks around, then pulls a key out of his pocket.

“My position has its little rewards,” he says. “Every Flawed bracelet in this facility is within my jurisdiction. In the case of chafing and so on I’m allowed to perform a temporary Removal and apply ointment. Mr. Big Shot, eh? For this I went to med school. At any rate, this is a service I’m prepared to offer you.”

I nod and hold out my wrist.

“Not so fast,” he says. “First I want you to go see Lucian Bentley in Hagstrom Grove. He’s recently taken sick days to visit his childhood home. He could give you an update on the state of the nation. The last thing I need is your death on my conscience. God knows I’ve got enough deaths on my conscience. Ha ha! So what do you say? Will you go see Lucian?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Super,” he says, then sighs heavily and disappears into the night.

Phil hangs his monstrous face down from above.

“I had such a dream,” he says. “I dreamed that Doc Spanner came in here sober and spoke to you as an equal. Is that wild or what? Heavens.”

“That’s wild,” I say.

At first light I take a few biscuits from my reserve and go over to Hagstrom Grove, where they send Employees who take things too much to heart and go nuts. The Grove is an untidy pen behind Administration with a dirt floor and a fifteen-foot chainlink. At mealtime they fling in sacks of black beans and let the mentally deficient slug it out. Consequently the fat loonies get fatter and the weak ones limp off to die under strips of cardboard.

I find Bentley behind a shed, wearing a filthy Hawaiian shirt and doing deep knee bends while grasping the fencing. I hold the biscuits in front of his face and he stands up.

“What do I have to do?” he says.

“Nothing,” I say. “They’re for you.”

“Are they poisoned?” he says.

“No,” I say.

“Eat one,” he says.

So I do.

“Probably the others are poisoned,” he says. “Eat a fraction of each.”

I eat a corner off each biscuit. He looks at the remainders suspiciously, then sniffs them.

“I’m not sure it’s worth it,” he says. “How I wish you’d never come. Perhaps you’ve left the poison off of just those corners.”

I begin to realize I’ll doubt whatever information he gives me.

“Lick the entire biscuit,” he says. “Then give them to me.”

So I lick each biscuit.

“Both sides,” he says.

I lick both sides of each biscuit. I give him the wet biscuits and he cracks them open and sniffs them. Then he puts them in his pocket.

“What do you want?” he says. “Now that you’ve failed to poison me to death.”

“Information,” I say. “About the outside.”

He glares and grips my wrist. He licks his lips and bats his eyes and tugs on his earlobes. He keeps looking behind him. The only thing back there is Mr. Cleary, the nutso tenor, who as usual is singing the national anthem while frantically adjusting his testicles.

“I don’t know you,” Bentley says, “but you’ve given me biscuits. So I’ll tell you the truth. It’s beautiful and wild and not worth the risk. Strong and crazy people prevail. Some of them strapped me to a U-Haul and made use of me. If you get my meaning. And me a grandfather. My sin? None. Walking along the road. This crew had taken control of a bridge. Left me in the sun for a fortnight until some missionaries unstrapped me and applied salve. Consequently I’ve got no zest left. Listen: Don’t budge from here. Learn to enjoy what little you have. Revel in the fact that your dignity hasn’t yet been stripped away. Every minute that you’re not in absolute misery you should be weeping with gratitude and thanking God at the top of your lungs.”

“Don’t believe him,” Cleary sings from behind us. “He is a liar out to confuse you. Ours is the finest nation on earth, filled with good-hearted lovers-of-life. I was out there fifteen years ago and found the rivers beautiful. At night the howling of dogs could be heard along the banks of crystalline rivers. I was young then, and in spite of my Flaw, Normal women snuck me in their back doors. Late at night they willingly showed me where on their bodies their moles were. They cooked me delicious meals and raked my back in bliss. The world was mine. The freedom made me dizzy. I’d go back in a heartbeat if I wasn’t so sickly. My advice to you is: Taste the sweetness of the world. Leave this death trap, get out and live!”

Meanwhile Bentley’s pulled a sheet of cardboard over his legs and is performing some additional sniffing of the biscuits. Obviously I’m going to have to decide for myself. How can you take the word of a man with biscuit crumbs under his nose and a habit of walking around holding his hand over his anus for fear of violation?

But it’s really no decision. You grow up sleeping a few feet from someone, you see her little Catholic jumpers crumpled up in the corner, hear her wheezing with croup, huddle with her in the closet playing Bend the Hanger, and then you’re supposed to sit idly by while she’s sold into slavery?

I find Doc Spanner drinking for free at a Drawbridge Fete. I hide behind a Peasant Hut and step out as he stumbles by. He makes an odd sound in the back of his throat and lurches into a hay bale.

“Holy crap!” he says. “Scared the snot out of me. I’ve had a few snorts. Thank God. But good sneaking. If you set out to do what I think you’re going to set out to do, you’ll need to be good at sneaking. Are you? Are you going to set out to do what I think you’re going to set out to do? I see by your eyes that the answer is yes! You swashbuckler! Have you ever got panache and verve and moxie! Exciting. I only wish my sister was a renegade whore about to be sold into slavery. You’ve talked to Bentley? Your mind’s at ease?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m ready.”

“Ah, youth!” he says, then removes my bracelet and hands me a prescription form with directions to Corbett’s Taos estate written on the back.

“Kindly keep quiet vis-à-vis your source,” he says. “If not, I may find myself Expelled and forced to care for the hateful rabble gratis in some real-world clinic. Yikes, would that ever bite! Best of luck, pal. Keep your head down. Don’t write me any letters or I might get nailed.”

Then he stumbles away and joins a group of Clients dropping bits of cheese down the mouthhole of a suit of armor being worn by the hapless Arnie Metz.

For the first time in twenty years I can see my entire forearm.

I go to the bunkhouse and put some bread crusts in a knapsack. I say goodbye to my bunk and shelving. Then I go out to the guardstation and climb up. What to do? Actually leave? Sacrifice my personal safety, my frame of reference, my few marginal friends, my job, my daily bread, my security, a lifetime of memories? My knees are shaking. I feel like throwing up, then hightailing it back to the bunkhouse for a nice bowl of black bean and my evening toot.

I think of Connie in shackles.

Then I jump.

And I’m free.

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. And a bed for a week or so. A bed in a leaky tent. A tent we were going to throw out anyway.” Then he stops and looks at my wrist.

“Whoa up though,” he says. “I don’t see no bracelet, so I’m assuming you’re Normal?”

“Well,” I say. “Not exactly.”

“Christ!” he says. “I been standing here talking to a goddamned Flawed as if he had a lick of sense. Offer withdrawn. Get your infectious ass out of here and hit the road. Now. Jesus. Disgusting.”

I’m shocked. We always got along so well. In the notes he used to throw over the wall he was always saying how much he envied and admired me, and telling me long personal anecdotes about his love for his daughter. That’s why I stole the cake. That’s why I risked my job.

“Did you hear me, shithead?” he says. “What’s your Flaw, big balls of wax in your ears? No wonder nobody respects you people. Hit the road, freak. Be thankful I’m too busy to have you rebraceleted.”

I walk through the camp. Filthy babies are sitting in the mud, swatting at passing dogs. Some entrepreneur drags in a muffler and men start pounding it into sheet metal with old shoes. On the perimeter is an immaculate tent surrounded by flowers. A shrunken old woman minds a pot on a healthy little fire.

“Hello!” she says. “I can sense a hungry youngster. Come sit down and have something to eat.”

“Garibasi said I shouldn’t loiter,” I say.

“That pup,” she says. “Look at my tent and look at his town, then tell me who’s got more sense, me or the mayor. I tell him: Just because we’re down on our luck doesn’t mean we have to live like animals. But he doesn’t listen. He’s too busy having dance parties and naming dirt streets after his mother.”

She hands me a bowl made of cardboard and duct tape. In the bowl is stew. She says she got the vegetables in exchange for sewing and the meat in exchange for a home boil remedy. We eat at a table she earned midwifing. Afterwards she offers me a handmade toothbrush, then tells me to lie down so she can relax me with a soothing dulcimer melody.

“Pardon my boldness,” she says, “but the pinkness of your wrist tells me that you’re one of our Special people.”

“You mean a Flawed,” I say in a self-pitying tone.

“Flawed my eye,” she says. “There’s not a person on this earth who’s not Flawed in one way or another.”

Suddenly Garibasi’s standing in the tent doorway.

“For example,” she says. “Look at the size of this man’s rear. If that’s not a Flaw I don’t know what is.”

“Out, pal,” Garibasi says to me. “You’ve had your meal. You’ve had your pep talk from Miss Know-It-All here. Now get going.”

“You do have a whopping big bottom, Johnny,” she says, laughing. “And you have no authority over me. Only I do.”

“I got the authority,” he says. “I got the fucking authority. Trash her tent.”

The toughs pull up her stakes and dump what’s left of her stew on the ground. Her matronly bun comes loose and her white hair falls down. They stomp on her dulcimer and shred her old photos. They splinter her hope chest and break her mosquito-repellent sticks, then stand around waiting for her to go into hysterics.

“You jokers,” she says. “Do you really think you’ve damaged anything of value? I’ll have this place looking better than any of yours again in no time. How sad. How sad that men like you exist and believe yourself strong.”

“Easy for you to say,” says one tough.

“Yeah, old bat,” says another, and blows his nose on her comforter.

She gives him a look and he slithers away.

“I’m sorry, Sara,” Garibasi says. “But you have to respect my authority.”

“When you get some,” she says, “I will.”

She digs through the wreckage for a brush and reinstates her bun. Garibasi and his crew go off, whooping and playfully goosing one another.

“Now tell me,” she says. “Where are you bound, and why?”

“New Mexico,” I say. “A family matter.”

“Good God,” she says. “You Special people must stay out of the West at all costs. Believe me, I know, from bitter experience. My husband was Special. For years before he was born, his parents had been unwittingly drawing their water from a mutagenic well. Perhaps you have a similar story. He was born with a withered leg and a hearing loss, but a sweeter man you never met. Our son got the withered-leg gene only. But it never slowed him down any. He drew cartoon characters on his Flawed bracelet, played ball, wrestled, flirted with the girls. A blessing. So self-confident. So energetic. Too much so. The day he turned eighteen he left us a note: Mother, Dad, it said, I’m off to see the world. While he was gone the Thirteenth Amendment was repealed and the Slave Edict went into effect. A year later his body showed up on our doorstep in a wooden box. He looked ninety. A slaver in Alton, Illinois, had drugged him and sold him to an Idaho rancher.”

She stops to regain her composure. I awkwardly pat her age-humped back. She regards me fiercely.

“Now what makes you think you’re any different from my Addie?” she says. “Are you smarter? Stronger? Better prepared?”

“I can hide my Flaw by always wearing shoes?” I say feebly.

“Pshaw,” she says. “It’s these people’s business to know a Flawed. They can smell a Flawed coming. They eat Flaweds for breakfast.”

“She’s my sister,” I say. “I have to go.”

“Then get out of my sight,” she says in a trembling voice. “I consider you a suicide. Goodbye, dear dead boy. Our Lord has reserved a special place in Limbo for those who put an end to themselves.”

“I’ll be okay,” I say.

“No,” she says firmly. “You won’t.”

Then she turns away and starts putting her tent back together, singing “Simple Gifts” at the top of her ancient lungs.

That night I sleep a troubled sleep beside a fetid stream. I dream of Limbo, a tiny room full of dull people eternally discussing their dental work while sipping lukewarm tea. I wake at first light and hike through miles of failing forest and around noon arrive in a village of paranoiacs standing with rifles in the doorways of flapper-era homes. It’s a nice town. No signs of plunder or panic. The McDonald’s has been occupied by the radical Church of Appropriate Humility. Everyone calls them Guilters. The ultimate Guilter ritual is when one of them goes into a frenzy and thrusts his or her hand into a deep fryer. A mangled hand is a badge of honor. All the elders have two, and need to be helped on and off with their coats. There was a rash a few years ago of face-thrusting, until the national Guilter Council ruled it vain and self-aggrandizing. Guilters believe in quantifying pain. Each pain unit is called a Victor, after their Founder, Norm Victor. Each Victor earned is a step towards salvation. Having a loved one die tragically earns big Victors. Sometimes for a birthday present a wife will cheat on her husband with one of his friends in such a manner that the husband walks in and catches a painful eyeful. Once at the facility we got hold of a bootleg video of a group of cuckolded Guilter husbands talking about the difficulties of living with simultaneous rage and gratitude.

Two Guilter guys are standing against a golden arch painted gray. In Guilter epistemology the arches represent the twin human frailties of arrogance and mediocrity. One of the Guilters is violently pulling off his cuticles. Every few minutes he takes out his notebook and logs in some Victors. I say hi as I pass and he nods and winces and rips off another.

“Which direction is the Thruway?” I say.

“I’m not worthy to tell you,” he says. “I’d probably get it all wrong. I’m lowly.”

“Could you take your best guess?” I say.

“I don’t think so,” he says, and tears off a cuticle. “What if I misled you and you wandered for hours in the wrong direction? I’d feel horrible.”

“Go ahead,” his partner says. “If you feel really bad about it, to the point where you can’t sleep, that’s three Victors an hour.”

The cuticle puller stops pulling.

“Seriously,” his friend says. “New regulations.”

“In that case,” the cuticle puller says, “I believe you’re going the right way.”

“On the other hand,” his friend says, “if you’re now experiencing any pleasure thinking of your future Victors, that could mean you have to apply anti-Victors to your running total.”

“Shut your trap,” the cuticle puller says. “I’m not too keen on taking spiritual advice from someone who picks up cheap Victors by refusing to pee when he needs to.”

“It’s valid,” the friend says. “I looked it up. Anyway, there are no cheap Victors.”

“Says you,” says the cuticle puller. “Says you, the king of the cheap Victor. The guy who induces no pain on himself for weeks at a time, then claims Victors for worrying about being so lazy.”

“Ouch, Bryce,” the friend says. “That cuts to the quick.”

“Ha,” Bryce says to me. “Now watch him claim Victors because I hurt his feelings.”

“It’s valid,” his friend whines. “Pain is pain.”

“Here’s our ride,” Bryce says.

A kind of bandstand on wheels comes up the street, pulled by six junior Guilters on bikes.

“We’re going on a retreat,” Bryce says.

“Have fun,” I say.

“Not likely,” says Bryce.

Then they get on the bandstand and ride off around the corner.

I walk to the window of the church and take a peak. It must have been something to go into a place like that and see somebody dishing up nice warm food instead of several women sitting bare-bottomed on coarse Welcome mats, listening to a little boy playing horrible violin. Imagine ordering one of everything on the menu and not being told no. Imagine idling in the drive-through with your sweetheart while singing along with the radio. What a beautiful country this must have been once, when you could hop in a coupe and buy a bag of burgers and drive, drive, drive, stopping to swim in a river or sleep in a grove of trees without worrying about intaking mutagens or having the militia arrest you and send you to the Everglades for eternity. I can’t help but feel I was born in the wrong age. People then were giants, royalty, possessed of unimaginable largesse and unprecedented power to do good. What I wouldn’t give to be drinking a Dr Pepper while driving an Edsel and listening to Muzak on a Victrola. What I wouldn’t give to be allowed to procreate in a home of my own and toss a ball around with my offspring before heading off for a night on the town with my well-coiffed wife.

The country opens up, all dips and rises and cool shadowed blue places. Two tan dogs flee across a dam of sticks and mud. Birds swoop over and their shadows follow like quick black checkmarks. Just after three I reach the Thru way. Foot traffic predominates. Every so often some elite guy chugs by in a motor vehicle, windows rolled up tight, and people fall all over themselves to either genuflect before him or lay goobers on his windshield. Legions of the sick wait to die along the shoulder. Wandering undercover bureaucrats whip out clipboards and assess odd taxes, bridge taxes and sleep taxes and taxes for if they catch you eating weeds without permission. Any weed on public property is considered a government agricultural product. If you eat a weed you’re required to utilize a handy pre-addressed envelope to mail in your fee. The envelopes are kept in roadside racks that people keep pulling up to burn for firewood. What used to be exit signs are covered with government propaganda banners. One shows a smiling perfect blond girl flipping a burger. Sneaking up on her is a lustful hunchback wearing a Flawed bracelet.

KEEP THE AMERICAN GENE POOL PURE! the sign says.

If You Must Fuck a Flawed, Wear a Rubber, someone’s scrawled over it.

I follow a herd of thin cattle driven by armed riders who whip the little people out of the way while chanting the name of the multinational corporation that owns the cows. I watch a tyke fascinated by the cowboys. He’s so fascinated he wanders under a heifer and into the herd. His mom’s at a food stall trying to buy hardtack in bulk at a good price by agreeing with the vendor that far from being unattractive, facial moles impart character. The vendor has facial moles aplenty. The kid vanishes among the cow bellies. I wait for someone to notice but no one does. So I vault over the cows and grab the kid and vault back out.

The mother hugs my neck. A crowd gathers. The vendor tries to recoup his losses by shrieking insults at the cows.

“You’ll be steaks!” he shouts. “You’ll be steaks and I’ll gladly eat you, if you ever try to harm a human boy again! Hear me, fatties?”

“A man of courage,” the mother sobs, “who risked his all to save my Len.”

“Forget it,” I say. It’s embarrassing. People are gaping. A smartly dressed stout man comes over and takes my hand.

“In these times, strange times that they are,” he says, “seeing someone do something that’s not patently selfish and fucked-up is like a breath of fresh air, good clean fresh air, not that any one of us would know good clean fresh air if a vial of it swooped down and bit us on the ass! Haw haw!”

Pretty soon the whole crowd’s laughing. He hands out shiny quarters and confidently tweaks chins. He puts a big white arm around my shoulder.

“Life has been kind to me,” he says. “So very kind. Damned kind. When I was about your age, I had an idea. I thought: These hard times have taken the wind out of our collective sails. People live like pigs. Time for a dash of luxury. And do you know what I did?”

“No,” I say.

“I built mud huts for minimum wage for five grueling years,” he says. “Ate bread crusts and never had an alcoholic beverage or a minute of relaxation. I worked every minute of overtime I could, cautiously saving my wages. Then do you know what I did?”

“No,” I say.

“Just outside Erie, Pennsylvania, I built the most ass-kicking clean-air geodesic dome you’ve ever seen, and spent my last dime on rich soil and some ash saplings. Are you following me? Of course not, no offense, because that was my moment in the sun, the instantaneous showing-out of my genius, not yours. And the culmination? Do you know it, the culmination?”

“No,” I say.

“GlamorDivans,” he says. “A difficult period while my ashes came to maturity. Then whammo, Sector A gets buzz-sawed, my special team of overpaid but brilliant carpenters swoops in, and before long, do you know what occupied the center of my warehouse under a special spotlight?”

“No,” I say.

“Six damn GlamorDivans,” he says. “Were their cushions specially handsewn by an incredibly talented seamstress I found in a rinky-dink tailor shop in Milwaukee? Yes. Did the ash shine under my spotlight like something from an earlier and more sane age? You bet. Did I tromp my ass off to identify loaded potential buyers? Yes yes yes. Did I own a car? Nope. Did I walk over five hundred miles and ultimately succeed in selling all six and buying a whole other load of ash saplings et cetera until I was the loaded and very happy man you see before you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Yes!” he says. “I thank God every day for the saga he gave me to live out. And now I say to you, because of the courage you manifested in saving that nameless little brat: Want aboard? Want to change your life forever and for better? Want to be part of the GlamorDivan Team and earn five hundred dollars a month?”

At the facility I made fifty a month and was the envy of every dispossessed who stood outside the retaining wall gaping up and swearing.

“I’ll take that involuntary exhalation as an enthusiastic yes,” he says.

I stand there nodding my head with my eyes watering.

“Here’s the situation,” he says. “I blame love for my woes. Not my love, but a barge guider’s. Over seventy GlamorDivans, bought and paid for, hang in the proverbial lurch because my pal Sid, whom I literally dragged out of the gutter, has met the woman of his dreams and suddenly loathes travel. That’s neither here nor there. What’s here is, some of Buffalo’s wealthiest are sitting around in their parlors even as we now speak, thinking: I hope old Blay didn’t screw me out of four thousand bucks. And with each passing moment my name’s sinking deeper into the muck, because buddy, I’ve already cashed the checks. It’s routine. It’s a cash-flow thing. Totally aboveboard. But all the same. My not-thin ass is in a sling, not that it hasn’t been there a million times before in this catch-as-catch-can line of work, but at any rate my question to you is: Do you have a hankering to see Buffalo or make me very happy or accrue some serious money real quick? If yes to any of the above, it’s on the scooter with you and let’s see you use some of that coolheadedness and courage to make us some loot. Ha ha! Life is good!”

His scooter’s hidden under some branches. I climb on. We fly along the side roads. He’s got a sweaty back and a nice touch on the curves. Scrawny subsistence farmers gawk at us and walk away shaking their heads as our dust settles on the brims of their economy hats. Finally we reach the Erie Canal, where two armed Flaweds guard his blue barge.

“Why the weapons, you might ask?” he says. “The common man is my friend. I used to be him. But I’m not him now. You wave some beautiful household furnishings in front of the common man’s nose, there’s no telling what he might do. And these are my GlamorDivans. My body built those ten thousand mud huts. My signature went on the check for the saplings. Anybody fucks with my product, I sadly have to bite their head off. Or rather you do, in my stead. Shoot their heads off, rather. Whatever. Haw!”

“Sir,” I say, “I’ve never driven a boat before.”

“Who’s driving?” he says. “You’re pulling. I apologize. I realize this was mule work in the old days but hey, these are the new days, so we best turn up our collars and deal with what is, what is now, the existing lemons from which lemonade may be made, eh? Ah, it’s exciting to see a rich man in process. You, that is. Don’t think of yourself as a surrogate mule, think of yourself as an entrepreneur of the physical.”

I should have known. Mules are at a premium. Thousands have died of a bone marrow disease. The ones that lived lost the use of their legs. You’ll walk past a field and there’ll be fifteen or twenty of them lying on their sides braying. High-school kids get a kick out of pouring gas on them and lighting them up. It’s a craze. The animal rights people do their best to prop them back up and slap on feed-bags and post antivandalism signs, but no sooner are they back at headquarters than the mules are either toppling over or burning.

“There’s ample grub in the hold,” Blay says warmly. “It’s good food. I’m a man who likes to eat. And here’s two bills. The rest I pay on arrival in Buffalo. Mike and Buddy know the details. Meet Mike and Buddy.”

So I meet Mike and Buddy. Their Flaws are dental. Buddy was born with no teeth and Mike has twice as many as he needs. Both smile at once. It’s disconcerting. I look at the barge.

A nice barge.

Alike and Buddy take a cash advance and go into town to get ripped.

“Truly nice fellows,” Blay says, “albeit none too swift in the head. Between the two of them they have maybe one-third of a brain. Watch them closely. Rarely leave them alone. You’re to be the thinker and planner of the operation. The nerve center. The guru. The Normal.”

“I’ll try,” I say.

“You’ll succeed,” he says. “I can look at you and see a winner. Dream big, win big. Stick with me. Self-actuate. It’s been a pleasure meeting you. See you on the other end. I’ll be the one proffering a huge wad of cash with your name on it.”

He gives me a hug. What a sweet man. He likes me. He trusts me. The way his girth makes him rasp even when he’s standing still is endearing.

I sit on the deck of the barge with a semiautomatic. The water’s brown. As prescribed by federal regs, all inflow pipes are clearly labeled. RAW SEWAGE, says one. VERY POSSIBLY THORIUM, says another. Dusk comes, an early moon pops up over the swaying trees, the barge slips around on its tether like a mild dog happy to be tied, and I help myself to some noodles and milk.

Noodles. Milk.

Freedom, I think: very nice.

In the morning Buddy cooks eggs. They’re good eggs. He gums them. Bits fly all around. Bits get on his chair and the saltshaker. Buddy and Mike fart with impunity, making a big comical show of lifting their butt cheeks. I think about participating to win their respect but then Mike says it’s time to start pulling. We each take a tether. We walk in a row. It’s not easy but it beats toadying to the whining rich. At nine we take a break and apply salve to our shoulders and have some bottled water. Every now and then a kingfisher pulls something out of the muck and looks askance at it and eats it anyway. Along the shore are decaying tract houses which now serve as bunkhouses for barge pullers. At noon we stop at one for lunch. In the yard is a filthy man digging up potatoes with a taped-together hoe.

“Go on in, fellas!” he says. “My wife’s put out a heckuva fine spread today. Mostly it’s just potatoes, but she does great things with a spud. Don’t take my word for it! Go in and see for yourself, by tasting some!”

Inside are nine kids and one other guest and an astounding tableful of potato-centered dishes. She’s carved potatoes into crude figures. She’s baked them and fried them and disguised them with sauce. She’s mashed some of them into pulp and dyed them and spread them across the surface of others. Understandably the kids are husky. Everyone pitches in. The youngest walks along wiping the face of the second youngest as the second youngest carries bucket after bucket of water to the mother, who’s washing and washing potatoes, then pitching them across the kitchen to identical twins, who cut them up while jabbering in pig Latin.

“Nineteen hours a day minimum!” the frazzled dirty father yells to us as he comes in. “It takes everything you’ve got. It absolutely kills you. I’m thirty but I look sixty. But what can you do? If you step off the treadmill for a minute you lose everything you’ve worked for!”

“Honey!” the wife yells from the steamy kitchen. “Stove’s off!”

He grabs a wad of paper and runs in and stokes the stove. Meanwhile the kids are filling our tumblers and dusting off our shoes and toting laundry down to the Canal and hanging the finished laundry on a line that keeps snapping and being mended by a teenage boy who’s wearing a tool belt and shouting orders to everyone at once. The baby starts crying and a limping child grabs a spoon and scoops up some mashed potatoes and pours on a little sugar, then sprints across the room to stuff the mixture in the baby’s mouth.

“Good work, Gretel!” the sweating mother screams from the kitchen. “Now come take this scalding hot tray away!”

The other customer is an old man with a sales case, who flinches every time something crashes to the floor. Whenever the wife rushes by in a frenzy she touches his shoulder and says she’s sorry everything’s so crazy and not very appetizing, and he nods and flinches as something else crashes to the floor and shards of whatever broke fly across the room and the older kids scurry to pick them up before the baby crawls over and puts them in her mouth.

We fill our plates and go out into the yard and sit in relative peace among baskets and baskets of potatoes and piles of car parts and a goat who keeps looking over at us and making a hacking sound. The husband rushes out with a raw potato in his mouth and starts rebuilding an engine.

“If you want something nice, you’ve got to get it for yourself,” he says around the potato. “I want a generator for my family. Lights at night. A fan in the summer. And I’m getting them!”

“Honey!” the wife yells from inside. “Come get the cat off the baby. It’s trying to eat her bib.”

“Coming, sweetie!” the husband yells, and grins and shrugs at us. “It’s always something. But I’ve got to give it everything I got. That’s my mission. My place in life. My calling. I’m no warrior. I’m no lover. I’m a plodding dad, plain and simple. But I love it!”

He sprints towards the house and trips on a bit of fence he’s been mending and falls directly into a rosebush.

“Ah well!” he says as he pulls himself out. “Nobody said it was going to be easy. And this is definitely not easy. Wow. These thorns sure hurt. But hey. You’ve got to get up and keep on going. You snooze, you lose. Ouch. Yikes. Concentrate, concentrate.”

“Honey,” the wife screams. “The cat’s standing right on the baby’s tray with his paws in her food! Please don’t dawdle! Cats have germs. Unless you don’t mind your daughter eating cat germs!”

“You’re snapping at me, love!” he shouts as he starts towards the house again. “Please don’t snap!”

“Guys, don’t fight!” one little girl cries out.

“Dad, God,” the boy with the tools says. “Mom does so much for all of us.”

“Don’t correct your father,” the mother screams.

“Don’t scream at him,” the father shouts.

“She can!” the tool boy yells. “She can scream at me if she wants! I don’t mind!”

“Ah jeez,” the father says, rolling his eyes at us.

“Daddy, goodness,” the little girl says. “Please don’t use Jesus’ name as a cuss!”

“Don’t correct your father,” the mother says.

“Family,” the father says tensely. “We have guests.”

“Not many,” the wife says. “Not nearly enough of them.”

“Are we going to lose the house?” the little girl says. “Oh no!”

“We’ve got to pull together,” the father says. “I call for a silent prayer moment.”

They huddle in the yard. They hold hands and bow their heads. We stop eating, except for Buddy, who redoubles his efforts since it’s family-style.

“Yes,” the father says tearfully once they’ve finished praying. “With love there’s always hope. With hope there’s a Ways healing. Yes. Yes.”

“Honey,” the wife calls as she goes back inside. “Shall we serve these gentlemen the dessert they paid for, or let them starve and then spread the bad word about our place up and down the Canal?”

“Yes,” the father says. “No.”

“All right then,” the mother says. “Why not get back to work like the rest of us? Perhaps I’m missing the halo over your head that disqualifies you from having to do your share.”

“This is exactly why I’m still single,” Buddy says while vigorously gumming an eighth potato and catching the drool in his palm.

That night on the barge I dream of Dad. I dream the iceballs on his cuffs and the dried blood on his face from when he fell trying to get us cornmeal from the Red Cross checkpoint. I dream him knee-deep in snow and cursing the Winstons.

When I dream it, I’m Dad.

Imagine: You’re walking through a frozen marsh. Your kids are delirious with hunger and keep speaking aloud to imaginary savior-figures. Sitting against a tree is a snowfrosted corpse. Wild dogs have been at it. Your son puts on the corpse’s coat. It’s bloody and hangs to his knees. You’re too tired to tell him take it off. Your wife sits on a rock to rest. You make the kids walk in circles to stay warm. You make them slap their hands against their thighs and recite the alphabet. You’re scared. You love them so much. If only you could keep them safe.

Then through the trees you see lights. Up on a hillside is a neon sign and a floodlit castle tower.

BOUNTYLAND, the sign says, WHERE MERIT IS KING — AND SO ARE YOU!

Under the words is a picture of a crown with facial features, smiling and snapping its fingers. The sounds from inside are jovial. You smell roasting meat and hear a girls’ choir rehearsing Bach. You run back to fetch your wife. She says she can’t go on.

“It’s all right,” you say. “We’re saved.”

You drag your tired family up the slope. Because of the snow it’s slick and the kids keep sliding down. At the gate a guard with a tattoo on his neck asks for your monthly income. You say things have been rough lately. He asks for an exact figure. You say zero. He snorts and says get lost. You start to beg.

“Christ,” he says, “I would never beg in front of my wife and kids. That’s degrading.”

You keep begging. He shuts the gate and walks away fast. You stand there a minute, then start back down the hill. The kids lag behind, staring up at the sign and hating you for being so powerless. The girl picks up a frozen clod and gnaws at it. Your wife tells her stop but she doesn’t listen. You hate your wife for being so powerless.

Kill me, God, you think, get me out of this.

Then there’s an explosion and you tackle your family into a ditch and lie in the muck looking at the sky above the place on the hill:

Fireworks.

The fireworks get your goat and you drag the kids back up. At the retaining wall you tell them they’ll understand someday. You hug them. They’re so beautiful. Then you take the boy by an arm and a leg and heave him over the wall. He lands on the other side and shouts that his arm’s broken.

“Daddy, don’t leave me,” he screams. “Why are you doing this?”

Your wife starts up the hill in despair, then gives up and sits in the snow.

Your daughter smiles sadly and offers her wrist.

Over she goes. She weighs very little. Your darling.

“He’s telling the truth,” she yells from the other side. “The bone’s sticking out.”

You must be a man of great courage to then turn and sprint down the hill weeping to rejoin your wife. You must be a man with great courage and a broken heart. Because until that day my father had never done a thing to hurt us. To hurt Connie or me. He loved us. On that we’ve always agreed. He threw us over to save us from death. He believed in people. He believed in the people on the other side of the wall.

We often wonder if he and Mom made it, and if so where they live.

We pull all the next day through a region of discolored reeds. At dinnertime we decide to eat ashore. You can get lard cubes or bundles of spiced grass at Canalside stands. At a family operation near Lock 32 they serve raccoon on a stick, with a lemon slice. Where they get lemons in this day and age I have no idea. Lowlifes are lined up behind the stand, hoping to suck a discarded rind. Raccoon bits are laid out on a card table. The vendor guarantees low heavy-metal content in the flesh. I ask how he can be so sure and he says he used to be a toxicologist. His wife confirms this and goes on and on about the number of skylights they used to have in their den. He produces a fading photo of himself holding a cage of lab rats. Meanwhile their daughter’s giving me crazy eyes while skinning raccoons. The toxicologist sees me looking. He says a beautiful woman is a joy forever. He says a dad can’t be too choosy these days. Anybody Normal who’ll treat a woman reasonably well is a catch. He says it’s amazing how quickly moral standards eroded once the culture collapsed. He says: Look at your marriage rate. He says: A young fellow these days doesn’t think family, he thinks pokey-pokey continually.

When he says “pokey-pokey,” his daughter crinkles up her eyes at me.

“Best raccoon in New York State,” the mother says. The daughter nods and takes off her filthy jacket and reclines and stretches in a provocative way, managing to continue skinning raccoons. The paws go in a cardboard box. Likewise the heads. The pelts are piled neatly on the towpath for later sale to furriers.

“So,” the mother says. “That’s a nice shirt you have on.”

“You’re traveling as part of your job?” the father says hopefully.

“Not exactly,” I say. “I’m going to visit my sister.”

“He’s going home,” the mother says. “Isn’t that nice? A family boy. A family boy returning home after some kind of success. You have nice clothes. Your mother will be pleased.”

“A young man out in the world, making the grade,” the father says. “Such a young man was I, back in the toxicology days.”

“Where will you stay tonight?” the mother says. “Probably a hotel. A very nice one?”

“They stay on their boat, dodo,” the father says.

“This may sound nervy ” the mother says, “but we would be pleased to have you stay with us. Why not sleep on dry land?”

“Don’t push him,” the father says. “Let him decide.”

“I’m not pushing,” the mother says. “I’m inviting.”

“He’s not interested,” the father says. “Can you blame him? We’ve failed to provide her with decent clothes. What man would want her?”

“She’s desirable,” the mother says. “But you’re right. It’s all a matter of presentation. Do you see the form on him? Nice clothing does that. Highlights those good strong muscles. A healthy kid.”

“Yum,” the daughter says.

“Appearing wanton won’t help,” the mother says.

“It might,” the father says.

“You’ll stay?” the mother says. “One night? Please? Who wants to sleep on a smelly old boat when he can have some good home cooking and play some cards?”

“Why insult him by calling his boat smelly?” the father says.

“Oh God,” the mother says. “Did I ever not mean that.”

“Spend some time!” the father says. “Why rush across the country without absorbing the local flavor? Nellie will take you to see the Boyhood Home of Frank Shenarkis.”

“Boy will I,” Nellie says, and licks her lips. Dad nudges Mom in the ribs.

“Just so a man cares for her and respects her in the proper fashion,” he says. “That’s all I want for my little sweetie pie.”

“Take a walk, you two,” the mother says. “Why the heck not? Get better acquainted. Make hay while the sun’s still shining and all.”

So we go for a walk.

The Boyhood Home is a pastel ranch on a street of pastel ranches. It’s hard to believe America’s Last Star was raised here. Just after the collapse of the national infrastructure, Shenarkis, an overweight Normal, reigned supreme on prime time with his depiction of Snappo the comical Flawed. Three times a week the entire nation tuned in. Snappo’s Flaw was that he had a Siamese twin named Tubby growing out of his waist. Shenarkis, a master ventriloquist, handcrafted Tubby from polyurethane and then made a fortune kowtowing to the least common denominator. Every week Snappo and Tubby vied in vain for the love of Carmen Entwhistle, the Normal knockout who employed them to maintain her grounds. Snappo was always either getting tangled up in her vines or knocking something irreplaceable into the pool. He was a fool who knew it. He was gentle and acquiescent and mispronounced many words. All intelligent Flaweds hated him for selling us so short. Carmen came to like him for his simplicity. At the end of each episode they hugged. Whenever they hugged, Tubby would roll his eyes suggestively at Snappo. Sometimes the hugging went on and on. Finally around the time of the Detroit purges the feds yanked the show off the air because of the Flawed/Normal sexual overtones.

We walk through the Home hand in hand. We see the actual Tubby in a display case in the master bedroom, as well as the complicated harness system used to conjoin Tubby to Snappo. We hear a tape of Shenarkis doing Tubby’s voice. It’s an extremely frank Boyhood Home, in that they’ve documented Shenarkis’s addiction-related demise and suicide. In his sister’s room they’ve got the actual suit he was wearing when he wrapped his mouth around an exhaust pipe in despair over his cancellation. Nellie trembles at the photographs of his bloated corpse at Boca Raton. I pull her close. Over the PA comes Frank’s familiar voice singing his theme, “Two Heads and Hearts Falling for You, Dear.” I can’t concentrate. She smells too good. Her lower back is too rock-hard.

Finally they shut down the Home for the night.

“I never liked his dumb show,” Nellie says as we leave. “Dad said he got what he deserved for making Flaweds look halfway intelligent. But I did like the one where he thought the trombone was a scientific instrument. That one I liked because he was such a butthole.”

“I know what you mean,” I say.

At this point I’d say anything. Her brown arms are hot. Our palms have a little river between them. She keeps veering into me with her muscular hip.

“Through the woods?” she says.

“Is it a shortcut?” I say.

“Nope,” she says.

Ten steps in she pulls her blouse over her head. Her chest is sun-dappled and her pit hair is blond. It all happens too fast to follow. Her breath thunders in my ear. She mounts me and screams with her mouth on mine. I feel a pebble being driven into my rear but I don’t care.

Afterwards she immediately says I’m the best she’s ever had. She says our kids will be darling. She says she wants me again, only naked. She pulls off my shirt. I basically lie there like a flounder on a shore. So far letting her do what she wants has been rewarding. My shoes come off. Then my socks.

She stands up naked and starts wailing at the sight of my claws.

“Jesus Christ!” she screams. “I just boinked a Flawed, Dad!”

I pick up my clothes and run through the woods. Acorns lodge in my heels. Manly fluids sail off me. In spite of the fact that she was repulsed by the real me, I find myself thinking in wonder of her breasts and the ripples in her belly. I’d gladly marry her. Doing that every night would be a reason for living. But apart from the fact that I disgust her, I’m a fugitive. I’ve violated Disclosure of Flaws legislation. I long to hold her tight and say: You took my virginity and made me forget my Flaw. Let me stay. I’ll tape my claws, or file them down daily. We could adopt. But what’s the use? I saw the look in her eyes. For the first time in years I’m truly ashamed of my claws. How I hate them. Oh for a pliers and the resolve to pluck them out once and for all.

I sneak back to the Canal. Her folks are standing in front of the barge, along with a shouting mob of townies and a sheriff with a rifle.

“The way I see it,” her father says, “we’re entitled to whatever’s on that barge.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Buddy says, almost in tears. “This barge belongs to Mr. Blay.”

“Take what you want, folks,” the sheriff says. “I have no abiding love for Flaweds.”

“Blay’s not Flawed, sir,” Mike pleads. “He’s Normal as the day is long, and a nice, nice man. Fax him. Ask him. Please. I beg you.”

“He hires Flaweds,” the sheriff says. “He hires Flaweds who haven’t been fitted with bracelets and go around raping Normals.”

Rape? I think. Rape? But I don’t budge. I like Blay but no way I’m getting lynched for a bargeful of GlamorDivans.

The mob strips the barge clean. Buddy and Mike weep. I feel so bad. Poor Blay. No wonder Normals don’t trust us. We’re always screwing them over.

There’s nothing to do. I could kick myself. I had sure transport west. I had a fat paycheck coming. I’ve let Connie down for a meaningless romp. I start walking. Far off I hear a train whistle. Then I hear bloodhounds. I run like hell through the woods and then along the tracks. A freight pulls through going slow and I run beside it. Holy cow, I think, I’m jumping a freight. I’m in a boxcar that smells like hay. I’m flying by a dark field full of baying dogs. The air smells like water and stars shine in the black Canal as we fly across a bridge.

Next morning lake Ontario’s out the open door. The beach is littered with seagull corpses, which people are scooping up like mad for dinner. Fishmongers on the shore shriek at consumer advocates passing out pamphlets about the hazards of eating lake fish. It’s Dunkirk, then Westfield, then Erie, then Girard. I lie in front of the open door, and as in a dream, the nation unfolds before me. You can imagine a hill, but an imagined hill is not actual, no clover smell rolls off it, no ugly dog chases a boy down it into a yard where a father is scratching himself before a chessboard set up across a birdbath. You can imagine sleeping Ashtabula but no justice is done the earnest faces manning the security bonfire at the crossroads. Here a drunk shouts advice to a tree, here a fire burns in a field of alfalfa, here the train whistle echoes back from a wall on which is scrawled: Die Earnest Pricks. Near Cleveland I see a mob pursuing a pig past a gutted Wal-Mart. Finally the pig’s exhausted and stands heaving on a berm. The mob seems unsure how to proceed. Then some go-getter shows up with a crowbar. The pig takes a whack in the head, then discovers new energy and trots off again with the mob in pursuit. Fortunately at this point the train rounds a bend.

For hours we head west, through Sandusky, Port Clinton, then Toledo, where in a public park militiamen hold back the dispossessed with firearms while emptying Hefty bags of bread crusts into a fountain for public consumption. We pass through Angola and Elkhart, through fields of torched corn, then Chicago, racked with plague, where corpses are piled high in vacant lots beside the tracks and Comiskey is now an open-air penitentiary, then across the plains, where solitary people dressed in sacks wander across the horizon, reminding me of my own cursed family. Sweet-smelling dust fills the car. The nation goes on forever. I never knew. When old people said plenty, bounty, lush harvests, I put it down to senile nostalgia. But here are miles and miles of fields and homes. Nice homes. Once it was one family per. Once the fields were thick with food. Now city men assigned residence by the government sit smoking in the yards as we pass, looking out with hate on the domain of hayseeds, and the land lies fallow.

On the morning of the sixth day a family gets on in a hop-smelling southern Illinois town. The bearded dad offers me sunflower seeds and briefs me on his child-rearing philosophy. Discipline and other forms of negativity are shunned. Bedtimes don’t exist. Face wiping is discouraged. At night the children charge around nude and screaming until they drop in their tracks, ostensibly feeling good about themselves.

“We ran the last true farm,” one of the kids screams at me.

“Until the government put us out,” the wife says softly. She’s pretty the way a simple white house in a field is pretty.

“Now we’re on the fucking lam,” says a toddler. Both parents smile fondly.

“We’re knowing America viscerally,” says an older girl while digging at her crotch with her thumb.

“Indeed,” the dad says. “My kids are at home on the American road.”

“It’s good for them not to be so staid,” the mom says. “Get out and breathe the air.”

“Live the life that’s being lived,” the dad says.

“Abandon the routines that conspire to force us into complacency,” says the mom halfheartedly.

“Think of the memories they’re accumulating,” the dad says.

“Still, it wasn’t a bad farm,” the mom says.

“Darn it,” the dad says. “Negativity, Ellie. Nip it in the bud. Remember? Forging self-love by creating a positive environment. Remember? They took our home but they can’t break our spirit?”

“Sorry,” the mom says. “I forgot. I mean, it was positive, because I was saying how much I liked our farm.”

“Never mind,” the dad says. “I love you so much.”

Still, he looks tense. He goes to the door and hanging his feet out tries to teach the kids “This Land Is Your Land.” The kids are busy leaning out of the speeding boxcar and lofting spit at little houses along the tracks.

“Nice shot, Josh,” the dad says. “You sure nailed that garage.”

“Shut up, Dad,” Josh says. “When you talk to me it screws up my concentration.”

“Sorry, buddy,” the dad says.

At Springfield a nutty-looking guy in a dirty flannel shirt gets on and immediately divides the boxcar in half with bales. On his cheek is a burned-in crucifix.

“Some serious privacy’s going to happen here or heads will roll,” he announces. “I’ve had it with interpersonal relationships.” Then he takes out a huge knife and sets it just inside his boundary. Even the wild kids shut up. He stretches out to sleep.

Once the kids get used to him, however, they resume shrieking. One little guy in coveralls keeps reaching across the border to touch the blade. Mom and Dad seem perplexed. To restrain or not to restrain? The blade looks sharp. But why risk quashing his natural curiosity?

I stay out of it. Another fifteen minutes and we cross the Mississippi.

The knife guy wakes up.

“Touch it again, you’re fucked,” he says to the kid, who’s about five. The kid’s eyes go wide.

“Just a minute,” the dad says. “That’s my son whose self-worth you’re bandying about. Don’t you remember what a special place the world was when you were tiny?”

“Don’t jack with me,” the knife guy says, “or I’ll be pleased to cut out and eat your whiny little heart.”

“Pshaw,” the dad says. “Sticks and stones, my friend. That kind of confrontational attitude does nothing but make me feel a lack of respect for you.”

“Keep talking, nimrod,” the knife guy says, “and I’ll have me a woman for free and a bunch of brats to toss off a moving train.”

“Hey now,” the dad says. “Hey now. Is that any way to talk to another human being?”

“Sam,” the mom says, “maybe we should just drop it. Maybe we should drop it and keep the kids on our side of the bales.”

“No, Ellie, I don’t think so,” the dad says. “My family is not something to be treated with disrespect.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” the mom says.

“No trouble at all,” the knife guy says, then picks up the knife and goes for the dad. I make a grab for his hand and the knife flies out the door. He tackles me and rolls me over and starts biting my neck. He’s strong and stinks and I can feel he wants to kill me.

Oh God, I think, now I did it, I’m dead.

“Fellows, fellows,” the dad says. “Violence doesn’t solve problems.”

“Help him, Sam,” the mom yells. “That nut’s going to murder him.”

“I’m not sure I can do that,” the dad says. “I can’t have the kids see me contradict my own moral system.”

“Dad,” one kid shouts, “get off your ass!”

“No,” the dad says gravely. “Someday you’ll understand, and respect me all the more for it.”

Meanwhile the loony’s biting deep into my neck and I’m starting to see stars. I panic. I thrash. Then we sail out the door and my head hits something metallic and I’m out like a light.

I wake up strapped to a stretcher propped against a dilapidated wet bar. Out a slit of a window is a duck on a tether near a mildewing empty built-in pool. Across the room a balding little man sits on the edge of a foldout bed, rubbing the feet of a hag sipping broth.

“Kenny,” she screams, “where are you? I said fish! You call this fish? Is this all the thanks I get, you trying to scrimp on my fish?”

“He’s an ass, Ma,” says the man on the edge of the bed. “You’d think with all you’ve done for him.”

In rushes another little balding man, identical to the first.

“Give her the damn fish, Kenny,” says the man on the bed. “She’s our mother, for crissake. Why try and starve her?”

“I doubt she’ll starve, Benny,” Kenny says, flinching. “That’s all you two do is eat. Eat and yell at me.”

From under the bedcover the woman smacks him with a length of wood. When he drops to one knee his brother knees him in the back.

“Benny, look who’s awake,” the mother says. “Our meal ticket.”

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Kenny says kindly from the floor. “You had quite a lump on your noggin when I found you.”

“Good old Kenny,” Benny says dismissively. “Out wandering the tracks like an idiot.”

“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 worthless? 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?”

“Where exactly are we going?” asks a petulant Flawed on my right whose name tag says Leonard.

“Great question, Leonard!” Ventor says. “You said to yourself: Look, I want to know where I’m headed. I like that. Good directedness. Also good assertiveness. Perhaps you weren’t quite as sensitive to my feelings as you might have been, given that I should have told you where we were headed right off the bat and so therefore feel at the moment a little remiss and inadequate for not having done so, but what the heck, a good growth opportunity for me, and a chance for you, Leonard, to make yourself the center of attention, which seems to be one of your issues, not that I’m in a position to make that judgment, at least not yet. The answer, Leonard, is: southern Utah. Here, take a look.”

He passes around snapshots of his ranch and we sit oohing and aahing while holding our lemonades between our knees. It’s beautiful. The skies are blue, the cottages immaculate, the mountains white.

On my soft seat I say a little prayer:

Let this be real.

We ride in style through Joplin and Miami and Vinita and Big Cabin. Ventor passes out sunscreen and shoots an antelope from the wagon and gives us each a big chunk and a side-salad with croutons. He laughs at our jokes and praises any initiative we take and tells us about the summer picnics on his spread, which will feature badminton and ice cream and bluegrass music and pretty Flawed girls from other ranches who really know how to dance. We make Tulsa. We make Sapulpa. We make Chandler, Warwick, Luther, and Arcadia. A thousand-member dog pack has just swept through Oklahoma City and distraught cabbies are sprinkling lye on their dead oxen while trying to trick beggars into the yoke. West of El Reno there’s a wide river and a collapsed bridge. A chalked sign on a plywood scrap says: Neerest ferry 200 miles south.

“Ouch, this isn’t good,” Ventor says. “Not that it’s bad. Not that I’m trying to predestine our failure via negativity or manifest an Eeyore paradigm.”

We start off south along the river. Kids fishing from rotting docks turn to call us Flawed pigs. In a tent town there’s a bingo game proceeding under a filthy awning.

Hidden away in a patch of reeds is a rowboat.

“Wow, talk about willing one’s own reality into being,” Ventor says. “Here I was just wishing we had a boat and one basically materializes! Super. I admit it’s not the exact boat I was visualizing, but still it’s a boat, and I for one am going to try to focus on its boatness, and not on those kind of huge gaping holes in the sides there. And while it’s true we’ll have to abandon our wagon and our horses and our supplies, I intend to put these losses behind me and work on viewing the fact that we now have to walk to Utah as a particularly challenging challenge I’ll someday look back at while laughing sagely.”

“So we’re stealing this boat,” Leonard says.

“No, Leonard, we’re not stealing the boat,” Ventor says. “We’re borrowing the boat, albeit leaving it on the far bank once we’ve finished borrowing it.”

He tells Leonard and Gene Sinclair and me to go across first and tells Leonard to row. Gene’s a former schoolteacher with tremendous armpit goiters who’s constantly measuring them with calipers.

“Good luck, men!” Ventor yells across the water. “Remember, I trust you implicitly!”

When we reach the far shore Gene and I pile out and Leonard starts back across.

“I have to admit this freedom would be kind of exhilarating if my goiters didn’t hurt like the dickens,” Gene says. “We could just walk away. Boy, wouldn’t that be nervy! A guy tries to give you a nice cottage and some dignity and you bite him in the ass.”

I think of Connie. I remember the autumn before the purge, when the Flaweds in our grade school were fitted with bracelets during a surprise Assembly. Connie and I stood there blinking madly as a Normal janitor named Fabrizi fired up his welding tool. At home Connie decorated her bracelet with glitter glue. Dad called her a trooper and praised her gumption, then broke down in sobs.

I get up and start jogging towards the trees.

Gene begs me to come back and swears that if it weren’t for his aching goiters he’d teach me a lesson about ingratitude by beating my brains out. I cut across a granite ledge and drop into a canebrake. I hear Gene shouting to Ventor. Then there’s a gunshot and some dirt kicks up at my feet and a little pine splinters to my left.

Free again, for what it’s worth.

That night I sleep in a ditch. I dream that Mom’s stroking my hair while reading me a comic book. I wake at dawn in the middle of a street market. There are jugglers and men expertly carving up big dogs and a few feet away from me a tall balding Normal selling pancakes from a cart. A couple of militia teens walk by with an entourage of eight Flaweds and a weeping Normal farmer.

“What did he do, boys?” asks the pancake guy. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Educated his Flaweds,” says one of the teens. “Let them read whatever they liked. Now they’re so educated they don’t listen for shit and we have to keep whacking them.”

“Yeah,” says the other. “They want to debate every little point.”

“No we don’t,” says a Flawed geezer, who promptly gets a gun butt in the midriff.

“So we burned down his farm,” says the first teen.

“Do I ever endorse the wisdom of that decision,” says the pancake guy. “You fellows are awfully youthful to be so insightful.”

“You should have seen Todd pouring gas on the beets,” says the first teen.

“I couldn’t believe how hard you kicked that one kitchen chick who was shrieking while crawling away,” says Todd.

“Chick was like shrieking at me,” says the first teen.

“Then she bites his leg,” Todd says. “I was like: Brad’s hating this. He thinks this sucks.”

“I was hating it,” says Brad. “I did think it sucked.”

“And yet you responded with remarkable restraint, by merely kicking her?” the pancake guy says. “I find that really, you know, great.”

“We were going to respond by doing her in the barn,” Brad says.

“But then the lieutenant comes up and goes no, because she’s a virgin,” Todd says. “I was like: dang.”

“I was like that too,” says Brad. “I was like: dang.”

“We were both like: dang,” says Todd.

“So we went out and wasted all the cows,” says Brad.

“Your delts looked so killer when you were slitting their udders,” says Todd.

“I’ll bet your delts looked killer as all get-out,” says the pancake guy.

“Then asswipe here started the barn on fire when he was supposed to be flamethrowing the ducks,” says Brad. “Lieutenant was pissed. Asswipe freaked.”

“I didn’t freak, I was bummed,” says Todd. “I was bummed because the lieutenant thought I was a dick.”

“You were a dick,” says Brad. “You were a dick and you freaked.”

“For my part,” the pancake guy says, “I doubt very much that you were either an asswipe or a dick, nor do you strike me as the type of boy inclined to freak, not that I’m trying to be difficult or contradict anyone.”

Then he tosses a pan of hot grease into the ditch and steps square on my chest and I start screaming bloody murder.

Brad puts his gun in my ear and drags me out.

“Congrats, dude,” he says to the pancake guy. “You just copped a free slave.”

“But I don’t want a slave,” says the pancake guy. “I can’t afford one. I can barely keep myself in batter as it is.”

“Tough bones,” says Todd. “The regs require local resale by the finder. And that’s you.”

“God forbid I should appear neurotic or recalcitrant, boys,” the pancake guy says, “but I have no idea where one sells a runaway slave.”

“Try Tanner’s,” Todd says.

“Tanner’s is a hoot,” says Brad.

“Ooh la la,” says Todd.

Tanner’s is a brothel in a former Safeway. A wiry Normal in a jogging suit is counting crates of condoms in what used to be Produce.

“Don’t tell me,” he says. “You’re in the mood for love.”

“Actually I’d like to sell this Flawed,” the pancake guy says, blushing.

“New flesh, Artie,” the wiry guy says, and a pudge with a stun gun steps out from behind the crates. “What do you think, son? Think he’d make a good addition to Staff?”

“You know exactly what I think, Dad,” says Artie. “I think that it’s not very nice, forcing someone to become a prostitute against their will.”

“Artie, sweet Jesus, why refer to our people as prostitutes?” the father says. “That’s not a fun term. That’s not a term that makes people want to let their hair down. That’s a sad term. That’s a term that, if anything, makes people want to put their hair back up, which means I eventually close up shop and you hustle your ass home from college sans degree. Sheesh. My son the philosophical sourpuss. Looks down his nose at my line of work but sucks up the tuition like it’s going out of style. Would it violate your principles too much to keep an eye on this guy for a few minutes, O Pure One? Think you could fucking manage that?”

“Fine, Dad,” Artie says. “Whatever.”

“We’ll be in my office talking price,” the father says, and steers the pancake guy into a former walk-in freezer now wood-paneled and decorated with framed posters of sweaty nude Flaweds sucking their fingers.

“Boy, I don’t envy you,” Artie says. “If you think Dad’s mean to me, you should see how mean he is to his whores. I mean his Personal Pleasure Associates. PPAs. You should see how mad he’ll get if he comes back here and finds you talking to me. He doesn’t go for the idea of his whores chatting with Normals. I mean, if you want to pretend to groan in ecstasy or compliment some John’s pecker, that’s fine, but just talking for the sake of talking, no, he doesn’t go for that. Which is exactly why I’m taking Physics at the community college. I’m getting out of the family business. Physics is hard. Really hard. But it’s not at all hard compared to helping Dad beat the snot out of some PPA for accidentally calling an AR a John. Dad makes us call them ARs. Affection Recipients. Are you going to be one of the PPAs who dresses up like a girl? Or one who gets gagged and bound? Do you know yet? I guess you wouldn’t. I hope you’re neither. You seem like a nice guy, so I’ll go out on a limb and say I hope you’re just a regular old whore.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“This one time Mack in Security had to stun-gun this AR for getting too rough with this fragile PPA named Kurt,” he says. “Mack told the AR, he said, look pal, you want to get rough, go to the Rough Room, there’s no need to brutalize a tiny PPA like Kurt. But by that time the AR had a big old hole in his neck courtesy of Mack and had forgotten all about Kurt. You’d be amazed what a big old hole in your neck will do to your sex drive. My point is, did Mack ever catch it from Dad on that one! You should have seen Dad burning a corresponding hole in Mack’s neck while I held poor Mack down. Did I like doing that? Of course not. But what was I supposed to do, contradict Dad in front of Mack? To tell you the truth, Dad scares me. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday he didn’t hold me down and burn a hole in my neck. Gosh, we probably shouldn’t be going on and on like this. If Dad comes back and hears us, you’ll get the pipefitters’ convention for sure. So we’d better stop talking.”

“Fine,” I say.

“Last year at the pipefitters’ convention Dad made this PPA named Earl wear a poodle suit,” he says. “That was one room I did not want to go into, except I had to, because Earl had forgotten his fake bone even though it was clearly marked on the Work Order. Last thing I wanted to see was Earl in a poodle suit going woof woof woof under a big pile of naked pipefitters, but I had my instructions from Dad, the heathen. After I dropped off Earl’s bone I went back to my room and studied Bernoulli’s equation while sobbing quietly. People look at me and think, he’s lucky, his dad’s Max Tanner the rich pimp, but I tell you it’s no picnic. Sometimes after writing a poem about the beauty of the stars I have to go around and change all the sheets. You think that’s uplifting? You think that kind of activity nourishes your sublime nature? Well it doesn’t, believe me.”

Tanner and the pancake guy come out smiling.

“Artie, super news,” Tanner says. “The price is right. All we need now is the physical exam.”

“Great, Dad,” Artie says weakly.

They examine my privates and make me hop in place so they can check my heart rate. They count my teeth and test my grip by making me squeeze a can filled with sand and have me read one of their brochures aloud to check for speech impediments.

“These feet worry me, Artie,” Tanner says, tapping my claws with a Sharpie. “These little fuckers could be serious showstoppers. What if in the heat of passion this guy claws the crap out of some AR’s leg and the AR gets gangrene and sues? Jesus. Although I suppose I could put him on drive-through hand jobs. Would you be in favor of drive-through hand jobs, Artie?”

“I’d be in favor of setting him and every other PPA in this dump free, Dad,” says Artie.

“All right, smart guy, I’ll do that,” Tanner says. “Then you can swap your slide rule for a fucking shovel and join your peers in the sewage trench. Hah? Hah? Is that what you want, Einstein?”

“No, Dad,” Artie says.

“Then let’s have some thoughtful input here,” Tanner says.

“He seems well suited to drive-through hand jobs,” Artie says through clenched teeth.

“That’s more like it,” Tanner says. “Now go get him a sexy smock and some baby oil.”

Then the lights go out and something blows up and suddenly Flaweds in lingerie are rushing by screaming, and swearing Normals are hopping over fallen beams with their pants around their knees. I grab Artie’s stun gun and make for a hole in the wall. Outside are sycamores and clouds and tongues of flame devouring the words GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS on a fallen paper banner. A guy in a ski mask is sitting on a parking bumper trying to get a jammed gun to fire and a brothel security guard is sneaking up behind him with a billy club. So I stun the guard and drag the guy in the ski mask to a kind of clearing, where a bunch of other guys in ski masks pat me on the back and push me into a van as the Safeway collapses like a house of cards.

I’m bleeding at the knees and choking from smoke and have no idea who these people are or where I’m going, but at least I’m off the hook in terms of the hand jobs.

I lie all night in the back of the van with three weeping rescued whores in nun costumes. When we finally stop we’re rushed past some swaying denuded mesquites into a cave, where we’re given bedrolls and wooden bowls of cold mush.

“Where are we?” one of the nuns asks.

“Texas,” somebody answers, and lights a candle.

Outside the cave two Flaweds in ski masks sit on rocks near a campfire.

“Quite a mission,” says one.

“Yes, Mitch, quite a mission,” says the other, who’s half the size of the first.

“Thanks to my leadership, we really exceeded our project goals,” says Mitch.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” says the other. “We only rescued four crummy Flaweds. On top of which you left Frenchy at the scene.”

“I beg your pardon?” says Mitch.

“Oh, come on,” says the other. “First you got lost, then you attacked a brothel rather than a work camp, then you drove off in a panic, leaving Frenchy at the scene.”

“I did no such thing,” says Mitch. “Why do you insist on making up lies, Jerome? Frenchy and I had talked before the mission, and at that time he said that he might want to, you know, undertake some additional activities subsequent to the primary mission. It was a secret talk. No one else heard it. We even arranged a secret signal. As we were leaving the site, Frenchy gave me the secret signal, so I kept driving. Simple as that.”

“What was the secret signal, Mitch?” Jerome says. “Begging you at the top of his lungs to please please slow down while he sprinted alongside the van weeping? You lie, Mitch. I saw the whole thing. If I hadn’t been so busy putting a tourniquet on Lance I would have wrested the wheel away and saved Frenchy myself.”

“Some tourniquet,” says Mitch. “The cassette player in the van is ruined with Lance’s blood, thanks to you.”

Then they hop to their feet and put on their caps.

“Hello, Judith,” says Jerome.

“Good evening, Judith,” says Mitch.

“What’s all this about?” says Judith, a tall woman with a sawed-off shotgun and a clipboard.

“Mitch left Frenchy at the scene, Judith,” says Jerome. “The wrong scene, incidentally. We never got anywhere near the work camp.”

“I’ve heard,” says Judith. “We’ll need to talk, Mitch.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Jerome says. “Somebody really needs to talk to Mitch.”

“I’ve got something to say,” Mitch says. “You people are always yapping about oppression this and oppression that, but you certainly don’t seem to mind oppressing me.”

“Nobody’s oppressing you, Mitch,” Jerome says. “Get off it. If anything, I’d say you’re attempting to oppress us, by accusing us of oppressing you. Wouldn’t you say so, Judith?”

“Did you hear that, Judith?” Mitch says. “Did you hear how he turned that around? It’s always my fault, and if that’s not oppression I don’t know what is. Just because I’m one of the few rebels with an internal Flaw, you people think you can treat me like dirt. If you think a perforated duodenum is somehow less significant than an extra arm or some open facial lesions, you’re just plain wrong.”

“This has nothing to do with your duodenum, Mitch,” says Judith. “This is strictly a performance issue.”

“You want to talk performance?” shouts Mitch. “Ask this little fart where he learned to fire a machine gun! There he was, spraying friend and foe alike, this smug look on his face, and now he has the gall to accuse me of a performance issue?”

“Leave it to you to bring my size into it,” says Jerome.

“For your information, my size is related to my pituitary, which in turn is related to a suite of mutagenic effects, so what you’ve just done, whether you’re man enough to admit it or not, is make fun of my Flaw, which last time I checked was exactly what we were fighting against, Mr. Shits-in-a-Bag.”

“That’s enough, you two,” Judith says. “Mitch, go walk the perimeter.”

“Who died and made her queen,” mutters Mitch.

“Phil did,” Judith says sharply. “And his last words to me as he died gutshot were: Continue my work.”

“Oops,” says Mitch. “Guess I sort of hit a nerve there.”

“What else is new?” says Jerome. “Open mouth, insert foot.”

“What was the first thing I did after Phil put me in charge, Mitch?” Judith demands, holding up her left arm, at the end of which is a reddened stump. “What did I do to make myself a more valuable commander?”

“Cut off your hand with a hacksaw to get your Flawed bracelet off,” Mitch says, hangdog.

“That’s right,” says Judith. “And why did I do that, Jerome?”

“To be able to more convincingly impersonate a Normal, ” says Jerome, equally hangdog.

“Correct,” says Judith. “And what was my first solo mission, post Phil?”

“You went to Denver and ingratiated yourself with a federal judge and made off with ten grand of his loot,” says Mitch.

“And what did I do with the money?” says Judith. “Did I buy myself jewels? Did I flee the country?”

“No,” Jerome says. “You bought weapons and food.”

“That’s right,” Judith says. “Weapons and food. Now. If you boys have finished presenting an absolutely shameful first impression of the movement to our guests, I’ll tend to my wounded.”

She leaves. Mitch and Jerome flip each other off and stomp away in opposite directions.

“Nice people,” says one of the nuns.

“Charming,” says another.

Then an old man brings us each a cup of cocoa and a questionnaire, which we fill out by candlelight to the sound of coyotes.

In the morning the old man shakes me awake and leads me to Judith’s tent. Judith’s sitting outside, wearing fatigues and hair rollers and sipping coffee.

“Good morning,” she says. “Welcome to freedom. I’d like to take a few minutes to tell you a little about our operation, if I may. Please have a seat.”

I sit at her feet and she gives me a cup of coffee and a sugar packet and some creamer.

“Stole these on a recent raid,” she says. “A little indulgence. In general, however, our resources are rather scarce. So, after a liberation, the rescued Flaweds are basically on their own. Your cavemates of last night, for example, have been sent stumbling out across the canyon in their high heels with five dollars each, regrettably still wearing their habits, because we have no budget for clothing. It kills me, but it’s all we can do to replenish our ammo and buy eggs from sympathetic farmers, much less subsidize jeans for liberated whores. Which brings me to you. I understand that you saved Mitch’s life by stun-gunning a Normal. That was impressive. That took guts. That implies to me that you may be a fantastic potential guerrilla. What do you say? Have you ever considered joining the movement?”

In truth I didn’t even know there was a movement. At Bounty Land we had Maurice Rabb, a malcontent who advocated armed Flawed rebellion. Then one day he tried to burn off his Flawed bracelet and ended up with a scorched wrist and a demotion to Porcine Reproductive Services. I’d often see him in the Birthing Barn, elbow-deep in pig afterbirth, still arguing the merits of a separate Flawed state. I tell her my story. I tell her I’m not joining anything until I find out what happened to Connie.

She removes her stump and hands me a Danish with a perfectly good hand.

“Surprise, surprise,” she says. “Step inside a sec.”

Inside the tent are pictures of Lincoln and Che Guevara and an extra-large Baggie stuffed with spare fake stumps.

“Here’s the thing,” she says. “I’m Normal. Never even had a bracelet. A few years ago I looked at the movement, or what passed for a movement, and said to myself, this is no movement, this is a bunch of uninspired yahoos waiting to be led to the slaughter, except that their moribund leadership couldn’t locate the slaughter if the slaughter sent up flares. So I invented a myth and invested in some fake stumps. I stopped being Lynette, a shy debutante with no marital prospects, and became Judith, the one-handed scourge of north Texas. Now every month or so I disappear and go to the bank in Lubbock and hit my trust fund and come back with a couple grand and a wild story about robbing a convenience store or seducing a senator. Is that wrong? Is a lie told in the service of good still reprehensible? These are the types of questions I ask myself every night as I apply antifungal to my hand, which is prone to infection due to these cheap stumps. But your people respect me. They work hard for me. Some have died for me. For themselves, actually, and for you, and for Connie. Ask yourself this: if you’d go through all you have to save your sister, what would you do to save a million sisters? Imagine a Connie in every town you’ve passed through, Connies of all ages, babies in cribs, bitter crones, pigtailed girls, children yet unborn. You could help give them dignity, a chance at careers, children, homes, husbands, peaceful dotages. Isn’t that something to work towards? Wouldn’t that be a way of honoring Connie’s memory?”

Her memory? I think. She’s not dead. At least I don’t think she’s dead. She may be a high-volume whore in some frontier brothel but she’s not dead.

“I can see in your eyes that you’re still mired down on the petty personal level,” she says.

“I guess so,” I say.

“Regrettable,” she says, then hands me a pocket atlas and a bag of apples and tells me mum’s the word on her stump and waves me out of the tent.

I start walking. I sneak through sleeping Amarillo and swing north through ranch country. I hear freights clanking and barbed wire humming in the wind. I see cows asleep on their feet and families of lunatics living in overturned semis. By Clayton the apples are gone and I hurry through Mt. Dora and Grenville and Capulin with a growling stomach. I eat from Dumpsters, I gnaw flowers, I find a dead deer and stuff my pockets with what I can tear off. There are orange lights in ranch windows and bikes propped against willows. There are well-tended gardens and little dresses on clotheslines and once I hear a man on a ladder say Love me? and a woman in a tire swing answer Always. I wish I was Normal. I wish I lived here and could whistle my kids in from the yard as the rain made sweet homish clangings in my gutters. Instead I shiver behind a former diner and heave rocks at wild dogs and start bits of trash on fire so I can read my atlas. I limp through Raton and Cimarron and Ute Park and my mind starts to slip with hunger and the mountains speak to me in cowboy accents of the ore within them and one morning I straighten up from a gut cramp to find I’m standing in front of a sign, and the sign says: TAOS.

I eat what’s left of the deer, for strength, and start down.

I get directions from some Flaweds baling hay in a meadow. I start up a dirt path. There’s an orchard where they promised an orchard and a stream where they promised a stream. I crawl under some of Corbett’s barbed wire, then walk through his cows and ducks and goats, practicing a little speech as I go: I know you sold her, I’ll say, but I want you to know who it was that you sold. She was funny. She was thoughtful. She loved jigsaw puzzles and could do a one-arm pull-up and once saved a rabbit from a flooded culvert. She could have given you so much if you would’ve been man enough to accept her, but instead you deceived her and used her and turned her out for a lifetime of misery. And you’ll pay. You’re paying already. Because she could be here now, conferring grace on this place and on you, who could have been her savior but instead chose to be her executioner.

After that I don’t know what I’ll do.

The house is huge. I take a deep breath, then hop a redwood fence and land in a bed of tulips. All around my face are colored bobbing pods. There’s a wet bar near a satellite dish and a trampoline near a pool.

Sitting in a rattan chair is Connie, big as a house.

Pregnant.

I look at her. She looks at me. She leaps to her feet and we do a happy little dance around the yard and Corbett steps out from behind a shrub with a croquet mallet and says that what five grand in detective fees couldn’t deliver, destiny has.

Then we have lunch.

Over soup he asks if I want a job in Grounds. I say sure. Next morning he gives me a Walkman and some pruning shears. Soon I’m an old hand. I dust roses and trim shrubs and mow lawns. On my lunch breaks I read. The Bounty-Land library had a few Hardy Boys and a Bible with fallacious pro-slavery sayings of Christ pasted into the Sermon on the Mount, but Corbett’s got everything. I read Epictetus and Frederick Douglass and Bobbo Schmidt, a Flawed Louisiana poet thrown off the Pontchartrain bridge for impregnating his Normal lover. At night Connie and I have long talks, remembering Dad’s aftershave and Mom’s lasagna, the swell of the hill in our yard, the names of neighbors and the voices of friends.

One night I ask her what she sees in Corbett.

“He’s good to me,” she says, eyes down. “I’m safe. It’s not so bad.”

Who am I to judge? She’s here in front of me, not off suffering somewhere, not starving, not in agony, and for that I’m glad.

A week later she goes into labor in the rec room and what seems like years into the night something comes from her, something red and yowling and malleable, temporarily cross-eyed but ours, our girl, and Connie names her Anita, for our mother.

She has Corbett’s eyes and Connie’s vestigial tail.

That night I dream I’m standing barefoot before a crowd of hostile Normals with baseball bats. I tell them I’ve never loved anyone so much in my life. I describe the way the baby flinches when she passes gas, her tiny brown eyes, the smell of her head. I beg them to repeal the Slave Edict and grant her full citizenship. I ask them to consider their own children and honor that part of the eternal that resides within them. Then I stand there smiling feebly, hoping for the best, and the crowd surges forward and knocks the hell out of me with their bats until I’m dead.

I wake with a start and think: What am I doing here?

There’s a rebel cell recruiting down in Talpa. According to Corbett they’re a bunch of skinny passionate guys in a leaning barn, practicing hand-to-hand with broomsticks and eating vanilla wafers provided in bulk by a sympathetic grocer from Chimayó. After dinner I kiss Connie goodbye and the baby goodbye and shake Corbett’s hand and off I go.

The night’s cold. I see a bushel of snowfrosted apples and two black horses snorting at a frozen shirt on a fence-post and I’m lonely already.

There’s a half-moon above the rebel barn. I give a little knock.

“I’m here to help,” I whisper, and the door swings open.