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?