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?”