Tenth of December

by George Saunders

“Jeff,” Abnesti said. “I know you’ve done a lot of work on this with Mrs. Lacey. On killing and so forth. But this is not you. This is us.” “It’s not even us,” Verlaine said. “It’s science.” “The mandates of science,” Abnesti said. “Plus the dictates.” “Sometimes science sucks,” Verlaine said. “On the one hand, Jeff,” Abnesti said, “a few minutes of unpleasantness for Heather—” “Rachel,” Verlaine said. “A few minutes of unpleasantness for Rachel,” Abnesti said, “years of relief for literally tens of thousands of underloving or overloving folks.” “Do the math, Jeff,” Verlaine said. “Being good in small ways is easy,” Abnesti said. “Doing the huge good things, that’s harder.”

From somewhere, something kind asked, Would you like to go back? It’s completely up to you. Your body appears salvageable. No, I thought, no thanks, I’ve had enough. My only regret was Mom. I hoped someday, in some better place, I’d get a chance to explain it to her, and maybe she’d be proud of me, one last time, after all these years. From across the woods, as if by common accord, birds left their trees and darted upward. I joined them, flew among them, they did not recognize me as something apart from them, and I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would.

Roosten took a step forward and gave the wallet a kick. Wow, did it ever slide. Right under a stack of risers. Like a hockey puck. There were the keys, alone now, underscoring the absence of the wallet. Yikes. He could say he’d accidentally kicked the wallet under there. Which was sort of true. He hadn’t thought about it, really. He’d just felt like kicking it and then he had. He was impulsive like that. That was one of the good things about him. It was how he’d bought the shop. Failing shop. He gave the keys a kick. What the hell? Why had he done that? They slid even better than the wallet. Now wallet and keys were far under the risers. Gosh, too bad. Too bad he’d accidentally kicked those things under there.

I worry: Growing up in paucity, won’t they become too cautious? Not that they are growing up in paucity. Still, there are things we want but cannot have. If kids raised too cautious, due to paucity, will not world chew them up and spit out? Would like to buy large box, decorate like buried treasure, bury, make map, hide map, lead them to map without appearing to. Then, when they bring map, say: Ridiculous, don’t be big dreamers, be cautious, be frugal, world is cruel. And when they persist, and actually find treasure, won’t that be an excellent lesson in sticking to it? But how to do? Where to get such a box? What to put in box that doesn’t cost too much? How to dig such a big hole, and when?

It was like either: (A) I was a terrible guy who was knowingly doing this rotten thing over and over, or (B) it wasn’t so rotten, really, just normal, and the way to confirm it was normal was to keep doing it, over and over.

Why were we made just so, to find so many things that happened every day pretty?

She came in flustered and apologetic, a touch of anger in her face. He’d embarrassed her. He saw that. He’d embarrassed her by doing something that showed she hadn’t sufficiently noticed him needing her. She’d been too busy nursing him to notice how scared he was. She was angry at him for pulling this stunt and ashamed of herself for feeling angry at him in his hour of need, and was trying to put the shame and anger behind her now so she could do what might be needed.