Tenth of December: Stories Read online

  PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR

  GEORGE SAUNDERS

  “Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.”

  —Zadie Smith

  “The person I’m highest on right now is George Saunders, whose book CivilWarLand in Bad Decline just came out and is well worth a great deal of attention.”

  —David Foster Wallace, in Salon

  “[I] read Saunders because he always makes me want to write. He reads like he’s having such a good time and I love his humor so much.… He was one of those writers—he just opened doors and doors for me.”

  —Karen Russell

  “An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times.”

  —Thomas Pynchon

  “A multifaceted writer, very easy on the surface to pin down but incredibly difficult once you actually read him with any depth.”

  —Joshua Ferris, in The New Yorker Book Bench

  “Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality, with a sure sense of his material and apparently inexhaustible resources of voice.… Scary, hilarious, and unforgettable.”

  —Tobias Wolff

  “George Saunders is so funny and inventive he makes you love words and so wide-eyed wistful he talks you into loving people.”

  —Sarah Vowell

  Tenth of December is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by George Saunders

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The stories in this work were originally published in Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The New Yorker, and Story Magazine.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Saunders, George.

  Tenth of December : stories / George Saunders.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-8129-9381-3

  I. Title.

  PS3569.A7897T46 2013

  813′.54—dc23 2012013782

  www.atrandom.com

  v3.1_r1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Victory Lap

  Sticks

  Puppy

  Escape from Spiderhead

  Exhortation

  Al Roosten

  The Semplica Girl Diaries

  Home

  My Chivalric Fiasco

  Tenth of December

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  VICTORY LAP

  Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday, Alison Pope paused at the top of the stairs.

  Say the staircase was marble. Say she descended and all heads turned. Where was {special one}? Approaching now, bowing slightly, he exclaimed, How can so much grace be contained in one small package? Oops. Had he said small package? And just stood there? Broad princelike face totally bland of expression? Poor thing! Sorry, no way, down he went, he was definitely not {special one}.

  What about this guy, behind Mr. Small Package, standing near the home entertainment center? With a thick neck of farmer integrity yet tender ample lips, who, placing one hand on the small of her back, whispered, Dreadfully sorry you had to endure that bit about the small package just now. Let us go stand on the moon. Or, uh, in the moon. In the moonlight.

  Had he said, Let us go stand on the moon? If so, she would have to be like, {eyebrows up}. And if no wry acknowledgment was forthcoming, be like, Uh, I am not exactly dressed for standing on the moon, which, as I understand it, is super-cold?

  Come on, guys, she couldn’t keep treading gracefully on this marble stairwell in her mind forever! That dear old white-hair in the tiara was getting all like, Why are those supposed princes making that darling girl march in place ad nausea? Plus she had a recital tonight and had to go fetch her tights from the dryer.

  Egads! One found oneself still standing at the top of the stairs.

  Do the thing where, facing upstairs, hand on railing, you hop down the stairs one at a time, which was getting a lot harder lately, due to, someone’s feet were getting longer every day, seemed like.

  Pas de chat, pas de chat.

  Changement, changement.

  Hop over thin metal thingie separating hallway tile from living-room rug.

  Curtsy to self in entryway mirror.

  Come on, Mom, get here. We do not wish to be castrigated by Ms. Callow again in the wings.

  Although actually she loved Ms. C. So strict! Also loved the other girls in class. And the girls from school. Loved them. Everyone was so nice. Plus the boys at her school. Plus the teachers at her school. All of them were doing their best. Actually, she loved her whole town. That adorable grocer, spraying his lettuce! Pastor Carol, with her large comfortable butt! The chubby postman, gesticulating with his padded envelopes! It had once been a mill town. Wasn’t that crazy? What did that even mean?

  Also she loved her house. Across the creek was the Russian church. So ethnic! That onion dome had loomed in her window since her Pooh footie days. Also loved Gladsong Drive. Every house on Gladsong was a Corona del Mar. That was amazing! If you had a friend on Gladsong, you already knew where everything was in his or her home.

  Jeté, jeté, rond de jambe.

  Pas de bourrée.

  On a happy whim, do front roll, hop to your feet, kiss the picture of Mom and Dad taken at Penney’s back in the Stone Ages, when you were that little cutie right there {kiss} with a hair bow bigger than all outdoors.

  Sometimes, feeling happy like this, she imagined a baby deer trembling in the woods.

  Where’s your mama, little guy?

  I don’t know, the deer said in the voice of Heather’s little sister Becca.

  Are you afraid? she asked it. Are you hungry? Do you want me to hold you?

  Okay, the baby deer said.

  Here came the hunter now, dragging the deer’s mother by the antlers. Her guts were completely splayed. Jeez, that was nice! She covered the baby’s eyes and was like, Don’t you have anything better to do, dank hunter, than kill this baby’s mom? You seem like a nice enough guy.

  Is my mom killed? the baby said in Becca’s voice.

  No, no, she said. This gentleman was just leaving.

  The hunter, captivated by her beauty, toffed or doffed his cap, and, going down on one knee, said, If I could will life back into this fawn, I would do so, in hopes you might defer one tender kiss upon our elderly forehead.

  Go, she said. Only, for your task of penance, do not eat her. Lay her out in a field of clover, with roses strewn about her. And bestow a choir, to softly sing of her foul end.

  Lay who out? the baby deer said.

  No one, she said. Never mind. Stop asking so many questions.

  Pas de chat, pas de chat.

  Changement, changement.

  She felt hopeful that {special one} would hail from far away. The local boys possessed a certain je ne sais quoi, which, tell the truth, she was not très crazy about, such as: actually named their own nuts. She had overheard that! And aspired to work for CountyPower because the work shirts were awesome and you got them free.

  So ixnay on the local boys. A special ixnay on Matt Drey, owner of the largest mouth in the land. Kissing him last night at the pe
p rally had been like kissing an underpass. Scary! Kissing Matt was like suddenly this cow in a sweater is bearing down on you, who will not take no for an answer, and his huge cow head is being flooded by chemicals that are drowning out what little powers of reason Matt actually did have.

  What she liked was being in charge of her. Her body, her mind. Her thoughts, her career, her future.

  That was what she liked.

  So be it.

  We might have a slight snack.

  Un petit repas.

  Was she special? Did she consider herself special? Oh, gosh, she didn’t know. In the history of the world, many had been more special than her. Helen Keller had been awesome; Mother Teresa was amazing; Mrs. Roosevelt was quite chipper in spite of her husband, who was handicapped, which, in addition, she had been gay, with those big old teeth, long before such time as being gay and First Lady was even conceptual. She, Alison, could not hope to compete in the category of those ladies. Not yet, anyway!

  There was so much she didn’t know! Like how to change the oil. Or even check the oil. How to open the hood. How to bake brownies. That was embarrassing, actually, being a girl and all. And what was a mortgage? Did it come with the house? When you breast-fed, did you have to like push the milk out?

  Egads. Who was this wan figure, visible through the living-room window, trotting up Gladsong Drive? Kyle Boot, palest kid in all the land? Still dressed in his weird cross-country toggles?

  Poor thing. He looked like a skeleton with a mullet. Were those cross-country shorts from the like Charlie’s Angels days or quoi? How could he run so well when he seemed to have literally no muscles? Every day he ran home like this, shirtless with his backpack on, then hit the remote from down by the Fungs’ and scooted into his garage without breaking stride.

  You almost had to admire the poor goof.

  They’d grown up together, been little beaners in that mutual sandbox down by the creek. Hadn’t they bathed together when wee or some such crud? She hoped that never got out. Because in terms of friends, Kyle was basically down to Feddy Slavko, who walked leaning way backward and was always retrieving things from between his teeth, announcing the name of the retrieved thing in Greek, then re-eating it. Kyle’s mom and dad didn’t let him do squat. He had to call home if the movie in World Culture might show bare boobs. Each of the items in his lunch box was clearly labeled.

  Pas de bourrée.

  And curtsy.

  Pour quantity of Cheez Doodles into compartmentalized old-school Tupperware dealie.

  Thanks, Mom, thanks, Dad. Your kitchen rocks.

  Shake Tupperware dealie back and forth like panning for gold, then offer to some imaginary poor gathered round.

  Please enjoy. Is there anything else I can do for you folks?

  You have already done enough, Alison, by even deigning to speak to us.

  That is so not true! Don’t you understand, all people deserve respect? Each of us is a rainbow.

  Uh, really? Look at this big open sore on my poor shriveled flank.

  Allow me to fetch you some Vaseline.

  That would be much appreciated. This thing kills.

  But as far as that rainbow idea? She believed that. People were amazing. Mom was awesome, Dad was awesome, her teachers worked so hard and had kids of their own, and some were even getting divorced, such as Mrs. Dees, but still always took time for their students. What she found especially inspiring about Mrs. Dees was that, even though Mr. Dees was cheating on Mrs. Dees with the lady who ran the bowling alley, Mrs. Dees was still teaching the best course ever in Ethics, posing such questions as: Can goodness win? Or do good people always get shafted, evil being more reckless? That last bit seemed to be Mrs. Dees taking a shot at the bowling-alley gal. But seriously! Is life fun or scary? Are people good or bad? On the one hand, that clip of those gauntish pale bodies being steamrolled while fat German ladies looked on chomping gum. On the other hand, sometimes rural folks, even if their particular farms were on hills, stayed up late filling sandbags.

  In their straw poll she had voted for people being good and life being fun, with Mrs. Dees giving her a pitying glance as she stated her views: To do good, you just have to decide to do good. You have to be brave. You have to stand up for what’s right. At that last, Mrs. Dees had made this kind of groan. Which was fine. Mrs. Dees had a lot of pain in her life, yet, interestingly? Still obviously found something fun about life and good about people, because otherwise why sometimes stay up so late grading you come in next day all exhausted, blouse on backward, having messed it up in the early-morning dark, you dear discombobulated thing?

  Here came a knock on the door. Back door. In-ter-est-ing. Who could it be? Father Dmitri from across the way? UPS? FedEx? With un petit check pour Papa?

  Jeté, jeté, rond de jambe.

  Pas de bourrée.

  Open door, and—

  Here was a man she did not know. Quite huge fellow, in one of those meter-reader vests.

  Something told her to step back in, slam the door. But that seemed rude.

  Instead she froze, smiled, did {eyebrow raise} to indicate: May I help you?

  Kyle Boot dashed through the garage, into the living area, where the big clocklike wooden indicator was set at All Out. Other choices included: Mom & Dad Out; Mom Out; Dad Out; Kyle Out; Mom & Kyle Out; Dad & Kyle Out; and All In.

  Why did they even need All In? Wouldn’t they know it when they were All In? Would he like to ask Dad that? Who, in his excellent totally silent downstairs woodshop, had designed and built the Family Status Indicator?

  Ha.

  Ha ha.

  On the kitchen island was a Work Notice.

  Scout: New geode on deck. Place in yard per included drawing. No goofing. Rake areas first, put down plastic as I have shown you. Then lay in white rock. THIS GEODE EXPENSIVE. Pls take seriously. No reason this should not be done by time I get home. This = five (5) Work Points.

  Gar, Dad, do you honestly feel it fair that I should have to slave in the yard until dark after a rigorous cross-country practice that included sixteen 440s, eight 880s, a mile-for-time, a kajillion Drake sprints, and a five-mile Indian relay?

  Shoes off, mister.

  Yoinks, too late. He was already at the TV. And had left an incriminating trail of microclods. Way verboten. Could the microclods be hand-plucked? Although, problem: if he went back to hand-pluck the microclods, he’d leave an incriminating new trail of microclods.

  He took off his shoes and stood mentally rehearsing a little show he liked to call WHAT IF … RIGHT NOW?

  WHAT IF they came home RIGHT NOW?

  It’s a funny story, Dad! I came in thoughtlessly! Then realized what I’d done! I guess, when I think about it, what I’m happy about? Is how quickly I self-corrected! The reason I came in so thoughtlessly was, I wanted to get right to work, Dad, per your note!

  He raced in his socks to the garage, threw his shoes into the garage, ran for the vacuum, vacuumed up the microclods, then realized, holy golly, he had thrown his shoes into the garage rather than placing them on the Shoe Sheet as required, toes facing away from the door for ease of donnage later.

  He stepped into the garage, placed his shoes on the Shoe Sheet, stepped back inside.

  Scout, Dad said in his head, has anyone ever told you that even the most neatly maintained garage is going to have some oil on its floor, which is now on your socks, being tracked all over the tan Berber?

  Oh gar, his ass was grass.

  But no—celebrate good times, come on—no oil stain on rug.

  He tore off his socks. It was absolutely verboten for him to be in the main living area barefoot. Mom and Dad coming home to find him Tarzaning around like some sort of white trasher would not be the least fucking bit—

  Swearing in your head? Dad said in his head. Step up, Scout, be a man. If you want to swear, swear aloud.

  I don’t want to swear aloud.

  Then don’t swear in your head.

  Mom and Dad would be hea
rtsick if they could hear the swearing he sometimes did in his head, such as crap-cunt shit-turd dick-in-the-ear butt-creamery. Why couldn’t he stop doing that? They thought so highly of him, sending weekly braggy emails to both sets of grandparents, such as: Kyle’s been super-busy keeping up his grades while running varsity cross-country though still a sophomore, while setting aside a little time each day to manufacture such humdingers as cunt-swoggle rear-fuck—

  What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he be grateful for all that Mom and Dad did for him, instead of—

  Cornhole the ear-cunt.

  Flake-fuck the pale vestige with a proddering dick-knee.

  You could always clear the mind with a hard pinch on your own minimal love handle.

  Ouch.

  Hey, today was Tuesday, a Major Treat day. The five (5) new Work Points for placing the geode, plus his existing two (2) Work Points, totaled seven (7) Work Points, which, added to his eight (8) accrued Usual Chore Points, made fifteen (15) Total Treat Points, which could garner him a Major Treat (for example, two handfuls of yogurt-covered raisins) plus twenty free-choice TV minutes, although the particular show would have to be negotiated with Dad at time of cash-in.

  One thing you will not be watching, Scout, is America’s Most Outspoken Dirt Bikers.

  Whatever.

  Whatever, Dad.

  Really, Scout? “Whatever”? Will it be “whatever” when I take away all your Treat Points and force you to quit cross-country, as I have several times threatened to do if a little more cheerful obedience wasn’t forthcoming?

  No, no, no. I don’t want to quit, Dad. Please. I’m good at it. You’ll see, first meet. Even Matt Drey said—

  Who is Matt Drey? Some ape on the football team?

  Yes.

  Is his word law?

  No.

  What did he say?

  Little shit can run.

  Nice talk, Scout. Ape talk. Anyway, you may not make it to the first meet. Your ego seems to be overflowing its banks. And why? Because you can jog? Anyone can jog. Beasts of the field can jog.

  I’m not quitting! Anal-cock shit-bird rectum-fritz! Please, I’m begging you, it’s the only thing I’m decent at! Mom, if he makes me quit I swear to God I’ll—