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Authors: George Saunders
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time by volunteering for the Carlisle entrapment. The Carlisles are rich. A poor guy has a raccoon problem, he sprinkles poison in his trash and calls it a day. Not the Carlisles. They dominate bread routes throughout the city. Carlisle supposedly strong-armed his way to the top of the bread heap, but in person he’s nice enough. I let him observe me laying out the rotting fruit. I show him how the cage door coming down couldn’t hurt a flea. Then he goes inside and I wait patiently in my car.
Just after midnight I trip the wire. I fetch the Carlisles and encourage them to squat down and relate to the captured raccoon. Then I recite our canned speech congratulating them for their advanced thinking. I describe the wilderness where the release will take place, the streams and fertile valleys, the romp in the raccoon’s stride when it catches its first whiff of pristine air.
Mr. Carlisle says thanks for letting them sleep at night sans guilt. I tell him that’s my job. Just then the raccoon’s huge mate bolts out of the woods and tears into my calf. I struggle to my car and kick the mate repeatedly against my wheelwell until it dies with my leg in its mouth. The Carlisles stand aghast in the carport. I stand aghast in thedriveway, sick at heart. I’ve trapped my share of raccoons and helped Claude with more burials than I care to remember, but I’ve never actually killed anything before.
I throw both coons in the trunk and drive myself to the emergency room, where I’m given the first of a series of extremely painful shots. I doze off on a bench post-treatment and dream of a den of pathetic baby raccoons in V-neck sweaters yelping for food.
When I wake up I call in. Tim asks if I’m crazy, kicking a raccoon to death in front of clients. Couldn’t I have gently lifted it off, he asks, or offered it some rotting fruit? Am I proud of my ability to fuck up one-car funerals? Do I or do I not recall Damian Flaverty?
Who could forget Damian Flaverty? He’d been dipping into the till to finance his necktie boutique. Tim black-jacked him into a crumpled heap on the floor and said: Do you think I spent nine years in the slammer only to get out and be fleeced by your ilk? Then he broke Damian’s arm with an additional whack. I almost dropped my mug.
I tell Tim I’m truly sorry I didn’t handle the situation more effectively. He says the raccoon must’ve had a sad last couple of minutes once it realized it had given up its life for the privilege of gnawing on a shank of pure fat. That hurts. Why I continue to expect decent treatment from someone who’s installed a torture chamber in the corporate basement is beyond me. Down there he’s got a Hide-A-Bed and a whip collection and an executioner’s mask with a built-in Walkman. Sometimes when I’m invoicing late he’ll bring in one of his willing victims. Usually they’re both wasto. I get as much of me under my desk as I can. Talk about the fall of man. Talk about some father somewhere being crestfallen if he knew what his daughter was up to.Once I peeked out as they left and saw a blonde with a black eye going wherever Tim pointed and picking up his coat whenever he purposely dropped it.
“You could at least take me for coffee,” she said.
“I’d like to spill some on your bare flesh,” Tim said.
“Mmm,” she said. “Sounds good.”
How do people get like this, I thought. Can they change back? Can they learn again to love and be gentle? How can they look at themselves in the mirror or hang Christmas ornaments without overflowing with self-loathing?
Then I thought: I may be obese but at least I’m not cruel to the point of being satanic.
Next day Tim was inducted into Rotary and we all went to the luncheon. He spoke on turning one’s life around. He spoke on the bitter lessons of incarceration. He sang the praises of America and joked with balding sweetheart ophthalmologists, and after lunch hung his Rotary plaque in the torture chamber stairwell and
Just after midnight I trip the wire. I fetch the Carlisles and encourage them to squat down and relate to the captured raccoon. Then I recite our canned speech congratulating them for their advanced thinking. I describe the wilderness where the release will take place, the streams and fertile valleys, the romp in the raccoon’s stride when it catches its first whiff of pristine air.
Mr. Carlisle says thanks for letting them sleep at night sans guilt. I tell him that’s my job. Just then the raccoon’s huge mate bolts out of the woods and tears into my calf. I struggle to my car and kick the mate repeatedly against my wheelwell until it dies with my leg in its mouth. The Carlisles stand aghast in the carport. I stand aghast in thedriveway, sick at heart. I’ve trapped my share of raccoons and helped Claude with more burials than I care to remember, but I’ve never actually killed anything before.
I throw both coons in the trunk and drive myself to the emergency room, where I’m given the first of a series of extremely painful shots. I doze off on a bench post-treatment and dream of a den of pathetic baby raccoons in V-neck sweaters yelping for food.
When I wake up I call in. Tim asks if I’m crazy, kicking a raccoon to death in front of clients. Couldn’t I have gently lifted it off, he asks, or offered it some rotting fruit? Am I proud of my ability to fuck up one-car funerals? Do I or do I not recall Damian Flaverty?
Who could forget Damian Flaverty? He’d been dipping into the till to finance his necktie boutique. Tim black-jacked him into a crumpled heap on the floor and said: Do you think I spent nine years in the slammer only to get out and be fleeced by your ilk? Then he broke Damian’s arm with an additional whack. I almost dropped my mug.
I tell Tim I’m truly sorry I didn’t handle the situation more effectively. He says the raccoon must’ve had a sad last couple of minutes once it realized it had given up its life for the privilege of gnawing on a shank of pure fat. That hurts. Why I continue to expect decent treatment from someone who’s installed a torture chamber in the corporate basement is beyond me. Down there he’s got a Hide-A-Bed and a whip collection and an executioner’s mask with a built-in Walkman. Sometimes when I’m invoicing late he’ll bring in one of his willing victims. Usually they’re both wasto. I get as much of me under my desk as I can. Talk about the fall of man. Talk about some father somewhere being crestfallen if he knew what his daughter was up to.Once I peeked out as they left and saw a blonde with a black eye going wherever Tim pointed and picking up his coat whenever he purposely dropped it.
“You could at least take me for coffee,” she said.
“I’d like to spill some on your bare flesh,” Tim said.
“Mmm,” she said. “Sounds good.”
How do people get like this, I thought. Can they change back? Can they learn again to love and be gentle? How can they look at themselves in the mirror or hang Christmas ornaments without overflowing with self-loathing?
Then I thought: I may be obese but at least I’m not cruel to the point of being satanic.
Next day Tim was inducted into Rotary and we all went to the luncheon. He spoke on turning one’s life around. He spoke on the bitter lessons of incarceration. He sang the praises of America and joked with balding sweetheart ophthalmologists, and after lunch hung his Rotary plaque in the torture chamber stairwell and
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