Modern Communications Techniques in Des Moines (and other stories) by Gary Britson

8/7/2019 Modern Communications Techniques in Des Moines (and other stories) by Gary Britson

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Modern Communications Techniques

in Des Moines

(and other stories)



Modern Communications Techniques

in Des Moines

(and other stories)

Gary Britson

Murphy’s Law Press

2009



Also by Gary Britson

The Courthouse Record Store



© Gary Britson, 2009All rights reserved

Modern Communications Techniques in Des Moines (and other stories) is awork of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’simagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any informationstorage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 0-9754308-6-6

Cover design by Matt St. AmandPrinted and bound in USA

Published 2009 byMurphy’s Law Press

www.murphyslawpress.com



For Tom McHale (1942 – 1982)



Contents

What’s Been Going On In Des Moines Lately, Probably 8

A Job For Gotsdiner 12 Modern Communications Techniques In Des Moines 28

Problems In Political Commentary Vis A Vis Secondary Education In Des Moines 34

A Brief History Of The Insurance BusinessIn Des Moines 38

2 Brothers 40

Respect the System 42 Dining In Des Moines: Zombies At The Salad Bar 49



What’s Been Going On In Des Moines Lately, Probably

Now that summer is over and everyone is back from the Green Day

tour, I thought I’d go over some of the stuff that’s been happening in DesMoines lately, if you’re still interested.

Legal Update: I am pleased to announce that the City Council hasfinally outlawed Dixieland bands from the County Fair if two or moremembers of said band are retired accountants. There were just too many of them and they were getting in the way.

My dog Oates: She wasn’t really lost. She was just over at the unionhall, digging up Jimmy Hoffa again. I didn’t mean to worry everyonewhen I sounded the alarm last spring, but she’s just about the only one

around here who’ll give me the time of day any more since I went onprobation.

My brother Earl : Now that he’s back from his tour of duty overseas,we’re doing just what his doctors told us to do: Keep him supplied withplenty of cold Old Milwaukee and don’t make any sudden noises. Let himsit by the TV and sop up the suds and take it easy. Since this is prettymuch the way he’d lived before he enlisted, things around here haven’tchanged all that much. Earl is considering various options, such as

furthering his education. Right now he’s got it narrowed down to theDeVry Institute and Harvard Divinity School. Depends on which one willgive him adequate funding. Personally, I’d go for the technical training, asthere isn’t much call around here for theologians, now that everyone hascable and can watch Believers Voice of Victory whenever they want.

Besides, we’ve got old Elmer Rudge down to the Seventh DayAdventists, and like my Dad always said, one Duns Scotus expert in atown is enough. I always liked medieval scholastics, but they do tend to goon a bit.

Thomas Pynchon: He really got everyone’s dander up at the CountyFair last summer, setting up that autograph booth right next to the ball park and giving free autographed first editions of Gravity’s Rainbow just tospite me for not letting him on the softball team, on account of I didn’twant him hanging around my sister any more. I just don’t think he’s agood influence on her. When word got out that he’d be doing a nightlybook signing, all those skinny girls from the junior college descended onthe town and folks wanting to go to the softball tournament couldn’t find a

place to park. I’d rather have a shortstop who can’t discuss postmodernismthan some stuck-up little geek who won’t even accept an invitation toappear on Oprah. It’s not my fault he can’t hit a change-up.

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Modern Communications Techniques in Des Moines (and other stories)

The Nobel Peace Prize: Once again the community has bandedtogether to formally nominate our own Sheriff Roy Albrecht for the NobelPeace Prize. This year we got it submitted in the right kind of envelopeand to the right address. The ladies of the church got together and did thecalligraphy and also provided the ribbons. Anyone who can keep the peacefive years running at the Zoo Bar deserves some recognition. I know Roy’snot as famous as some of those laureates, but I don’t see how you can givea Peace Prize to someone who’s never even run for sheriff.

Annals of Justice: You probably saw in the paper how our own AmesNickelsworth got his plumbing lethally ventilated by a blast from theshotgun of his neighbor, Walt Croolly. Walt was convicted of murder onetwo years ago, as you know, but over the summer the homos on the Iowa

Supreme Court said he didn’t do it after all and gave him a new trial. Of course, all the real men were out of town for the summer following theGreen Day tour and who was left to man the jury? Bunch of socialists andSeventh Day Adventists and kids working at Wal-Mart. I mean, get real.Anyway, Walt got a new trial and they convicted him of manslaughter, areal slap on the wrist. He’ll be out of prison in a year or two. Word has itthat down to the prison, his dance card has been pretty full the last coupleof years.

My Little League Team: We changed our name from the Wildcats tothe Badass Mutant Disciples, but we still lost to St. Mary’s 21-3. It wascloser than it sounds. We’d have made the playoffs if we’d won a game,I’m convinced.

Health issues: Have you noticed that since AIDS came and went,nobody ever talks about getting the clap any more? They used to talk aboutit all the time, especially Nestor, but I think he was just bragging.

Probation: It’s not as bad as you might think. My probation officer is apleasant lady, but I have to call her Ms. Sanderson and she won’t go to the

movies with me. She says she’ll have me revoked if I ask her again.Women. Go figure.

The arts: The high school production of The Phantom of the Opera hita snag, on account of they couldn’t get the rights. They decided to do itanyway. Shirley and her sister had the album and their Aunt Melanie over in Omaha saw it and remembered a lot of the talk, so they just put their heads together and figured out some stuff to say between songs, but after acouple weeks of rehearsals they got a call from a guy who claimed that theguys who wrote the show would sue our eyeballs out if we sold tickets, onaccount of the rights hadn’t been purchased and are not, in fact, evenavailable. So we wrote him a nice letter saying we’ll do Carousel instead,but then we’ll go ahead and do The Phantom of the Opera anyway. Ipersonally don’t think a bunch of fruits in New York give a rat’s wazoo if

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Gary Britson

we do The Phantom of the Opera anyway. They just wanted to get a niceletter. There’s nothing much in this world that can’t be fixed with a niceletter. It always worked with my Aunt Sally and it will work here, I am

sure. Actually, I like Carousel better anyway. My favorite is still AnyoneCan Whistle, though, but I have never been able to drum up any interest init around here, on account of what happened at the gym the last time SteveSondheim came to town. The less said about that the better, in my opinion.

Meanwhile, pre-production plans for my long-awaited staging of Dialogues of the Carmelites are almost complete. Mindy’s doing the setsand Ed is looking for a guillotine. He thinks there’s one in his UncleLyle’s barn. I wouldn’t be surprised. Old Lyle has always gotten a funnylook in his eye around Bastille Day.

Law: Sheriff Leo was arresting guys for speeding and driving drunk and then they were going downtown and getting the charges dropped onaccount of the deputy kept forgetting to show up for the trial or theevidence was tainted with suppressions or some such. So Leo hit uponwhat appears to be a good idea. He arrests a guy and then instead of takingthem to Court he just brings them over here and lets Harold give them agood talking to. After five minutes of his admixture of The SynopticGospels, Thomas Pynchon (again, that guy just won’t go away) and his

speech about Hillary, the poor guys always end up paying about whatthey’d pay in court, only we get to keep the money for beer. I’m thinkingabout going to law school, but Mom says I have to finish high school first.Between coaching little league, shooting the breeze with my probationofficer and keeping Thomas Pynchon away from my sister, I don’t havetime to go to high school. Life is one thing after another.

Amelia Earhart : She died last month, in case you’re interested. She’dlived out to Smiling Cedars Care Facility. She worked there, you know, for about 50 years as a nurse’s aide and part-time water-skiing instructor, and

then when she took sick she became a patient. She came to town becauseshe had heard that Des Moines was a nice quiet place to write one’smemoirs, but what with nursing and water-skiing and what-not, I don’tthink she ever got around to it. Judge Crater came to the funeral, but hardlyanyone else. Don’t tell him I told you.

The Maynard Boy: He got back from Iraq in August. Seems fine,except he appears to think he’s George C. Scott in the first reel of Patton.Spends most of his time at the Legion Hall, talking about the Battle of El

Alamein. He’ll be fine after we have a church supper for him nextSaturday and he has a double helping of Alice’s Chicken Tetrazzini withsauerkraut and beer. Anyone’s ever been a little out of touch with reality,that always brings them around. Everybody’s welcome, but this may beone of those events that is not suited for family viewing.

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The Rossman Boy: He came home from Iraq last Friday. Services willbe Tuesday at eleven, with a church supper in the basement after. Edith’smaking pie.

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look at Gotsdiner and figured he was there to ask for retirementinformation.

“I don’t want to retire,” he said. “I want a job.” Most of them tried notto laugh in his face, but some couldn’t help it. Their laughter caromeddown the corridors like crude weapons as Gotsdiner retreated.

Whenever he got a T.S.G. letter, which was often, he consideredsending an arch, sarcastic reply, something brimming with well-tooledmalice and charming vitriol. But he refrained. Why bother? He knew thatno one in any Human Resources department could read.

Gotsdiner called one of his oldest and dearest friends, the executivedirector of a local firm of substance. Gotsdiner greeted him warmly.

“Who?” the friend asked, disbelief and fear mingling in his voice.

Gostsdiner repeated his unlikely name, but the friend was drawing ablank.

“Who?” the friend wailed.“I’m looking for a job, old buddy,” Gotsdiner said, recounting old

college days and drunken frolics and suspicious misadventures of youth, inwhich he and the old friend had often been partners and co-conspirators.

“Who?” the friend cried.“It’s Gotsdiner,” Gotsdiner said. “I’m looking for a job.”The friend was speechless. When it comes to job-hunting, nobody is

anybody’s friend. Gotsdiner listened to the silence, and when it becametoo loud, he gently hung up.

If friends greeted his inquiries with deafening apathy, the totalstrangers were sadists, honing their skills of treachery and betrayal topoints of exquisite fineness. The world, it seemed, was now run bynineteen-year-old girls. They answered the phones, they occupied thereceptionists’ desks, they snarled, irritated at Gotsdiner for showing up justas they were about to repair to the ladies’ room to take yet another home

pregnancy test. When Gotsdiner had entered the job market, it had beenrun by men in their forties and fifties. Where had they all gone? Gotsdiner called old employers, old professors, old roommates, seeking counsel andadvice, but the old employers were either dead or in the nuthouse, the oldprofessors were on permanent retreat, and the roommates were either inprison or unemployed themselves. A few old acquaintances had risen tospectacular heights in the world of big business, but, like his former oldestand dearest friend, they were so terrified of losing their positions that theyhad surrounded themselves with an impenetrable phalanx of toadies, yes-men, goombahs and nineteen-year-old girls, whose collective job was tokeep Gotsdiner away, at bay, far, far away.

Gotsdiner decided to improve his employability by buying a new suit,but the clothiers who had for years clad his lumpy and inadequate frame

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informed him, without a trace of regret, that he could no longer affordthem, and that he would now have to take his custom elsewhere, like to theSalvation Army.

Gotsdiner did not feel that he had actually changed much since the axehad fallen. But everyone else had. Once-cheerful countermen and groceryclerks now gave him the evil eye. Merchants with whom he had exchangedlight and witty banter now wouldn’t give him the time of day. Theyseemed, in fact, to resent his business, on the theory, apparently, thatGotsdiner was swathed in bad luck and that it might rub off. He quit diningout, bought little or nothing, stayed home, watched TV.

TV had changed since Gotsdiner’s youth, when there had been threechannels. Now there were at least seven hundred. There were special

channels devoted to religion, pastry, exercise, iffy real estate practices,athletics, classical music, fishing. Some channels showed nothing but theblack-and-white comedies and dramas of his ancient youth. Gotsdiner haddisliked this crap in the fifties, and he disliked it now. Time, which workedwonders for cheese, wine, and certain mutual funds, did absolutely nothingfor stale and unconvincing jokes. The announcers who introduced thisdreck, though, seemed entranced by it. They spoke of old episodes of Leave It To Beaver and The Munsters with the wonder and awe that should

have been reserved for promoting Die Zauberflote at Covent Garden.Gotsdiner wondered why the Library at Alexandria was gone, but reruns of I Love Lucy were readily available at any time of the day or night. It hadonce been customary to teach young men Greek and Latin, as a matter of course. Now young men were taught the dialogues of long-dead gag-menwith names like Morty and Art. It occurred to Gotsdiner that hisphilosophical reflections were naught but the musings of a prematurelyaging misanthrope, and he resolved to change his ways. A tall order, inGotsdiner’s case.

Gotsdiner’s Case: The People vs. Gotsdiner . A case for the ages, andhis was fifty. Therefore, his guilt was presumed. Guilty of being too old.Why had the world turned against him? His old friend Priscilla, once thelight of his life and now a local financier and mover-and-shaker who wasway too successful to be concerned with the likes of him, shed some lighton the subject one afternoon, returning a call he had made a month or twoearlier.

“Because you don’t amount to a hill of beans, hot stuff. Never did,”

Priscilla trilled, her voice unnecessarily cheery and bright. The cheer of money, Gotsdiner knew. She had a lot of it, knew how to get it, always hadand always would. Even in their antique youth, Gotsdiner knew, she hadsensed that any investment in his future would be unwise and hilariouslyunprofitable. Once a squeeze—perhaps even a main one, in the

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nanosecond of their abortive courtship—Gotsdiner knew he was not even afootnote to her history now. Which was why she had returned his call,after a hefty wait. To mock him, in the manner exclusive to the dizzyingheights of executive suitedom.

“How’s about a job, for old time’s sake?” Gotsdiner said, trying tosound concerned, rather than desperate, hopeful rather than doomed.

Priscilla’s laugh was a noon whistle, a rebel yell, the triumphanttrumpet of a jungle predator.

“I wouldn’t hire you to drain my pool, Gotsy,” she cried. “I’m all infavor of ‘old time’s sake’ and all that other sentimental horseshit. Butyou? Where the hell would our industry put an unemployed bureaucratwho’s, what, fifty now?”

“Fifty, same as you,” Gotsdiner said, reflecting that he had heard thevoice of doom a few times in his life, but never from his very own voicebox.

Priscilla whooped. She was having entirely too much fun withGotsdiner’s misfortune.

“Nothing, honey,” she said, cracking up, holding the phone away fromher ebullient and no-doubt slightly chubby face long enough to regain her composure, “nothing, about you, is the same as me.” The concept of Gotsdiner being in any way her peer engulfed her once again, and shecollapsed in mirth.

Gotsdiner held the phone away from his burning ear. Since hisdismissal, everyone seemed to be laughing all the time. He hadn’tremembered that much laughter from the halcyon days of his prosperity.He waited for her to recover from this attack of the giggles, but when itseemed certain that hers was a terminal case, he gently returned his uselessphone to its cradle and took a nap.

At day’s end, the mailman brought him a fistful of letters from

uninterested employers. They wrote to tell Gotsdiner of their sorrow. Theywere all sorry. Gotsdiner could almost see the tear-stains on the boiler-plate pages. But they were also grateful. Thank you, they wrote. Thank you. Their gratitude slopped all over the place, like spaghetti sauce on afresh white shirt. And Good Luck. That was the worst part. Good luck. If you wanted me to have good luck, Gotsdiner mused, you’d just give methe goddamn job and keep your sorrow to yourself. And how am I to useyour unwanted, unrequested, un-asked-for sorrow? Where can I spend it?

On the dizzyingly false theory that he was just killing time until he“found something”—as everyone said he would: “You’ll find something!Hang in there!”—Gotsdiner took a job at the post office. He lasted onewhole week and part of another until conceding that it wasn’t the snow, therain, or the dark of night that was keeping him from the swift completion

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of his appointed rounds, but rather the militaristic, not to mentiondictatorial, not to mention fascist, nature of the management, which drovehim to the voluntarily resumption of his unemployment, his idleness, his

sloth. Somewhere between the diplomacy of Idi Amin and the patience of Vlad the Impaler lay the character of his supervisors. They had all servedwith distinction in the army, so they said. And they made it clear toGotsdiner that only proud veterans of the various illegal wars in which hiscountry had engaged during the last thirty years or so were morally worthyof federal employment, that they and they alone packed the ethical andpatriotic gear needed to deliver mountains of unwanted junk mail to thehousewives of his town. They had no use for his dearth of militaryexperience, and what they perceived to be a latently pacifistic, i.e. commie,

mind set, and when he at last pointed out that of the entire local postalcorps, he and he alone had packed the brains to figure out a way to stay thehell out of the army, that, as they say, was that. Gotsdiner went home andturned on the TV. He watched reruns of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,

whose teenage characters with names like Maynard G. Krebs and ZeldaGilroy, faced with the first rumblings of a disquieting world, smiled andsaid “Surely you jest” in moments of stress. It seemed to work for them.

There were times when Gotsdiner himself, rattling around the house in

despondent—and, increasingly, alcoholic—despair, found himself muttering these very words. After a morning of being rejected by anendless host of haughty H.R. teenagers, Gotsdiner shouted “Surely youjest!” at no one in particular. He went to a local print shop and ordered aSurely You Jest rubber stamp in capital letters. For a week, he spent timeevery afternoon stamping this new motto on the T.S.G. letters he receivedand returning them to the baffled senders. It didn’t improve his standing inthe local job market, but at this point he didn’t particularly care.

He decided to engage in some soul-searching, although he had always

felt in close touch with his soul. Sometimes the damn thing wouldn’t goaway, like a stale lover or the flu. Nevertheless, he searched.

To start with the obvious: Gotsdiner wasn’t very smart and he didn’treally know anything. This wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Lots of men of high rank and wealth were airheads. Some didn’t even have air, weredying from oxygen deprivation, and it didn’t keep them from reapingevery benefit their God could think to shower upon them. Smarts andknowledge were overrated. Just look at TV, at the success of Morty and

Art, Herman Munster, the lizards who sold car insurance. In a world whereGreek was eschewed in favor of boys named Beaver, what the hell did aguy need with smarts?

He was generous, too. He gave fifty dollars to Jerry’s Kids everyLabor Day, and five bucks to the paper boy at Christmas. He had never

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beaten anyone up and only insulted people who definitely had it coming tothem. He brushed after every meal. He was kind to animals, benevolent tothe poor, courteous to the halt, deferential to the elderly. He didn’t drink much, rarely threw up in public and was not nearly as much of a sexist pigas he had been in his salad days. Why wouldn’t anyone give him a job?

“Why should anyone give you a job?” asked the thirtyish headhunter to whose firm Gotsdiner paid beaucoup bucks to rustle up someemployment for him. He filled out their reams of paperwork, answeredtheir puerile questions, submitted to their sophomoric philosophizing, took their tests, breathed the sodden and excessively conditioned air of their high-rise. And now this little punk in his pinstripes and his pink shirt andthe tie with cartoon characters on it was looking down his nose at

Gotsdiner, asking why anyone would hire him.Gotsdiner didn’t despise the young any more than he despised anyone

else, but lately he was beginning to despise anyone else a great deal,everyone else, you name it, especially when they challenged his right towork. Especially when he paid them cash money to find him a job and thebest they could do was ask idiot questions.

He explained to the young man that he should be hired because he hadan impeccable work record, perfect attendance, high standards,outstanding production, great personal hygiene and an unblemished recordof being an all-around nice guy.

Then he tipped over the guy’s chair—with the guy still in it—and wenthome.

Gotsdiner went shopping. The streets were filled with cars, the storeswere filled with men and women his own age and younger. Why weren’tthey working? They couldn’t be unemployed. They looked too healthy, tooclean and sober, too motivated. Motivated by what? By early retirement, of course. Nowadays, you got yourself a great job the day after you got your

diploma, and fifteen years later you were a man or woman of leisure. Ithadn’t been that way in Gotsdiner’s day. Not, come to think of it, that he’dever really had a day, but if he’d had, it certainly didn’t include retirementat 36. Back then, you struggled to find some low-life job to pay off your student loan. Forty years later, if you lived, you might be able to quit work and spend the rest of your days in the modest home you’d sweated decadesto pay for. Now the book stores and their concomitant de rigueur coffeeshops were filled with 36-year-old millionaires. They stocked up on Proustand Jane Austen to read on their next Hawaiian extravaganzas, their perpetual vacations. What did they do with these books? Gotsdiner knewthey didn’t read them. Used them as props, probably, furnishing animaginary life of the mind.

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Gotsdiner applied for a job as a book store clerk. He filled out theforms in a fine professional hand, then went home and waited. Nobodycalled to ask him to report for work first thing Monday. What kind of a

world was it where a well-educated professional man with twenty-sevenyears of experience couldn’t get the kind of clerical job traditionallyreserved for teenagers or doddering retirees?

A new world, that’s what kind of world. A new one, in whichGotsdiner had no place.

Weary of considering himself unemployed, Gotsdiner decided tochange tactics. He would now consider himself retired. Retired soundedbetter than unemployed. It didn’t mean anything much. He was still broke,still graying, and still couldn’t get laid in the proverbial whorehouse, but

when he looked in the mirror he could see definite possibilities for becoming a successful old coot. He would sit on park benches and mock the ambitious. He would play shuffleboard and bitch about the governmentand welfare. He could dawdle for hours over a single cup of coffee at thediner. The flabby waitress would be known as Marge and she would callhim Hon. He would leave her a dime tip.

But after a couple of hours, the whole scenario left Gotsdiner reelingwith a fierce blend of nausea and vertigo. He abandoned the concept of

cootdom. Besides, there were no park benches any more (the parks wereway too dangerous), the shuffleboard courts had been razed to make roomfor juvenile detention centers, and welfare wasn’t really such a bad ideathese days.

Gotsdiner’s neighbors, the Hendersons, bought a dog. He was a bigguy. They named him Duke, probably after John Wayne, but Gotsdiner couldn’t be sure. The neighbors’ children were little girls, way too small towalk a big dog like that. And mom and dad worked all day and wereprobably too tired at day’s end to go for a walk. Gotsdiner looked out his

kitchen window in the morning and saw the jumbo puppy sitting in hisyard, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for a party, a job, somekind of action. It seemed mean to keep him waiting, but human andcorporate cruelty had worked such a savage number on Gotsdiner’s ownspirit that he had almost become inured to pain. Almost. There remained asoupcon of sympathy left in him. The dog sensed a soft touch next door and stared at Gotsdiner’s house. Feeling sorry for the pooch, wholanguished ignored and unloved in the neighbors’ yard, Gotsdiner

volunteered to walk him during the day. It wasn’t as if he had anythingelse to do. The man of the house accepted the offer immediately. The guyclearly hadn’t wanted the dog in the first place, and had only caved inunder severe pressure from the wife and kids, who probably had variousromantic notions about the joys of pet ownership but no actual interest in

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the daily nuts and bolts realities of canine maintenance. So it fell toGotsdiner to walk the dog.

Duke was black and brown and white, part Huskie, maybe a drop of German Shepherd blood in there somewhere, and strong as a bull. Hecould have pulled a sled through arctic terrain with joy and ease; draggingan aging jobless old guy through the sunny streets was no problem at all.Gotsdiner bought his own leash, a sturdy black canvas strap, and it got aworkout, for once Duke got over his initial shyness he expected to bewalked every day, two or three times per day if possible, and why wasn’t itpossible? The dog seemed to know a sucker when he saw one. He knewGotsdiner was unemployed and had nothing else to do. He read Gotsdiner like a dime novel. The dog’s eyes were knowing and pure, and they spoke:

Why not walk me? Why vegetate in sloth and despondency when you canbreathe fresh air, exercise those atrophying limbs and do something useful

for a change? Everybody loves doggies and nobody loves you. Come walk with me. Let us be happy. Let us find friendship. He was hard to arguewith.

Hard to resist, too. Everyone loved Duke. They liked his name, heardin it suggestions of dignity and grandeur one didn’t see every day in thesegray and pointless streets. John Wayne, the Blue Devils, Mr. Ellington: thedog’s name came from a long line of winners. Duke was a winner.Everyone loved him. Some of this respect, if not exactly affection, rubbedoff on Gotsdiner. People who would never otherwise have given him thetime of day greeted him as he walked, just as an excuse for saying hello toand greeting and petting Duke. Some of them called Duke The Dukester,Dukerino. The dog was a hit, the kind of hit Gotsdiner had never eventhought about being. For the first time in recent memory, folks wereactually nice to Gotsdiner. The dog’s good fortune at being rescued fromthe kennel had rubbed off on him.

Of course, there were drawbacks. Duke made more pit stops in an hour than Gotsdiner made in a week, or so it seemed. Other walkers carriedwith them little plastic bags in which to scoop up the offending material,but he figured he was already carrying enough refuse around with him as itwas—toting, as he did, truckloads of frustration, anger and guiltthroughout his solitary and impecunious days. He had burdens enough. Hedrew the line at toting offal. It was, after all, biodegradable. Nature meltedit down. It deliquesced. It would have been different if Duke hadeliminated toxic waste, but he didn’t. What was the big deal? Gotsdiner letthe animal act as nature had designed it to act, without objection,correction or plastic bags.

At first, Gotsdiner walked Duke once a day, usually after shaving,bathing, staring at his sad and silly resume—a document that lingered on

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his computer like a lifeless leaf on a November tree—and engaging in acouple hours of intense self-pity and professional grief. He watched Leave

It to Beaver , The Munsters, maybe Sanford and Son or Dobie Gillis. Then

he edited his resume—that existential chronicle of despair; even Sartrecouldn’t pack so much hopelessness into a single page—added a fewadjectives, exaggerated a few references, expanded on reality, mixedmemory and desire. Then threw in the towel. He knew when he waslicked. Time for a walk.

Gotsdiner trudged. Ahead of him, Duke pranced. He strutted. The dogwas way too young to realize what a bottomless mire the world was. Hethought it was a nice place. Wait ’til he finds out the truth, Gotsdiner thought. He’ll have to learn despair on his own, however. I’m not going to

teach it to him.Pedestrians of all ages and creeds stopped to pet Duke the Dog.

Curmudgeons, career cynics, psychopaths, parolees, wackos andmalcontents alike all shed their sociopathic tendencies for a few secondswhen they met Duke on the street. He melted hearts, impressed the jaded,charmed the troubled and brought joy everywhere. He was everybody’sfriend. He glowed like a saint and marched like a drum major. Here was acritter who didn’t need to look for a job. He knew his niche from day one:

being admired, being petted, a friend to all.Only Mr. Fitzwaugh failed to be moved by the beauty and nobility of Gotsdiner’s new friend. Fitzwaugh, who was said to own the renderingplant on the other side of town, was a widower, and a recluse andremorseless crabapple of long-standing. All Gotsdiner knew aboutrendering plants was that they took animal carcasses and melted, burnedand otherwise blasted them into some new, unimaginable product. Theresulting stench made the plant’s neighborhood uninhabitable, save for theWagnerian and subterranean trolls who were forced to work there. It was

no accident that Fitzwaugh himself didn’t live anywhere near the place. Ondays when the wind was feeling frisky, it carried vague but horrificwaftings of the rendering plant carnage into Gotsdiner’s neighborhood.Never for very long, but long enough to let him and his neighbors knowthat, a few miles to the south, there dwelt a living and malignant horror.Fitzwaugh had sense enough not to put his own name on the plant, buteveryone knew whose it was.

His antique brick home of Dickensian gloom languished two blocks

from Gotsdiner’s. The old man was said to leave the house rarely since hiswife, who no one had seen during the last ten years of her allegedly painfullife, had gone to her reward. Occasionally Fitzwaugh left to preside over the disposal of putrefying carcasses down at the plant for a few hours, butotherwise he stayed home. Doing what, no one could say. Gotsdiner first

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saw the old coot while following Duke on a morning canter. As dog andderelict went by, Fitzwaugh emerged from behind the kind of door thatmight have once borne the reflection of Marley’s Ghost. Duke had stoppedon the little strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk—cityordinances referred to it as “The Parking”—and was carefullyinvestigating something Gotsdiner couldn’t see and didn’t want to.Fitzwaugh emerged from his Victorian despond and stood in the doorway,wearing a black suit, white shirt and black tie.

“I don’t appreciate that,” he said. His voice was all money and dust.Gotsdiner looked up. “I don’t either,” he said. “It gets boring,

watching him poke around like this.”Fitzwaugh reddened and pointed a shaking finger at the dog.

“I mean,” he said, voice aquiver with self-importance, “I don’tappreciate that.”

Gotsdiner looked down at Duke, who smiled and wagged his tail. Theanimal had a wonderful innate patience with idiots.

“It’s all right, he didn’t defecate,” Gotsdiner said. “Besides, even if hedid, this is ‘The Parking.’ City property. Not yours.”

Fitzwaugh’s face became a fist of confusion. The smell of therendering plant had done a job on his complexion, and his face throbbed ina variety of unknown and slightly scary colors.

“That there’s my property,” he said.Gotsdiner’s job had once required some familiarity with the city code,

and he had actually read the unreadable thing, which was more than couldbe said for the folks who had written it. He knew what “The Parking” was.

Gotsdiner cleared his throat and assumed what he hoped was a slightlyimperious, professorial tone of voice.

“’The Parking’,” he announced, “is the area of land between the curband the sidewalk, and is under municipal jurisdiction.”

He’d hoped that Fitzwaugh would get it, but Fitzwaugh did not get it.Gotsdiner’s generous explanation did nothing to assuage the renderer’smood. He darkened, his face lurched and contorted. He quaked.

“My property,” he sneered, his voice a kazoo of rage.Gotsdiner thought about debating the old coot, but Duke wanted to

walk. He strained at his leash The dog had no need for dialogue at all,which was one of the reasons Gotsdiner liked him so much.

Gotsdiner followed Duke, but turned as he walked away. “It’s TheParking,” he said. “Municipal property.”

Duke and Gotsdiner walked down the street. They didn’t seeFitzwaugh walk down the steps to the sidewalk and stare at them as theyturned the corner.

21



Gary Britson

After a couple months of walking Duke, Gotsdiner developed areputation. A following, even. A local joke, he figured: Look at the oldman walking somebody else’s dog. He must be crazy. Why doesn’t he get

his own dog? Once in a while a total stranger asked that very question. Hehad no answer.During one walk, a lady doing some flower gardening in her front yard

stopped Gotsdiner and asked him if he would baby-sit her pet while sheand her husband visited their daughter in Duluth for a week. His neighborshad recommended him.

Gotsdiner agreed. The lady offered to pay him real cash money for visiting her home once in the morning and again in the evening, feedingthe puppy, and walking him. Gotsdiner was given a key to the tidy and

touching home, where pictures of dogs past and present were framed oncoffee tables. Gotsdiner opened the refrigerator, looking for beer, foundnone. Lots and lots of dog food, though. The dog itself wasn’t much. Verysmall, for starters, with a tendency to yap when addled, which was often.Gotsdiner was a little self-conscious walking this hyperactive animal. Itslegs moved with the speed of a jackhammer, making little rapping staccatosounds on the pavement. It walked with purpose and a certain amount of self-assurance and pride, but lacked the Dukester’s poise and nobility of

spirit. He got the feeling that people were laughing at him behind his back,but when the lady returned at the end of the week and wrote him a check for a hefty bonus, the wounds to his pride healed quickly.

Encouraged by this success—the first success he’d had since gettingthe boot at work—Gotsdiner placed a little ad in the newspaper, offeringhis services as a dogsitter. Soon his phone rang several times a week.People were leaving town, vacationing in Europe, visiting the grandkids inSchenectady, going to prison for a few months, rehab, that sort of thing.They may have let their personal and professional lives go to hell in a

handcart, but the pets were well provided for, and soon Gotsdiner foundthat he had, quite unintentionally, become an entrepreneur. Heincorporated, sought advice from the Small Business Administration,worried about the tax implications of it all. But usually he was having toomuch fun to worry. He liked the animals and they liked him. And not oneof them ever called him a dipshit or tried to get him fired.

Sometimes he went to the animals. Sometimes they came to him. Hebecame a dog valet, and on occasion, even a cat chauffeur. Animals took

to him as no human being ever had.The only drawback to all of this personal fulfillment, not to mention afair-to-middling cash-flow, was Fitzwaugh. In the pre-Duke days,Gotsdiner had never encountered the little pickle-puss. He had, in fact,gone years without seeing him. But now, walking pets through the

22




neighborhood five or six times a day, Fitzwaugh seemed to be around allthe time. Usually Gotsdiner steered clear of Fitzwaugh’s street, butsometimes he forgot, and one day, walking a frisky Dalmatian, he heardthe unmistakable whine of malice and rendering coming from the ancientoaken front door.

“I don’t appreciate that on my property!” Fitzwaugh puled, a littleRumpelstiltskin, an Albrecht, a skinny Mussolini frantically looking for apopulace to abuse.

On The Parking, with a slightly dyspeptic pooch on the leash,Gotsdiner was temporarily helpless.

“It’s biodegradable!” Gotsdiner chirped, but it didn’t do any good.“My property!” Fitzwaugh certainly was a territorial old geezer. Was

this an extension of his capitalistic nature, or had he been a creep beforestriking it rich? Probably the latter, Gotsdiner reflected. After all, hethought, I’m a small businessman myself now. And I don’t bother a soul.

“The Parking is municipal property,” Gotsdiner repeated with a sigh.“It’s not yours. Besides, it’s only a dog, and this is only—”

“My property!” and Fitzwaugh was inches from his face. Veinsjitterbugged over his eyebrows, and a big vessel pulsed furiously at hisneck. Gotsdiner feared being a witness to some sort of coronary explosion,ambulances, stretchers, emergency hysteria, questions, inquests anddepositions.

“Don’t make yourself crazy, it’s just nature,” Gotsdiner muttered, andyanked the dawdling pooch to attention, half dragging him away.

“It’s my property!”“It will deliquesce.”“My property.”“Municipal ground.”“Mine.”

The cop who knocked on Gotsdiner’s door that evening seemedembarrassed about the whole thing, but he was young, and Gotsdiner figured the kid had to do a lot of dumb things anyway, at this stage of hiscareer.

The uniformed lad said there’d been a complaint about an allegedviolation of Municipal Code chapter twenty-eight section nine, AnimalManagement. Gotsdiner knew how defensive cops got when discussingThe Law. They didn’t like to get the idea that anyone else had read thedarn things, and most certainly did not like hearing the statutes quoted tothem, but Gotsdiner couldn’t help it. Ever so humbly, he explained that hetoo had read the ordinance, and while it proscribed allowing leashedanimals to eliminate on private property, there was no such ban on saidactivity on “The Parking.”

23



Gary Britson

“The what?” the officer asked.“’The Parking,’” Gotsdiner patiently explained. “The area of land

between the curb and the sidewalk is under municipal jurisdiction. It ain’t

private.”The officer looked disappointed.“The dog has never defaced Fitzwaugh’s private property,” Gotsdiner

said. “Nor anyone else’s.” Looking over the officer’s shoulder, he couldsee Fitzwaugh lurking across the street, a miasma on legs, trying topretend he wasn’t there and doing a poor job of it.

The officer shuffled and looked at the ground. Gotsdiner had pre-empted his lecture, and under the circumstances there was nothing for thekid to do but either walk away in futile disgrace, or unsheathe the

nightstick he had been fingering and administer a really good beating toGotsdiner. Might as well get something out of this visit. Wisely, hethought better of it and went away without a word.

Gotsdiner watched as the officer and Fitzwaugh conferred across thestreet. The old renderer gestured frantically toward Gotsdiner’s housewhile the cop listened patiently, shrugged, and returned to his vehicle.Fitzwaugh remained on the sidewalk, glaring, fuming like tar.

Gotsdiner grabbed a leash and sprinted down the street a few blocks to

his next engagement. He walked a Lhasa Apso—a small, territorial littlebeast—collected his modest fee and went home. There was a doofus on hisdoorstep.

“Ricky Rusher, Neighborhood Improvement Association, how are youtoday?” said the adolescent carrot-top whose frantic smile and overdonepersonification of good will had no doubt been pasted on by years of Jaycee membership and reading those godawful self-help books that werepeddled on afternoon talk shows and sold at airports.

“I’m out of breath, and you don’t look so hot yourself,” Gotsdiner

said.The kid didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve been asked for your assistance in

making this a better neighborhood.”“If you’re taking up a collection for kindling with which to burn

Fitzwaugh at the stake, I’ll write you a check for the whole enchilada,”Gotsdiner said. “Otherwise, begone, go back to Oprah, leave me be.”

“Mister Fitzwaugh,” the kid said, his grin becoming more panicked bythe second, “would appreciate it if your dog would not evacuate on his

property.”“The only things that ever evacuated Fitzwaugh’s property were hissanity, which apparently jumped ship some years ago—in sheer terror, Isuspect—and his old lady, who had the good sense to meet her Maker rather than spend another no-doubt hellacious night under the same roof

24




with a guy who burns animals for a living,” Gotsdiner said. Ricky’scommunity spirit reached an almost hallucinatory zenith as he silently,frantically turned the pages of his memorized copy of the EmergencyManual for Dealing With the Public, a Jaycee tome which he always kepton file in his active if not particularly fertile mind. Chapter Nineteen: Howto Behave Around Older People Who Say Things You Don’t Understand.Section One: SMILE!

“Mr. Fitzwaugh wants to be your friend!” Ricky croaked.“Mr. Fitzwaugh hates my guts and wishes me dead,” Gotsdiner said.

“I, however, am merely a humble businessman. I wish none harm. I amkind to animals for a living. Neither I nor my charges have ever depositedany matter, organic or otherwise, on Mr. Fitzwaugh’s property, nor on

anyone else’s. ‘The Parking’—defined under the city code as the areabetween the curb and the sidewalk—is municipal, not Fitzwaughian,property. The animals—who, by the way, are darn near the only sentientbeings in this county who haven’t tried to wreck my life in the last year— are perfectly free to investigate, occupy and make contributions to saidproperty in any manner which Mother Nature deems fit. I realize that yonFitzwaugh, who, even as we speak, stands across the street, fuming likethe ancient sulphur pits of which he is no doubt redolent, believes thatoperating a business whose function is ripping, burning and melting thecarcasses of harmless animals who never in their tragically short lives ever harmed him or anyone else in any way, shape or form, automaticallymakes him morally superior to those of us with the audacity to helpanimals rather than maim them. But in this, as in everything else, no doubt,he is wrong, wrong, wrong. I shall continue to walk my dogs, my cats, myfurry friends. We shall, and usually do, try to steer clear of FitzwaughWay, but in the unlikely event that we exercise our municipal rights to trodupon a municipal sidewalk which happens to front Chez Fitz, and if at

such time Mother Nature, in her wisdom, commands us perform certainunsightly albeit unavoidable biological functions, than the animals will doso, with no objection from me. Who am I to tell Mother Nature what todo? And tell Old Fitzy”—here Gotsdiner pointed to the renderer, who,across the street, appeared to be performing an ancient war dance, a jig of rage—”that while the dogs and cats are making a pit stop, I might just dothe same, only I might not confine my activity to ‘The Parking.’ You hear that, Fitzy? If you don’t stop sending these children to do your dirty work for you, I might just go to the zoo, rent a couple of camels and an elephant,and take them for a walk down your street. I can confine dogs and cats tothe parking, Fitzy, but I don’t think I’ll be quite capable of reining in ahippopotamus with a great big load to lose, you wizened, senile, oldmisanthrope!”

25



Gary Britson

Ricky Rusher fled, having concluded, as a mentor at the Jaycees hadonce told him, that You Just Can’t Deal With Some People.

“And I’ll tell you something else, Fitzy,” Gotsdiner said, as his little

nemesis stood across the street, paralyzed with hate, “I might just go over there and hijack a couple of snow leopards. Let’s see how brave, howcourageous you are when those little darlings fertilize your begonia patch,you animal-hater, you trouble-maker, you renderer !”

Gotsdiner went back inside, where he fielded phone calls and joboffers from owners of German Shepherds, Pomeranians, Sharpeis, andeven the odd anonymous Muttus Americanus, as well as kitty-cats,hamsters, the occasional ferret. He was beginning to thrive.

After sending out nearly a thousand letters, resumes and transcripts,

and receiving as many T.S.G. letters, Gotsdiner picked up a ringing phoneone day, expecting a date with a Doberman, but heard instead the dulcettones of the new Director of Human Resources at the heartless concernwhich had deep-sixed him. That dark day was now, in the happy bedlam of Gotsdiner’s newfound prosperity, an event so remote that it seemed tohave occurred in another life. In fact, it had. Did he want to come back?The paradigms had been retooled. Parameters had been aligned.Infrastructures had been stratified and harbingers had been acclimated and

God was now back in His Heaven and the coffee was ready andGotsdiner’s old job was back, if he wanted it.“Surely you jest,” he shouted. God, it felt good to say it. Thanks,

Zelda.Gotsdiner dropped the phone and pirouetted around the room,

performing, in his inimitable arthritic and clubfooted way, a balletic ode tojoy. His dance was a poem, albeit a dull-witted and derivative one. Hedidn’t care. He was alive again, alive, reborn.

No sooner had he returned the instrument to its cradle than it pealed

again. A summons from neighbors called out of town on an emergency,and could he come fetch their Shih Tzu right away, maybe keep him aweek? They offered a handsome sum, but he would have done it for free;maybe he would! He burst out the door. Outside, Duke the Dog waited inhis yard, ready to run. Gotsdiner opened the neighbor’s gate and the dogwas out like a shot. Together they spirited down the street, toward moneyand love and a new friend, and all the things that the world of jobs fromwhich Gotsdiner had long ago been ostracized had never once in twenty-

seven years come close to offering him.Duke and Gotsdiner zipped down the street, a warm wind at their backs and sunshine on their faces. Their destination lay at the end of Fitzwaugh’s block, but at this time of day the geezer was probably atwork, rendering something, turning some once-loving critter’s carcass to

26




oil and lard. They decided to chance it; passing Fitzy’s place, they turnedtheir pace up a notch, threw it into high, and sprinted, serene and free.

They were too transported by joy to hear the ancient portal of Fitzwaugh’s wreckage of a house creak open, or to see the little manemerge from the doorway, shotgun at the ready. He wasn’t much of amarksman, but pure concentrated hatred made his aim correct and true.Gotsdiner’s spinal cord accepted the first shot as if it were just another T.S.G. letter, which, in a way, it was, right down to the Good Luck. Dukehyperspaced around the block and back toward home, where he hurtled thefence and was there in time for supper.

Back on the sidewalk, Gotsdiner lay paralyzed, relieved, if only a littletiny bit, that he would not have to be dealing with any more teenage H.R.

departments. As for the Dukester, he knew he needn’t worry. That dogwould always have a job.

Gotsdiner watched with grim fascination as Fitzwaugh trudged towardhim to administer the coup de grace. When the shotgun was inches fromhis forehead and Fitzwaugh’s rancid mottled trigger finger began the lasthuman action his victim would ever see, it dawned on Gotsdiner that this,in a way, was probably the job he had always been applying for,interviewing for, and seeking, right from the start. His search was over.

Thank you, he said, right before the metal pierced his brain. Sorry.Good luck!

27



Modern Communications Techniques In Des Moines

It was not unusual, on the bus, to see passengers wearing T-shirts

bearing messages, advertisements and snide remarks. There were T-shirtsannouncing rock tours by groups ten years defunct, products whose stock had gone belly-up during the Reagan administration, attitudes oncealarming but now de rigueur , quips long stale.

Andrew usually paid them no mind. But glancing up from hisnewspaper one morning he couldn’t help noticing a T-shirt worn by a lasswhose woe far exceeded her age and circumstances. In red letters acrossthe back, he read:

My grandmother died last week

“No, it’s not a band,” said his friend Art that night over beer. Art washis cultural reference. Art, at 46, still listened to popular music, still wentto movies that were fewer than 30 years old, still kept his finger on thepulse of a culture which Andrew had given up for dead around the birth of MTV. “It’s a statement. She has something she wants to share with theworld.”

It was more than a statement. It was a letter, a diary, a journal. Thenext day, directly in front of him, she was back with the next installment,in the same scarlet script:

She was 107

“It’s not unheard of,” Art said. “In Russia, lots of people make it to107 and beyond. It’s sex and vodka that do it. And no TV.”

We weren’t surprised ,

her shirt said on Wednesday, adding, the following day:

But, of course, death is always a shock

He thought about tapping her on the shoulder and commiserating, butthought better of it. “If she wanted to be tapped, she wouldn’t have had the

shirt printed up,” Art said.“I should say something.”“She doesn’t want you to say anything. That’s the point. She wants an

audience, not a correspondent.”

28




Longevity runs in my family

“She’ll be riding the bus for decades,” Art said. “You’ll get a freeshow every day. It’s cheaper than taking the paper.”

But of course, there are always exceptions

She sounds suicidal,” Andrew said. “I’m worried.”“Anyone who is willing to go through the ordeal of mass

transportation every day not only hasn’t given up on life,” Art said, “but isin fact the very embodiment of the Life Force. She’ll be fine.”

Was she ever. On Monday, her T-shirt declared:

Funerals can be an affirmation of life

“Easy for her to say,” Andrew said. “It wasn’t her funeral.”On Tuesday, she advised:

I don’t want her money

“It means she desperately wants that money,” Art said. “It’s all shethinks about.”

“I think I’m starting to fall in love with her,” Andrew said. “It hasnothing to do with money. I like her mind.”

“Falling in love with a T-shirt correspondent is the worst thing that canhappen to a man your age,” Art said. “These people live on a differentplane. They don’t like other people. They like writing.”

She must have read his mind.

We must keep our thoughts aloft

he read the next day. There was a week’s silence. Then:

I miss you, Grammy, wherever you are

and

Blood is thicker than water

and

29



Gary Britson

Death can’t keep us apart

and

I’ll see you in heaven

And, on Friday:

I have to go to court next week

“Probate, do you think?” Andrew asked.“Or criminal,” Art said. “They often try juveniles as adults, depending

on the crime.”“Crime?” Andrew asked. “This girl’s no criminal.”“You never know,” Andrew said. “Maybe she’s tired of wearing T-

shirts. She kills her grandmother and collects a big inheritance, she’ll beable to pen her messages on Chantilly lace, instead of cotton.”

She was absent for two weeks. Andrew rode the bus, awash inmessages, all of the Eat At Joe’s variety. His fellow passengers werewalking advertisements for tin-eared ensembles, county fairs, potables.

There was the odd tribute to breeding and its concomitant dilemmas; theoccasional quotation from Kierkegaard or Mick Jagger (although thewearer would be way too young to know the sentiment’s source); theunfortunate declaration of nihilist doctrine. Andrew was relieved when shereturned.

I must see my lawyer tomorrow

Followed by another long absence. Then:

Moskowitz is a crook

“Sounds like she’s getting a rocky crash course in civil procedure,”Andrew said.

“Suffering is good for young people,” Art said. “It builds character.Don’t get involved.”

Andrew kept his counsel. On the bus, he tried to keep his eyes on his

Middlemarch paperback. But his correspondent was foaming at the seams.

Justice delayed is justice denied

The next day:

30




Who speaks for the poor?

And the next:

Justice is a pain in the keester

And Wednesday:

A dog starved at his master’s gate/ predicts the ruin of the state—Wm. Blake

Thursday:

Do unto others. . .

And Friday:

Moskowitz is toast

“Do you think we ought to warn the lawyer?” Andrew said.“If she dresses conservatively at the sentencing, she’ll be fine, if she

washes her hair first,” Art said.Andrew hoped the shop he chose for his own custom shirts was not the

same one she used. He opted for a masculine, more aggressive type face.

The quality of mercy is not strained

Her reply was quick.

You can use that line to defend anything

He tried a different approach.

Moskowitz is only human

Her reply, though mute, was loud and clear.

So was Richard Speck.You want to start a fan club for him?

“Bitterness is tragic in one so young,” Andrew said.

31



Gary Britson

“Being gunned down on public transportation by a foiled heiresswould be tragic for one so old. Like you,” Art said.

Look before you leap

he advised her the next day.

Who asked you?

she replied.

You want to argue, take it outside

the driver said.And then she was gone again. A week, two, three. Andrew plowed

through Middlemarch, drowning himself in the opiate of distinguishedliterature while he wondered what she was doing, how she was enduringprobate, and whether Moskowitz was still a living, breathing shyster or afresh statistic on a desk sergeant’s blotter. Art got a promotion and a hotnew car and stopped taking the bus. Andrew, though surrounded by fellow

passengers, did not attempt to commiserate with any of them. They weretoo young. Worse, they couldn’t spell. Their syntax made his eyes burn.They seemed to have learned English through a correspondence courseevery bit as shady and inadequate as the counsel of Moskowitz. Or theysimply had down-home, All-American bad taste. A little floozy tried topick him up with some early Pretenders lyrics, but he brushed her asidewith a line from Finnegan’s Wake. He had no idea what it meant, but itseemed to work.

Tiring of great books, he resumed reading the paper as he rode the bus.

The day after scanning an hysterical account of the mysterious death of aprominent local lawyer, one day after a sudden marriage to an obscureyoung woman one-third his age, she reappeared. He didn’t expect her tosay anything then, as it would have been sacrilege to deface the absolutelygorgeous mink coat she now sported, a garment so stunning that it wasalmost able to upstage the surrealistically large diamond on her left hand.As always, there was no eye contact. She stayed on the bus only longenough to be assured that Andrew was about to spontaneously combust.

Then she rose. For one second, she stood still and let the mink drophalfway down her back.

32




So sue me

she said, and left the bus.Andrew walked to work for the rest of his days. There were a lot of

them.

33



Problems In Political Commentary

Vis A Vis Secondary Education In Des Moines

As she dropped her son and daughter off at Hoover High School in

Des Moines, Moira couldn’t help noticing a bumper sticker on the car ahead:

My kid is an honor student at Hoover High

A terrible thing, she reflected. To damn one’s own offspring with faintpraise. Sort of like announcing:

My kid has hardly ever been to prison

She was reminded of a ferocious, ultimately futile, campaign her stateof residence had conducted, some years back, to come up with a catchyslogan for itself. Moira had aspired to the cash prize offered to the winningentry. She still thought hers was far and away superior:

Iowa: Smarter than Mississippi

She hadn’t won.The car ahead of hers started to pull away from the curb, but was

quickly cut off by an aging Volkswagen whose rear bumper announced.

Given the laughable failure of Herbert Hoover’s so-called

economic policies, being an honor student at Hoover is rather likebeing the best-dressed man in Sing Sing, n’est-pas?

The two drivers stared at each other wordlessly. Moira made a U-turn

and headed home, only to find herself blocked again:

My kid is home schooled and he’s forgotten more integral calculus than your kid will ever know.

Moira thought: If he’s home-schooled, why aren’t you at home,schooling him, instead of clogging up the parking lot? Her question wasanswered by the opposite bumper:

I just work here.It doesn’t mean I approve of this school and its antediluviancurricula.

34




I’m rather like Joyce in Dublin, simultaneously loving my city and

its people, but, mired here by circumstance, despising itsoppressive cultural and intellectual miasma.

Prolixity, Moira reflected, rather defeats the whole purpose of bumper stickers. But, after all, this was Des Moines. As she drove home, sheconsidered preparing her own bumper stickers.

My kid has an interesting record collection

That seemed to sum things on the home front up pretty well.

Her fellow motorists read her thoughts:

I was a roadie for Foreigner and my kid is on tour with Coldplayso shut up and drive

Des Moines, Moira reflected, was turning into a tough room.

My kid sings in the all-state choir

a nice maroon Mazda proclaimed. Only to be replied to by a somewhatobstreperous BMW:

You call your kid a singer?Your kid thinks Puccini is a spaghetti sauce

Had the pioneers of the auto industry foreseen this kind of problem?Mora wondered. The internal combustion engine as a mode of hostile

communication. Give man a tangible object, she mused, and he’ll figureout a way to turn it into a weapon.

My kid is a champion debater at Hoover High School

proclaimed a well-polished Oldsmobile.

Debate, my eye; your kid just talks too much

replied a station wagon of ancient vintage.Up ahead, a Des Moines police car waited with ominous patience at a

stop light.

35



Gary Britson

Seat belt, lady, and don’t make me get out of my car

Moira quickly buckled up, and proceeded homeward apace.

At the next stop sign, however, she was accosted by the chrome of a newCadillac.

My kid plays football at Hoover High

Alongside him, a small European vehicle obviously primed for quick getaways replied:

The way your kid tackles, he oughta be wearing a tutu

Moira got out of there tout de suite. She backed up and sought analternate route. Going back toward the school, she hung a quick left andbegan a series of zigs and zags that she knew would take her home with aminimum of editorial commentary. But, encountering the inevitable detour sign, she was stopped by a buxom Buick:

My kid made the honor roll at Henderson Junior High

Moira threw it into reverse and had to swerve viciously to avoid avintage VW bus:

Honor, schmonor. My kid can identify fourteen Wagnerianleitmotifs in Parsifal

Your kid is in the Hitler Youth, and you’re bragging?

Politics and art cannot be confused

Yeah, you’re confused enough without art and politics

Pulling into her driveway, at long last, Moira let the car idle a longtime before getting out. She collected her thoughts. They were all incapital letters. She resolved to sit there until she had reduced them to lower case. Her five-year-old daughter sped out of the driveway on her new bike,

which declared

My mom sits in the car and talks to herself

Moira left the car in the driveway. The next day it was

36




For sale

Let the kids walk to school.

37



A Brief History Of The Insurance Business

In Des Moines

Everything seems to have been fine until the people showed up.Wildlife in abundance, plenty of rabbits, joyful streams. Most

significant in the earliest days of the territory was a complete absence of anyone even remotely connected with the insurance business.

The early settlers were mostly Christians. That is to say, they wereindividuals—Jesuits, mostly, the occasional Presbyterian, the oddAnabaptist—who had insurance potential hidden deep inside them,yearning to breathe free. Like the capacity for art in a child who, at themoment, is preoccupied with throwing things at the nearest available wall,

these settlers had the seed of successful insurance executivedom insidethem, but nature had yet to give them the means to bring this latent talentto light.

Christian missionaries settled the land and christened it Des Moines.The precise meaning of this phrase remains unknown to this day, primarilybecause Des Moines is French, and no one in Des Moines is smart enoughto know how to find a French-English dictionary. Some say it means “TheMonks.” Others opine that it means “The Rapids.”

The Marx Brothers, while still a traveling vaudeville act, long beforegoing to Hollywood to film “The Cocoanuts,” visited one weekend to playan engagement at the old RKO Orpheum Theatre. They translated thename thus: “Death Moans.” They weren’t invited back. Pity, becauseGroucho, incorrigible cynic as he was, could have had a brilliant career ininsurance.

The early business community seems to have consisted of the usualassortment of farmers, traders, trappers, blacksmiths, three-card monteexperts, madams and heretics of all stripes. Wildlife and local flora seem

to have coexisted more or less peacefully with the inhabitants, althoughcholera, diphtheria and low-grade whiskey—all maladies for which therewas no known cure—were grave impediments to population growth.

The first traces of the insurance business in Des Moines seem to havearrived without notice or fanfare, much as the arrival of the first boatloadof plague victims arrived in the port of Messina in 1347, without a whisper of warning or press agentry. Local legend has it that Increase Adams— displaced Mormon, failed polygamist and inventor of the convertible

covered wagon—appeared in town around 1900, ostensibly to set up shopas a singing blacksmith. He began slipping insurance policies for term lifeinsurance between the hooves and the horseshoes of randomly selectedcustomers, thus pioneering the concept of pop-up advertising almost 100

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years before the first home computer was invented. Increase is creditedwith being the first insurance agent to offer dental insurance, anachievement particularly remarkable in view of the total lack of dentistryin Des Moines until the early nineteen-twenties. It was impossible to knowif Des Moines lived up to its moniker, but Increase certainly seems to havelived up to his.

World War I was clearly a turning point in the insurance life of DesMoines. Some two thousand local boys marched off to war, unencumberedby responsibilities, wealth, knowledge or insurance. Three years later,most of them came back, much to back, much to their collective surprise,to find themselves not only fully insured, but seriously in arrears on their premiums. To this day, no one knows how the old boy did it, but Increase

Insurance was here to stay.Incidentally, regardless of the yearly ebb and flow of commerce, the

local flora and fauna have always caught holy hell. Most of the rabbits aregone, and the ones that remain haven’t got a chance. I saw a dead one inmy neighbor’s driveway just this morning.

Anyway, ever since The Great War, wherever failure occurs, IncreaseInsurance has been there to fill the void. The last village smithy succumbsto the march of progress, and his shop is reborn as Increase Casualty. Thecorner haberdasher dies, and the next Monday his shop is Increase Mutual.The local barber moves to Branson and, voila, his business is now the newsite of Increase Life. Nowadays, you can’t buy a shirt or get your hair cutin Des Moines, but you can insure yourself and your internationalconglomerates up to your eyebrows, no questions asked. Well, a fewquestions.

Today, Increase Insurance dominates Des Moines. There are thosewho say that Increase Insurance is Des Moines. The two entities arepermanently entwined.

Cholera and diphtheria have been conquered, but insurance in DesMoines is here to stay.

And there is still no cure.

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2 Brothers

Gerald started taking piano lessons at age four and was playing Mozart

at four and a half. He gave his first recital at seven. Gene was mugged onthe way to his first piano lesson at age six and got out of the hospital on hisseventh birthday.

Gerald went directly from the third grade to high school, where herewrote the calculus textbook, corrected the history teacher’s interpretationof the Battle of Hastings, and wrote his first book of poetry, which thecritics hailed as a milestone, comparing him to Yeats and Auden. Genewas mired in the sixth grade for a few years, until his continued presencebecame an embarrassment and he was passed on to the high school, which

didn’t want him either.Gerald ran into Gene’s room one night and said he needed a dollar to

buy a ribbed condom because a movie starlet who was passing throughtown was waiting for him at the Sleepy-Tyme Motel. Twenty years later,in her best-selling memoir, the actress wrote, “I learned what it meant tobe a woman while visiting a small Midwestern town, with a young manwho must remain nameless, and who has gone on to become aninternational captain of industry. He inhabits my soul to this very day.”

Gene never got his dollar back.Gerald graduated from college at sixteen, having earned magna cum

laude in astrophysics, bio-medicine, finance, musicology and RenaissancePoetry, along with the Heisman Trophy and a Rhodes Scholarship. Genewas conditionally admitted to City Technical Training Day School, butkept getting lost between his locker and the lunch room, and they had to lethim go.

At twenty-one, Gerald was a doctor, a lawyer and merchandise chief, arenowned poet with a seat on the Stock Exchange, the occupant of a Chair

in Physics at Oxford, and was in demand as a heart surgeon throughout theworld. Gene was night watchman at a day-care center, where they didn’twant him all that much, and where he kept falling off his chair.

Gerald became the only U.S. Supreme Court Justice with four Super Bowl rings. As Secretary of State, he ended all wars, brought eternal peaceeverywhere and filled in at the Vatican one summer when Mother Churchwas between popes, the previous one having entered the witness protectionprogram.

Since Gerald was in demand throughout the government, the system of checks and balances was thrown out, enabling him to be President, Chief Justice and Speaker of the House, all at the same time. Gene tried to

40




balance his checkbook, but made such a hash of it that the bank took awayhis checkbook and beat him with it.

Gerald’s mansion on a sprawling estate of scenic splendor was theenvy of monarchs and minor deities. Gene had a cot at the MidtownMission, where parolees kept stealing his gruel.

Gene sent Gerald a postcard, asking if he could have his dollar back.To reach Gerald, mail had to work its way through three hundred andtwenty-nine layers of factotums, lackeys, minions, elves, dwarves,Nibelungen and Wharton School alumni. Gene’s card made it to thetwelfth layer, where a Nobel Laureate in economics used it to floss histeeth before having it recycled.

Gerald was offered the chairmanship of Microsoft, but didn’t want to

take the pay cut or the loss of prestige. Gene was offered the opportunityof shoveling two feet of snow from the city block surrounding the mission,but he didn’t want to continue the diet of botulism, prayer and abuse, so hetook to sleeping under the bridge.

Gerald was married to a former Miss America, a ravishingmanagement consultant who bore him a son who won the Cy YoungAward straight out of high school, the year before he was appointedSecretary-General of the U.N. Gene’s erotic experiences consisted of fending off the amorous advances of mission guests and bridge denizenswho had been out of prison about two days and who seemed to be in ahurry to go back.

Gerald’s heart wasn’t supposed to stop beating, but it did.Gene wasn’t supposed to be beaten senseless by a bunch of meth-

heads while hitch-hiking to Gerald’s funeral, but he was. An enterprisingnewspaper reporter found him in intensive care and published a maudlinarticle about a loser whose brother had owned the world.

This led, for better or worse, to the first and last real honest-to-

goodness job offer ever made to Gene: Tour Guide at Gerald’s boyhoodhome, now a national shrine, opening on the very day that Gerald’s facewas added to Mt. Rushmore.

He can still be found there, Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.,showing the curious where Gerald did his calculus homework, brushed histeeth, planned world domination, and where he gypped his little brother out of that fateful dollar. He likes to tell the story, and for a dollar, he’lltell you a few more. He knows some good ones.

41



Respect the System

To: Administrator

From: A.B. Adams, Sales AssistantDate: January 15, 2009Re: Sales

I just got a call from Rich Wagner over at Levine and Associates.They need a few million units of our Wotan Nibelungen Extractorsimmediately. He’s on his way over with a check for forty million dollars.We can sign the contracts in my office. I’ll need to borrow a chair from theconference room. The check will be on your desk by noon.

To: AdamsFrom: Administrator RE: Implement reallocation protocol

Implement reallocation requires authorization pursuant to our SystemsCode. See Chapter 267(A)(b)(II-a)(XIV)(hnds-off) pertaining to PhysicalPlant Systems. To apply for authorization to modify the Physical Plant

model of this unit, Implement Relocation Logistics Requisition, form C-190-14 is mandated. File the original in my office, with copies of theapplication to all 112 units in the organization. When the Logistics panelmeets in September, your request to Relocate an Implement will bereviewed. The panel’s decision will be forwarded to the Sales ResourcesCommission for study. When their study is complete, their report will bereviewed by the Logistics Team. Their decision is promulgated throughnormal industry channels. You will be advised of their decision followingthe annual Logistics meeting in approximately six months. Logistics panel

meetings, are, of course, subject to funding authorization by ImplementFinancing Authority, which will meet again in 2012 to discuss appointinga panel to discuss the feasibility of funding for Implement Relocation. If funding is approved, a panel will be appointed to define the Scope of Implement panel review. The scope of review determination will mandatepriorities for long-range planning regarding implement reallocation.

In the future, please consult our Systems Manual before reallocatingoffice contingencies. Protocols are primary. You must respect the system.

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To: AdministrationFrom: AdamsRe: Chair

Since he’ll be here in ten minutes, we’ll get along without the chair.The $40 million check will be on your desk shortly.

To: AdamsFrom: AdministrationRE: Foreign personnel entering premises—aliens—human logistics

Visitors to Sales Offices may apply for admission to the Niebelung

Building by completing Alien Admission Accountability Form AA-39-visa/human logistics/whos-he-form 9719. The original is filed with theInterpersonnel Panel of the Office of Human Logistics. Copies must beprovided to each Niebelung office, sub-office, and all non-official officesubstitutes. The application panel meets four times per year and reviewsall applications for alien admission. Interviews with applicants occur inyears in which the Super Bowl is won by an AFC team whose startingquarterback is not married to a person of questionable character. Allapplicants must provide medical clearance, psychiatric evaluations, andAffidavits of Good Citizenship from three veterans of World War II, oneof whom must have been present at Pearl Harbor. Applicants must pass awritten examination on American History, The Constitution, and BibleAppreciation. Applicants will be asked to bake a cherry pie using woodshavings from the executive pencil sharpener and old copies of NationalReview. Successful applicants may enter the building on alternate Fridaysduring months with an “r” in them, between 5 and 6:30 a.m. uponsubmission of proper subsidiary application form DUM-15(n), co-signed

by at least three Nibelungen. The decision of the Interpersonnel Panel canbe appealed by preparing the proper appellate forms and filing them for review at the following year’s July Interappellate Council Reviews.

I have notified security not to admit this individual until he hasprepared the appropriate application for admission and can prove that hehas his own spatula.

To: Administrator From: Adams

He’s not applying for a job with Rachel Ray. He’s bringing us a check for $40 million. Can’t the rules be modified under these circumstances?

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Gary Britson

To: AdamsFrom: The Administrator Re: Protocol/Rule Modification/Code Systems Prerogative Mandate

Please see Nibelungen Personnel Manual 1114-urxtatic 2B w/us, page293, verse 2(b)/MORALE: “Respect the system,” regarding application for Rule Changes vis-à-vis Logistical Implementation Modifications. RuleModification panels are scheduled for reappointment in 2013, providedeveryone is out of federal prison by then. The panel will meet to discussthe scope of review for funding requests. A proposal for meeting to discussthe proposal for the meeting will be drafted by a sub-committee. SeeManual, Chapter XXI, verse 12(ix)(whsthisguy) regarding parameters for

drafting the committee proposal to propose the proposal for the committee.All decisions regarding rule modification re: code systems mandates arepending the proposal to propose the proposal, depending on how manytimes the applicant has been married to Britney Spears.


I’ll just go downstairs and meet him at the door. We’ll do the contractsin the cafeteria. The check will be on your desk this afternoon.

To: AdamsFrom: Administrator Re: Vacating Nibelungen premises/permission to/reallocation of personnel resources

All employees leaving their Nibelungen Patrol Designations beyond

the parameters of hourly occupancy must file Form IM/outta/here-19-iv-(3)-XIV(n). I will review your application to vacate your designationwithin 27 weeks. My decision will be reviewed by a blue-ribbon panelcomprised of representatives from all 261 Nibelungen Teams at their bi-yearly Council. Application for funding for this panel is anticipated by2014. When the panel is fully funded, a select Team will meet to discussthe parameters of the scope of their duties. Should your specific requestfall within these parameters, your request to vacate your designation will

be studied. A report will be issued and reviewed by the NibelungenReview Designators, if their parole officers say it’s okay.

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I’ll just meet him at Chelsea’s Pub on my way home. I’ll pick up thecheck then and bring it in tomorrow. It will be on your desk by 8:00 a.m.

To: AdamsFrom: The Administrator Re: Extra-office interpersonal communications

See Systems Code Parameters Parabola XXXIV-(xii)-14B(tag-yr-it)— Nibelungen Logistics vis-à-vis Extra-territorial Conference Extra-Person-

nel (xtra-cheez-99) Visitation Outer Limits(Pubs-see “C” classification“Chelsea”)for guidelines re:Nibelungen FILES (Removal thereof en routeto domestic designation) for parameters of alien conference. Nibelungenborn subsequent to 1814 must, prior to alien conferencing outsideNibelungen Parameter Sector XXX, request permission to completeFORM 1,997,352. The FORM when completed will be designated for referral to Alien Conference Committee. Funding for Committee meetingsis pending. Contingent upon funding, the scope-of-review panel will meetin 2017 to discuss parameters for blue-ribbon panel which will meet toconsider considering forming sub-panel to consider mulling over thinkingabout pondering meeting sometime to try to decipher the FORM. WhenFORM has been translated into Nibelungen you will be notified.


He didn’t have time to go into the pub. We signed the contracts in the

car and I have the check. I’ll have it on your desk first thing tomorrow.

To: AdamsFrom: Administrator Re: Unauthorized seating extra-office rendezvous

ALERT: Systems Manual Chapter T (Sub-6-iv)(XTC ABNRML 11-IV-xix) “Two Men In a Car At The Same Time” prohibits two maleNibelungen from occupying a motor vehicle simultaneously when either or both is thinking about money. Abort mission immediately. Destroy allchecks, memoranda, records, microfilm, notes, diaries, logs, OriginalBroadway Cast albums, Unplugged CDs, Playbills autographed by NathanLane and references to Paul Monette novels.

45



Gary Britson


What about the $40 million check?

To: AdamsFrom: Administrator Re: Financial instruments

See Systems Manual, Chapter F, Financial Instruments. Section 6,895(A)(flthy-lucr)(B)(Whatitis-tx shltr-wknds in Malibu, offshr drling,

goomar, etc.) Administration is currently seeking funding to establish acommittee which would study the feasibility of appointing a panel toestablish procedure for processing financial instruments transported from amotor vehicle in the parking lot at Chelsea’s Pub to Corporate Offices. If funding is provided, a blue-ribbon panel will be appointed to study thefeasibility of forming a committee which would appoint the panel. Thepanel, in turn, would consider the possibility of commissioning a study of potential parameters for potential use to propose initial discussions

regarding the formation of a committee to appoint a committee whichwould appoint the panel. The panel will establish a charter which willdelineate the scope and responsibilities of the panel. The panel will haveauthority to seek funding from the corporation, subject, of course, to thecorporation establishing an independent charter to establish a panel todiscuss the formation of a committee which would meet annually toestablish discussion guidelines to enable the panel to discuss thepossibility of meeting to discuss the possibility of meeting to discuss thepossibility of meeting.

To: AdministrationFrom: Adams

I’m in the lobby. I ran into the Chief Nibelungen Treasurer, Al Brecht.I gave him the check. He’ll have it to you in three minutes.

To: Adams

From: AdministrationRe: Logistical query re: financial instruments, intra-office parametersthereto

46




See Nibelungen Manual Chapter XXXIV-xxvi-12-(Treas.)(financialinstrument)(frm. Lackey)(to-little guy in brn suit). Further references, vis-à-vis op.cit.(whattodo)(whaddyaUdo)(ibeenhoodooed)(Hr-she-comes-now-singin’mony-mony)(fed. Prison) XXI. All financial instruments enteringlobby of Nibelungen corporate headquarters must be scrutinized pursuantto Maximum Security Mandate 2,997,325(ii). Officers of the MaximumSecurity Authority are authorized to examine, inspect, deface, abuse, andmake strange faces at all documents representing potential financialprogress of this institution. Financial instruments approved by Authoritymust be approved by the Basic Ulterior Cash Knowledge Suspicion panel,for which funding is pending in 2019 subject to Vatican approval. Washyour hands before entering elevator. Must have proof that you have not

missed a Mother’s Day since 1923 and must have receipts to prove it.Must provide justification of birth, education, and last episode of TheSopranos.


Rich Wagner has hired me as VP in charge of Sales for his corporateempire. He just bought Nibelungen Enterprises. Be out of the building byfour-thirty or I’ll personally settle your hash with a flame-thrower, youincompetent yuppie nitwit.

To: AdamsFrom: Administrator

See Nibelungen Survival Manual, Chapter 666 (I was only doing myjob—see memoirs of Adolf Eichmann) regarding deep-sixing old pals.

Subchapter 13 provides that dumping on auld colleagues who have spentthe last 17 years abusing Nibelungen can only be implemented by blue-ribbon panel of Nibelungen with Ph.D. in European history frominstitutions of higher learning with a “v” in them. Once the panel has beenfunded through fiscal parameters (See Chapter 2,917-bgbks, tnre-trak, hotcoeds, free vactns, etc.) the panel must allow applicant time to come upwith a respectable excuse. Letters of reference from at least 14 graduatesof Harvard Divinity School, at least 12 of whom must speak in tongues,are mandated. Applicant to be interviewed by committee established todetermine cause for dismissal and whether or not the applicant is a niceguy.

47



Gary Britson

To: Administrator Date: January 16, 2009From: Adams

Just got your job application here at Britcom. The application isincomplete. Respect the system! To perfect your application, please submitthe following: One copy of A La Recherche des Temps Perdu in CopticGreek, preferably signed by Proust; 152 copies of Britcom ApplicationForm XXXII-(xx-I-xyz)(whsyrdaddy)(5,221,897.1(ii)(ina-pigseye)(nwayJose) which must be signed and notarized by at least 14 WimbledonChampions, Judge Crater, Jimmy Hoffa, Harpo Marx and JayneMansfield, and I will promptly submit your application to our blue-ribbon

panel, which is currently in vitro in a lab somewhere near San Ysidro, andas soon as they’re born and have graduated from Harvard Business School,we’ll begin the funding process for appointing a panel to interviewapplicants who will appoint a panel to interview applicants who willappoint a panel to interview applicants who can still remember what theyapplied for and why. Be patient. Respect the system!

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Dining In Des Moines: Zombies At The Salad Bar

Melanie asked me why there were zombies going through the salad

bar. I explained that zombies prefer cool, damp food. It makes them feel athome. Hot things tend to alarm them. One must try never to alarm azombie.

Melanie next wanted to know why the zombies wanted to have lunchat a fast-food joint. She thought the constant noise and commotion mightunnerve them.

On the contrary, I explained. They enjoy the colors and the bright buzzof life all around them. It makes them feel like they’re part of somethingagain. This is a delusion on their part, of course, zombies being part of

nothing whatsoever. But if the lunchtime bustle makes them happy, well, Iwouldn’t deny them.

Fast food proprietors actually welcome zombies, as a rule, one reasonbeing that zombies don’t take up space in the parking lot or cause car accidents there. Zombies don’t drive. Often they have no idea what carsare, many of them having been zombies since before the invention of theinternal combustion engine. Zombies don’t adapt well to technological or cultural change, with a few exceptions, such as the salad bar. They adapt to

the food in the salad bar because it is cold and wet. Anything that is coldand wet is, to a zombie, comfort food.

Melanie, traditionally a proponent of universal brotherhood and goodwill, said that while zombies certainly had the right to have lunchwherever they pleased, she would just as soon not have them lunching nextto her. This intolerance was not like her. She said she knew it was terrible,but they just made her feel uncomfortable.

This was understandable, to a certain extent. The zombies are notmuch to look at. Many of them haven’t shaved since the late nineteenth

century. Their clothes are woefully out of date. They tend to take little or no pride in their personal appearance. Their slow, languid gait suggeststhat they are bored with where they are going, or worse, that they havenowhere to go. In short, zombies make a terrible first impression. Theseare, alas, the impressions that always remain with new acquaintances, andupon seeing one’s first zombie, one’s train of thought tends to segue intoirrelevant childhood memories of zombie movies from long-ago late, lateshows, in which zombies were usually slandered willy-nilly. No group has

received shabbier treatment from Hollywood than have the zombies.Your typical film-maker, for example, asked to depict zombies at thefast-food salad bar, would create a scene of panic and hostility. Nothingcould be further from the truth. The zombies are models of decorum as

49



Gary Britson

they fill their plates, spilling not so much as a shred of lettuce or a drop of creamy Italian dressing. They quietly seat themselves at a table close to awindow, where they appear to be enjoying the sunlight. They spread

napkins on their laps and dine peacefully. When they are finished, theydeposit their plastic plates and spoons carefully in the nearest receptacle,take a couple of the complimentary balloons the restaurant offers tochildren of all ages, and walk away, seemingly at one with the universe.

Melanie said that she appreciated their good table manners and the factthat they cleaned up after themselves, but that the zombies gave her theheebie-jeebies nevertheless.

I sympathized with her feelings, of course, but at the same time I couldnot help feeling a twinge of pity for the zombies as they ambled into what

will probably be an eternity of social failure. It’s sad.Melanie said that one of the problems with seeing zombies at lunch

was that she would probably continue to see them everywhere she went for the rest of the day, whether they were really there or not. In fact, she said,she thought she saw a zombie way back there behind the counter, wearingan employee’s uniform and cap, solemnly taking instructions from anassistant manager on how to operate the French-fryer.

I thought she was letting her imagination get the best of her, but didn’t

say so. She could, after all, have been right. There is no reason why azombie could not learn to make good, even great, French fries. While mostzombies are not employed, those who are, generally speaking, haveexcellent work records. They bring to their work a blend of patience,single-mindedness and perseverance that almost any employer wouldwelcome and reward. Contrary to what the Hollywood cynics would haveus believe, zombies can be as competent and cooperative in the workplaceas anyone. Perhaps even more important is the fact that they lack thecharacter flaws that keep so many young people from moving up the

career ladder. For instance, a personable young employee may turn out tobe a little too personable for his own good, or for the good of his fellowemployees. Who knows how many work hours are lost annually in on-the-job flirtation and heart-throb? Zombies, being notoriously maladroit atflirting, incur no such wastes of time, and their hearts, while still intact,have gained the wisdom of age. They don’t cause anyone any trouble.

Moreover, zombies never watch the clock at work. For understandablereasons, they are not the least bit interested in time. They don’t count the

hours until it’s time to go home because, except in a very ambiguous,metaphysical sense, they have no homes to go home to.Like many individuals who have nowhere to go, many zombies quite

naturally are drawn to amateur theatrics. Our local community theatrecounts zombies among its finest volunteers, depending, of course, on the

50




nature of the production at hand. For instance, several zombies turned upin last season’s productions of Waiting for Godot and Abie’s Irish Rose.

They seemed to blend right in. On the other hand, their attempts toparticipate in anything by Rodgers and Hart, or any show requiring anabundance of sudden motion, are, to put it most politely, unfortunate. Theymake good stage hands, though, as they have limitless patience and all thetime in the world. Having no post-rehearsal assignations, they are never ina hurry to leave, and their talent for successfully foraging in unlikelyplaces for even the most outré props is legendary.

Melanie said she once heard strange sounds coming from her garagelate at night. She was afraid to go out and see what it was, but when shechecked the following morning, she found that several items of hardware

had been rearranged, and her lawnmower had been moved slightly. Couldit have been a zombie? Probably not. Zombies are wanderers, not burglars.It was probably just Norman puttering around with the lawn tools again.Melanie said he’s done this sort of thing before.

But what if it was a zombie? How else could she explain the fact thather lawnmower, out of order since 1997, worked like a charm the morningafter she heard the noise in her garage? It had been brought back from thedead. Norman certainly couldn’t have done that. I suggested that she leavea note on the lawnmower: “Please mow lawn Wednesday. Thank you.”They’ll probably do it for free. It couldn’t hurt to try, I told her. She’llprobably keep paying the neighbor boy to mow her lawn, though. Shepromised the neighbors she would.

Melanie and I left the fast-food place and headed back to work. Thezombies were gone, which pleased her. She kept talking about them,though. She is worried that a zombie might sit next to her in a restaurant or a movie theater some night. What if one asked her for a date? Not toworry, I told her. Zombies are perfectly satisfied with their own society

and seldom make social forays outside it. On the other hand, what if amaverick zombie seats himself next to her and strikes up a conversationthe next time she goes out for fast food?

Mentally I began to prepare a list for her. It would be ready to typewhen I got home from work, for delivery to her at lunch the next day. Icalled it: Tips on Conversation with Zombies. Be yourself. Relax.Remember, they’re meeting someone new, too, and they’re probably justas apprehensive as you are.

Stick to simple, basic topics, such as what you’ve been doing for foodlately. Try to work the subject of walking into the conversation. They walk most of the time and love to talk about it. Ask a zombie if he/she wants togo for a walk and you’ve got a friend for life.

Stay away from current events. Zombies aren’t current.

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Gary Britson

As a matter of fact, avoid talking to zombies about anything that’s ever happened to anyone. They probably won’t understand.

Feel free to smoke while talking to a zombie. There’s no need to ask

permission. After all they’ve been through, the potential danger of cigarette smoke is the last thing on a zombie’s mind.You could ask the zombie if he/she wants to go get a beer somewhere,

but the offer will probably be politely declined. The idea of spendingmoney to numb the senses will be incomprehensible to a zombie.

Introduce sports as a topic of conversation with caution. The zombies,most of whom stopped reading newspapers several decades ago, will ask what kind of a year Christy Matthewson is having, and unless you areprepared to analyze World Series highlights that occurred before your

parents were born, I’d stick to food and walks.Discuss chairs. At first, zombies spent an enormous amount of time in

the supine position, but now that they are practicing zombies they seldomget a chance to sit down. They appreciate chairs, on the rare occasionswhen one is offered to them. Listen as they discuss the relative merits of this type of furniture. It will enhance your appreciation of even the crudestchair.

The preparation of my list was interrupted a couple of blocks from

work when a stranger standing next to us at a stop light commented on thebrilliance of the autumn day. He was a zombie. I agreed that it was, in fact,a perfect day. He asked me if I thought Ruth would hit number sixty, oneof these days. We began to talk.

I noticed Melanie crossing the street. When she was a block away, Isaw her turn and look at us. She seemed relieved that I wasn’t getting hurt,and she waved. She needn’t have worried. We were only talking.

Maybe they’re not zombies after all. Maybe they’ve simply lived inDes Moines too long.

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Modern Communications Techniques in Des Moines (and other stories) by Gary Britson