In Persuasion Nation (15 page)

Maybe the problem with their show is, it's too smallhearted.
It's all just rolling up hoses and filling the birdfeeder and making
smart remarks about other people's defects and having big meals while
making poop jokes and sex jokes. For all its charms, it's basically a
selfish show. Maybe what's needed is an enlargement of the heart of
their show. What would that look like? How would one go about making
that kind of show?

Well, he can think of one way right now.

He goes into the shed, finds a tarp and, using the laundry line and
the tarp, makes a kind of tent. Then, using an umbrella, he
carries the corpses out.

"Easy, easy," says the one-armed corpse. "Don't break
my leg off by hitting it on that banister."

Just then the back door flies violently open.

"Bradley!" Doris shouts from inside. "Did I say build
the ghouls a playhouse or put the ghouls in the yard?"

"The ghouls?" says the one-armed corpse.

"That isn't very nice," says the woman corpse. "We
don't call her names."

Brad looks apologetically at the corpses. Apparently it's time for a
little marital diplomacy, time to go inside and have a frank
heart-to-heart with Doris.

Look,
Doris, he'll say. What's happened to you, where has your generosity
gone? Our house is huge, honey, our refrigerator is continually
full. However much money we need, we automatically have that
much in the bank, and neither of us even works outside of the home.
There doesn't seem to be any physical limit to what we can have or
get. Why not spread some of that luck around? What if that was the
point
of our show, sweetie, the radical spreading-around of
our good fortune? What if we had, say, a special helicopter? And
special black jumpsuits? And code names? And huge stores of food and
medicine, and a team of expert consultants, and wherever there
was need, there they would be, working to bring to bear on the
problem whatever resources would be exactly most helpful?

Talk about positive. Talk about entertaining.

Who wouldn't want to watch that?

Brad has goose bumps. His face is suddenly hot. What an incredible
idea. Will Doris get it? Of course she will. This is Doris, his
Doris, the love of this life.

He can't wait to tell her.

Brad tries the door, finds it locked.

We see from the sheepish look on Brad's face, and the sudden comic
wah-wah of the music, that convincing Doris may turn out to be a
little harder than he thought, and also, that it's time for a
commercial.

Back at the Carrigans', Grandpa Kirk, Grandma Sally, Uncle Gus, and
Aunt Lydia, suddenly in formalwear, have been joined by Dr. and Mrs.
Ryan, the Menendezes, the Johnsons, and Mrs. Diem, also in
formalwear.

Just then the doorbell rings.

Doris, in a skimpy white Dior dress and gold spike heels, hands
Grandma Sally a plate of meatballs and walks briskly toward the door.

At the door is Brad.

"Somehow I got locked out," he says.

"Hi Brad," says Doris. "Here to borrow butter?"

"Very
funny," says Brad. "Hey, is that a new dress? Did you just
now change dresses?"

Then Brad notices that Chief Wayne is over, and Dr. and Mrs. Ryan,
the Menendezes, the Johnsons, and Mrs. Diem are over, and everyone is
dressed up.

"What's all this?" he says.

"Things are kind of crazy around here at the moment, Brad,"
says Chief Wayne. "You could say we're in a state of
transition."

"Doris, can we talk?" says Brad. "In private?"

"I'm afraid we aren't in any shape to be talking about anything
in private, Bradster," says Chief Wayne. "As I said, we're
in a state of transition."

"We've been so busy lately, things are so topsy-turvy lately,
hardly a minute to think," Doris says. "Who knows what to
think about what, you know?"

"The way I'd say it?" says Chief Wayne. "We're in a
state of transition. Let's leave it at that, babe."

Brad notices that Chief Wayne is not wearing his headdress or
deerskin leggings, but a pair of tight Gucci slacks and a tight
Armani shirt.

Just then, from the place near the china cabinet from which their
theme song and the occasional voiceover comes, comes a deep-voiced
voiceover.

"Through
a script error!" it says, "turns out that Chief Wayne is
actually, and has actually been all along, not Chief Wayne, but
Chaz
Wayne, an epileptic pornographer with a taste for the high life and
nightmarish memories of Vietnam!"

A tattooed young man Brad has never seen before steps out of the
broom closet.

"I'm Whitey, Chaz Wayne's son from a disastrous previous
marriage, who recently served time for killing a crooked cop with a
prominent head goiter," he says.

"And I'm Buddy, their dog," says Buddy, who, Brad notices,
is wearing a tiny pantless tuxedo. "I have recurring rabies and
associated depression issues."

Then Chaz Wayne puts his arm around Doris.

"And this is my wife Doris, a former stripper with an imploded
breast implant," says Chaz Wayne.

"I'd like to propose a toast," says Grandpa Kirk. "To
the newlyweds!"

"To Doris and Chaz," says Uncle Gus.

"To Doris and Chaz!" everyone says together.

"Now wait just a minute," says Brad.

"Brad,
honestly," Doris hisses. "Haven't you caused enough trouble
already?"

"Here's your butter, Carrigan," says Grandma Sally,
handing Brad a stick of butter. "Skedaddle on home."

Brad can't seem to breathe. It was love at first sight, he knows from
their First Love Montage, when he saw Doris in a summer dress on the
far side of a picket fence. On their first date, the ice cream fell
off his cone. On their honeymoon, they kissed under a waterfall.

What should he do? Beg Doris's forgiveness? Punch Wayne? Start
rapidly making poop jokes?

Just then the doorbell rings.

It's the Winstons.

At least Brad thinks it's the Winstons. But Mr. Winston has an arm
coming out of his forehead, and impressive breasts, a vagina has been
implanted in his forehead, and also he seems to have grown an
additional leg. Mrs. Winston, short a leg, also with impressive
breasts, has a penis growing out of her shoulder and what looks like
a totally redone mouth of shining white teeth.

"May? John?" Brad says. "What happened to you?"

"Extreme Surgery," says Mrs. Winston.

"Extreme
Surgery happened to us," says Mr. Winston, sweat running down
his forehead-arm and into his cleavage.

"Not
that we mind," says Mrs. Winston tersely. "We're just happy
to be, you know, interesting."

"It's
wonderful to see everyone doing their part," says Chaz Wayne.

"Nearly everyone," says Uncle Gus, frowning at Brad.

Just then from the living room comes the sound of hysterical
barking.

Everyone
rushes in to find Buddy staring down in terror at a naked emaciated
black baby covered with open sores.

"It just magically appeared," says Buddy.

From
the tribal cloth which is serving as a diaper, and the open lesions
on its legs, face, and chest, Dr. Ryan concludes that the baby is an
HIV-positive baby from sub-Saharan Africa.

"What should we name him?" says Buddy. "Or her?"

"Him,"
says Dr. Ryan, after a quick look under the tribal cloth.

"Can we name him Doug?" says Buddy.

"Don't name him anything," says Doris.

"Buddy,"
says Chaz Wayne. "Tell us again how this baby got in here?"

"It just magically appeared," says Buddy.

"Could you be more specific, Buddy?" says Chaz Wayne.

"It like fell in through the ceiling?" says Buddy.

"Well,
that suggests an obvious solution," says Chaz Wayne. "Why
not simply put it back on the roof where it came from?"

"Sounds fair to me," says Mr. Winston.

"Although
that roof's got quite a pitch to it," says Grandpa Kirk. "Poor
thing might roll right off."

"Maybe
we could rig up a kind of mini-platform?" says Uncle Gus.

"Then duct-tape the baby in place?" suggests Mrs. Diem.

"What do you say, Brad?" says Chaz Wayne. "Would you
do the honors? After all, we didn't ask for this baby, we don't know
this baby, we didn't make this baby sick, we had nothing to do
with the deeply unfortunate occurrence that occurred to this
baby back wherever its crude regressive culture is located."

"How about it, Carrigan?" says Grandpa Kirk.

Brad looks into the baby's face. It's a beautiful face. Except for
the open lesions. How did this beautiful little baby come to be here?
He has no idea. But here the baby is.

"Come
on, guys," says Brad. "He'll starve to death up there. Plus
he'll get sunburned."

"Well, Brad," says Aunt Lydia. "He was starving to
death when he got here. We didn't do it."

"Plus he's an African, Brad," says Grandma Sally. "The
Africans have special pigments."

"I'm not putting any baby on any roof," Brad says.

A strange silence falls on the room.

Then we hear the familiar music that indicates the backyard has
morphed again, and see that the familiar Carrigan backyard is now a
bleak desert landscape full of rooting feral pigs, ferociously
feeding on the corpses.

"Brad!" yells the corpse who died fending off blows. "Brad,
please help us!"

"Pigs are eating us!" yells the one-armed corpse.

"A pig is eating my hip!" shouts the corpse who died
fending off blows.

"Don't, Brad," says Doris. "Do not."

"Think about what you're doing, Bradster," says Chaz Wayne.

"Listen to me carefully, Brad," says Doris. "Go up
onto the roof, install the roof platform, duct-tape the AIDS baby to
the roof platform, then come directly down, borrow your butter, and
go home."

"Or else," says Chaz Wayne.

From the yard comes the sound of sobbing.

Sobbing and grunting.

Or else? thinks Brad.

Brad remembers when Old Rex was sent to the old folks' home against
his will and said: Little pardner, sometimes a man has to take a
stand, if he wants to go on being a man at all. The next day Old Rex
vanished, taking Brad's backpack, and years later they found out he'd
spent the last months of his life hitchhiking around the West,
involved with a series of waitresses.

What would Old Rex do in this situation? Brad wonders.

Then he knows.

Brad races outside, picks up a handful of decorative lava stones, and
pelts the pigs until they flee to a bone-dry watering hole, with
vultures, toward the rear of the yard.

Then he loads the corpses into the wheelbarrow, races around the side
of the house, past the air-conditioning unit and the papier-mâché
clown head from the episode when Doris was turning thirty and he
tried to cheer her up, and loads the corpses into the back of the
Suburban, after first removing the spare tire and Doris's gym bag.

Then
he races back inside, grabs Doug, races out, tucks Doug between the
woman corpse and the corpse who died fending off blows, and gets
behind the wheel.

What he'll do is drive down Eiderdown Path, across Leaping Fawn
Way, Bullfrog Terrace, and Waddling Gosling Place, and drop Doug off
at the EmergiClinic, which is located in the Western Slope Mini-Mall,
between PetGalaxy and House of Perms. Then he'll go live in Chief
Wayne's former apartment. He'll clean out the garage for the corpses.
He'll convert Chief Wayne's guest room into a nursery for Doug. He'll
care for Doug and the corpses, and come over here once a day to
borrow his butter, trying to catch Doris's eye, trying to
persuade her to leave Chaz Wayne and join him in his important work.

Suddenly Brad's eyes are full of tears.

Oh Doris, he thinks. Did I ever really know you?

Just then a gray van screeches into the driveway and six cops jump
out.

"Is this him?" says a cop.

"I'm afraid so," says Doris, from the porch.

"This is the guy who had questionable contacts with foreign
Filipinos and was seen perversely loading deceased corpses into his
personal vehicle for his own sick and nefarious purposes?"
says another cop.

"I'm afraid so," says Chaz Wayne.

"Well, I guess we all learned something from this," says
Grandma Sally.

"What
I learned?" says Doris. "Is praise God we're now free to
raise our future children in a hopeful atmosphere, where the
predominant mode is gratitude, gratitude for all the blessings we've
been given, free of neuroses and self-flagellation."

"You can say that again," says Uncle Gus.

"Actually, I'm not sure I can!" says Doris.

"Well, if you're not going to be using that hot mouth of yours,
how about I use it?" says Chaz Wayne, and gives Doris an
aggressive tongue kiss while sliding his hands up to Doris's full hot
breasts.

This is the last thing Brad sees as the cops wrestle him into the
van.

As the van doors start to close, Brad suddenly realizes that the
instant the doors close completely, the van interior will become the
terrifying bland gray space he's heard about all his life, the place
one goes when one has been Written Out.

The van doors close completely.

The van interior becomes the bland gray space.

From the front yard TV comes the brash martial music that indicates
an UrgentUpdateNewsMinute.

Animal-rights activists have expressed concern over the recent trend
of spraying live Canadian geese with a styrene coating which
instantaneously kills them while leaving them extremely malleable, so
it then becomes easy to shape them into comical positions and write
funny sayings on DryErase cartoon balloons emanating from their
beaks, which, apparently, is the new trend for outdoor summer
parties. The inventor of FunGeese! has agreed to begin
medicating the geese with a knockout drug prior to the styrene-spray
step. Also, the Pentagon has confirmed the inadvertent bombing of a
tribal wedding in Taluchistan. Six bundled corpses are shown
adjacent to six shallow graves dug into some impossibly
dry-looking soil near a scary gnarled-looking dead tree.