CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

The collection’s third story follows an unnamed, male protagonist who works at a theme park and: 1) accidentally kills a boy; 2) has the boy’s ghost talk to him at night; 3) catches his partner, Simone, cheating on him with a co-worker; 4) is almost killed by the dead boy’s father; and 5) wanders in the hills near his house, vowing to change who he is.

The story opens with a description of the “Center for Wayward Nuns,” which is “full of sisters and other religious personnel who’ve become doubtful” (34). The protagonist states that: “A young nun named Sister Viv came unglued [up] there last fall and we gave her a free season pass to come down and meditate near our simulated Spanish trout stream whenever she wanted” (34).

Sister Viv is at the theme park one day, “sitting cross-legged a few feet away from a Dumpster housed in a granite boulder made of a resilient synthetic material”(35) when she falls into the water. The protagonist “dive[s] in and drag[s] her out” (35). Viv comes to and “spits in [the protagonist’s] face and says [he] couldn’t possibly know the darkness in her heart,” to which the protagonist responds, “Try me” (35). A week later, Viv “runs amok in the nun eating hall and stabs a cafeteria worker to death” (35).

The protagonist’s partner is named Simone; nightly, she “puts on a mermaid tail and lip-synchs on a raft in the wave pool” (35), while the protagonist does the lights and sound. Leon, “the Subquadrant Manager,” stares at Simone. After the show, Leon helps Simone “pack away her tail” (36), while the protagonist simply watches on. Simone and the protagonist leave the theme park together, with Simone telling the protagonist to stop driving “at the roadcut near the self-storage” so that she “can view all the interesting stratification” (37), as Leon has made her a new, sudden fan of geology. The two argue, with Simone telling the protagonist that “a little boldness goes a long way” (37). The protagonist then reveals his past wrong:

Me at the controls is a sore subject. Nothing’s gone right for [him and Simone] since the day I crushed the boy with the wavemaker. I haven’t been able to forget his little white trunks floating out of the inlet port all bloody. Who checks protective-mounting screws these days? Not me. (37).

The protagonist adds that Leon does indeed check such screws, that doing so is “in the protocol,” and that Leon “got to be Subquadrant Manager” through “attention to detail” (37).

The name of the boy the protagonist inadvertently killed is Clive. The protagonist says that “[b]y all accounts, [Clive] was a sweet kid,” and that the protagonist tries to help Clive’s family out by sneaking over to his family’s house in the night and doing “chores in secret […] I’ve changed his dad’s oil and painted all their window frames and taken burrs off their Labrador” (37). Clive’s sister believes this to be the work of “Clive’s soul” (37) and leaves notes for Clive; Simone says that the protagonist is driving the sister crazy.

At home, the protagonist and Simone find that neighborhood kids “have drawn squashed boys all over [their house’s] windows with soap” (38). Simone asks the protagonist if he’s updated his resumé; he says he has not. The protagonist next describes the day that Clive died. Distracted by “an attractive all-girl glee club […] lying around on the concrete in Kawabunga Kove in Day-Glo suits,” the protagonist, who is in charge of the controls for this specific attraction, “increase[s] [his] appeal” by having “sea chanteys blaring” (38). He adds that he was “operating at the prescribed frequency setting but in [his] lust for the glee club had the magnitude pegged” (38).

Leon tells the protagonist to turn down the sea chanteys; the protagonist, feeling brazen, does the opposite; “consequently, [the protagonist] never heard Clive screaming or Leon shouting at [the protagonist] to kill the waves” (38). The protagonist has gone to counseling, in wake of Clive dying, and says that “the sessions have done [him] good, in that “Clive doesn’t come into [his] room at night all hacked up anymore. He comes in pretty much whole” (39).

This ghost Clive talks with the protagonist at night; the protagonist says that Clive “has been hanging around with kids from other epochs,” and that “[o]ne night he showed up swearing in Latin” (39). For the protagonist, Clive is the scariest “when he does real kid things, like picking his nose and wiping it on the side of his sneaker” (39). Clive is upset at the protagonist for “the future [the protagonist] denied him,” and details a “Mexico City trip with [a] perky red-haired tramp”(40) that will never happen because Clive’s dead. The protagonist asks for Clive’s forgiveness, and Clive says no.

The next day, there’s a wedding taking place at the theme park for the Kipers: “The Kipers are the natural type. They don’t want to eat anything that ever lived or buy any product that even vaguely supports notorious third-world regimes” (42).The grandmother of the bride has what the protagonist believes to be a cardiac event. The protagonist attempts CPR but Leon intervenes, taking “a pen from his pocket and [driving] it into her throat” (42), as it turns out that the woman was choking, not having a heart attack. The protagonist slinks off to the Control Hut, where he hopes the hut will “blow up or a nuclear war will start so [he will] die” (42).

After being unable to help the bride’s grandmother, the protagonist is demoted to “Towel Distribution and Collection.”He’s only not fired by Leon because Simone intervenes. On another day soon after, the protagonist goes to Leon’s office and hears “moans from inside,” then sees “Simone [come] out looking flushed and happy” (42). Leon emerges shortly after; the protagonist confronts neither of them, instead climbing “out a window and hitchhik[ing] home” (43).

The ghost of Clive arrives to the protagonist’s house that night; he tells the protagonist “what his senior prom would have been like,” while “Simone calls Leon’s name in her sleep” (43). The protagonist goes out to the kitchen and looks outside, where “all the corn in the cornfield is bent over and blowing,” and the moon “over Delectable Videos” rises “like a fat man withdrawing himself from a lake” (43). In the middle of the night, Clive’s father phones the protagonist to say he’s coming over to kill him. The protagonist says, “I’ll leave the door open” (43).

Clive’s dad “pulls up in Land Cruiser and gets out with a big gun” (43). The man is buzzed, if not drunk, and puts his gun to the protagonist’s head. The protagonist waits to be killed, urinating himself while doing so. He opens his eyes and sees that Clive’s dad has left and that “the front door’s wide open,” and decides to “go for a brisk walk” (44). He “hike[s] into the hills and sit[s] in a graveyard” (44). He contemplates leaving Simone but then thinks of her with Leon and can’t. A storm comes in and the protagonist, “having lost what was to be lost,” has his “torn and black heart [rebel],” telling himself:“[E]nough already, enough, this is as low as I go” (44).