CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

The story opens with the following paragraph:

At noon another load of raccoons comes in and Claude takes them out back of the office and executes them with a tire iron. Then he checks for vitals, wearing protective gloves. Then he drags the cage across 209 and initiates burial by dumping the raccoons into the pit that’s our little corporate secret. After burial comes prayer, a person touch that never fails to irritate Tim, our ruthless CEO. Before founding Humane Raccoon Alternatives, Tim purposefully backed his car over a frat boy and got ten-to-twelve for manslaughter. In jail he earned his MBA by designing and marketing a line of light-up Halloween brooches. Now he gives us the brooches as performance incentives and sporadically trashes a bookshelf or two to remind us of his awesome temper and of how ill-advised we would be to cross him in any way whatsoever (45).

After the burial, the story’s protagonist, a male named Jeffrey, writes out customer invoices and includes “a paragraph or two on how overjoyed the raccoons were when we set them free” (45-46), adding that “no writes a better misleading letter” than he does:

When a client calls to ask how their release went, everyone in the office falls over themselves transferring the call to me. I’m reassuring and joyful. I laugh until tears run down my face at the stories I make up regarding the wacky things their raccoons did upon gaining its freedom. Then, as per Tim, I ask if they’d mind sending back our promotional materials. The brochures don’t come cheap (46).

The protagonist works on commission and says that commissions, at this point, are his “main joy,” as he weighs 400 pounds and can’t “attract female company” (46). Claude enters the office, sees the protagonist snacking, and comments on the protagonist’s size. Claude and Tim continue to make fun of the protagonist, with Tim asking Claude if Claude has had sex with the protagonist, to which Claude responds, “I’m no homo […] But if I was one, I’d die before doing it with Mr. Lard” (47). The protagonist says his co-workers think he’s a “despondent virgin” (47), which Jeffrey counters by discussing his seemingly sole sexual experience, with a woman named Ellen Burtomly. Jeffrey remembers Ellen “nude at the window [at her brother’s cottage] […] the lovely seed helicopters blowing in as she turned and showed [Jeffrey] her ample front on purpose” (47). As Jeffrey then states this was his “most romantic moment” (47), it would seem the intimacy didn’t progress past this.

Since this moment, Jeffrey has taken to going to an adult store and watching pornographic videos in a booth, bring along “bootloads of quarters and a special bottom cushion” (47). Since Christmas, however, he’s stopped this routine, which has left him “sexless,”“good,” and “tense” (47). He adds:

Since then I’ve tried to live above the fray. I’ve tried to minimize my physical aspects and be a selfless force for good. When mocked, which is nearly every day, I recall Christ covered with spittle. When filled with lust, I remember Gandhi purposefully sleeping next to a sexy teen to test himself. After work, I go home, watch a little TV, maybe say a rosary or two (47).

Nonetheless, Jeffrey yearns for companionship. He next details some of his backstory, offering that he “had a dog named Woodsprite who was crushed by a backhoe” and that his “dad died a wino in the vicinity of the Fort Worth stockyards” (48). Jeffrey offers the contents of a letter his father sent him, before his father died:

‘Son,’ he wrote, ‘are you fat too? It came upon me suddenly and now I am big as a house. Beware, perhaps it’s in our genes. I wander cowboy sidewalks of wood, wearing a too-small hat, filled with remorse for the many lives I failed to lead. Adieu. In my mind, you are a waify-looking little fellow who never answered when I asked you a direct question. But I loved you as best I could’ (48).

Freeda, whose role at Humane Raccoon Alternatives is “document placement and retrieval specialist,” has been of romantic interest to Jeffrey in the past, and he now finds those feeling returning, even while he knows that he “repulse[s] her” (49) due to his morbid obesity. Freeda has a young son, Len, and is an only mother, and sometimes Jeffrey “can’t help picturing [him]self sitting on a specially-reinforced porch swing while [Freeda] fries up some chops and Len digs in the muck” (49).

Freeda wants to be at home more, with Len, but makes a poor wage and can’t afford to. Jeffrey offers that they should get a meal together, and “offer each other some measure of comfort” (49), to which Freeda responds by spitting out her soda and laughing at Jeffrey. However, at the end of the day, she says yes to Jeffrey’s offer.

Jeffrey “clean[s] out his pitiful savings” buying gifts for Len and shows up at Freeda’s. At her house is Mrs. Rasputin, Len’s alcoholic babysitter, who has no problem with Len being behind the TV, eating lint balls. Len has an action-figure toy called MegaDeathDealer and generally seems hyperactive and not well-behaved. Freeda and Jeffrey leave to go dine at Ace’s Volcano Island, “an old service station now done up Hawaiian” (51). The owner of the restaurant, Ace, is “an aging beatnik with mild Tourette’s” (51). Jeffrey and Freeda have a pleasant meal and walk home together, with Jeffrey hoping for a kiss. Instead, Freeda “shakes [Jeffrey’s] hand and says great, she can now pay her phone bill, courtesy of Tim” (52).

Jeffrey takes a “week of vacation,” spending three solid days playing a video game, “Oil Can Man” (52), after which he throws the game out and returns to Humane Raccoon Alternatives, where he is chided and verbally harassed. After a day of ribbing and invoicing, “[t]he sun sets [and] the moon rises, round and pale as [Jeffrey’s] stupid face” (53).

In the following scene, Jeffrey is onsite at “the Carlisle entrapment”; the Carlisles are “rich,” and dominate “bread routes throughout the city” (53). After midnight, Jeffrey “trip[s] the wire” on the cage and then shows Mr. Carlisle the captured raccoon; “just then,” however, “the raccoon’s huge mate bolts out of the woods and tears into [Jeffrey’s] calf” (53). Jeffrey kicks the raccoon to death against his car. The Carlisles are “aghast” (53). Jeffrey drives himself to the hospital. After this, he calls Tim, the boss. Tim says Jeffrey handled things incorrectly; we also learn that Tim has “installed a torture chamber [of the BDSM variety] in the corporate basement,” and brings “willing victims” (54) there at night. The next day, “Tim is inducted into Rotary” (55). He hangs “his Rotary plaque in the torture chamber stairwell and order[s] [Jeffrey] to Windex it daily or face extremely grim consequences” (55).

In the story’s next scene, Claude and Jeffrey “approach the burial pit with the Carlisle raccoons” (55). However, they stop before dumping the raccoons because “a pale girl in a sari” is at the burial pit taking photos and “scribbl[ing] in a notebook” (55). Jeffrey and Claude go back to the office; Tim tells Jeffrey to go to HardwareNiche and buy coolers. The only kind of cooler they have is a “Chill’n’Pray, an overpriced cooler with a holographic image of a famous religious personality on the lid” (56). Jeffrey chooses the Buddha Chill’n’Pray and returns to the office, where “loud whacks and harsh words are floating from the basement” (57). Tim emerges, saying the other person in the basement has “the sexual imagination of a grape” (57). Freeda then emerges, her face bruised. Tim “speeds off in his Porsche” while Jeffrey “emerge[s] overwhelmed from [his] cubicle” (57). Freeda’s response to Jeffrey is:“What can I say? […] I can’t get enough of the man” (57). Jeffrey, in a state of shock, leaves his car at work and “walk[s] the nine miles home” (57).

The next day Tim asks Jeffrey to work late, to which Jeffrey agrees. That evening, the girl in the sari returns and videotapes the burial pit. Tim rushes from the office with his signature weapon, a blackjack. Jeffrey follows. Tim attempts to bludgeon the girl, but Jeffrey intervenes, taking the blow meant for her and then wrapping Tim in a bear-hug, killing him. Jeffrey runs across the highway, seeking help, and thinks about turning himself in, then thinks differently:“And standing there […] I learn something vital about myself: when push comes to shove, I could care less about lofty ideals. It's me I love. It’s me I want to protect. […] Me” (59). Jeffrey then buries Tim in the raccoon burial pit and forges a letter saying Tim has gone to Mexico in order “to clarify his relationship with God via silent meditation in a rugged desert setting” (59). Jeffrey adds that Tim, before leaving for Mexico, has decided to make Jeffrey boss.

Jeffrey sleeps in his car that night, dreaming of Tim in Mexico. He goes into the office and feigns surprise at being made boss. Claude doesn’t buy the story. Another employee, Blamphin, urges the group to give Jeffrey a chance, which they do. Jeffrey orders prime rib for everybody, along with “a trio of mustachioed violinists, who stroll from cubicle to cubicle hoping for tips” (61). Jeffrey winds up firing Claude. The party keeps going that night. Jeffrey vows to change Humane Raccoon Alternatives’ corporate culture entirely, with onsite daycare, “[b]everages and snacks […] continually on hand” (63) and actual humane ends for the captured racoons themselves, among other changes. Then Claude, along with the police, comes back in “holding one of Tim’s shoes” (63).

Jeffrey is sentenced to 50 years in prison by a judge who gives less than a life sentence because he feels sorry for Jeffrey, due to his size. (This difference is arbitrary, of course, as Jeffrey will be dead in 50 years.) In prison, Jeffrey is made the property of Vic and forced “to wear a feminine hat with fruit on the brim for nightly interludes” (63). The final page and a half of the story is a lengthy diatribe by Jeffrey concerning how unfair life is and his theological musings. The story concludes with: “And I will emerge again from between the legs of my mother, a slighter and more beautiful baby, destined for a different life, in which I am masterful, sleek as a deer, a winner” (64).