Free In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders Page B

said Uncle Matt. I'll be watching.

    WELL LATER THAT WEEK
this dog Tweeter Deux brought down a deer in the woods between the
TwelvePlex and the Episcopal Church, and that Tweeter Deux was not a
big dog, just, you know, crazed, and how the DeFrancinis knew she had
brought down a deer was, she showed up in their living room with a
chewed-off foreleg.
    And that night—well
the DeFrancini cat began racing around the house, and its eyes took
on this yellow color, and at one point while running it sort of
locked up and skidded into the baseboard and gave itself a
concussion.
    Which
is when we realized the problem was bigger than we had initially
thought.
    The
thing was, we did not know and could not know how many animals had
already been infected—the original four dogs had been at large
for several days before we found them, and any animal they might have
infected had been at large for nearly two weeks now, and we did not
even know the precise method of infection—was it bites, spit,
blood, was something leaping from coat to coat? We knew it could
happen to dogs, it appeared it could happen to cats—what I'm
saying is, it was just a very confusing and frightening time.
    So
Uncle Matt got on the iMac and made up these flyers, calling a
Village Meeting, and at the top was a photo he'd taken of the red bow
(not the real bow but Karen's pinkish-red bow, which he'd
color-enhanced on the iMac to make it redder and also he had
superimposed Emily's Communion photo) and along the bottom it said
FIGHT THE OUTRAGE, and underneath in smaller letters it said
something along the lines of, you know, why do we live in this world
but to love what is ours, and when one of us has cruelly lost what we
loved, it is the time to band together to stand up to that which
threatens that which we love, so that no one else ever has to
experience this outrage again. Now that we have known and witnessed
this terrific pain, let us resolve together to fight against any and
all circumstances which might cause or contribute to this or a
similar outrage now or at any time in the future—and we had
Seth and Jason run these around town, and on Friday night ended up
with nearly four hundred people in the high school gym.
    Coming
in, each person got a rolled-up FIGHT THE OUTRAGE poster of the
color-enhanced bow, and also on these Uncle Matt had put in—I
objected to this at first, until I saw how people responded—well
he had put in these tiny teeth marks, they were not meant to look
real, they were just, you know, as he said, symbolic reminders, and
down in one corner was Emily's Communion photo and in the opposite
corner a photo of her as a baby, and Uncle Matt had hung a larger
version of that poster (large as a closet) up over the speaker's
podium.
    And
I was sort of astonished by Uncle Matt, I mean, he was showing so
much—I'd never seen him so motivated. This was a guy whose idea
of a big day was checking the mail and getting up a few times to
waggle the TV antenna—and here he was, in a suit, his face all
red and sort of proud and shiny—
    Well
Uncle Matt got up and thanked everyone for coming, and Mrs.
DeFrancini, owner of Tweeter Deux, held up that chewed-up foreleg,
and Dr. Vincent showed slides of cross sections of the brain of one
of the original four dogs, and then at the end I talked, only I got
choked up and couldn't say much except thanks to everybody, their
support had meant the world to us, and I tried to say about how much
we had all loved her but couldn't go on.
    Uncle
Matt and Dr. Vincent had, on the iMac, on their own (not wanting to
bother me) drawn up what they called a Three-Point Emergency Plan,
which the three points were: (1) All Village animals must immediately
undergo an Evaluation, to determine was the animal Infected, (2) All
Infected or Suspected Infected animals must be destroyed at once, and
(3) all Infected or Suspected Infected animals, once destroyed, must
be burned at once to minimize the possibility of