Free CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella by George Saunders Page A

with a start. The sun comes up, driving sparrows before it, turning the corporate reflective windows wild with orange. I roll out of my car and brush my teeth with my finger.
    My first day as a killer.
    I walk to the pit in the light of fresh day, hoping it was all a dream. But no. There’s our scuffling footprints. There’s the mound of fresh dirt, under which lies Tim. I sit on a paint can in a patch of waving weeds and watch my colleagues arrive. I weep. I think sadly of the kindly humbler I used to be, bleary-eyed in the morning, guiltless and looking forward to coffee.
    When I finally go in, everyone’s gathered stunned around the microwave.
    “El Presidente,” Claude says disgustedly.
    “Sorry?” I say.
    I make a big show of shaking my head in shock as I read and reread the note I wrote. I ask if this means I’m in charge. Claude says with that kind of conceptual grasp we’re not exactly in for salad days. He asks Freeda if she had an inkling. She says she always knew Tim had certainunplumbed depths but this is ridiculous. Claude says he smells a rat. He says Tim never had a religious bone in his body and didn’t speak a word of Spanish. My face gets red. Thank God Blamphin, that toady, pipes up.
    “I say in terms of giving Jeffrey a chance, we should give Jeffrey a chance, inasmuch as Tim was a good manager but a kind of a mean guy,” he says.
    “Well put,” Claude says cynically. “And I say this fattie knows something he’s not telling.”
    I praise Tim to the skies and admit I could never fill his shoes. I demean my organizational skills and leadership abilities but vow to work hard for the good of all. Then I humbly propose a vote: Do I assume leadership or not? Claude says he’ll honor a quorum, and then via show of hands I achieve a nice one.
    I move my things into Tim’s office. Because he’d always perceived me as a hefty milquetoast with no personal aspirations, he trusted me implicitly. So I’m able to access the corporate safe. I’m able to cater in prime rib and a trio of mustachioed violinists, who stroll from cubicle to cubicle hoping for tips. Claude’s outraged. Standing on his chair, he demands to know whatever happened to the profit motive. Everyone ignores him while munching on my prime rib and enjoying my musicians. He says one can’t run a corporation on good intentions and blatant naïveté. He pleads that the staff fire me and appoint him CEO. Finally Blamphin proposes I can him. Torson from Personnel seconds the motion. I shrug my shoulders and we vote, and Claude’s axed. He kicks the watercooler. He gives me the finger. But out he goes, leaving us to our chocolate mousse and cocktails.
    By nightfall the party’s kicked into high gear. I bring injugglers and a comedian and drinks, drinks, drinks. My staff swears their undying loyalty. We make drunken toasts to my health and theirs. I tell them we’ll kill no more. I tell them we’ll come clean with the appropriate agencies and pay all relevant fines. Henceforth we’ll relocate the captured raccoons as we’ve always claimed to be doing. The company will be owned by us, the employees, who will come and go as we please. Beverages and snacks will be continually on hand. Insurance will be gratis. Day care will be available on-site.
    Freeda brightens and sits on the arm of my chair.
    Muzak will give way to personal steros in each cubicle. We will support righteous charities, take troubled children under our collective wing, enjoy afternoons off when the sun is high and the air sweet with the smell of mown grass, treat one another as family, send one another fond regards on a newly installed electronic mail system, and, when one of us finally has to die, we will have the consolation of knowing that, aided by corporate largesse, our departed colleague has known his or her full measure of power, love, and beauty, and arm in arm we will all march to the graveyard, singing sad hymns.
    Just then the cops break in, led by Claude,