The Corrections

“There’s bacon, you like bacon,” Enid sang. This was a cynical, expedient fraud, one of her hundred daily conscious failures as a mother.

“Two, three, four,” Alfred said.

Chipper ran to take his place at the table. No point in getting spanked.

“Blessalor this foodier use nusta thy service make asair mindful neesa others Jesus name amen,” Gary said.

A dollop of mashed rutabaga at rest on a plate expressed a clear yellowish liquid similar to plasma or the matter in a blister. Boiled beet greens leaked something cupric, greenish. Capillary action and the thirsty crust of flour drew both liquids under the liver. When the liver was lifted, a faint suction could be heard. The sodden lower crust was unspeakable.

Chipper considered the life of a girl. To go through life softly, to be a Meisner, to play in that house and be loved like a girl.

“You want to see my jail I made with Popsicle sticks?” Gary said.

“A jail, well well,” Alfred said.

The provident young person neither ate his bacon immediately nor let it be soaked by the vegetable juices. The provident young person evacuated his bacon to the higher ground at the plate’s edge and stored it there as an incentive. The provident young person ate his bite of fried onions, which weren’t good but also weren’t bad, if he needed a preliminary treat.

“We had a den meeting yesterday,” Enid said. “Gary, honey, we can look at your jail after dinner.”

“He made an electric chair,” Chipper said. “To go in his jail. I helped.”

“Ah? Well well.”

“Mom got these huge boxes of Popsicle sticks,” Gary said.

“It’s the Pack,” Enid said. “The Pack gets a discount.”

Alfred didn’t think much of the Pack. A bunch of fathers taking it easy ran the Pack. Pack-sponsored activities were lightweight: contests involving airplanes of balsa, or cars of pinewood, or trains of paper whose boxcars were books read.

(Schopenhauer: If you want a safe compass to guide you through life … you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony.)

“Gary, say again what you are,” said Chipper, for whom Gary was the glass of fashion. “Are you a Wolf?”

“One more Achievement and I’m a Bear.”

“What are you now, though, a Wolf ?”

“I’m a Wolf but basically I’m a Bear. All’s I have to do now is Conversation.”

“Conservation,” Enid corrected. “All I have to do now is Conservation.”

“It’s not Conversation?”

“Steve Driblett made a gillateen but it didn’t work,” Chipper said.

“Driblett’s a Wolf.”

“Brent Person made a plane but it busted in half.”

“Person is a Bear.”

“Say broke, sweetie, not busted.”

“Gary, what’s the biggest firecracker?” Chipper said.

“M-80. Then cherry bombs.”

“Wouldn’t it be neat to get an M-80 and put it in your jail and blow it up?”

“Lad,” Alfred said, “I don’t see you eating your dinner.”

Chipper was growing emceeishly expansive; for the moment, the Dinner had no reality. “Or seven M-80s,” he said, “and you blew ’em all at once, or one after another, wouldn’t it be neat?”

“I’d put a charge in every corner and then put extra fuse,” Gary said. “I’d wind the fuses together and detonate them all at once. That’s the best way to do it, isn’t it, Dad. Separate the charges and put an extra fuse, isn’t it. Dad?”

“Seven thousand hundred million M-80s,” Chipper cried. He made explosive noises to suggest the megatonnage he had in mind.

“Chipper,” Enid said with smooth deflection, “tell Dad where we’re all going next week.”

“The den’s going to the Museum of Transport and I get to come, too,” Chipper recited.

“Oh Enid.” Alfred made a sour face. “What are you taking them there for?”

“Bea says it’s very interesting and fun for kids.”

Alfred shook his head, disgusted. “What does Bea Meisner know about transportation?”

“It’s perfect for a den meeting,” Enid said. “There’s a real steam engine the boys can sit in.”

“What they have,” Alfred said, “is a thirty-year-old Mohawk from the New York Central. It’s not an antique. It’s not rare. It’s a piece of junk. If the boys want to see what a real railroad is—”

“Put a battery and two electrodes on the electric chair,” Gary said.

“Put an M-80!”

“Chipper, no, you run a current and the current kills the prisoner.”

“What’s a current?”

A current flowed when you stuck electrodes of zinc and copper in a lemon and connected them.

What a sour world Alfred lived in. When he caught himself in mirrors it shocked him how young he still looked. The set of mouth of hemorrhoidal schoolteachers, the bitter permanent lip-pursing of arthritic men, he could taste these expressions in his own mouth sometimes, though he was physically in his prime, the souring of life.

He did therefore enjoy a rich dessert. Pecan pie. Apple brown Betty. A little sweetness in the world.

“They have two locomotives and a real caboose!” Enid said.