Eschaton: "We'll All Go Together When We Go" An Essay

 

The simulation of mutual nuclear destruction, “Eschaton.” occupies a central position in the body of Infinite Jest.  Even more space when one figures in the “fall-out’ that ensued because of the injuries that occurred because of the game.  In this presentation I would like to attempt to address how David Foster Wallace might have chosen the name for the game, how he might have come up with his inspiration for it, and then attempt to apply the metaphor of “eschaton” to the worlds of the Enfield Tennis Academy, the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery Facility, and to the Quebecois Separatist Group; a collection of barely credible characters, including wheelchair assassins, who are searching for their own weapon of mass destruction, the film “Infinite Jest;” so captivating a movie to watch that the viewer becomes so engrossed in it that his will to live abandons him.  The movie totally takes hold of (vaporizes) the mind to the point that the viewer neglects all physical needs, including the need to eat and sleep.  Death eventually ensues; a numbing mind-rot in front of a television.  Each of the aforementioned worlds has its levels of mutual assistance, diplomacy, distrust, deceit and hostility that are simulated in the game (or final judgement) of Eschaton.  I will be addressing a number of books and movies that most of us and I believe David Foster Wallace as well was familiar with, that perhaps might have led to his creation of the game.

Freedictionary.com defines Eschaton as the end of time following Armageddon when God will decree the fates of all individual humans according to the good and evil of their earthly lives.”  In order to arrive at this point in time, we must look to divine inspiration, or mankind must acquire technology destructive enough to invoke that day of reckoning upon itself.  When the Manhattan Project Scientists tapped the power of the atom, they lit the path that has led to a point in history where we now have that ability.  One can’t help but note the irony in the fact that the Eschaton game at the Enfield Academy is scheduled for “Interdependence Day.”

Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocked the psyches of not only David Foster Wallace’s parent’s generation, but have left their scars on succeeding generations as well.  Young David’s TV viewing, according to D. T. Max in his biography of Wallace, was “intense and extensive enough to worry his parents,”  and in later years DFW would reflect that television was a major influence in his childhood, “the key factor in this schizophrenic experience that I had growing up.”

David was born the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so he would have been spared the potential trauma of those tense days, but one only has to run through the litany of nuclear destruction themes addressed in the movies and literature that he would have been likely to view to understand how these fears could imbed themselves in the author’s mind.  A young boy would have certainly been fascinated with reruns of Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone.”   Wallace once stated that he enjoyed Serling’s later offerings in “Night Gallery.”  A number of Serling’s plots were crafted out of fear of nuclear war.  As Wallace grew older and immersed himself in contemporary culture, it is safe to guess that he watched Stanley Kubrick’s satire, “Dr. Strangelove.”  The “Planet of the Apes” movies as well as Mel Gibson’s “Mad Max” productions were both premised in the chaos and devastation left after a nuclear holocaust.  Novels such as “Fail-Safe,” “A Canticle for Liebowitz.”  Even “Dune” with its use of “Family Atomics” and a harsh forbidding habitat that compared to a post nuclear war world could be considered part of the genre.  Then there were (and still are in a number of old buildings) fall-out shelters constructed during the height of the nuclear war scare.  One thinks of Henry Bemis, the book-loving bank teller in a Twilight Zone episode, who takes refuge in a bank vault to hide and read and becomes the only survivor when the bomb hits.  For a time Civil Defense authorities (does anyone remember the “Civil Defense’ squads?) were urging that families build fall-out shelters in their basements as well.  You might emerge into a shattered world only to starve to death, but at least you’ve survived.  David Foster Wallace, as we all did, absorbed much of the fear and paranoia predicated by fear of the Bomb.  The image of nuclear devastation even appears in a metaphor about suicide, which he refers to as removing oneself from the map.

There is a body of thought, which D. T. Max addresses in a footnote on page 317 in his biography of Wallace, that mentions that David contacted the novelist Don Delillo to discuss with him his concerns that Delillo might think that he’d taken the idea for Eschaton from Don’s novel  “End Zone,”  due to some similarity with Delillo’s work.  Delillo graciously responded that he didn’t view his novel as being Wallace’s source.  Personally, I don’t think it was either.  There were so many movies and games out there that Wallace could have run into and used as a springboard for his own creation.  The most obvious one would be the movie “Wargames,” which starred Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman and Ally Sheedy.  This movie came out when David was twenty one years old.  The plot revolves around a young computer nerd by the name of “David,” who is looking to hack into games to play on his computer and inadvertently connects to a computer in NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain facility.  David, who thinks he’s found such a game, engages in a computer simulation of “Global Thermonuclear War” against a computer, Joshua, that had been programmed to run the nuclear weapons control system by  military men who in their infinite wisdom, entrusted a computer to take charge because they feared that a flesh and blood human being might be too squeamish to make the murderous decisions that could lead to victory in a nuclear exchange.  “David” (Mathew Broderick) chooses to play the USSR, and all hell breaks loose.  Eventually, David realizes that he’s activated a real computer.  He gets hold of the computer’s original programmer, and together they come up with a scheme to teach the computer tic-tac-toe.  With two competent players these games will end in draws.  The computer, as it has been programmed to do, adapts and changes its strategy to no avail.  Having accustomed the computer to recognizing the futility of “no win” situations, they then let the computer run through its list of nuclear war scenarios.  The computer can come up with no winning strategy in this competition either, finally reaching the conclusion that “the only winning move is not to play.”

In 1965 Flying Buffalo Games published their “Nuclear War” card game.  This game, another one that often “nobody wins,” soon became a popular offering at game conventions and could be seen being played on many college campuses.  The object is to be the last leader with any population left.  Often the country you’ve just nuked into oblivion will return the favor with their final strike.  The game is done tongue in cheek, with a spinner dictating results once a missile is launched.  A dud can ruin your day.  There are cards portraying peaceniks that can thwart one missile launch, or the dreaded “Supergerm,” which can devastate a population center.  This game has continued to evolve (or devolve, depending on your mind set) for over 50 years, and is still popular.  For countries on the brink of annihilation there’s always the hope that you’ll hit an opponent’s nuclear stockpile with a hundred megaton payload.  This triggers a chain reaction that will destroy the planet, and usually a round of the players singing Tom Lehrer’s “We’ll All Go Together When We Go.”   No winner.  But great satisfaction to those who would have lost anyway.

Other games in this genre include Yaquinto’s  “Ultimatum” and Game World’s “Apocalypse: the Game of Nuclear Devastation,”  not to mention post –nuclear holocaust scenarios too numerous to mention.  Wallace could have taken inspiration for Eschaton from a book, movie or game.  David Foster Wallace fans have taken his creation and have carried it further as well.  In his on-line article, “Eschaton: the World’s Most Popular Game?”  Scott Rosenfield writes about Keith Pille, an avid fan of the author’s works, has simplified the rules into something he calls “Eschaton Lite,” and has posted the rulebook on his website (http://nowhereband.org).  The game hasn’t developed much of a following yet, but perhaps its day will come.  My suggestion that DFW may have encountered such games is supported by a flyer put together by  J.T.Jackson, a longtime-friend of the author, who mentions in the flyer that he and Wallace attended the World Fantasy Convention in Tucson in 1985.  He could have seen some of the games mentioned above being played there.

So, why does Eschaton occupy some twenty pages in “Infinite Jest,” not to mention the fall-out from the debacle that the game turned into that is chronicled later in the novel? 

Most of us spend much of our lives learning to interact in, get by in, and ideally, flourish and grow in work, school or community factions as unique as the groups of people thrown together in the tennis academy, the recovery house or the cabal of Quebecoise separatists, the parallel worlds that intersect with each other in the narrative of “Infinite Jest.”  Like countries or regions do, individuals thrown together because they share a particular talent, character defect or goal distrust , envy, befriend or begin to harbor out-and –out antipathy toward each other.  Like alliances formed in the play of Eschaton, being part of any group of individuals necessitates taking stock of one’s own standing in it; assessing whom to befriend (ally with) and recognizing those who are a threat to your standing in the group either by their having the talent to outshine you, envy of your talent or a personal antipathy toward you, or even sociopathic tendencies that could lead to them doing you harm.  As early as kindergarten we divide into cliques and begin to learn how to assess, evaluate and interact with each other.  We learn life diplomacy.

It is no accident that at the Enfield Tennis Academy the Eschaton participants that represent political factions are made up of the younger  members of the academy; twelve to fourteen year old teens.  One immediately thinks of the real life parallel; youth being sent to war while the elders who have goaded them into it write the rules that determine the strategy and set the game in motion.  So it is with life in Enfield.  Students there are brought together because they share the common goal of honing their tennis skills to the point where they can compete and win at the professional level.  They learn to assess each other’s skills and how to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses if they have any.

 John Wayne is conceded to be the best player in the academy.  As such he’s cut a lot of slack and granted favors that include sexual access to Avril Incandenza.  His pressure comes from his father, who suffers from a serious work-related illness, and is anxious to see his son graduate into the big money of professional tennis to lift some of the financial burden from him.  Hal Incandenza would be perhaps the best player in the academy if Wayne were not there.  Finding personal relationships difficult, he has learned to cope by slipping into the tunnels beneath the academy to lose himself in a haze of marijuana smoke.  As the novel progresses, Hal isolates himself more and more from his family and his friends in the academy, almost becoming like Melville’s Bartleby in his efforts to distance himself from others, ending in a spectacular failure to express himself that one tends to lose track of since it occurs at the beginning of the novel, that’s reminiscent of yet another one of Melville’s characters…Billy Budd.  Perhaps his best friend at Enfield, other than his brother Mario, is Michael Pemulis.  Pemulis is vulnerable because of his drug dealing, he’s sensitive about his working class background, and he’s coming to grips with the realization, much to his chagrin, that his tennis game isn’t good enough to take him to the professional level.  Like the old men that Bob Dylan sings about in “Masters of War,” Pemulis has come up with the concept of the game of Eschaton, has crafted the rules for it, and is the final arbiter when it comes to rule interpretations.  Pemulis constructed the game in order to highlight his tennis game’s best feature; an ability to serve precise lobs just as cynically as diplomats push policies that enable the implementation of their country’s strengths and takes this same cynical approach to his drug dealing.  His sales have created a need for clean urine samples, so in the classic entrepreneurial spirit, he makes them available as well.  Having created the need, he offers the solution.  That’s marketing savvy.  Then there’s the story of Eric Clipperton, who aspires to a number one junior ranking despite not having the talent to propel himself to that point.  He plays the guilt/sympathy card before every match by bringing a gun with him and making it shockingly clear that he will do away with himself if he loses.  Finally achieving the top ranking that he so aspired to, he did kill himself.  He had achieved his goal and perhaps didn’t know how to proceed from that point. 

In the refuge of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery facility, those unfortunates who have glutted their appetites on pleasure or escape substances to the point where they can no longer function is society.  ( one immediately calls to mind the ultimate pleasure fix…the movie, Infinite Jest) gather to attempt to de-toxify in order to work towards rehabilitation.  Pat Montesian, the counselor, serves as the arbiter who determines which of these flawed souls have made enough progress to accept greater responsibilities.  Dan Gately, a muscular man who once aspired to play professional football (again, Wallace’s nod toward entertainment) is making progress, thanks to a group of elderly recovering alcoholics (the Crocodiles) who are there to offer him support.  Dan is fascinated with Joelle, a disfigured young woman who is referred to Ennet House after a failed suicide attempt.  Formerly the “Prettiest Girl of All Time,” or “P-Goat”, as she was referred to by Hal Incandeza’s brother Orrin, who used to date her, she wears a veil to hide her acid-ravaged face.  She was “Madame Psychosis” in a late night radio program that Hal’s brother Mario enjoyed listening to.  I would imagine her to be something like the present radio persona of “Delilah,” whom you can turn into to hear pathetically lonely listeners call to discuss their problems with.  Other members of this cluster of recovering addicts are the sad case of Kate Gompert, who turned to drugs out of despair and revulsion  after witnessing her father molest her comatose sister;  Bruce Green, Geoffrey Day, Ruth Van Cleve and Randy Lenz, a despicable creature who gets his jollies from killing animals.  He’s a rogue state if there ever was one.  All are in various stages  of rehab, and with the exception of Lenz, aspiring toward clean and sober.  These disparate individuals coalesce into a fighting unit when a group of Canadians come storming onto the Ennet House grounds, hell-bent on taking revenge on Randy Lenz, who had killed a pet dog of theirs.  No matter what their individual problems, they came together as though they were citizens of a country that had just been invaded.

Then there’s the Quebecois Separatist group, Les Assassins des fauteuils,” another group working like a rogue state outside the norms of acceptable behavior.  Disgusted with the Organization of North American Nations, (yes, O.N.A.N.) and at the seemingly supine tendency of the Canadian government to accede to demands by their neighbor to the south, including the recent decision by the Canadian leaders to accept the gift of Maine (the state had been turned into a toxic waste dumping ground now rumored to harbor packs of ravenous feral hamsters as well as other terrifying bio-hazards) the “Assassins” are working to acquire the leverage that will help them to achieve their goal of Quebec independence.  The “Assassins” have tentacles that extend into many places.  They may have infiltrated the tennis academy.  It’s founder, James Incandeza, Hal’s father, directed the legendary movie “Infinite Jest,” which featured Joelle Van Dyne before her disfigurement.  This movie has such power that it will captivate a viewer to the point where he lives for nothing else than to watch the movie over and over again, rewinding it to review as quickly as possible.  Death comes as the body shuts down while the mind is held in thrall in a state of catatonic bliss.  This movie is eagerly sought by the group, which has visions of using it as blackmail against the United States to ensure that they pressure Canada to grant Quebec its independence.  It would have as devastating an effect as a nuclear strike…instead of radiation poisoning; the victims would perish of a surfeit of pleasure.   Their tentacles also reach into the Ennet House, where an operative (Maranthe) is sent to search for information about the movie’s location as well.  All is not single minded discipline and mission focus among the assassins, however.  They are opposed by a U.S. Government agency that is determined to discover the movie themselves and keep it out of the separatist  group’s hands, and they can’t be certain as to which of their agents can be totally trusted or which might be double-agents.

Yes, it’s a complicated plot.  Note that I’m barely touching upon the Incandenza family history, which included Hal discovering his father’s suicide, his head splattered in a microwave after he’d stuck it inside it and zapped himself to eternity. Don’t waste time pondering the physics of how to close the door with one’s head inside in order to turn the microwave on.  I did, and I can’t come up with an answer.    You wonder why Hal is messed up?  Society is as well.  Wallace pens a vision of a time where pursuit of pleasure and rampant consumerism has replaced patriotic fervor, a society that elects as its President, Johnny Gentle,  a former Vegas Lounge singer.  Picture Wayne Newton leading our Nation.  Or Donald Trump giving his inauguration speech wearing an Air filtration mask while promising us a tidier nation.  It’s a society where everything is peddled crassly.  Even Lady Liberty is called upon to pimp consumer goods.  The naming right for each upcoming  year is bid on by corporations.  The winning bid becomes the nomenclature for the year as well as the product that Lady Liberty holds in the crook of her arm for the length of that anointed time span.  The Year of the Whopper becomes the Year of the Glad which becomes the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.  You get the sad, tacky picture.

Two and a half months after I committed to it, I finished Infinite Jest.  My wife asked me what I thought of it.  I told her that I consider my favorite novel, Moby Dick, to be a magnificent tale of rebellion against God.  Melville’s “wicked book,” as he referred to it in a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The feeling Infinite Jest leaves me with is that it’s a guttural cry of despair.  Most everyone is doomed to fail; fail to reach their goals of becoming a tennis pro, fail to come out of rehab cured, fail in their relationships, even fail in their pursuit of pleasure to dull the pain, finding it empty, or in the case of coming across a copy of James Incandenza’s movie, ending up consumed by it.  Personal relationships lead too often to betrayal, disappointment, or explode with devastating results.  A father’s love leads to a character being  disfigured by acid; a psycho kills a pet and war breaks out between “us” (the Ennet House) and “them, (the Canadians).  You’re scarred by a father’s assault on your sister, a father’s suicide  or a wife’s unfaithfulness. There’s no telling when events in one’s life will degenerate into chaos.  Hal Incandenza’s solution:  Flee to the tunnels.  Isolate yourself, numb yourself, refuse to participate.  In the end, what Hal tells the young boys given to his charge at the tennis academy is all too true, and so very disheartening.

  “We’re each deeply alone here.  It’s what we have in common.  This aloneness.”

 If I were to end this essay with a musical accompaniment, I would be playing the woeful refrain from “All Apologies,”   the song that Kurt Cobain wrote and performed with his band, Nirvana.  

            “All alone is all we are.”

David Foster Wallace would agree.

Springer Detail

Yeah, I was on the road again. The name "Vanderbilt" had come up on the detail roster. Unlike the usual  sentencing to Turkey Ridge, that hemorrhoid on the ass of the universe, I'd actually been sent to a decent location.  Not that many postings were decent in Western Illinois.  Certainly the town wasn't.  Dutchman's Knoll was a little town of less than a thousand people.  It had a couple bars though, and a grocery store, and a clean little motel, so it was livable for a week.   What made this posting desirable was the fact that I was going to be working in an egg plant.

Egg Inspection is a gravy job.  it's usually a one inspector plant, so you don't have office politics or the one or two intolerable co-workers that any office has to contend with.  You don't have a supervisor either.  It's easy work too.  You go out a few times during the day and monitor the process, observe the company's inspectors to make certain that they're doing a good job, check some gauges, cooler temperatures, and occasionally put a USDA seal on a truck.  Most of the day one can spend in the tiny USDA Office, watching television, reading or occasionally, sneaking a nap in.  There's an opportunity for a good chunk of overtime too, since most egg plants run ten to twelve hours a day and law mandates that a USDA inspector be on premises during hours of operation.

It  was Thursday afternoon, and I was waiting for my replacement, who would arrive at 3:30.  The sole window in the Government office faced the parking lot, so Lloyd would be easy to spot as he pulled in.  I was already dressed in his street clothes and looking forward to a couple beers after my shift was done.   It had been a productive week.  I had read an interesting  biography of Daniel Boone. Jennifer Dubois' A Brief History of Lost Causes, and had just about finished galloping through Sarah Vowell's enjoyable Assassination Vacation. I enjoyed the luxury of leisurely watching Sports Center in the morning and having the time to turn on the Jerry Springer show to watch less than stellar representatives of redneck America air their dirty laundry.

As I sat looking out the window waiting for Lloyd's black SUV to arrive, a battered tan Ford Taurus careened into the parking lot and pulled to a stop just inches from the office window.  I had sprang from my chair and stepped back, fearing at first that the car would hit the building.  Out of the car lunged an obese young woman with  wiry uncombed blonde hair and a look on her face that clearly said that "someone is going to die."  She pulled open the front door of the plant, and shoving her way past the plant Manager, who had risen from his desk to greet the visitor,  she strode up to one of the gals who had just arrived to work the second shift, another obese honey, about 5'2'' and pushing 250 lbs. 

"Stay away from my husband, you goddamned slut," she bellowed, "or I'll rip your crappy dye-job hair right off your scalp, you fuckin  skank."

"Then tell your whore-dog of a husband to quit calling me, you stupid cow," she snarled back.

The two of them glared at each other for a few moments, like WWE wrestlers strutting their machismo before the bell rings, but then the aggrieved party backed off, another thought forming in her agitated mind.

She ran up the stairs and began pounding on the door of the transfer room, where eggs cartons are stacked on to pallets in preparation to being shipped to grocery warehouses.  That's where her philandering husband worked.

By this time the plant manager realized that he had a problem to address.  He grabbed the woman by a shoulder, turned her toward him and said, in a voice that he was striving to but noticeably failing to keep calm.

"If you don't leave the premises immediately, I'm going to call the police."

She stepped back and glared at him for a few moments, her right leg back and taut as though she was considering kicking him.  The word "Police" though, had evidently permeated her consciousness.  She snarled "Fuck You!" and turned and flounced out the door.

I saw Lloyd coming in, so I grabbed my book and jacket, exited the office, and moved toward the front door to leave.  Behind me were some of the plant's employees who had finished their shift as well.   One of them must have been her husband, because next view I had was of the pissed off wife coming at me looking like an NFL lineman wanting to take off my head.  Yeah, I admit it.  I panicked.  I whipped out my government badge as though it were a cross held up to ward off the fury of a vampire, and said,

"I'm USDA.  If you touch me you'll go to jail forever."  Looking back on it, it comes across as a pretty stupid and cowardly thing to say, but it actually worked.  She backed off, but crouched in an attack mode looking like a tiger waiting to pounce on its prey.

The prey was her husband.  As I passed her and headed to my car, he came out.  She gave out a banshee yell and launched a ferocious assault upon him, her fists balled and her arms flailing.  This guy was close to six feet tall, and weighed about 160 lbs, but the ferocity of her attack had knocked him down.  For a time had all he could do to fend her off as she did her best to wallop the cheating devil out of him. 

By this time all of the first shift employees who hadn't left yet, and a good share of the second had stepped outside to enjoy the show.  Her husband eventually fought his way back to his feet, then hit her one...two...three times in the face as hard as he could.  Shaking off his punches, like a boxer used to absorbing punishment, turned, ran toward her car, got in and locked the door.  She had outmaneuvered him, and he was not at all happy about it.

"Let me in, you fucking bitch," he yelled, pounding on the door.  "Let me in.  NOW!"

I know it probably wasn't the most professional thing to do, but there are times when professionalism is overrated.  This was one of those times.  The scene was so reminiscent of one of Springer's productions.    I couldn't resist.  I tossed any pretense of  professionalism out the window and began to loudly chant "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!"

A number of the plant employees immediately joined in on the  raucous "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!"refrain as well.  Yeah, I'd nailed it.

His old lady listened to him bellow as he pulled futilely on the door handle for awhile, then finally stepped on the gas, fishtailed away, and sped out of the driveway and down the road, leaving her husband standing in the parking lot.  Frustrated, he shot me and his chanting co-workers a furious look, then ran to his car to take off after her, leaving a laughing and cheering parking lot behind him.

I heard the following morning that his old lady was waiting for him with a baseball bat when he got home.  He must have been able to wrest it away from her though, because he was at work the next morning.  He must have not used it on her, because she wasn't in jail.  Who knows.  Maybe they each realized what a prize they have in each other, and reconciled.  For a while, anyway.

At any rate, just a couple days before I had been telling Lloyd what a boring job he had.  Not anymore.  Not in Dutchman's Knoll at least.  Not here in Springerville.

No Corporation Left Behind

     It was morning break and the Boy had brought in the local newspaper.  Like most rural newspapers it did little justice to world or national news.  This one was so countrified that it still had elderly women correspondents who published weekly filler pieces like News from Johnson’s Crossroads, Goings on in Gossamer Springs, or Tales from Titmouse Prairie, all little communities that once were self-sufficient enough to boast a church, a few businesses and a school.  Consolidation has closed the country schools though, Sprawl-Mart has suffocated the businesses, and church attendance is dwindling as the elderly parishoners who took pride in their ties to their little country church take permanent residences in the cemeteries behind  them.  No one has the heart to tell the blue-hairs that their contributions aren’t needed anymore, so every week one still gets to read about who had coffee with whom, who had out of town company, and whose granddaughter managed to graduate from high school, college, or a cosmetology program.  The people referenced in these columns were always white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.   The elderly correspondents wanted nothing to do with and were somewhat frightened by the immigrants that Canterbury Meats had brought into the community.  The people who still subscribed to the local newspaper did so out of habit, or to access the obituaries or Matter of Record.  After a weekend, the Matter of Record was usually perused with avid eagerness by Canterbury Meat employees, as more than likely it would be discovered that one or more of the hard–working/hard-partying packing house wage slaves had had a Saturday night run in with the law. 

     The Boy, who had brought in the pathetic excuse for a paper, looked up at Vanderbilt and said, “I see that the locals have voted down a tax increase for the schools again.” 

     Vanderbilt snorted dismissively, and said “what the fuck did you expect”

     “I’d expect the locals to support a good education for their kids, at least,” he said.  We had no trouble passing one in Lutefisk Hollow.”

     “This isn’t Lutefisk Hollow.  This is a packing house town.”

     “So what,” the boy countered.  “Packing house employees have kids too.”

     Vanderbilt stood up, waved his arm toward the town, and said "that’s the point.  Take a look over there.  It’s an old town.  A town of retirees.  A town of I never got any, or I got mine, fuck you.  Your village passes tax increases for schools, because they are passing them for their kids or grandkids.  You’re from a farm community, where people have put down roots for generations, and farm profits have been able to purchase good education for those who know they’ll have an opportunity to pursue their promise beyond high school.  You come from a school district that has had to deal with little change demographically.  Do you think Lutefisk Hollow would be as apt to vote for better schools for Nigerian, Chin or Mexican children?  I doubt it."  

    “So,” the boy challenged him.  “You’re saying that you live in a community of racists then, and that’s why they voted the school funding down.”

     “That’s part of it,” Vanderbilt admitted.  You’ve got the same assholes who posted shit like Jesus Christ carrying an overnight bag above a caption that said “Christ is Welcome in the White House Again,” after Obama’s two terms were done.  Those kind of people wouldn’t vote anything for a child of color other than for the right to be born, then suffer.  You know what I mean.  Pro-lifers until the colored kids are born.  Then to hell with them.  Yeah, we have some of those. “

     “I guess where I’m going with this,” Vanderbilt mused, trying to muster his thoughts in a way to send them marching out in a formation that could be readily understood, "is that there’s a lot of people in this community that feel threatened by the influx of foreigners that Canterbury is bringing in to work at the plant.  They believe that these kids are taking jobs away from their kids or grandkids.  They won’t accept the fact that maybe their blood is too lazy to take a job there or maybe they can’t pass the drug test.  Someone owes their kids a living.  Canterbury’s the biggest game in town.  Why shouldn’t it be Canterbury?   And if Canterbury isn’t giving it to them, it must be the damn foreigners fault for coming over here to take their place.”

     “That’s all they see,”  Vanderbilt continued.  “They don’t see Canterbury Corporate sending emissaries all over the world to reach into areas devastated by turmoil and poverty in order to recruit wage slaves to work in the golden streets of the U. S. of A.  They don’t care that they bring in these kids to keep union sentiment at bay and to beat the wages down.  They just see “niggers” or “spics” or “gooks” as they call them, working where their kids ought to be.  They’re angry.  They can’t take on Canterbury, so they’ll get their licks in when they can.  I’ve heard them….."

     “Why should my taxes be increased to educate packing house family kids?’  

     "That’s a polite wording of it.  It’s usually filled with a smattering of racial slurs as well.  They’d vote for education for their own kids, but they won’t for the immigrants.  And admittedly, it’s not all motivated by hate.  There are a lot of elderly long-time residents of this town, who dislike the changes it’s brought to the community, who feel threatened by diversity, change, or people whose ways are different than theirs.  These are good people who can change, but fear to, and have a tendency to vote against it.  I’ve heard some of them saying, for instance, "if the packing houses bring all their workers' kids here, can’t they help pay toward educating them?”  What they don't realize, is that the kids who come here from overseas to work are good kids; the best of the lot.  They're willing to vote with their feet to move to a strange new country in order to improve their lot.  They're the ambitious ones.  The ones they leave behind are like the kids here who choose to remain in Johnson's Crossroad or Gossamer Springs because they fear to leave their families and home, then whine because there's no opportunities for them."

     Vanderbilt took a breath, then reached for a bottle of water.  The Boy took the opportunity to wrest the conversation from him.  

     “Have the company contribute toward funding the schools.   That’s actually a pretty good idea.  If they bring these people in, they should be helping the schools out financially”

     “Yeah.  Like that’s going to happen.  This corporation is just like 99% of their cohorts.  It’s just take, take, take.  Look at what the city spends on infrastructure to keep this place running.  Look at the burdens on social services.  Look at the burdens placed on the schools.  You’ve got kids being dropped on them that don’t speak a word of English.  You need translators for Chin, Spanish, Swahili, French and who knows what else.  In the cash-strapped school systems we have now, the money for that kind of help only can come from cutting other programs.  When little Susie’s art classes or Johnnie’s music programs are being cut to buy special help for the foreign kids who arrive unprepared, their parents get the blame.  Not the corporation that brings them in.  And corporate loves it.”

     “How can you say that,” the Boy wondered. 

     “Simple,”  Vanderbilt said with a sigh, as though discouraged at the prospect of having to explain his reasoning.  “if the community is scapegoating the immigrants, nobody’s subjecting them to any sort of scrutiny.  It’s the immigrants who are ruining the community.  Not the corporation that’s sticking it to it.  Canterbury had record profits last year.  Certainly they could afford to help out the community some.  Instead, they ask for tax abatements, tax free loans, improvements in the infrastructure, anything they can get.  And they don’t give a damn thing back.  God forbid their CEO doesn’t make his millions a year, the higher-ups cut back on their bonuses a bit, or their stockholders give up a little for the good of the community.  Like the Second Coming…it’s just not gonna happen.  Hell, these people probably wouldn’t pay health care for their employees if they weren’t under federal obligation to.

    “Rely on you to work your atheism in,” the Boy laughed.  “So, alright.  What’s the solution?  You’re so full of talk.  What do you suggest we do about it?”

     “I’d love to see corporations that import labor assume some of the expense that the community now incurs.  And of course I’d like to see the employees unionize, to be able to take on corporate in a battle for fair wages, benefits and treatment without fear of reprisal.  I’d like to see a work environment where the races aren’t being played against each other.  No more of the “you Mexicans aren’t worth a shit.  The Chin are working circles around you.”  Stuff like that.  They must learn that in Foreman 101, along with classic lines such as “we might be running a couple trucks short today.  If you work hard, you might get done early.”  But none of this will ever happen, of course.  Corporations own the legislators that write the labor laws,  that write the bargaining agreements and that regulate the industries.  Our elected officials don’t care about the public schools.  They send their kids to private ones.  They’re paid handsomely by lobbyists to make certain that no corporation is left behind.”

    “Then, what you’re saying, is that the schools are fucked then,” the Boy sighed.

     ”Yeah, probably.  At least here.  In a packing house town.

     And we’re fucked too.”

    “Yeah, probably.  At least here.   In a packing house town.