He woke up bit by age-stained bit. Bones crackling in his skin, filled with complaints about how he’d let his campfire run out in the night. Hair feeling extra thin in the cool remnants of the night’s breeze. Eyes wobbling out of their wrinkles to peer up at another far-away sunrise. His tongue and mouth had been at odds again the night before, and it took him some gnashing and working of his jaw to tell them apart.
In the meantime he got breakfast ready, digging around in the bottom of the small, simple pack that carried all he cared about in the world.
His hands shook as he held it. It was a little piece of a faraway land that he would never return to – vanished not in space, but in time. It was priceless, and he was about to consume it and throw away the crude wrappings that had held it secure against the elements for all those years, discard it into the wind.
Eyes pricked with tears, he removed the quesadilla from its bag, averting his gaze from the logo emblazoned upon it: Taco Bell. If he read it, he’d be too busy weeping to chew.
It was another morning and nothing had changed.
Once upon a time, this whole landscape was quiet suburbia.
Once upon a time, he and his people had lived upon it, they and no other. They lived in harmony with the lawn, and the lawn repaid their benevolent guidance with a greenness and vivacity seen nowhere else in the annals of human history.
They had no word for ‘disaster’ in their language. Well, they did, but their scale was different. ‘Disaster’ was a word for when Jason or Jennifer came home with a see-minus emblazoned upon their report cards, or for when Bradley got put on the bench while the coach had a talk with the cops, or for when that stinker Hugh from accounting took your parking space.
That all changed when they arrived. When the Urban Planners came to the suburbs.
The sun boiled on his leathery shoulders. Shadows lay flat and still on the hot ground, breath so baited that it burned the air.
There his target was. Close enough to touch. Memories filled his mind of his youth, of how his friends would have applauded his audacious boldness. To come so near to such a prize, to avoid the gaze of the lot-manager, to find it with only his own eyes and will and fleetness of foot… they would talk of him and only him for days. Three times he’d counted coup.
He laid his palm flat against the exposed frame of the car, rust crinkling against his spread fingertips. Standing there he pictured himself looking back out from its seat, seeing himself silhouetted against the sky, framed in the gap where the driver’s door should have stood.
It didn’t move. It never would again. And it was the first he’d seen in a half-decade.
A fourth coup.
Once, great herds of these vehicles had roamed the suburbs, coming down from the highways, through the overpasses. Once, the on-ramps groaned under their weight, and the night shone with the thousand fires of their eyes. Once, they had been surrounded by such a bounty as naturally as fish were by water. Once, his own father, a powerful consultant and head of the Ro-ta-ry Club, had owned an entire herd. And then – even then, in the midst of wealth unimaginable – still they had used every part of the SUV, from hood ornament to cupholders to bumper.
He wanted to cry again, but he had run out of tears.
Oh, they had listened to the Urban Planners. They brought them to their homes, they brought them to their porches, they sat and smoked the cigars (social smoking only!) of peace and friendship with them. They had traded with the Urban Planners, learned of their magical ways and the secrets of so-shal sus-tain-ab-ility – secrets that they mastered quickly, as it allowed for the purchasing of newer and still grander hybrid SUVs with intriguing features and lower gas mileage.
They were an innocent people, and could not have guessed where such things would lead.
Hungry, hungry, hungry, and the old fanny pack was empty. The craving for food gnawed at his innards like the thousand adorable yappy little dogs his mother had owned, and his pace was measuring a little too slow, his heartbeat running a little too fast. He had not seen a Subway or McDonald’s in weeks, and in his hour of need he would even resort to a Walmart.
In his youth, he would only have been a mere fifteen-minute car ride from a Walmart at all times, from his home or any of his friends. In his youth his friend’s homes WERE his homes, for all of them were functionally identical in every single way right down to the lawns thanks to the wise guidance of the Neighborhood Association.
His rheumy vision was growing more blurred still. His breath was as shallow as a marketer’s conscience. Then there – like an unexpected stop-sign in the night, it rose up in front of him. Food.
Food, but at a cost he’d never hoped to pay.
The Urban Planners knew of food. They told them of sustainable farming and agricultural reform and the pressing need for reducing the mass production of red meat, particularly beef. Their preaching was passionate, and it swayed many a curious thirtysomething into abandoning their ways of gluten-free, all-natural, vitamin-enriched, low-fat diets.
The Urban Planners knew of land. They told them of the suburbs, they called it ‘sprawl,’ and they made it shameful to inhabit. Be conscious of your footprint, they said, and they said it especially carefully to the children.
The Urban Planners knew of warfare. They spoke of class warfare, and they warned that there were only two sides and the smaller, wealthier one had been firing shots for more than a century. The suburbs, they said, were a sad little sham set aside to lull their inhabitants to sleep on fickle dreams of wealth. They must be put aside to cope with the changes ahead.
He was quite still when the children found him – a young brother and sister wandering along the edge of their parent’s fields.
“Wow! Gee!” said the brother. “A real suburbian!”
“Gosh!” replied the sister. “Golly! I wonder what killed him?”
The brother prodded at the old man’s cupped hand. “Dunno, sis! Oh, wait. It looks like he stuffed himself on juniper berries until he got diarrhea and the dehydration got ‘im.”
“Jeez, what a nimrod!” said the sister. “Who’d just stuff berries into your mouth without even recognizing them? Only somebody with no survival skills whatsoever would think that was a smart idea.”
“Stupid ‘ol suburbian!” said the brother scornfully.
The old man remained still. And behind his eyes lay one fading image: the faces of his brothers, long-ago lost to the scourge of gluten intolerance, reaching out to welcome him.
This story I have told you is not true (although my incredible grasp of realistic dialogue and characterization may have led you to believe otherwise). But that is only because a thousand like it are occurring every day, and each one has its own, unique litany of heartless details. The suburbians are a sad and sorry lot whose pain and misery, alas, falls to us to alleviate. Their culture has failed them and they are adrift – mothers lack the gas money to drive their children to soccer practices; young boys cannot purchase the SUVs that allow them to become men; the elderly roam the landscape, searching in despair for a nice nursing home where the nurses aren’t too abusive; and the wage-earning male, the former pillar of the suburban community, is utterly lost in a now jobless landscape, his tie and suit doing him as much good as a tutu.
They were a noble people once, if silly to the eye of civilized man. Let us alleviate these noble sillies of their pain. We must shoulder their burden for them, uncomplaining, patient, and with their own good in mind. And it is for that greater good – for the greater good of the suburbians as humans, as flesh and blood – that they must end as a people.
What I propose is humane by definition, being in its entirety the preservation of humans. The suburbians must cease to be as their suburbs have. Their children must be raised properly as decency intends, not left to wander the streets in search of long-abandoned soccer teams. Their houses should be constructed with an eye as to the local climate and landscape’s demands, not mindlessly fabricated one after another. Their adults should be taught how to live, not how to wear suits correctly. And with this advice and more, with our wisdom, we can uplift the suburbians from their lot until they need bear their sad, shameful name no longer.
And maybe they can even learn to enjoy living within walking distance of infrastructure. That’d be nice.