Vocabulary from "Tenth of December" by George Saunders

The pale boy with unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs and cublike mannerisms hulked to the mudroom closet and requisitioned Dad’s white coat.

Today’s assignation: walk to pond, ascertain beaver dam.

This was just their methodology.

His aplomb threw them loops.

He would turn, level the pellet gun, intone: Are you aware of the usage of this human implement?

And place at their doorway an implacable rock of suffocation, trapping them inside.

Later, imagining them in their death throes, taking pity on them, he would come back, move the rock.

And chortle their Nether laughs.

If the person was mental, all the more reason to come to his aid, as had not Jesus said, Blessed are those who help those who cannot help themselves, but are too mental, doddering, or have a disability?

Six minutes to follow the path around the pond, an additional three minutes to fly up the hillside like a delivering wraith or mercy-angel, bearing the simple gift of a coat.

Which Dad prognosticated would soon triumphantly congeal into linebackerish solidity.

You have such aplomb, Suzanne demurred.

Your bravery is irascible, Suzanne said.

If Mom could see him, she’d have a conniption.

She had a munificent splay of long silver hair and a raspy voice, though she didn’t smoke and was even a vegan.

A blissful feeling overtook me as I drifted off to sleep at the base of the crevasse.

He’d kept waiting for some special dispensation.

He was defunct now, off rotting somewhere, no brain in his head.

Sometimes comments were made on the style faux pas of Mom.

Once, he’d done a secret rendezvous of recording Mom’s phone calls, just for the reconnaissance aspect.

He got to his feet and, gathering his massive amount of clothes up like some sort of encumbering royal train, started toward home.

He had somewhat cried, yes, but had then simply laughed off this moment of mortal weakness and made his way home, look of wry bemusement on his face, having, it must be acknowledged, benefitted from the much appreciated assistance of a certain aged—

An image flashed of the old guy standing bereft and blue-skinned in his tighty-whities like a P.O.W. abandoned at the barbed wire due to no room on the truck.

Which—you didn’t want to get that ball roiling...rolling.

They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you always expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever—