“I guess that wasn’t bad,” she shouted to me when I finally reached her, mobbed as she was by Lemmings. With brotherly concern I watched her descent, could only tell when she hit by the cheer of the crowd. To our credit we hadn’t made them pay the fee. Mothers Against Lemmings was protesting in a nearby parking lot, but I swear even their eyes grew wide when she fell. “You’ll do fine,” I told her, gave her back only the tiniest of shoves. She straddled the window ledge, managed to balance her rear on it so she could lift the other leg out, sit on the sill for another few seconds. She looked at me for a long moment and then lifted one leg up and over the windowsill. “I know we’re not going to be able to collect the fee from everybody,” I said, “but I’m sure we’ll get a good sixty percent of them to ante up.” She’d refused to lighten it with peroxide. I’d had her dress in white – blouse, pants, shoes – to make her appear even more angelic. “I don’t feel quite right about this,” she said as she leaned out a twentieth floor window, surveying the crowd like a princess from an ivory tower. Since my sister’s tuition payments for the art institute were due at the same time I was made treasurer of the state Lemmings chapter, the natural thing was to find a tall building and charge a viewing fee. Many called us a cult, but we didn’t have much to say about that. Besides, new people flocked to join Lemming societies faster than they swore off them. Of course Lemmings Anonymous support groups sprouted after the Denver convention, mainly due to the untimely passing of thirty Lemmings, but most other members thought this statistic reasonable considering the thousands that had gathered to jump.
The bumpers stickers sold two for a dollar. But the mothers couldn’t stop our flow - the t-shirts we had printed up with little lemming herds before the fall, the weekly meetings we organized in community center basements, our national convention in Denver. Before we knew it there were two hundred fifty chapters nationwide and an equal number of mothers’ groups organized against us. “I think it’s starting to swell.”Īfter news of my sister hit the media, Lemming societies took hold faster than we’d thought. “You were something.” I leaned on my sister’s shoulder as she helped me limp home. Like a good brother I jumped after her and landed on Elijah, whom I later learned was already dead. We loaded her pockets heavier and heavier, were drawing a crowd, she stumbled off the cliff and dropped with the weight of a curly hair. It did at first, in those first precious seconds of free-fall, but she lost speed, landed soft. We filled her pockets with rocks, pennies, lead shot, anything to make the decline faster. It was like trying to hurl an autumn leaf. Her descent started normally, but she seemed to slow as she neared the ground, her body like a peacock feather. We were just one of a handful of Lemming societies, ordinary people jumping off 30-foot cliffs. The Patron Saint of Unattractive People.The Foot (another story about Frederick from “Daisies”).Selling Toothpaste in Small Towns (or Five Laments Over My Pac-Man Machine).Places Where the Biology Teacher and Janitor Have Made Out: A list complied by Sheila, Tina, and Amy, Fourth Period Biology.Lemmings (This story first appeared in the literary journal Crazyhorse).Larissa Loses Her Job (A Lament in Three Parts).“Theodore Roosevelt’s Eyebrow Hairs” - novel excerpt.“On the Train” - first published in North American Review.“Meriwether Lewis’ Skull Fragments” - novel excerpt.
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