Les Mis & the Bros Go to Buffalo Wild Wings
A Short Story for an America Slipping into Its Own Sequel
Victor Hugo had just discovered Fireball whiskey.
“This,” he declared, coughing, “is either the Devil’s piss or the blood of Saint Denis himself.”
Across the table, Fyodor Dostoevsky squinted suspiciously at a basket of boneless wings, as if they were somehow judging him. “They’ve removed the bones, Victor. How can there be truth in a thing without a spine?”
It had been a strange day.
One moment they were quietly dead, entombed in their respective corners of Europe. The next, they were stumbling through the automatic doors of a Buffalo Wild Wings outside Columbus, Ohio. Apparently summoned by the overactive imagination of a media producer curious what might happen if two 19th-century moral titans were plopped into a bar in Ohio and asked to explain modern America without screaming.
No one else in the pub seemed to notice that two of history’s most dramatic men were sitting in a booth next to the arcade machines, looking like gods who’d fallen into polyester slacks and tourist t-shirts. Hugo’s said “UNDER ARMOUR” in all capitals and Dostoevsky’s said “Good Vibes Only.”
On the television above them, a talking head explained that armed patrols were sweeping up immigrants regardless of citizenship or criminal record. That children in Gaza were being sacrificed in the name of security. That liberty was under threat unless everyone got in line.
They watched in silence.
Then Hugo set down his drink.
“I am working on a sentence,” he said slowly. “It came to me just before the Fireball. ‘There are no bad plants, or bad humans. Only bad cultivators.’”*
“Cultivators,” Dostoevsky repeated. “Like… gardeners?”
“Precisely.”
Dostoevsky stared again at the boneless wings.
“You think if we had better farmers,” he said, “America would not be bombing children or building walls?”
“I think,” Hugo replied, “that if you raise a boy in a field of poison, you cannot be surprised when he does not bloom.”
Dostoevsky leaned in. “But Victor, what of the soul? What of the man who chooses the lie? Who tells himself he is righteous while feasting on the suffering of others? A better field does not stop a liar from lying to himself.”
“Ah,” Hugo said, “so it begins. The eternal tension.”
“The eternal truth.”
“You want to fix the soul.”
“You want to fix the system.”
“Can they not be the same thing?”
Dostoevsky shrugged. “In theory, yes. In America, no.”
Victor pointed at the TV. “They are punishing the refugee. The orphan. The stranger. They treat compassion as weakness and cruelty as patriotism. If this is not the work of bad cultivators, what is?”
Dostoevsky took a long sip from a Diet Coke and grimaced. “And yet, some of the most ‘cultivated’ men in this country lie more convincingly than they pray. Your good gardener still must wrestle with the snake in his own chest.”
“There you go again, bringing it all back to Eden. Save these kinds of sermons for Sunday School you brooding Slav.”
“You're the one who brought up the notion of gardens. I was simply going along with your metaphor.” He paused and took a short sip of air. "Sentimental Frenchman.”
The waitress arrived with more wings and a tray of blue cheese. Hugo was delighted. Dostoevsky looked vaguely betrayed.
Somewhere between the honey barbecue and the mango habanero, the TV switched to a breaking news segment. Footage of a protest: students, artists, parents holding signs. “Free Palestine,” read one. “Let Them In,” read another. The pundit called them naive. Said the real threat was disobedience. Disorder. Disrespect.
Hugo’s face was pink with fury. “How easy it is to justify cruelty when you've made truth a matter of opinion.”
“And when love becomes a branding strategy,” added Dostoevsky.
Victor leaned back, arms crossed. “The American ideal was once liberty. Now it is convenience. The fast food of justice.”
Fyodor nodded. “And yet, they still claim to be a Christian nation. I have seen more Christian ethic in the way a mother cuts bread.”
There was a silence between them, heavy but unhostile. The kind of silence that belongs to people who have walked through hell and brought back vocabulary.
Then Hugo asked quietly, “What is the line you are working on?”
Dostoevsky looked up. “It’s a warning. To the self-deceiver. ‘Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him…’”*
“…and so loses all respect?” Hugo guessed.
Dostoevsky smiled. “And having no respect, he ceases to love.”
Hugo nodded, eyes glossy. “Then we are both writing the same book.”
Dostoevsky raised his Diet Coke in a toast. “From opposite ends of the field.”
Hugo raised his Fireball whiskey. “To America. May she remember that love is not a luxury.”
“And that truth,” said Dostoevsky, “is not optional.”
They clinked their glasses. Somewhere in the bar, a song by Imagine Dragons began to play. Both men shuddered.
*From Les Miserables, Volume I – Fantine, Book Five
*From the last chapter of The Brothers Karamazov