People like to use the phrase "my famous (fill-in-the-blank)" to refer to
their favorite dish. Some of these people think cooking dinner for more than
four people makes them famous; some just think the word “famous” means “good.”
Either way, there's only one person who is actually famous for something she
cooks, and that person is Miss Damn Sippi. Her Sweet Potato Pie could make the
Devil cry. Her Pecan Pie AIN'T TOO BAD EITHER! The woman has personally cooked
for hundreds and thousands of southerners over the last 60 years, and even for
those who haven't had the pleasure, when they idealize pie, that is Miss
Sippi's pie in their dreams.
So no advertising was necessary at Donkey Con,
Miss Sippi just showed up and started slanging pies. Demand got real real high.
"That's all the pies I have in this trunk," she told the crowd.
"I'll be back in two flicks of a fox's crotch with the next batch!"
Miss Sippi approached the Al's Dodge Dakota in
the dusty parking lot, which was housing another large crate of delicious pies.
Her vision wasn't what it used to be, but she could tell from a distance that
trouble was afoot. She shrieked when she realized the crate had been broken
into, so many foil shells scattered everywhere it looked like a giant junkyard.
(Well, that was also because of the junky cars that were parked everywhere,
mirrors and mufflers hanging off loosely. But the foil pie shells totally
looked like baby hubcaps.)
"Joe Biden!?!" screamed Miss Sippi.
The Vice-President was the hungry culprit, sitting with his butt in the crate,
legs hanging out, and holding a whole pie to his chompers, like it was just a huge
cookie. Miss Sippi charged at the Vice-Rascal, Biden jumped off the truck bed
and onto another pick-up. Though she cleverly commandeered a broom from the
truck bed, Biden dodged her strikes, slid down, and began running underneath
all the cars. And Miss Sippi just didn't have the knees for that.
Stopping to catch her breath, retreating from
the chase, Miss Sippi was approached by Al Obama, who was waving an envelope
proudly. Fresh out of the genealogy booth, he went on and on about how he
wanted to share the report with his brother, Barak, to go over their shared
heritage and connect tightly to make up for many lost years apart. But coming
up was POTUS's big moment; his special concert event was imminent and his
friends felt a vicarious sense of anxiety. They joined in the line to enter
Hillshillings Hall, where the entirety of Donkey-Con was assembling. The crowd
became a blur of sunburned flesh, and from the back of the line, Al and Miss Sippi
saw only the party ends of mullets, bald spots, bra straps, everyone's behinds.
It was impossible to read expressions or tell the mood.
Across the sprawling tin structure, the President
was led from the green room down a dark hallway towards the stage. Mark
Ettingshmuck had opened a door for Obama but did not follow through it himself,
then it was as if Mark never existed at all. Barak was alone. The hallway was
barely as wide his shoulders, and seemed to go on forever. This faint noise, an
ominous bass sound, became louder with each step; dripping water from the
vaulted pipes came down and pricked the President, pesky wet spots fizzed
through his blazer and into his skin. These were not the lush waterfalls or
streams of Dixie's dream, this was malevolent, cursed water. Occasionally
lights would flicker to his left or right, and he'd be misled, walking right
into the wall. Barak thought of his de facto home, Washington, which was like a
funhouse mirror of a democratic society. He'd never be comfortable in such a
ludicrous place, and he wished he'd never have to go back - even for one damn
day, to pack his things and vacate the White House. He could only hope to be
comfortable inside his own head, and maybe that's where he was, strolling
through the marshes of his cerebellum. He wasn't getting anywhere. The dark
tunnel continued. A fun house mirror of a fun house mirror, with an exit
strategy as vague as W's Middle East invasion.
An ear-splitting creak ricocheted through the
cavern and a door finally opened. Nasty fluorescent lights burned with such
awkward rage that Obama could hardly see anything else. It was like the way
movies portrayed the entrance to heaven, only inverted. Barak could tell he was
now walking on to the stage. A man in a cowboy suit was yelling furiously at an
empty chair. There was no music - between the heinous shouts there was a
silence so gruff you could hear lumps throbbing in throats; tobacco sweating in
bottom lips; ingrown hairs twisting and gnawing; red, red blood curdling.
The crowd was still obscured by the heavy
light. Barak looked back and forth between the man and the chair, feeling like
an unlucky phantom.
"SIT DOWN!" the man screamed.
Barak Obama was the first black President of
the United States, and the first President to get SCREAMED AT. The screaming
man was Wes S. Stern. This was his concert?
"Here he is, ladies and gents!" Wes
S. Stern went on, "the Satanic Muslim Communist Dictator of 'Merica! The
man who has ruined Donkey Con forever and ever."
GULP. Obama swallowed his pride like a piece of
gristle, broke a hard sweat, and had a seat. He played it as cool as anyone
could. "Oh," he said softly. "Are we doing like a Hee Haw-type
skit?"
"Is that what you think this is?"
Stern sneered.
Barak replied, "No, but it wouldn't hurt
to ask." It would've been better if this were a joke, but it would've been
much worse if Wes was doing blackface. Thank God for small favors.
The barrage continued. A madlib of every
right-wing talking point from the last decade blasted out of the man's mouth
like it was hell's intercom. And with giant comets of spit and trail mix pieces
accompanying phrases like "welfare moms" and "war on Christmas,"
every attack had a physical weight that Barak could feel. He wasn't in an
Internet comments section anymore, he was at war. Then it was time for the
Powerpoint presentation.
"This photo was taken earlier today in
front of the great Abernathy's Ass. That's Barak Hussein Obama throwing up gang
signs next to a cherished symbol!"
Barak looked over his shoulder at the massive
screen behind him. It was displaying one of the photos from earlier, a pretty
good one, rendered in sharp HD. Barak wondered how Hillshillings has procured
such an elaborate multimedia setup, and also how anyone with eyes could infer
that he was doing a gang sign in the picture. If anything, his wave resembled a
heil salute, but he was certainly not going to suggest anything to that effect.
CLICK. The next photo appeared on the projector
screen. It would've been funny if an image was displayed other than what Wes
had intended. For instance, instead of more visual Obama libel, the crowd
would've been surprised with a highly embarrassing photo of Wes S. Stern
(perhaps he'd be depicted wearing only his drawers!) The crowd would laugh
profusely, and Wes would be entirely oblivious that the photo was implicating
him, and not the target of his attack. This scenario comes alive in dozens of
enjoyable movies, a classic gag and great comic relief. And boy, that would've
been a lifesaver there in Hillshillings Hall. But it did not happen. The photo
on the screen was a severely vandalized Abernathy's Ass. The poor guy had
graffiti from head to hoof and a woman's brassiere around his neck. The crowd
winced at the sad sight, devastated by the awful taste. A part of everyone
died.
Barak shook his head like a propeller, trying
so hard to deny the obvious hatchet job. With eloquently-articulated phrases he
assembled in his head, he defended himself clearly, but the words came out of
his mouth like paper through a shredder. Uhhhnaahhwaitjustaminuuu...
"He doesn't know what to say!" Wes
yelled, hooting and hollering. He held his two fingers out in the shape of a
gun and waved it around menacingly like a criminal with a seated hostage.
A high-pitched ringing in Obama's ears jarred
him into a new sphere of pain, where he understood so much more than he should.
Neurons in his brain made brand new connections that only led to despair. It
was like the one time he took LSD, he could read minds and contemplate the
metanarrative of his life, of his entire bloodline, and every action in world
history that lead to each present moment. An intellect such as his was too much
to withstand a chemically-charged jolt, the Acid tossed his thoughts around so
much that night in 1983 that he felt like he was reading God's Post-It notes.
He never went to that well again, but here was his flashback and maybe his
fate.
He read the bloodthirst on the crowd's faces
like a natural war cry. These rural men and women had mourned their donkey icon
as if it'd been a thousand years ago. Pain and poverty were prophetic
guarantees and conflict was their religion. In Obama they saw American
anathema, a figure made to be hated. Barak knew exactly what everyone thought
of him - yes, he'd read all the e-mails and no, he didn't have the right to. He
was sorry. But now he couldn't even recognize himself from the inside.
Wes S. Stern kept yelling, the President was in
one of those slow motion getting-beat-senseless scenes from Rocky. These
pale jack-o-lantern faces in the crowd nodded with cultish delight as their
scapegoat was verbally slaughtered. In the raving strobe light of Barak's
tearful eye, these lost voters went off and on and off and on and in and out;
pulsing and flickering; an endlesss firing squad. There was an orange speck in
the white blob - Jon Boehner waded in the water like a steeping tea bag,
turning the water orange and acerbic. He shook his head, as if to say, “tsk
tsk.”
Barak reexamined the wrinkles on the fat skulls
of the crowd members as they hissed. Each blink shook them around like a Wooly
Willy, and they became John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, the Cenobites
from Hellraiser. They were all the
same. Familiar chumps.
And what was it about these chumps that was
somehow comforting? What, was hatred
new to the President? He now faced these exotic trolls of Dixie, with their
stoked acrimony and their unattainable approval wafting away like a thin vapor.
Just another day at the office.
"Uhh, now hold it right there..."
Barak started with a second presidential wind. "Now just a minute, Mr.
Stern. I've seen much more convincing Photoshopping over the years. Did you see
the one where I was with Kim Jong Un? They had us doctored into the pottery
scene from Ghost. Michelle had a poster made up of it for Father's
Day."
Someone in the crowd laughed. Swing vote!
"Now let's talk about you and your
business, Mr. Stern," Obama continued. "Folks, did you know that this
man - this millionaire country superstar - uses free labor? I should say: 'abuses'
free labor, as a young man in his production company is forced to pick through and
sort Wes Stern's trail mix, paid only in humiliation and false promises."
"I'm a job creator!" barked the
singer. "I'm giving opportunity for young men to pull up themselves up by
the bootstraps. But I wouldn't expect any economic knowledge from a damn community
organizer! You know who else was
a community organizer? Hitler!"
The crowd gasped.
"You know who else was a community..?" Barak asked with
confidence. "Hillshillings, Tennessee!"
The crowd cheered.
"Nah! Shu'up, shu'up!" Wes S. Stern
squawked. Not that he was relaxed at any point, but he was becoming more
flustered with the sense that Barak wouldn't take his whooping lying down.
"This man isn't one of you!"
"He's one of me," spoke a resonant
voice that cut clearly through the crowd.
Wes S. Stern heard it as well as anyone,
despite being borderline deaf from years of concerts. He understood the urgency
of the comment, despite its grammatical obtuseness. And he couldn't see the
speaker, but he saw that he was losing a lot of the crowd; things were maybe
getting out of hand, and Wes gestured to someone in his crew on the side of the
stage. This was no longer Wes S. Stern's concert, both because of his
opposition and the fact that he hadn't played one note all night. He only came
to yell political rhetoric, but the crowd came to tap their toes. When Al Obama
revealed himself in the spotlight, it felt like the Beatles had just landed the
plane and entered the Ed Sullivan Show. The crowd didn’t necessarily feel the
extreme Beat-AL-Mania, but his brother, Barak, did.
"Ladies and gents of Hillshillings,"
Al Obama began, having been handed a mic by Justin Tern. "I'm one of
y'all, would you agree with that?" The crowd's consensus, via nods: yes.
So Al continued, "That's right, I'm a proud Southerner and I love country
music, grits, and donkey festivals. One of the men on stage is my kin. And it
ain't that angry, peckerwood, wanna-be singer, Wes S. Stern!"
"My brother, Al Obama, everybody,"
Barak announced proudly. "I love you, man."
"I love you too," said Al. The crowd
cheered but then Al was grabbed from behind by one of Stern's goons.
"Good job, Bhen!" Wes yelled at his
hired muscle, who had Al in a full-nelson just below the stage. "Get his
wallet out, let's see his credentials."
Big, brooding Bhen confiscated a fancy envelope
from Al's Wranglers. "Give it here!" yelled his boss.
"Aren't you going to introduce your
friend?" the President asked with an unnecessarily civil tone.
"You mean you haven't met Bhen Gazi?"
Stern yelled through a devilish giggle that morphed into a gross coughing fit
that bummed everyone out even further.
"Never mind," Barak said. "So
what's in the envelope, bro?"
"Barak, it's the results from the
genealogy booth - the Obama family tree! I was waiting 'till after the show so
we could open it up together. Make this jerk give it back! Executive order
him!"
Wes stomped his foot in outrage and screamed,
"Oh god, are you kidding me?! You've been claiming you're Obama's brother
this whole time? And everyone's been letting you get away with it? Enough is
enough!"
Barak shrugged when Wes stared at him, not
seeing what there was to be upset about. When Wes stopped speaking for a
moment, it somehow got more uncomfortable in the auditorium.
"Let me continue!" Stern grumbled.
"This man 'Al' ain't who he says he is. He's clearly trying to scam the
dictator of the U.S. and get some kind of favor."
"Brothers just.. They just," Al
squirmed in the big mitts of Bhen Gazi. Frustrated, he raised his voice to the
max, "THEY JUST DO STUFF FOR EACH OTHER!" He was not cool at all with
being restrained in a full-nelson.
"HE'S BLACK AND YOU'RE FLIPPIN’
WHITE!" screeched Wes, at the top of his voice like a shrill bird. Now
that the precedent had been set for screaming, it seemed everyone would be
losing their wits, exploding through their throat in the highest octave. It was
like the Sam Kinison Impersonator Convention was in town - which, if there's
such a thing, may want to consider booking the lovely Hillshillings Hall.
"So what?" bellowed Barak. It wasn't
a nasal scream like the other guys, but no one had ever heard Barak speak so
deep and gruffly, including his family; the need to lay down the law in a
harsh-dad voice must not exist in the Obama household. The domestic serenity
Barak missed so sorely, it sat deep in the bottom of his heart where he could
not reach it. But now the President felt he could take the gloves off. And with
eyebrows pointing down like lightning bolts, he let Wes have it. "You want
to talk about race? Let's talk about race."
"Hey, what do you think this is,
Starbucks?" Wes quipped. "Huh? Five dollars for a cup of coffee? Huh?
You can thank Obama for that, too!" The country star paced on the stage
and tried to change the subject. He even started to look around for an
instrument to play.
"I'm tired of downplaying and apologizing
for my race, only to have everyone else obsess over it," Barak said with
eloquent intensity. "You're all entitled to your opinions about me, but
first, I'm entitled to my identity. And if you have to reduce me down to a
color, well, you can only reduce it down to two: black and white."
"THE MOST AMERICAN THING IN THE
WORLD!" Al cheered through the chokehold he was still trapped in.
"No, Al and I did not grow up
together," Barak continued. "But it doesn't matter what's inside that
envelope, or who's in our family tree. He's been a great brother to me ever
since I met him. That's all that matters. I don't even think I'll look at the results."
"I know you won't, because I will!"
Stern cackled and skipped, waving the card like a captured flag. "Sounds
like this card has another government secret that they don't want you to know -
that Al and Barak are not related at all! So let me tell you what I'm gonna
do," Wes yelled wildly, all of his fire returning to him. "I'm gonna
break this little family up and break everybody's hearts! Then I'm gonna ride out
of here, and find the next President of the United States. OK? And me and him
are going to protect the sanctity of marriage and turn the Middle East into a
big parking lot!"
The crowd was absolutely debilitated at this
point. People were fanning themselves with their weak, dehydrated hands, still
suffering through the drama; others lay in the aisles like roadkill. Wes S.
Stern cut open the fateful envelope with a rusty knife he withdrew from the
waistband of his underwear.
"Barak, when it comes to Al Obama,"
he spoke dramatically into the mic, over the ghost of a drum roll. He tried to
fight the next words, but they left his mouth with their own power. And this
phrase lodged in Stern's throat for him to suck on forever: "You ARE the
brother!"
Barak's two slender wrists floated over his
head like angel wings, or the proud gloves of a victorious fighter. Down his
spine, like a jazzy ride symbol, ran a chill; and in his chest, warm embers
percolated like the furnace of a ship - a kinship. The sudden sensation in
Barak's body yanked him from his chair, sent his left hip over to the left and
his right hip to the right, in the direction of orange, joyless Jon Boehner.
And Obama did the “stanky leg.” He was dancing and cutting a rug on stage,
grooving, and Dixie was behind him. The crowd cheered. Bhen Gazi's violent grip
on brother Al Obama loosened into a gentle hug; the husky goon was moved by the
familial emotions, and spoke into Al's ear with rusty, monosyllabic grunts. But
Al understood what Bhen Gazi meant: how lucky he was to have a brother.
"Noooooo!" Wes howled. He was so
demonstrably tortured by his abject pettiness, absolute ugliness. He was so
obvious and everyone was so over him. It's like he wasn't on the stage anymore.
Barak embraced his brother Al in a "street-style" handshake-hug as
the crowd hooted, happy as a donkey on a day off. Everybody was passing around
bottles of Jack and living it up. Claps turned into stomps, stomps started
shaking and quaking the whole building.
There was suddenly too much racket and it
didn't feel safe. Hard crashes were heard throughout the hall, the lights
started to shake and burn out. It was hard to see but impossible to ignore the
rumbling noise, that one just couldn't place - what the F was that? Metal
fixtures creaked from the ceiling and pieces began to fall. Thusly, the more
timid members of the audience screamed with fright and fled the hall. More
rumbling filled the space, and even the more hardened folks ran off; people who
had doubtlessly survived a barn collapse or two, but would not press their luck
in this impending disaster. Barak and Al stood in a corner on the stage, both
ready to shield one another.
The image of the defiled Abernathy's Ass
flickered on the big screen, which ripped in an instant. Sparks flew from
shattered bulbs, fire-detecting sprinklers whipped streams of water everywhere,
then the wall came tumbling down. Giant feet stomped into the hall from the
shadows, and a curdling "Yeeeeehaw!"
bounced through he wreckage, followed by a beastly siren that could not be
mistaken. The Obama bros could not believe what they were looking at: a giant
elephant tearing into the building, with the most bizarre mechanical
contraption hooked across its body. It seemed to be a sort of giant plow, made
from long steel beams and chains that extended a hundred yards in every
direction. The plow was evidently jury-rigged to the load-bearing pillars of
the structure - each step the elephant took was demolishing the whole building.
Naturally, Wes S. Stern was riding on top like a demented cowboy villain,
carrying the hunched-over Miss Sippi as his hostage. Wes was shouting through a
megaphone things like, "F Tennessee."
"PUT HER THE HELL DOWN!" Al shouted
to Stern.
"OK," Wes turned around to face the
brothers. "She's old as dirt and smells awful, too! Hahahaha!" Then
he dropped the sweet old lady like she was a bag of fast food trash. She hit
the floor with a thud. "Roll tide! Long live the Grand 'Ol Party!"
Stern yelled as his elephant completed the loop around the hall and through the
center. "Yeeeehaw!"
While Stern's beast blazed off into the night,
the Obama brothers ran to where Miss Sippi had been plopped from a dozen feet
above. Hillshillings Hall seemed to be totally deserted, thankfully, but the
damage was so exhaustive, it was nearly impossible to walk through. Pew seats
sat vertically into the air, while pillars, beams, and rafters lay jagged like
fallen stars; a labyrinth of debris and deconstructed steel.
"Are you OK, Miss Sippi?" the
President asked as he knelt before his friend.
An old, round man waddled toward the group.
"Well, looks like we're stuck in here," he said.
"Hey, sir, could you give us some
space?" said Barak. "Miss Sippi?" She showed positive vital
signs but was quite conked out. Miss Sippi followed imaginary birds with her
eyes and pursed her lips for a word that was not quite available to her.
"Yeah, this building is pretty much sealed
shut," the old man continued. He was bald on the top of his head, with a
thick beard and beautiful, neck-length silver hair on the sides that looked
like fine silk. He resembled a mythical critter. "That man's elephant plow
tied this building into a knot! It's like it was perfectly engineered by mad
scientist. Unbelievable."
"Should I straight up spear this
guy?" Al asked his brother.
"No that's alright." Barak said.
"Sir, our friend is hurt. Could you pl--"
"She'll be fine," the man blurted. He
was suddenly behind Miss Sippi, gently rubbing her shoulders. She looked like
she was into it. "She just needs to be held until the shock wears off. By
the way, Mr. President, I should introduce mysel--"
"Please, I'd rather not know your
name," Barak said bluntly. "No offense. I've met enough people for a
whole lifetime on this trip, all the goofy names I can handle. OK? Been a long
day."
"Gonna be a long night," said the
man. "Who knows when help will arrive. But while we wait, I could tell
y'all the story of Abernathy's Ass."
Al scoffed, "I'm more curious about where
that man got a dang elephant!"
"The elephant!" Miss Sippi exclaimed,
suddenly spry but weary and with the lucidity of her eyes a mile deep inside
her head.
"Whoa, she's waking up," Al said.
"I met the elephant merchant before I was
kidnapped. The elephant came here from Africa."
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
In 1932, Herbert Hoover had entered the 9th
inning of his presidency; he was down by a lot of the points (he was
"negative a million points") and his reputation was deep in a hole,
just like the American economy. It was the middle of the Great Depression, and
things had gotten so bad that people were living in paper shacks and eating
hair. Of course, the people who tried to prepare their hair meals with heat tended
to get incredibly nauseated and then likely opted to just starve. But the folks
that used a salt-curing technique, like that of a country ham, harvested a very
edible hair jerky that contained enough nutrients to partially sustain a family
for a generation.
Not knowing any better, Hoover felt the need to
roll up his sleeves and try to raise morale himself, to connect with the common
folk and try to revitalize a legacy. He had a hunch as to where to start in the
goodwill tour, a phosphate mine in the heart of Dixie. Hoover had had a
longtime correspondence with the owner of a company Fink Stinkrock Inc.,
located in Hillshillings, Tennessee. Richard Fink had thousands of working
employees in his mine, which was an amazing feat of productivity in those dirt
poor days. The pay was just above insulting and the conditions were just above
suicidal. But with the steady work, the community of Hillshillings had a hair
of a chance in the Depression, and meanwhile, they had hair for dinner.
Richard Fink took the President on a tour of
his sprawling work site while he bragged and ranted about the potential glory
of industry when the government doesn't get in the way. "Ya know what I
like about you, Herbie? You know who's really in charge of this country!"
"You're the boss, Mr. Fink," said
President Hoover.
The two rode in Fink's automobile around the
site's exterior, passing fancy new excavators and drills and workers who toiled
all around, so dirty and disheveled, they seemed to be not people, but moving
clusters of scrap metal, or limping shadows. The tour went on for hours and
across miles. "Welcome to the new wing of Fink Stinkrock!" Fink
cackled, twirling his mustache.
"I thought this was the downtown area.
Isn't that the elementary school?" asked Hoover.
"Whoever put that school there had no
appreciation for what valuable minerals might be in the soil! So with real
estate so cheap anymore, it was incumbent on me to acquire a few stray puzzle
pieces to help compete my beautiful jigsaw puzzle," Fink spoke with
apocalyptic glee. "So now that I own the big mine, a few farms here, a
couple small lots there, our company has engineered these streamlined innovations
that let us set up a little mining rig in any open corner in the region, no
matter how small."
"How enterprising!" Hoover popped. He
watched work crews drive out in increasing numbers, getting busy. It genuinely
impressed the President, and now he figured he'd have to try that much harder
to impress anyone in this boomtown.
"If they won't sell me the school, that's
their business, but no reason why I shouldn't dig for phosphate everywhere
around it. And my special surprise for you, Mr. President, is that today we are
breaking ground on our brand new mini-mine network!" Fink raised out of
the car window and shouted through a megaphone that materialized in his hand.
"Attention! Prepare for the first drill in five minutes!"
Like a sped-up film strip, the work crews
bustled, moving wires, big metal stakes, and massive cranes. The peculiar thing
was that all this took place in a weekday, downtown context, where the people
of Hillshillings were conducting unrelated business at the court house, the
post office, and several shops and restaurants. The run-of-the-mill town had a
mill running completely over it. But Hoover being completely foreign to any
type of blue-collar labor, the ad hoc worksite didn’t seem particularly
strange.
"Look at this prosperous town!"
said Richard Fink. "In the future we shall celebrate the anniversary of
this day with a festival - the Stinkrock Jubilee!" Hoover gawked at the
action as Fink led him up a large hill, part of a scenic park overlooking the town
center, where a PA sound system was set up and several elite-looking
businessmen stood. Hillshillings looked quite darling from this view; the town
center was set in a valley in between two hills, which could be seen perfectly
from Hoover's vantage point on the western hill. As he shook hands with some of
the businessmen and city officials, he remarked on how the hills resembled a woman's
breasts. The joke earned only minor, nervous chuckles.
"First let us welcome President Herbert
Hoover!" Fink shouted into the microphone. The men on the hill could hear
the sound signal bouncing off all the radios below on the bottom of the hill, a
disturbingly shrill blast of feedback. Each man completed a single clap for the
President, then covered their ears. "And now, get rea-"
Hoover interrupted, "Hey do you mind if I
give the order?"
Fink furled his brow a bit, feeling imposed on,
but still allowed the President the honor.
"People of Hillshillings, it is I: your
Commander in Chief! I am proud to announce a bright new day in phosphate
mining, and all American industry. With new innovations, we'll be able to
maximize GDP, and create jobs, and.." Hoover's speech began to lose steam
and fell into a sputtering dribble. "And these technological innovations
are... all thanks to… research that came from my administration… and especially
from me."
Rich Fink rolled his eyes and wrangled the mic
away. "You heard the man - PULL! DIG! GO!" His commands flew through
the tinny speakers and emerged out of the dozens of radios below like hornets
hatching from eggs - EEEEAAWWOOO! The workers heard the word and cranked
up right away, cranes and chains pulsed - BOODUMMCHCHCH...
The radio feedback died down and then the
supervisors heard sounds they knew they shouldn't have been hearing. Bricks
busting, glass breaking from machines whacking the sides of buildings; pipes
cracking and water gushing into the streets; rocks quaking; people screaming
for their lives.
Fink's mini-mines were evidently set up with
little or no care, haphazardly spilling over the town's infrastructure and
creeping up next to the charming facades of the Hillshillings storefronts. Now
many of these buildings were crumbling as fast as the machinery had been set
up, both from the force of out-of-control excavators smashing into them, and
from the tremors rippling under the ground. This area's soil was too tender to
withstand the drilling pressure; Main Street's pretty paved face was stricken
with devastating acne and concrete boils. Sharp metal debris scattered in the
wind like slowly exploding bombs. Furious tides of muddy water ripped through
the town square. The Hillshillingsians believed they were experiencing judgment
day.
"Thanks, Hoover!" Fink yelled in the
President's face. The group walked down the hill, which was not nearly as high
as the one they walked up; a ripple effect from the mine detonations made the
hill leak like a balloon. On to the shaky ground the powerful men stepped -
where the street became a pit, the gutter became a ravine, and the general
store became a basement. People ran and shouted with panic, dispersing like
fearful confetti. A man, not watching where he was going, rushed directly into
Rich Fink's path, so Fink grabbed him firmly by the shoulders, yelled,
"Calm the HELL down!" and slapped the man across his face.
From the doors of Hillshillings Elementary
burst a hundred children, who ran, bunched up in a straight line. Within eight
or nine strides beyond the schoolyard, the first few kids hit the lip of the
giant well that they didn't know about. Down twenty feet the little ones fell,
and then each consecutive cluster of kids fell like droplets. The children went
into the well with the ease of a waiter brushing crumbs off a table.
There was nary a plan of action, hardly a level
head in the crumbling chaos of ground zero. Thankfully, someone on the eastern
hill had heard the ruckus and was heading down to save the day. Ezekiel
Abernathy was a man of great character, just like his ancestors, who helped
settle the Tennessee town. Ezekiel loved Hillshillings, but was uneasy about
the direction it was going with Rich Fink basically running things. The fancy
new amenities of the town did nothing for him, as he kept mostly on his lush
farm on the eastern hill. So when he saw hell breaking loose, he took a
wheelbarrow of supplies and his trusty donkey down to town, nonchalantly, as if
it were a routine he'd done before. "Great, here we go," he
sarcastically quipped to his ass.
Shrieking, crying victims of the man-made quake
felt the sudden relief of a tall, burly farmer taking them into his arms.
Abernathy had bandages for the maimed and an inner tube for the human flotsam
drifting down the filthy water of the mudslide. He was rapidly taking the
townspeople out of harm's way, quelling the panic with his solemn sureness.
Abernathy's Ass hauled person after person to higher ground, completely on his
own, with no direction from his master. But Ezekiel was unaware of the children
trapped in the well. Their cries were not audible over the roar of sobbing
adults with their materialistic mourning. As soon as a baseline safety was established,
there were collection plates being passed around for a new church.
Abernathy's Ass marched directly toward the
well, where he knew the tragic predicament awaited. Before Ezekiel could even
catch up, the donkey had tossed a long chain down to the children, and
expressed through donkey noises and gestures, that they all needed to tie their
bags around the chain and hang on, and that the older kids needed to help the
smaller ones with their knots. No, not all donkeys are that intelligent and
paternal, just Abernathy's Ass. When the kids were latched on, the donkey
stomped a hoof into the dirt, grinded his big buck teeth, and drilled his hind
leg into the ground with all his might. He could only squeak up another step.
The kids cheered like a cloistered pep rally for the donkey, and the strength
he needed was in the well. Abernathy's Ass put his nose deep in the ground, his
big gray rump in the air, and his legs kicked the ground like supercharged
pistons.
Then the miracle completed - reader, please pardon
this uncouth analogy, for although this matter pertains to children, no other
phrase could paint the breathtaking picture - Abernathy's Ass lifted the long
string of youths in one brilliant yank, like anal beads out of the earth's
rectum. All the children petted and hugged Abernathy's Ass with fantastic
adoration, and no one would ever forget what he did.
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
In the year 2035, people were starting to come
around to the fact that Barak Obama was a pretty damn good president in his
day. Many of the basic dignities Americans were enjoying in the '30s came from
the seeds Obama planted in the 20-teens. Considering he planted those seeds in
toxic soil and had to beg Congress for a damn watering can, it had all been a
success. No success comes easily. But retirement had been smooth sailing, a
blessing.
Barak began his morning just like every other:
kissing his wife and taking his cup of coffee to his computer, where he would
check the news. He was still old fashioned that way, reading the news on a
computer instead of one of the various augmented reality or MindFeed
apparatuses available on the market; Obama just didn't want Facebook literally
in his face. As the computer booted up, he looked at the reflection of his
white hair in the black screen, taking a sip of coffee.
The first thing that popped up was a Twitter
notification, actually a hundred of them. Barak was flattered. The messages
came from so many different types people, but all said basically the same thing:
"Thanks Obama."
A headline on Yahoo got his attention: Middle
East Completely Turned Into Parking Lot. A photo of a massive strip mall in
the desert was depicted, with Iranians walking and smiling in front of a Bass
Pro Shop and an Applebee's.
Barak gazed at the framed picture of Miss Sippi
on his desk and smiled from his soul. In the photo, she's holding hands with
Arnold Abernathy, the man she'd met after her accident at Donkey Con 2015, and
later married. Arnold was the son of Ezekiel, the Hillshillings folk hero - or
rather, the man associated with the true hero, Abernathy's Ass. It was like two
true Southern royal families finally being joined by marriage. Barak remembered
their wedding, the most beautiful one he'd ever seen. Arnold and Miss Sippi
were so good for each other; their marriage lasted in lovely harmony for over a
decade, when they both passed of natural causes on the same day.
Obama clicked another link, one about the
"Post Racial Protestor." He remembered meeting the leader of the new
revolution when he was only a child. Now fully grown and educated, this man
known as Mountain X had united working-class blacks and whites in the quest for
economic equality. He had convinced white Southerners, of all people, that the
contention they felt with blacks was purely a manipulation plotted by an
aristocratic ruling class. The Southern elite had built their wealth on free
slave labor, and after that was outlawed, they kept wages as close to
slave-level as they possibly could. But now blacks and whites agreed that that
was enough. This week, Mountain X was leading a wave of general strikes around
the South, demanding higher wages and proper social care. Obama was quite
proud.
He heard a car pull up, the first of Obama's
guests for the day was here. Both of his daughters were on the way, but
arriving first was Barak's brother Al Obama, along with his wife, Beyoncé.
"Welcome to Hawaii, brother," said
Barak.
"Good to see you!" Al gave his bro a
big bear hug, lifting him off his feet. When he set him down, Al transferred a
small package into his hands. "This was out front. I've already inspected
it for explosives and hazardous materials."
"Thanks. Let's see, what do we have
here?"
Barak examined the gift basket. It was a large
bag of some sort of Tex-Mex trail mix, conspicuous by its lack of pretzel
bites. It came with a note:
"I'm sorry, Obama."
- Wesley Saddam Stern
