Sweet Homie Al Obama [Part II]

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."

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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.

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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