![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolPANACA, NEVADA
He came in through the window of the room I had crashed in, grabbing the edges of the window frame with both hands and carrying a Ziploc baggie in his mouth. The baggie was full of pills. He threw one leg over the sill and half-rolled, half-fell into the dark of the motel room. Immediately he was on his feet, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight. He had on his crazy eyes. He spat the baggie into his hand.
"It's time, Twist," said Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and conservative Republican candidate for POTUS in 2012. I propped myself up on one elbow.
"Time for what?" I said blearily. "I was having an incredible dream. The Hoover Dam was made out of white lightning, man."
Mike stared at me. He made a clicking noise with his mouth. "Was it kind of gauzy around the edges?" he asked.
"Yeah, exactly," I said. "Like lightning shot through cotton fucking candy, holding back the waters of America. What's in the bag?"
"I've had that same dream. How ass-fucked is that?" For a conservative Christian, Mike Huckabee sure can swear. "This bag? I'm not really sure. Not five minutes ago I bought the whole she-bang from an Indian in a Laundromat. There's lots of different stuff in here."
My mouth suddenly felt all dry. "My dream's gone, Mike," I complained, "and I'm starting to crash."
Mike shook the baggie. "I'll split 'em with you," he said. "That's, oh, about twenty pills per person. We'll take 'em here in the dark where we can't see what we're getting. It'll be like Russian Roulette, only with no Russians, the gun's fully automatic, and the bullets are made out of KRAZY AKSHUN TIME."
We did it. I admit it, I'm a crazy motherfucker, but you don't know the full story on Mike Huckabee. That guy is an animal. I'm just a freelance journalist, but I hope my sad-sack reporting can bring his special brand of gonzo politics to the White House.
Twenty minutes later, or possibly one day and twenty minutes later, we were staggering down the main drag of Panaca. It was dark o'clock and the streetlights hurt my eyes. "Time for what?" I asked.
"Huh?" Mike Huckabee was walking by feeling the ground ahead of him with each foot before putting his weight on it, as if he expected that the road's thin layer of asphalt covered a substructure made of a single ply of paper, and with an incautious step he might fall into a yawning void. "What are you talking about?"
"When you came in the window, you told me it was time. Time for what?" I made a great show of looking for my watch, which we both knew had been stolen by dwarves. "Your stump speech isn't until tomorrow morning."
"You're goddamn right it is, Twist," said Mike seriously. He was using his Presidential voice. It was a voice that made you believe the speaker was calm, sane, and had a plan. Personally, I knew that Mike Huckabee was neither calm nor sane, and him having a plan would be an unsettling development. But he knew how to talk reassuringly. "No, that is not our mission. We have an entirely different fucking mission now, Twist. We are going to find chicks."
"Awesome." The night sky was suddenly shot through with streaks of lemon-colored stars. "Where?"
"Here." We were standing near a store. The neon sign proclaimed that this was 'PANACA DONUTS'. The neon in the 'U' was out.
"It looks like 'PANACA DON'TS'," I giggled.
"A genuine Small American Business," said Mike, rubbing his hands together. One of his eyes was dilated and the other wasn't.
I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine. "It says DON'T," I moaned. "It's an omen."
"Check your bad trip at the door, Silly Billy," said Mike Huckabee, slapping me on the ass. "It's DONUT TIME." He opened the door and went inside. I followed fearfully. The bells on the door jangled a kind of supernatural warning.
"Hullo, gents," said the old fart at the counter. There was nobody else in the shop. Mike's quest for chicks would not be completed here. Mike smiled his best Presidential smile.
"Hi there," he said. "Mike Huckabee. I'm running for president."
The geezer's grin widened to reveal an unfortunate view of deferred dental maintenance. "Why, sure you are," he said. "I've seen you plenty on the TV."
"That's right. That's right." Mike nodded, staring and grinning like a shark pulling on a chum line. "This is, ah, one hell of an establishment you got here." He looked around at the chipped formica counters and dirty linoleum square flooring. I could hear his thoughts, and his thoughts were: please let me get outside before I black out.
"Well, thanks," said the old dude, still grinning like an idiot. "Say, might I ask your friend to take our picture or something?"
"Oh, no," said Mike, making warding motions with his hands. "No no no no NO." Sometimes Mike gets it in his head that cameras are lasers, and there's no point trying to convince him otherwise.
"That's too bad," said the donut man, crestfallen.
"But I'll tell you what you can do, my friend," said Mike. "You can sell us your donuts." He scanned the smudged glass case and frowned.
"We're looking a bit picked over," Mike commented, walking down the line. "Some of the pink ones here, a few with the nuts – say, is that one made out of wood?!" He jabbed a finger at something brown and cakey.
"No, sir," said the old man. "That's maple."
"Hmm," said Mike suspiciously.
"I'm sorry, Mister Huckabee," said the man. "We're mostly sold out and the crew won't come in to make the morning batch until 4:30."
Mike straightened up and beamed at the donut guy.
"That's all right, sir. I want all your donuts."
"All of 'em?" There were actually several racks of plain glazed donuts left.
"Yes, sir," said Mike hungrily. "I want every blessed one of your donuts. In fact, I'm going to need a donut count. How many donuts are we talking about, exactly?"
The man counted the donuts. There were one hundred and seven. "Sold!" screamed Mike Huckabee at the top of his lungs. He turned to me with a wild look on his face. "Twist!" he shouted in my face, seizing me by the shoulders. "We're going to be donut-rich!"
"It's happening," I muttered. "The bad thing. It's happening."
The man at the counter didn't have much to say to Mike Huckabee after that. He boxed up all the donuts in nine neat boxes, and Mike paid him. Mike took five boxes and I took four, and we lurched back out into the night.
"PANACA!" shouted Mike at the top of his lungs. "WE HAVE ALL YOUR DONUTS!"
It was true. There could not possibly be another donut shop in a town the size of Panaca. Suddenly the wisdom of Mike Huckabee cornering the local donut market, at least until 4:30, came home to me. I realized, not for the last time, that this was the only president for me.
"THAT'S RIGHT!" I yelled. "IF YOU WANT DONUTS, YOU'LL HAVE TO COME TO US!"
"DID YOU HEAR THAT?!" bellowed Mike Huckabee. "YOU'LL HAVE! TO COME! TO US!!" His voice echoed off the blocky grey buildings of downtown Panaca.
We crossed the street. A flickering sign proclaimed that ALL-NITE BOWLING could be had. Mike's eyes lit up.
"I sense," Mike said, "an opportunity for greatness." He hooked a finger into the door latch, somehow got his foot into the door jamb, and kicked the door wide open. We staggered into the bowling alley with our boxes of donuts threatening to fall to the floor.
"Sirs?" said the man at the counter who dispensed the shoes. "You can't bring your own food in here."
"Hello," said Mike, using his Presidential voice. "I am here on behalf of the Obama Administration. We are part of the donut redistribution program for underserved communities." He gave the man a winning smile. The man was too stunned to say anything.
"These are experimental donuts," I supplied. "They combat poverty."
Mike waggled his eyebrows at the man. "I take a size ten," he said gently.
A short time later we were seated with two female Panaca locals at lane seven, enjoying beers and smokes. The ladies may have been drawn by our promise that we controlled the only viable donut source between here and Glendale, but it didn't hurt that I still had a little weed, and Mike had beers in their hands before they could blow us off. Linda was a checker at Fat Smokey's, which was apparently a grocery store, and Royce managed a car wash.
"Now, we still have a few donuts at the store," teased Linda. "They're the powdered kind in the wrappers in the snack aisle."
His mouth full of glazed donut, Mike shook his head violently. "Those are not truly donuts," he argued once he had wolfed down his bite. "Baked sugary confections? Calling them donuts is a lie. It's false advertising."
"There should be a law regarding that," I advised.
"And there will be one day, Twist," Mike said gently. "There will be."
"I want to bowl," said Royce.
"Is that allowed here?" Mike was having some trouble focusing his eyes. I bought us several games.
Mike looked over the selection of balls. "Decisions," he said edgily. "Difficult decisions…"
I lifted him out a blue twelve-pounder. Mike took it from me and smiled. "It has three holes!" he proclaimed. "*I* have three holes! Perfect!" I chose not to challenge him on the subject.
Mike stepped up to the line and stared at the pins. "Whoa," he said, dropping the ball.
I chased it down and handed it back to him. "What's the matter?"
"Do you see how far away the pins are?" Mike demanded. "This is a totally non-standard bowling alley."
"Looks like any other bowling alley I've ever been in," said Linda.
"No," said Mike, his eyes narrowing. "This isn't a North American regulation bowling alley. I'd know the dimensions anywhere. I've travelled widely, you know. This is strictly European bowling stuff. NOT the norm. NOT kosher at all."
"Just bowl already," said Royce, already tiring of Mike's shit.
Mike turned to Royce and glared at her. "Oh, I'll bowl all right," he declared. "But I'm bowling American." He took six long steps down the lane, pacing them off carefully. He squared off on the pins and nodded slowly.
"Yes," said Mike. "That's about right."
Linda and Royce stirred restlessly. I sidled up and plucked Mike's elbow. "Hey, uh, maybe we should cool it a bit," I suggested.
"NO." Mike wasn't Nice President anymore; he was Imperious President, mister Throw Your Ass in Guantanamo if You Don't Shape Up President. With a gesture he drew an imaginary line across the lane.
"Today," he announced, "we fucking bowl from HERE."
We bowled from there. Mike threw a ninety-eight. I threw a twelve. Linda and Royce quit after three frames and were therefore DISQUALIFIED.
The night dissolved into a bit of blur after that. I remember Mike displacing the man from behind the shoe counter, commandeering the mic, and rehearsing his stump speech over the bowling alley PA. He took a few liberties with the text, throwing in a few lesser-known but still heartfelt opinions he was known to have, such as a principled condemnation of the missionary position, and his undying love and solidarity for the moon-people. I also remember getting into a fight with a slot machine, which was totally not my fault because it was looking at me funny.
We returned to the hotel, or perhaps we were returned to it, when the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. I felt it was very cheeky to spy on us like that, and I told Mike so.
"Oh, its days are numbered," said Mike enigmatically. We stumbled upstairs, and Mike promptly fell asleep on my bed, face down. There were two donuts that had been stuffed into his back pockets. They were squashed flat.
I put paper into my typewriter and begin to type. I had only two hours to file my report, or I had been told I would never write for The Gazette again. The events of the day flowed onto the pages; I was merely the conduit for their transcription.
I wrote about a man's rise to greatness.
He came in through the window of the room I had crashed in, grabbing the edges of the window frame with both hands and carrying a Ziploc baggie in his mouth. The baggie was full of pills. He threw one leg over the sill and half-rolled, half-fell into the dark of the motel room. Immediately he was on his feet, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight. He had on his crazy eyes. He spat the baggie into his hand.
"It's time, Twist," said Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and conservative Republican candidate for POTUS in 2012. I propped myself up on one elbow.
"Time for what?" I said blearily. "I was having an incredible dream. The Hoover Dam was made out of white lightning, man."
Mike stared at me. He made a clicking noise with his mouth. "Was it kind of gauzy around the edges?" he asked.
"Yeah, exactly," I said. "Like lightning shot through cotton fucking candy, holding back the waters of America. What's in the bag?"
"I've had that same dream. How ass-fucked is that?" For a conservative Christian, Mike Huckabee sure can swear. "This bag? I'm not really sure. Not five minutes ago I bought the whole she-bang from an Indian in a Laundromat. There's lots of different stuff in here."
My mouth suddenly felt all dry. "My dream's gone, Mike," I complained, "and I'm starting to crash."
Mike shook the baggie. "I'll split 'em with you," he said. "That's, oh, about twenty pills per person. We'll take 'em here in the dark where we can't see what we're getting. It'll be like Russian Roulette, only with no Russians, the gun's fully automatic, and the bullets are made out of KRAZY AKSHUN TIME."
We did it. I admit it, I'm a crazy motherfucker, but you don't know the full story on Mike Huckabee. That guy is an animal. I'm just a freelance journalist, but I hope my sad-sack reporting can bring his special brand of gonzo politics to the White House.
Twenty minutes later, or possibly one day and twenty minutes later, we were staggering down the main drag of Panaca. It was dark o'clock and the streetlights hurt my eyes. "Time for what?" I asked.
"Huh?" Mike Huckabee was walking by feeling the ground ahead of him with each foot before putting his weight on it, as if he expected that the road's thin layer of asphalt covered a substructure made of a single ply of paper, and with an incautious step he might fall into a yawning void. "What are you talking about?"
"When you came in the window, you told me it was time. Time for what?" I made a great show of looking for my watch, which we both knew had been stolen by dwarves. "Your stump speech isn't until tomorrow morning."
"You're goddamn right it is, Twist," said Mike seriously. He was using his Presidential voice. It was a voice that made you believe the speaker was calm, sane, and had a plan. Personally, I knew that Mike Huckabee was neither calm nor sane, and him having a plan would be an unsettling development. But he knew how to talk reassuringly. "No, that is not our mission. We have an entirely different fucking mission now, Twist. We are going to find chicks."
"Awesome." The night sky was suddenly shot through with streaks of lemon-colored stars. "Where?"
"Here." We were standing near a store. The neon sign proclaimed that this was 'PANACA DONUTS'. The neon in the 'U' was out.
"It looks like 'PANACA DON'TS'," I giggled.
"A genuine Small American Business," said Mike, rubbing his hands together. One of his eyes was dilated and the other wasn't.
I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine. "It says DON'T," I moaned. "It's an omen."
"Check your bad trip at the door, Silly Billy," said Mike Huckabee, slapping me on the ass. "It's DONUT TIME." He opened the door and went inside. I followed fearfully. The bells on the door jangled a kind of supernatural warning.
"Hullo, gents," said the old fart at the counter. There was nobody else in the shop. Mike's quest for chicks would not be completed here. Mike smiled his best Presidential smile.
"Hi there," he said. "Mike Huckabee. I'm running for president."
The geezer's grin widened to reveal an unfortunate view of deferred dental maintenance. "Why, sure you are," he said. "I've seen you plenty on the TV."
"That's right. That's right." Mike nodded, staring and grinning like a shark pulling on a chum line. "This is, ah, one hell of an establishment you got here." He looked around at the chipped formica counters and dirty linoleum square flooring. I could hear his thoughts, and his thoughts were: please let me get outside before I black out.
"Well, thanks," said the old dude, still grinning like an idiot. "Say, might I ask your friend to take our picture or something?"
"Oh, no," said Mike, making warding motions with his hands. "No no no no NO." Sometimes Mike gets it in his head that cameras are lasers, and there's no point trying to convince him otherwise.
"That's too bad," said the donut man, crestfallen.
"But I'll tell you what you can do, my friend," said Mike. "You can sell us your donuts." He scanned the smudged glass case and frowned.
"We're looking a bit picked over," Mike commented, walking down the line. "Some of the pink ones here, a few with the nuts – say, is that one made out of wood?!" He jabbed a finger at something brown and cakey.
"No, sir," said the old man. "That's maple."
"Hmm," said Mike suspiciously.
"I'm sorry, Mister Huckabee," said the man. "We're mostly sold out and the crew won't come in to make the morning batch until 4:30."
Mike straightened up and beamed at the donut guy.
"That's all right, sir. I want all your donuts."
"All of 'em?" There were actually several racks of plain glazed donuts left.
"Yes, sir," said Mike hungrily. "I want every blessed one of your donuts. In fact, I'm going to need a donut count. How many donuts are we talking about, exactly?"
The man counted the donuts. There were one hundred and seven. "Sold!" screamed Mike Huckabee at the top of his lungs. He turned to me with a wild look on his face. "Twist!" he shouted in my face, seizing me by the shoulders. "We're going to be donut-rich!"
"It's happening," I muttered. "The bad thing. It's happening."
The man at the counter didn't have much to say to Mike Huckabee after that. He boxed up all the donuts in nine neat boxes, and Mike paid him. Mike took five boxes and I took four, and we lurched back out into the night.
"PANACA!" shouted Mike at the top of his lungs. "WE HAVE ALL YOUR DONUTS!"
It was true. There could not possibly be another donut shop in a town the size of Panaca. Suddenly the wisdom of Mike Huckabee cornering the local donut market, at least until 4:30, came home to me. I realized, not for the last time, that this was the only president for me.
"THAT'S RIGHT!" I yelled. "IF YOU WANT DONUTS, YOU'LL HAVE TO COME TO US!"
"DID YOU HEAR THAT?!" bellowed Mike Huckabee. "YOU'LL HAVE! TO COME! TO US!!" His voice echoed off the blocky grey buildings of downtown Panaca.
We crossed the street. A flickering sign proclaimed that ALL-NITE BOWLING could be had. Mike's eyes lit up.
"I sense," Mike said, "an opportunity for greatness." He hooked a finger into the door latch, somehow got his foot into the door jamb, and kicked the door wide open. We staggered into the bowling alley with our boxes of donuts threatening to fall to the floor.
"Sirs?" said the man at the counter who dispensed the shoes. "You can't bring your own food in here."
"Hello," said Mike, using his Presidential voice. "I am here on behalf of the Obama Administration. We are part of the donut redistribution program for underserved communities." He gave the man a winning smile. The man was too stunned to say anything.
"These are experimental donuts," I supplied. "They combat poverty."
Mike waggled his eyebrows at the man. "I take a size ten," he said gently.
A short time later we were seated with two female Panaca locals at lane seven, enjoying beers and smokes. The ladies may have been drawn by our promise that we controlled the only viable donut source between here and Glendale, but it didn't hurt that I still had a little weed, and Mike had beers in their hands before they could blow us off. Linda was a checker at Fat Smokey's, which was apparently a grocery store, and Royce managed a car wash.
"Now, we still have a few donuts at the store," teased Linda. "They're the powdered kind in the wrappers in the snack aisle."
His mouth full of glazed donut, Mike shook his head violently. "Those are not truly donuts," he argued once he had wolfed down his bite. "Baked sugary confections? Calling them donuts is a lie. It's false advertising."
"There should be a law regarding that," I advised.
"And there will be one day, Twist," Mike said gently. "There will be."
"I want to bowl," said Royce.
"Is that allowed here?" Mike was having some trouble focusing his eyes. I bought us several games.
Mike looked over the selection of balls. "Decisions," he said edgily. "Difficult decisions…"
I lifted him out a blue twelve-pounder. Mike took it from me and smiled. "It has three holes!" he proclaimed. "*I* have three holes! Perfect!" I chose not to challenge him on the subject.
Mike stepped up to the line and stared at the pins. "Whoa," he said, dropping the ball.
I chased it down and handed it back to him. "What's the matter?"
"Do you see how far away the pins are?" Mike demanded. "This is a totally non-standard bowling alley."
"Looks like any other bowling alley I've ever been in," said Linda.
"No," said Mike, his eyes narrowing. "This isn't a North American regulation bowling alley. I'd know the dimensions anywhere. I've travelled widely, you know. This is strictly European bowling stuff. NOT the norm. NOT kosher at all."
"Just bowl already," said Royce, already tiring of Mike's shit.
Mike turned to Royce and glared at her. "Oh, I'll bowl all right," he declared. "But I'm bowling American." He took six long steps down the lane, pacing them off carefully. He squared off on the pins and nodded slowly.
"Yes," said Mike. "That's about right."
Linda and Royce stirred restlessly. I sidled up and plucked Mike's elbow. "Hey, uh, maybe we should cool it a bit," I suggested.
"NO." Mike wasn't Nice President anymore; he was Imperious President, mister Throw Your Ass in Guantanamo if You Don't Shape Up President. With a gesture he drew an imaginary line across the lane.
"Today," he announced, "we fucking bowl from HERE."
We bowled from there. Mike threw a ninety-eight. I threw a twelve. Linda and Royce quit after three frames and were therefore DISQUALIFIED.
The night dissolved into a bit of blur after that. I remember Mike displacing the man from behind the shoe counter, commandeering the mic, and rehearsing his stump speech over the bowling alley PA. He took a few liberties with the text, throwing in a few lesser-known but still heartfelt opinions he was known to have, such as a principled condemnation of the missionary position, and his undying love and solidarity for the moon-people. I also remember getting into a fight with a slot machine, which was totally not my fault because it was looking at me funny.
We returned to the hotel, or perhaps we were returned to it, when the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. I felt it was very cheeky to spy on us like that, and I told Mike so.
"Oh, its days are numbered," said Mike enigmatically. We stumbled upstairs, and Mike promptly fell asleep on my bed, face down. There were two donuts that had been stuffed into his back pockets. They were squashed flat.
I put paper into my typewriter and begin to type. I had only two hours to file my report, or I had been told I would never write for The Gazette again. The events of the day flowed onto the pages; I was merely the conduit for their transcription.
I wrote about a man's rise to greatness.
