It’s Wayne and Doreen, at it again. At the good stuff, that is. These two can’t keep away from each other, and for good reason. Each one has what the other lacks. He’s hard; she’s soft, and neither is ever much of the other. She tries to soften him up, there on the loveseat, doing without, because Billy has hidden her stash.
Billy doesn’t think his
mother should smoke. Especially not with Uncle Wayne (he’s taken to
pronouncing the “uncle” in Italics, thereby obeying the letter of his mother’s
law. The man is morose. How can anybody want to be with him, let alone get high
with him? That’s impossible anyway. The guy’s whole purpose in life is to bring
everybody down. He always says something that makes you feel lousy.
Which is about to happen now.
Doreen is making a confession. She’s giving Wayne the upper hand. Cradled in
his lap, her long, lush body curled up on the loveseat, she nuzzles her face in
his neck, and to give him a surrender of sorts, she says “There’s something
about the government that does scare me.”
“And what’s that, Reenie?” his
pet name for her, out of use lately, but he’s petting her un-bunned hair, and
it sounds right.
“The government spying,” she
tickles into his neck. Wayne gets a mental hard-on. His hand goes from the tips
of her long hair, sideways toward a voluptuous breast, when she adds, “which
might be even worse under a Republican president.”
I wish I could say he
stiffened, but the opposite is true. He wilts, and jumps up, spilling her
halfway to the floor.
“Can’t you let up for a
minute?” he shouts. “The Republicans! The Republicans! The Republicans, of
which I am NOT one, aren’t doing a god damn thing except trying to stop the
government take-over of America!” Doreen slips the rest of the way to the
floor, and lets the barrage go over her.
“Wake up! It’s one man who’s
bringing us down, and demonizing Republicans is just one more of his tactics.
He has super-human powers, awarded him by guilty Liberals, and he’s taking the
country to hell! Don’t you see it? Collecting records of everything so he can
have something on everybody? How about the IRS starving out his opposition by
not granting them the same status, which amounts to money to buy ads, as his
friends. How about that he wants to bring in millions of Mexicans who will vote
Democrat, so finally we will have one-party rule? Just like Russia!”
At the word, she rallies, and
from the floor accuses. “George Bush started it; He wanted something else to
scare us with. Terrorism and Homeland Security have replaced Russia and
A-bombs, and it’s just going on and on. Obama can’t stop it, or he would.”
“Oh my God!”
She begins to blubber. “You’re
always defending the Republicans. They shut down the government…”
“The Republicans did NOT shut
down the government. The representatives of the people, who do not want
Obamacare, because it sucks on every level, funded the entire government except
Obamacare, and Harry Reid’s Senate, on behalf of the President said No thank
you. It’s all or nothing. Take Obamacare or take nothing at all. It’s the
Democrats who don’t care about people. It’s Democrats who don’t want equality. It’s
the Democrats who cheat and lie! And it’s the fucking Republicans who are too
stupid, or untalented, or downright moral, to do it back and beat them!”
On “beat them,” she
flinched, and he threw up his hands in disgust. He’s got a wild look in his eye
from not being able to get her to understand.
Let’s get out of here. Billy’s
got the right idea. He’s riding his bicycle over to the winery, looking for
Natalie. Let’s hope she’s not home, because driving slowly up the winding road
to the winery, always at least a curve or two behind him, is a nondescript
dirty white car, and in it are two undercover police officers assigned the task
of following that kid who’s been seen on Saturdays handing out pamphlets in
support of marijuana.
We’re going to jaunt over to
the college, and see what the academics are doing this late fall Friday afternoon,
when decent people are out raking their lawns.
Drinking coffee, of course,
and being intellectual. Brittany Brown has the student lounge floor. The crowd
is sparse; it’s the beginning of a holiday weekend. She started out talking to
another graduate student, a pretty girl in very tight jeans and a low-cut
shirt. A small group, mostly male, has collected around them, and Brittany is
becoming expansive before it. She’s waving a piece of paper. Her voice is way
up there.
“Pelosi says there is nothing
to cut. Not one single thing! Well listen to this. When the ruling class
retires, you know what they get?” She consults the paper.
“A congressman or a Senator gets one hundred and seventy four thousand dollars. Every year. For life! After congressmen serve in the US Senate or House of Representatives, every year, for as long as they live, they get one hundred and seventy-four thousand dollars! The Speaker of the House gets even more. I think we can find you some cuts, Nancy!”
Surprisingly, she’s
applauded, so she steps it up. “I say congressmen should collect a salary when
they’re in office, and that’s it. Their terms should be limited, and when
they’re over, they should go back to the jobs they came from, and WORK, like
the rest of us. No retirement pay at all. We’re supposed to have citizen
legislators, not career legislators. Career legislators are rulers. We don’t
have rulers here.”
But up at the winery, Donny
Harris is not so sure. He’s thinking: I don't get it. If I know my taxes are
due, do I wait until two weeks before the due date to figure out how I’m going to
pay them? NO. I come up with a plan in advance. I know winter is coming. Do I
wait until December to start splitting firewood? NO.
They knew the debt ceiling was
about to come down on their heads. What do they do? They wait until the 23rd
hour to try to force it through over fear of a shut down. We have a seventeen
trillion dollar debt. When are we going to at least stop adding to it? Why does
Obama insist on spending more and more?
And he doesn’t understand why
there was no money to let the Veterans into their memorial, but right next to
it, undocumented residents were welcomed by Nancy Pelosi to protest for amnesty.
Not that he has anything against Mexicans, but the attack on the veterans seems
mean.
He’d like to talk to Anne
about it; they talk about everything, but on Day 5, she went on-line and tried
to find out how much Obamacare would cost them. She signed up to get her login
and password to the exchange. An error message came up, and then every day and
hour after that, website maintenance. “All I wanted to do is find out how much
IT is going to cost me and what IT is. Amazon should have been in charge of
setting up and running the systems. Imagine how many people use that site
daily, hourly, and it still works every minute of every day.”
Anne is a big fan of Obama,
and of Obamacare, and she’s miserable about the bad showing. If he piles on his
own doubts, the gloom in the big room will only deepen. As it is, they’re
drinking from dinky little glasses some not-so-good wine they have to get rid
of, eating cold left-overs.
Meanwhile, Steve has forsaken
his new friends for old, and coffee for weed. He’s out on the compound grounds
in Natalie Winegrove’s room. (She hasn’t legally changed her name, but she
plans to when she‘s old enough.) He and Nat and Billy the Kid are talking their
own brand of politics.
Billy is telling them what’s
in his Saturday pamphlet. “I’ve got a list of names you wouldn’t believe, of
people who used pot. Wanna hear?” He’s anxious to tell them, and they’re in the
mood to listen.
“William Shakespeare,” he
says.
“Nooo,” says Natalie, slowly
exhaling the breath she’s been holding.
“Steve Jobs.” He’s proud of
that one. “Dope on a regular basis.”
“You’re kidding,” says Steve.
“Stephen King.”
“Obviously,” says Nat.
“Thirteen presidents,
including our current one.”
“Holy shit!” says Steve.
“Exactly,” says Natalie.
Outside in the unmarked car,
the two police officers have all the windows open and are themselves partaking of
the evil weed, their self-awarded ransom for letting go the guy they nabbed
harvesting it.
