The Mourning After
The President of the United States of America, arguably the most powerful man on the planet, had spent the night curled up in bed, alternately shivering in fear and planning to destroy his hated enemies.Chief among these at the moment was the telephone on the table beside his bed. Off and on all night it had frowned, leered, or stared at him. Occasionally it had taunted and tortured him, calling him a coward, accusing him of being a closet Democrat, or suggesting absurd ways to destroy his political opposition, such as sneaking into their offices and leaving bugs around.
As dawn broke across the D.C. skyline, pouring warm rays through his East Wing bedroom window, angels rode in on the sunbeams, casting lances at the telephone, lots for the President's pajamas, and aspersions upon his dogs. But at least the telephone, at last exposed as an alien spaceship, was now a smoldering heap of burnt extraterrestriality.
His wife stirred under the covers. "Dick, are you OK? You tossed and turned all night, and you're usually up before now."
He patted her head (was it really hers?), and responded. "Yes, I think so. I'm going in now. Keep the girls in today, the doors locked, the curtains drawn, security close by. I think there's rabies about."
The First Lady stared at the clock, unsure just what was going on. "Dick, were you drinking after Tricia's party last night?"
"Sure," he replied just a little too softly. "Coffee, tea and thee. I may have had some warm milk and juice, a bit of water, and a couple of windmills. At least, I think so." The angels waved, holstered their lassos, and roared out the windows on their mighty, panting brooms. The President waved at them, sprang from bed, bounced off the wall, stumbled to the window and stood in his stocking feet, staring morosely into the distance. His fingers waved goodbye like a hydra ("Now why did I think that?", he pondered).
"I thought only witches rode brooms..." He turned back, blew a kiss at his wife, and skipped to the bathroom, giggling. Pat, convinced she was having a nightmare, closed her eyes and pulled the pillow over her head. Soon, a raucous version of "Mary had a Little Lamb" filled the room, slowly turning into a song bawdy enough to make Hugh Hefner blush. Fortunately for the First Lady, she was asleep again.
Not so the Secret Service agents. Perez stared in amazement at the controls before him. He flicked off the recorder, pulled the reel and ran it across the bulk eraser. His job was to protect the president, and that meant nobody ever needed to hear this recording. He wished he hadn't heard it himself. Was his boss cracking under the strain?
Richard Nixon sat at the Desk of Power. Occasionally he had felt it before, this aura of power that radiated from The Desk. But never like today. On the other hand, there was a green undercurrent to it that bothered him - could he control it? Was it, like so many others, out to get him?A telephone cleared its throat and rang.
The President nearly leaped out of his seat. Suddenly he realized that there were several of the monstrosities before him. Which one was screaming at him? The voice tore at his ears for eons, but the silence between the screams lasted only decades. Or maybe nanoseconds. He wasn't sure. Finally, just before he took the sterling silver letter opener to his ears, the thing hushed.
The quiet was as ominous as it was peaceful. He wondered which of the little men before him on The Desk had made the noise. And why did they wear those funny hats? And why were they different colors?
"Red and yellow, black and white, you are loathsome in my sight", he sang quietly. Snatching up one of the phones, he pried at the base. Finally he noticed the screws in the base. Humming "Rule Britainia" (and hoping this wouldn't get him beheaded by the House Un-American Activities Committee), he rummaged in The Desk a bit. Beneath the paper clips, the papers, the notes, the rubber bands, the rubbers, the bands, the little green men (had he noticed them before?), the salsa (he was sure he hadn't noticed that before), the jellyfish and the slugs, he finally found a knife some Boy Scouts had presented him.
Admiring the Philmont emblem, he pried open different blades- the big knife, the little knife, the tweezers, the corkscrew, the bathtub, the baby buggy, the rubber hose, the candlestick, and finally the screwdriver.
As he tried to remove the first screw, he slowly became aware that someone in his fingers was talking to him. Hollering in pain, in fact. He could feel the blood spurting, his life draining away! He slumped onto The Desk, face down, his eyes filled with the grain of the wood. It was a peaceful way to die, a good way to go, face to face with his old friend. He could see the tree which had given its life for this Desk, feel its heartbeat, the sap flowing through its veins. He grokked it ("now where did I hear that word?") All went dark, the casket closed, the earth covered him, took him to be with it. Worms ate his brain. Ants devoured his flesh, meal worms consumed his bones, and were carted off to an Aunt Jemima pancake factory. Who could ask for more? Except that no one had come for his soul yet. What was wrong?!
The President sat up, looked at his hand. A minute drop of blood glistened wetly in the light, threw dancing cream doughnuts about the office. He giggled a nice presidential giggle. "Oh, wow." It echoed, reverberated through his head, throughout the office. He felt, no, saw the vibrations chase and dance down the halls of the building, radiating outwards like Spider Webs of Light, Joy and Power from The Desk, through the White House, out through the country, across the face of the entire planet, out into space. They stopped halfway to Mars. What stopped them? He'd have Bob Haldeman look into it, or maybe Gordon Liddy. He scribbled a note on the back of his cuff with the knife, dipped in his own blood for ink.
"Have to remember to close the other blades", he said aloud. He did so, slowly, lovingly, one at a time. "Not this one. Not Mr. Screwdriver. Mr. Screwdriver and I have a job to do", he chortled, eyeing the upside down telephone ("belly up! belly, belly good!") with a righteous glee.
Deep in the bowels of the White House, Joseph Davis of the Secret Service stared, aghast, at the equipment. Almost hypnotized by the slowly spinning reels, he managed to punch the code for his supervisor. When Delaney picked up, he explained, hung up. Delaney was there within a minute. After listening quietly for a few moments he called Bob Haldeman.Haldeman listened for a moment, slammed down the stop switch. He jerked the reel off the tape deck, ran it across the bulk eraser several times, and sailed it across the room into the burn bag reserved for decoded messages. "That never happened. This equipment is obviously defective. It's out of service until I say it's repaired", he spat at the agents. They looked uncomfortably at Haldeman, sheepishly at the electronics gear, then at each other.
"Keep monitoring the President, but no more recordings until I say so. Got it?" They nodded. Haldeman stalked off furiously to find Kissinger. A buzzer buzzed, a light flashed. Both agents jumped, but it was the non-urgent call buzzer.
Delaney stood up. "I'll go." Davis mopped sweat from his brow and breathed a prayer of thanks. He didn't want to see his President like this. He didn't even want to think about what was going on. But he couldn't ignore the nursery rhymes and free form poetry whispering from the speakers in front of him.
"Time for my milk, time for my milk, time for my milk and caaaake..." Davis rubbed his head, which suddenly ached horribly.
Delaney knocked on the door. At the sound of a body hitting wood, he jerked the door open and leaped through, falling and rolling. Several telephones hit the floor, bells clanging and plastic clacking. Coming out of a roll, Delaney pulled his Uzi from its holster and came to his knees behind a chair, scanning the room desperately. But the only other person present was the President, laying happily across the desk, singing quietly, "...time for my milk and caaaake...""Mister President, sir!", Delaney shouted, still desperately scanning the room, "Who is it? Where are they?" He bolted from cover, grabbed the executive by the lapels, hurled him to the floor, and spun frantically, looking for whoever had attacked the President of the United States. The only sound was the giggling at his feet.
"Why, Delaney, is that any way to treat Harriet the Spy?"
"What?!!! I mean, What, sir?" Gun at the ready, Delaney waved at the security detail appearing at the door to fan out and search the room. They found nothing but a Boy Scout knife and a couple of partially disassembled ("disemboweled," corrected the President) telephones. The agents looked uneasily at each other. Measured, calm footsteps approached. They all looked up. In the door, the GQ ad that was Henry Kissinger stood, silently appraising the scene.
"Henry!", cried Nixon with joy. "Just the man! Help me up from here". (Delaney immediately helped his boss up and began to apologize. The President clapped his hand over a stunned Delaney's mouth. "You're my best friend," he said shyly. Looking around, he announced more loudly, "You're all my best friends. Thanks for playing. But Henry and I have business." He paused meaningfully. "Important business." A pregnant pause (he could feel the baby dropping). "Top secret, urgent, code red business!" he sang with gusto.
Deftly snatching Delaney's Uzi, the President propelled Delaney towards the door. He waved the others out. They all looked at Kissinger, who nodded surreptitiously. Nixon noticed, wondering if Kissinger was part of a plot to steal his power. Perhaps he was in league with the telephones?
"Sit down, Henry," Nixon beamed (he could feel goodwill beams radiating from his face). He righted an overturned chair in front of The Desk and pointed graciously to it. He walked to his chair, stepping pointedly on each phone on the floor.
Sitting, he explained to his patient advisor. "They were furious after I operated on their compatriots" (he pointed at the two destroyed phones on The desk). "They attacked, but I beat them in hand to hand combat." Nixon sat back in his chair, eyeing Kissinger warily. Without his hat, he didn't look anything like a telephone, but then, without their hats, neither did any of the telephones.
"Here, my dear friend, look at this!" He handed the knife across The Desk to Kissinger, careful to keep the knife out of The Desk's line of sight. "Genuine Philmont Ranch in the Sky Boy Scout knife. Handle of pure naugahide. Hunted the Nauga myself. Caught it with some snipes on Dawn Patrol."
Kissinger took the knife silently. He looked at it, looked up at Nixon. One brow raised quizically.
"For God's sake", Nixon cried, his voice trembling with rage, "Stand up! Stand up!"
Kissinger merely sat with his mouth open. Finally he managed to stammer a reply. "What?"
Nixon coldly calculated for a few days, as the worms flew by. "Stand up, pretty please, with whipped cream on top?"
Kissinger stood uneasily. "Dick, what's going on? Are you feeling OK?"
Nixon analyzed things carefully. Kissinger had definitely stuttered, therefore this wasn't Kissinger. In fact, he was as hatless as the Bolshevik telephones so recently killed at the President's own hands. And Henry hadn't pirhouetted, either.
"I hate to do this," Nixon said, the tears forming like liquid diamonds in his eyes and avalanching down his face to freedom. "Even though you can't be Henry, you look so much like him..."
"Mister President... Dick... what's wrong?" For the first time in his political career, Henry Kissinger was at a loss for words, at a loss for understanding. Unfortunately, this didn't help his reflexes any.
The President pressed the panic button with his knee as he raised the Uzi. He blew Kissinger's face apart as the door and two secret panels slammed inwards. Secret Service agents swarmed the office, surrounding the President even before Kissinger's body hit the floor.
After a moment of bedlam and shouting, the agents moved away from the President. Delaney had recovered his Uzi, being careful to hold it in a handkerchief.
"He was trying to kill me!" cried the irate executive. "With that pig sticker!" An agent opened Kissinger's hand, looked at the knife, at the President, at his supervisor, back at the knife. Several agents started talking at once.
A voice like thunder shouted down all competition. "SHUT UP!!!" Nixon froze them all in place. He grabbed one of the phones from the floor, sat down, and began talking quietly into it. Delaney spoke quietly into the ear of an agent, who hurried quietly out the door, past the gathering crowd of secretarial staff. He motioned the other agents to back off, to examine Kissinger, or watch the President.
Nixon mumbled code phrases into the telephone, rattled off numbers, and barked an occasional order. Finally he hung up the phone and hurled it back forcefully to the floor. He smiled evilly at the agents. "You thought you had me. But not Richard Millhouse Nixon. No sir, I'm wise to your games. And that's why I've just ordered a nuclear strike. The final target was right here. I wish I could evacuate my family, but at least I'll clean out this rats nest." He glared at Delaney, looked with sorrow at the nearly headless corpse of Henry Kissinger.
As one, the agents broke into a sweat. One stood with his mouth open for a second. Nobody moved. Time seemed to pass as slowly for the agents as it often had for the President this morning.
Abruptly, Nixon turned and walked to the window. Somewhere, he knew, missiles were, or would be soon, leaping from their underground wombs, flying on their fiery umbilical chords of smoke and plumage into the sky, there to hang like mighty birds of prey, choosing their victims with care, falling like hawks with unerring accuracy to strike with thermonuclear passion. He saw, in the theater of his mind, the mindless destruction, the fiery death, flesh and bone vaporized, cars exploding, steel and concrete melting like butter at a bonfire, daisies wilting...
"Daisies. Daisies?" the President croaked. "Daisies!" He collapsed onto the floor and wept bitterly for the daisies. The agents stood helplessly until another agent returned with the entire White House medical staff. The President was soon sedated and on his way to Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Finally one of the agents started shaking, fell into a chair. Nearly crying, he looked at Delaney with soul-searing desperation. "What's happening? How could he do it? World War III? Has he gone mad? Have we? Did he say Washington, D.C.???"
Delaney started with the last question and worked backwards. "He did. I don't think so. I don't know..."
He picked up the phone he thought Nixon had last used. He stared at it a moment, pressed the single button on its face. A few seconds later, he heard a woman's voice. "Well, what is it this time, Dick? What is wrong with you? ... Are you there? Are you OK?" Delaney stared at the handset, suddenly apologized. "Sorry. Wrong number." The woman at the other end screamed back. "What?" He hung up.
Delaney stared at each agent in turn, a lop-sided, silly grin breaking across his usually dead pan face. "No problem. That was his private line to his wife's office. I think she's worried about him.
"Kind of like I am."
Haldeman walked in the door, his face red with rage. "You know those jerks who got into Patricia's party last night - the hippies, Hoffman and Slick?"
Most of the agents nodded. "Well, after someone figured out who they were, and we got them out of the party, we kept them in custody. Questioned them all night. Five minutes ago they finally gave up demanding access to the press. Hoffman gleefully explained that the revolution has finally come to Pennsylvania Avenue, and we will all be seeing the Age of Peace ushered in any day now."
As Haldeman paused for breath, Delaney jumped in. "And just what is that supposed to mean?"
Bob Haldeman slowly removed his glasses and began polishing the lenses with his handkerchief. He hesitated a moment, then spoke. "Grace Slick brought Abbie Hoffman here for one reason, and one reason only. In their words, ``to help the President tune in, turn on, and drop out.'' They dropped LSD into his cup. The lab ran some tests on all the cups from the party, and one did, indeed, contain trace amounts of LSD." Suddenly Haldeman merely looked tired.
The agents looked at one another first in fear, then in cold fury. Haldeman spoke again. "I know how you feel. I want to kill them personally. Slowly. The man might well go insane." ("In which case I will personally see to their deaths", thought Haldeman.
A voice buzzed, unnoticed, from a handset under the President's desk. "First birds now approaching targets." Air raid sirens began to scream outside. A squad of marines burst through the door as a helicopter raced to the ground outside the window.
A major screamed at the stunned agents and Haldeman. "Where is the President? We have to get him out of here now! We're under attack!" Far above, a missile nosed over in ballistic flight, its electronic brain gurgling telemetry data happily back to antenna everywhere. The missile didn't know it, but it had a date with the Washington Monument, only blocks from the White House.
Slowly, too late, the nations awoke to the fate accidentally willed to them by two societal dropouts. The dropouts never even knew what was coming.
So often, we think of the fate of the world as being in the hands of its leaders. And it does. But it also sits in the hands of honest, hard-working men and women, not least in the hands of those who serve the leaders. More frequently than we usually realize, the day to day operations of people whose names escape popular history determine the future as much as the actions of the leaders they serve.What if a heads-up Secret Service agent hadn't recognized, just in time, the two notorious hippies waiting in line for Tricia Nixon's birthday party? What if they had actually met the President, spoken with him, distracted him for a few seconds, and managed to do a thing unnoticed, a small thing, a tiny thing, a mere political statement, an act of alleged kindness to a man they considered "way uptight"?
Thankfully, we will never know.
[Just as I was finishing this story, the Indigo Girls were singing on my stereo, ``... someone's got his finger on a button in some room''. How appropriate.]
-Miles O'Neal, very early in the morning, somewhere in the hill country northwest of Austin, Texas
Last updated: 05 March 1998Copyright 1997 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved. Miles O'Neal <roadkills.r.us@XYZZY.gmail.com> [remove the "XYZZY." to make things work!] c/o RNN / 1705 Oak Forest Dr / Round Rock, TX / 78681-1514