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By Dave Eggers
Editor's note: This is the most recent episode in Dave Eggers' novel in progress. For previous installments, click here.
Jul. 13, 2004 | Inside, the candidates had finished the slow lifting of their heads from prayer, and it was time for Carol O'Mealy's opening statement. She was wearing a red suit, red lipstick and enough mascara and eye shadow for many young Goth enthusiasts. When she took a breath and raised her chin, about to speak, she looked eerily like the "Like a Virgin"-era Madonna, which was the effect her makeup artist, a Texan named Houston Alamo, was hoping for. Houston Alamo, whose real name was Dallas Alamo, was raised by Mormons and had been in the Navy. Carol O'Mealy only worked with men who had been in the Navy.
She licked her lips and began.
"I too lament the predicament that our former president finds himself in tonight. And while I was proud just now to stand in quiet observance of his plight, I can be silent no longer. None of us can be silent. Too much is at stake here, my friends. Yes, we have a Republican in the Oval Office, but still we are losing ground. We have been losing ground for eleven years now and nothing is being done to turn the tide."
And at this, those in the audience who had seen O'Mealy speak publicly in the previous few months knew they were in for what was being referred to, in reverential tones, as The Speech II. The original Speech of course was RR's, and it launched his career in politics, so pure of ideology and inspirational of vision was it. O'Mealy's might be said to be a bit darker in tone, more stick than carrot, but it was just as rousing to the base.
"It is no longer time to stand idly by as the country is ceded, bit by bit, to a future so lawless and lascivious that Bosch himself would blush..."
And here she paused to acknowledge those who'd gotten the reference. Dipshits, she thought, smiling.
"...led of course by the party of sex-crazed freaks like Slick Willy and our two most celebrated lecher-cripples, FDR and Kennedy -- may the latter duo roll over in their respective graves, if the unions let them, that is."
And here she sent a sidelong glance in the direction of Hamilton, whose stance toward unions was softer than desirable.
"My friends," she continued, "as J. Junior Inferior dangles in a tree by the parking lot, how many of you at home are dangling, yourselves? How many of you feel like you, like J. Junior, are awaiting rescue, in this case from an administration that won't stand up to the encroaching tide of filth and the mongrelization of our once-pure culture?"
She had a way, thrilling and inscrutable, of planting words like "mongrel" into her speeches in a manner that rendered them not clearly objectionable, but clearly and meaningfully audible to her constituency.
"How many of you are dangling before the abyss of financial ruin? The chasm of personal immolation? How many of you dangle, imagining your country hijacked by leftist extremists who want to parade through your town wearing leather and carrying their feces in buckets?"
This got a confused laugh. No one knew what it meant, but it always worked.
"How many of you have lost your jobs to Mexicans and Indians, to [here she paused to underline the absurdity of these nations and people] Bosnian Serbs and Rwandans? How many of your paychecks are buying crack for women with eleven children living in luxury in Cabrini Green? How many of your tax dollars are going to pay overtime for police to keep the peace when gay men in chaps march through your streets tonguing each other? How many of you can't get ahead because 40 percent of your earnings are going to pay for the government to kill fetuses and allow New York artists to use them in their 'installations'?"
She went on for a while in this way, which needn't be further described or recounted because it would not be believed. She finished amid an explosion of clapping and whooping. Even staffers representing Hamilton and Inferior Jr. were cheering. In response, O'Mealy licked her red lips again, pouted, and seemed to be -- was she? -- fingering a riding crop.
Viewers at home couldn't see the riding crop, because O'Mealy kept it at her side, beneath the beveled roof of her lectern, but the studio audience could clearly see that her right hand held a riding crop of black leather, and her left hand was busy fondling it. The audience felt odd about this riding crop. They felt tittery and gooey and their teeth seemed sharper. Each one of the 128 men in the audience was at that moment picturing Carol O'Mealy doing unspeakable things to his flesh, as would a butcher to a ham hock. Each one of the 77 women present was wondering if the riding crop she would purchase the following day should be leather or plastic, and which color and length.
Outside, J. Junior Inferior Sr. could no longer feel his feet or fingers. The only part of his body that still seemed a part of him was his back, which was attached to the soft, broad stomach of Montana, who was asleep. Montana was a snorer, and he snored in a strange, quick rhythm, making noise while both inhaling and exhaling, in a way that reminded Senior of a song he'd heard once in a commercial for Volkswagen, the lyrics of which were, if he remembered correctly, "Da da da."
Inside, his son, who as a child could not catch a ball, could not color inside the lines, could not add or multiply, or draw a rooster using his hand -- his son who ate from the cat's litter pile and once broke open the TV "to let the people out" -- was about to address the nation in hopes of retaining his presidency.
But Junior was stuck. Hamilton had taken away the possibility of his instigating a proper tribute to his father, while O'Mealy had played the audience the way some kind of wooden instrument would be played while resting in the crook of one's neck.
Thus there was only one place for Junior to go. Straight to hell.
-- By Dave Eggers
