Chronicles of the Shade – Part III – Episode I
Forebush VanderScum sat back in his high rocker. He surveyed the land that lay before him, the 120,000 acre pig farm in the heart of New Jersey. As CEO of the Malapaca pharmaceutical company, he was chagrined at the thought of having to spend another $100 million to bank-roll that miserable piece of excrement, Dollard “Mittens” Rumnose.
“Damn him for being such an idiot,” VanderScum said to no one in particular. “Why in the bloody hell is he talking out of both sides of his mouth?” All he has to do, thought VanderScum, is take one side or the other. Doesn’t he know that taking both sides is a contradiction? VanderScum was of old Dutch stock, meaning that if he’d had his ‘druthers, what the French (ugh!) called the “neuveau riche” would be locked up in the stocks until they got a little spine in in their backs.
“Cellophane,” said Forebush, as if talking to the wall, “That guy’s nothing but a cellophane man. At that moment, the song from “Chicago” popped into his mind, “Cellophane…I’m made of cellophane…..You can see right through me….” Yeah, thought Forebush, you can see right through him. Why in hell didn’t the Repugnican Party have the good sense to vote for a true patriot, someone like Rock (“of ages”) Sanctum. Rock was a good Catholic, someone who really believed the nutty things that those Opus Dei flagellators did, someone who had a Christening party for his dead kid. Rock was as solid as, well, you know what. But Rock had lost to Mammon, to the Wall Street crowd, a crowd as cynical and money-grabbing as anything under the sun. I might be a miserable piece of scum (well, it’s part of my name), but these guys are so, so far beyond me. I want only to preserve my family’s wealth forever, but the Wall Street guys are just in it to jump all over those who are more unfortunate, and they don’t have any other agenda apart from, “me, me, me.”
Little beknownst to VanderScum, the Shade had been listening to every word that he could decipher from Forebush’s muffled pronouncements. For those unfamiliar to the goings-on of Lance Carter, he had undergone an apparent mystical experience some years ago in a crevasse in the Himalayas. After that experience, he had acquired the ability to get into the time frames of others so that they could not see him. There is scientific evidence for his ability. Combat pilots say that you have to scan the environment in order to see what’s in front of you. The people who couldn’t see Lance Carter even though he was smack in front of them were people who couldn’t scan him. This new-found ability had allowed him to adopt his alter ego, that of The Shade.
Yes, thought the Shade, as he surveyed the scene afforded by the redolent acres of pig farm owned by the VanderScum family, Forebush might be a pig, but he was an intelligent pig (and it’s been proven that pigs are more intelligent than the average member of homo sapiens—and clearly more intelligent than the average Repugnican voter). Forebush was interested only in the advancement of his own family, a natural enough predilection, but in Forebush’s case one that was sadly mistaken. His daughter, Emily “drool” VanderScum (so nicknamed because she drooled like an idiot whenever the subject of chocolate ice cream was mentioned) was a closet homophobe, even though her hormones perked up whenever Françoise la pussiere, VanderScum’s French maid, showed up to dust the armoire.
The Shade could never understand the priorities of the very rich. Although he had been left a small fortune by his father, a renowned Wall Street financier, Lance thought that it was best for humankind to give away as much as he could. The love of money, he repeated to himself as he stood in VanderScum’s lounge room, was the root of all evil, as his friend Josephus Fratello had taught him. Josephus was a real Christian, not one of the phony Christianists who preached the sermon of private interests. But there you have it, thought the Shade, no one will ever be able to convince those who refuse to be convinced. For instance, take Pauletto O’Rourke. O’Rourke wasn’t a phony, but he was as thick as a plank. He thinks that if private enterprise cannot feed the hungry, then that’s God’s will—they deserve to starve (rather than have public funds take up the slack).
Enough of ruminating, thought the Shade. What he had insinuated himself into VanderScum’s home for was to find out just where the money to prop up Rumnose had been coming from. Well, it was obvious where VanderScum’s sympathies lay. But there was also that dynamic right-wing duo, Tom and Jerry Cocks. The Cocks were bankrolling the re-election fight that Scrott Walzer had got himself into because he essayed to break the unions of Wiscarson. It was shocking, thought the Shade, that a state that had been the home of La Follete was taken in by the lies and innuendos funded by pair of driveling idiots whose favorite game was “Pin the tail on the Donkey.” There had been whispers that once one of the Cocks’ guests tried to pin the tail on Mrs. Cock. After that the Cocks played games that were much more circumspect, such as beanbags with the ladies, although the Cocks were hard-pressed to find anyone who could get one of the bags in the hole.
The Shade thought that he was getting a bit old for this sleuthing business. Four years ago he had done a job on the administration of Barnaby A. Liar, who was now living the life of the idle rich on his ranch in Crawdad, TX. One thing you’ve got to say for Liar, thought the Shade. He didn’t stick around for any accolades after his presidency was succeeded by that of the nonpareil scintillating speaker, and now President, the Honorable Bam Orama. After being swept into office by a landslide vote, Bam hadn’t taken advantage of the mandate given to him, and he had spent a lot of time on the basketball court practicing his jump shot with the likes of LeBron James, the best basketball player on the planet and someone, he believed, who would lead the Miami Heat to a well-deserved championship after just missing the golden hoop in 2011.
Poor Bam, thought the Shade. He does something that Hildy Swinton couldn’t do –passing a universal health-care bill, despite the vociferous voices of flacks for the insurance companies and Big Pharma—and he gets no credit for it. Instead the whiners on the far left complain that when Navy Seals gunned down Oswami ben Loaded, they violated the rights of that terrorist murderer. Now Bam’s progressive support seemed to be dribbling away, especially after Dem voters mostly sat on their hands in 2010, letting the tri-cornered nutcases sweep control of the House of Representatives. Although Fancy Buligiosi had kept her job as minority leader, she had been severely wounded by the lies that had been spread about her, even though she commented frequently that it only hurt when she laughed (which she found harder and harder to do lately, what with the economy swirling down the drain because of President Liar’s unfunded wars against Jiraque and Albasterstan.)
What confounded the Shade was that Ricardo Chancey was still in the picture, snarling into the cameras of the lame-stream media as they kowtowed to this personification of evil, someone with an artificial Jarvik heart that thumped with an ungodly rhythm and an occasional whirr from the chambers being filled and emptied. Because Chancey’s heart was set to beat at a steady 60 beats a minute, whenever he exerted himself, he would have to beat on his chest like a gorilla to get his heart-rate up. This was because the nerves surrounding the Jarvik had been removed, and he had to pound his chest whenever he wanted to increase his aerobic levels. If he didn’t do this, any exertion, such as killing hundreds of innocent quail with his double-ought, double-barreled shotgun would send him into a swoon from which he might someday not recover.
Chancey was still wheeling around D.C. in his motorized chair, trying to energize the remnants of a neocon base so that they could continue to plot invasion and domination of any country that was foolish enough to think that it was independent of the machinations of the DOD and its obscenely inflated budget, sucking funds from Medicaid, Medicare, the homeless, and the destitute, just so corporations could exercise the personhood granted to them by the SCOTUS, led by Justice Tonio Sleazy and his dark and silent shadow, Tommie (Uncle Tom-Tom) Thomasino. Joined by Justice Sammy Stiletto, Robert “Call me Bob” Robot, and the doddering Ken Kenilworth, these clowns in black robes had decided, without clear precedent, that corporations are people, and that ordinary people had better incorporate themselves if they wanted to vote.
VanderScum was now out of his chair and prancing back and forth on his wooden leg. “Who put you in the stocks, Brom Brick?” he suddenly exclaimed. The Shade could now see clearly into Forebush’s mind, an uncanny ability that Lance Carter had acquired while frozen in the ice so many years ago in Katmandu. Although VanderScum possessed the most up-to-date prosthetic device to replace his leg—amputated below the knee several years ago because he carelessly swung his big, electric cross-cut saw across his body whilst fashioning a set of stocks to intimidate the help—he preferred the hand-carved wooden peg, inlaid with silver, that his great-great grandfather had worn in Old New Amsterdam.
Forgetting that Brom Brick had put himself in the stocks, Forebush continued to declaim that it was he, the overseer of this mighty land of swine, who would clap anyone in the stocks who refused to bow to old money. As VanderScum continued to clump back and forth, playing the part of the mighty landlord, the Shade was becoming weary. He could keep his heart-rate low for only about five minutes, and Forebush’s antics were beginning to try his patience. His thoughts wandered to Lara—Lara, the love of his life, whom he had thought was lost but who now was found—Lara, who was now probably at the bar in the Carlyle Hotel in NYC, waiting for him to join him for a drink. Lance’s chauffeur was waiting for him under a shade tree just beyond the gate to the VanderScum mansion, engine idling in the big, black Mercedes 500S. It would take only about an hour to get from NJ to the City. Then they would sit together at the bar before dinner, he with his martini and she with her Pim’s Cup. Lance had begun omitting the gin from his martinis, having found that gin made him a tad surly. Now the smoothest drink he could imagine consisted of three parts Sobieski vodka and one part Noilly Prat vermouth. (He was troubled by still calling it a “martini” now that he was using French vermouth, but it just didn’t sound right to say to the bartender, “I’ll have a Noilly.” Finish it off by adding a couple of onion-filled Spanish olives, thought Lance, as he eased himself out the French doors of VanderScum’s lounge room, and there you have a drink that even Zeus would relish.
“Things’a change,” said Lance under his breath as he walked toward his waiting ride back to the city, purposely repeating the phrase Don Ameche used playing the gardener who was mistakenly thought to be a Mafia mobster. But Lance knew from his study of Greek philosophy that this phrase had been uttered long ago in Ephesus (although in a different language) by none other than Heraclitus. “Boy, do they ever,” he muttered to his chauffer as the Mercedes rolled out towards the highway, “I can really use that drink.”
Chronicles of the Shade Part III Episode 2
Comments are closed.
