Back at the Ranch...

Back at the Ranch…

It was good to back at the ranch he thought. Georgie boy sat on his scarred old rocker looking out at the smoke rising off the burned out land and the heat distorting the light so that it looked as if the scrub bushes were doing a little dance to welcome his return.

A smirk started to appear on his plain, bland countenance. Small cold eyes belied the grin that widened as Georgie Boy took it all in. It was good to be back among dead things, he thought.

Yes,he thought, some might call it a wasteland, a Bosh-like tryptich of half animal half human beasts devouring the ungodly in a place so bleak so inhuman, it left one in a kind of life-sucking limbo between abject fear of evil things and a total incomprehensible vacuum that seemed to swallow up whole anything that resembled human emotion or feeling.
.

But Georgie Boy saw none of that. For him, this was the center of the universe. The place that God had personally selected for him to launch his crusade. And that acceptance was a kind of a medal that he carried with him all the time.

He sat back and thought about how his life had always been shaped by good fortune. His took pride in a background that he invested with a heroism that was not there. He had a facility for taking events that were bland and undistinguished and imbuing them with qualities that were merely invented. It was so much easier that way than dealing with the tedious reality. No, there was no hard work; no toil, not even a commitment to the military that he could point to outside of his imagination. But that didn’t hold him back. It seemed people want to get caught up in his imaginary life. With the result, that he had garnished prime jobs from the governorship to the presidency without ever having to work for them. This was the new American example. What could be done with no qualifications and no talent providing you had the right genes. . He was a model for others who couldn’t cut it under normal conditions. And that made him feel good. Why should those bloody nerds who study their butts off get all the goodies, he questioned. God was right. It was nice being a member of the happy sperm club.
.

He laughed again, a pale,thin laugh that was sucked up by the heavy moisture laden air. “Yeah, man. The big Cajuna returns, he thought. He smiled to himself, stretched and got up from the rocker. He looked around. It made him proud to think that there was nothing he could see that he did not own. Acres and acres of some of the ugliest and harshest terrain on earth. And that made him feel strong and potent, master of all he purveyed, the tarantulas, snakes, brush, flat enervated desert scrub, the overarching flatness of it all. It was like a medieval view of the end of the world. All you had to do was go out far enough and you’d fall off. . It was the perfect home for someone who wanted to be out of the mainstream and couldn’t care less about what the rest of the world was doing.
.
It was a good place for a Saint or a Messenger. Or someone who would change the world to suit his beliefs. And, fortunately, all of the rest had lined up to do his bidding. That, too, was funny considering at Yale no one placed much stock on Georgie boy accomplishing much of substance with his life.

Georgie Boy stood up, stretched, looked down at his lizard boots…. They felt comfortable, just right on his feet as if they were part of his anatomy. He thought that if they had to inject him with lizard, his body would not reject it. He smiled at that. He looked down. He could see the start of a little swelling around his waste. The fries and nachos must be getting to him. It was clear he needed to go for a run soon. But for now, he would go inside and stretch out on his favorite old recliner. Yes, that was the move.

He loved this place. The strangeness, the hostility of the land. If that wasn’t enough, he loved it best in August when the heat scorched the already scorched ground and even the snakes played dead. And he would be all alone out there with his guns shooting whatever living things he could find and cutting and burning any living vegetation. It was empowering, this parade of death he contributed to.. He liked to watch the buzzards swoop down like emissaries of death and do their work, picking clean the remnants that littered his turf. They were part of his personal cleanliness committee, he thought.

Georgie liked things clean and neat.
He liked empty desks and prided himself on not having more than a half a dozen books on his mostly empty book shelves. A clean desk is a clean mind, he liked to think..

For him, for some strange reasons, the lizards and the crawly things made him feel right at home. It also endeared him to Washington. He couldn’t put his finger on it but It was like they all had something in common. They were all God’s creatures were they not?, he ruminated. And wasn’t that good? But it was something more than that, it was almost as if these spineless denizens of this nether world understood each other.

For him, returning to the familiarity of the ranch was almost like a salmon swimming upstream….a very lucky salmon at that. He realized almost intuitively that he was a lot like this dead place. He never created anything. He never had any ideas. He favorite amusement was hurting things. . He didn’t read aside from the sports pages. . He didn’t take pleasure in good music. No, for him he relished the chance to be here far from where people forced you to keep up with books and magazines and culture. How he hated culture and those who pretended to enjoy all those things. Those gold-plated phonies. All of them. He had seen enough of them at school. He remembered the way they looked at him, made fun of him and talked about him behind his back. He would spend the rest of his days getting even….

But here, it was different. By himself in the land of nothingness. Where he and his guns would fight the last battle against Evil and save the world. Yes, that was it. Save the world. .That was a notion that he could relate to. In his own mind, he could see himself posed upon his charger garbed in white and protected by layers of armor. In his strong right hand, he raised a sword; in his other, the standard of a free world, the American flag superimposed on the Bush coat of arms.

George preferred the company of others who felt the way he did. The good old boys who liked things the way they were before the dark skinned folks came over. Yup! Times were better then. You knew who the good guys were.

Even then, you didn’t mess with Georgie lightly. No siree, he thought. Attack him with a box cutter and you would be nuked. His reaction was never in equal parts; it was always total aimed at total devastation of the opposition. And almost everyone was the opposition.….How much like his enemies he really was….


Despite his religious conversion that came just in time and saved his world, he in truth had little compassion for others or their problems. What people never grasped was that he saw himself as being destined for greater things; someone who would be capable of bearing responsibility for the ultimate challenge. Yes, there was more to Georgie than that cruel grin, boozing and cruisin’. And if you penetrated to get beyond that, you would find a kind of dead zone where there was little beyond the reptilian to respond. Despite his pretensions, he operated on harsh primitive instinct and that meant he was quick to strike out. Not that he was complex. It wasn’t that. It was just that with his imagined self-image, he couldn’t see himself as he really was; nor could he accept the reality if he did.

His home reflected the man better than anything else. It fit him like a glove. It was the place he chose. It was hot yet cold to its very marrow as he was. It was a tough, brutal place that he could identify with. Nothing transcended the physical dimension in his land. . And for him, those were the challenges he could deal with. Limited man meets limited environment. And so they got along well..

But as unfriendly as the area was, he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. . He was in his domain. Like Dante standing at the Gates of Hell. It felt good. He liked to be close to the land—not the living land of a Willa Cather or the land as immortalized by the thousands who gave up everything for the chance to make something grow. No, it was not about breathing life into the soil and building something. No, it was quite the opposite—an opportunity to reign over a nether region that seemed to reek of death and things dying.

It was a place of absolute extremes….something metaphysical, biblical in its scope. It was the end of earth. And who could live in such a place without deep fundamental views…an alignment with your maker perhaps?
And this had happened, quite profoundly, it turned out after a life of debauchery. Was he Sodom’s savior, he wondered….Was he the new St. Augustine ready to sacrifice all for the final battle yet to come….

But this reflection had to take a back seat to the new challenges he faced.
Fortunately, he was blessed with the kind of nature which allowed him to put everything into little comfortable compartments. That meant he slept like a baby nights even if the night before he had given orders that would result in committing American boys to an uncertain future, actions with a political intent. No, he had a stomach for making tough decisions because they never involved a risk on his part. Yet, he felt that this wasn’t enough. That there was more to do. He felt that he needed to fulfill his real role. And until he did, he would be living as a shadow figure incomplete and not fully realized. He was willing to wait it out. He knew it was coming soon. He just needed the trigger. And he thought he knew what it was.

In his heart of hearts, he knew that God would some day call him on a special mission. And, now, it seemed as if it were forming himself before his eyes. Could he have ever realized himself so fully were it not for 911. 911 was the leading edge, the watershed that defined him, he realized. He could not help but see himself engaged in the holiest of missions: To rid the world of the heathen Arab, the terrorist anti-Christ who would infect his land and his life. And if that required drastic actions and sacrifice, he was prepared to do what it took. There was no need for soul searching or questioning; there was only a need to go forward and do God’s work. Of course, at times, he had fallen badly. At other times, he thought himself the male equivalent of a Joan of Arc, the instrument of the Lord committed to do his bidding. But he was a humble man in his heart of hearts. He wanted man to fulfill his role in Christianity and if meant that he would have to take extreme action, he was not beyond that. And, secretly, he supposed, that was why God had chosen him over any adversary.
At times, he had turned out the lights when he was alone, to see if he could yet see the illumination coming out from his being. It had not happened yet, but it would. He knew it as sure as night followed day.

At times, he would allow himself this time to daydream about his noble mission in life which lent purpose to a life that could have easily gone awry were it not for help he received from family, friends and his minister. Thank God for their patience and their guidance, he thought. Nevertheless, the other dimensions to him did not lessen. He still clung to many of the things that had shaped him in his youth. Fundamentally, he was a chameleon who could change on a dime. He could be a religious zealot one moment, and one of the boys the next. In a sense, he might have reminded some of his more learned friends of an Ivan the terrible who seemed like he was a friend to his peasants until he would toss their baby off the roof or force them into the arms of a half-starved bear for his own amusement.

On the other hand, he still clung to his physicality, it was the one thing he felt proud about. He had salvaged his physical self but his thinking processes had been damaged, even he had to admit that. . They say that’s what happens when you experiment too much with foreign substances. But what the hell, he was still a better man that most. In fact, half of his young life he couldn’t remember. Friends whom he trusted confided that he had been quite the lady’s man in his youth. The good time Charlie who was the first to want to party. Or so he was reminded even though he had no memory of his descent into debauchery.

Nevertheless, it made him feel like a man. No matter what anyone thought, they would never get him to deny his life. . In short, he liked the way he was. He liked being a good ole boy; he liked his quick temper, uncritical nature and impatience and unwillingness to be flexible. He liked cussing and making fun of what he and his colleagues considered lesser folk. He liked giving in to his baser emotions. For him, it was a natural state. He never saw a conflict between the role he was chosen to play or humility which he never had. Nor was it possible for him to believe that even the savior was not without his mortal traits. Best of all, he never had regrets. Mom always said that having regrets made no sense. You had to get on with things. So with it all, he could pull the switch on a mother in the electric chair who never had a chance; yet sleep the sleep of the innocent so accommodating was his mind-set.


On other matters, he had always felt that it was a sign of strength that you make up your mind fast and not be one of those who gets too involved in looking objectively at facts and then making a decision.

The key to great success, he had always believed, was reacting intuitively and quickly. . That showed great strength and decision making skill. It removed you from those wimps who can never make a decision. And he guessed rightly that many people would respect you for those qualities.

Being decisive was often more important than being right, he thought. Yes, he was at peace with what he was. . But there was more to it than that. Cheney and the old gang had taught him, if you take a position, you must win. And that meant bullying it through half the time. Using bluff, lies, intimidation…whatever it took. It was the end game that counted. Nobody ever remembered somebody who was right; they remembered the winner. And he never forgot that.

Being a winner. That’s what made you good and remembered…..And he relished the hard-ball approach in everything he did. He might not be as smart as Clinton or Gore, but he knew how to bust chops and how to use propaganda and pressure to get his way.

And that was the bottom line….Poor Gore. He was such a patsy. So easy to suck in. So bright and yet so vulnerable for his kind of gutter tactics. How he loved to put the smart boy down. And then kick his teeth in. No siree, no fair play with good old Georgie boy. Fair play doesn’t win ball games. No way, Jose.

He moved over to his snack dishes which were always full of stuff that had no natural analogy. They were greasy fibrous clumps of stuff that spewed out of great machines… But they filled him up. No questions asked. . He loved his snacks.

‘Never let them see you sweat,’ he giggled to himself,
as he munched on some pork rinds and watched his favorite local team beat the living daylights out of that team from up north. Thought we were hicks didn’t you, he thought. That’ll show you.
“Yeah, yeah, eat their lunch” he shouted to the dog who looked at him, anticipating the abuse which would come next, let out a groan and proceeded to crawl under the couch.

Yes, life was good in this land of milk and honey. Now, he would just take a little nap. Maybe now he would dream about the Garden of Eden and Eve. Or maybe he would dream about himself riding through the desert with clad in armor and ready to do the Lord’s work.

Whatever it was, he began feeling himself drift off and as he did, he thought about how lucky he was to have the Lord by his side. It was almost more that a little boy from West Texas could hope for…