Return of the Strange

RETURN OF THE STRANGE 

 

Author’s Preface 

This novella picks up where HEAVY WAIT: A Strange Tale ended in 2001, with Riley Strange serving a 10-year prison sentence in a north Florida prison for saving Willa Sue Jenkins' life and soul. How HEAVY WAIT came to leap out of me in the spring of 2001 is told in its Preface. I figured the tale had a sequel, but it didn't come. And it didn't come. And it didn't come. And when it finally did come this spring and summer, 2023, there was no leaping out of me. Each chapter creeped. I had to ponder and think a lot more, because America today is nothing like America in 2001. To deal with that, I needed help from what caused me to write HEAVY WAIT. Apologies for several chapters having no paragraph indentation. Google isn't entirely compatible with other word processors.

 

Stranger than fiction … 

 
     Riley Strange’s 10-year sentence for kidnapping Willa Sue Jenkins and saving her life doesn’t sit well with Willa Sue and her good friend Oprah Winfrey, nor with their and Riley’s tens of millions of admirers in America. Overseas, the world is aghast, horrified, incredulous that a real-life knight in shining armor, who saved a maiden from many dragons, was not given a medal of honor and elected President.  
     Florida Governor Jeb Bush is lampooned and vilified on radio and TV talk shows, news media editorials, and all over the internet. Donald Trump declares he will run for Governor of Florida and pardon Riley, who feels he’d rather serve all ten years, than see Donald Trump in the Tallahassee governor mansion. 
     Under Florida law, exemplary inmates get 10 days a month good behavior credit against their sentence. Riley is teaching inmates karate; how to be better jailhouse lawyers than the lawyers who had represented them; how to man up and take responsibility for their crimes and mistakes that landed them in prison; and the true meaning of life, which some might call the way of the samurai, but Riley simply calls it going whole hog, giving it your best shot, day after day, night after night, because that’s all that matters. 
     The prison chaplain doesn’t know whether to give thanks to God for Riley being in the prison, or to resent a lot more inmates take Riley’s karate classes and hang out with him in the prison yard and the dining hall, than attend chapel services. The chaplain is flummoxed that Riley tells inmates they can have a direct relationship with God. That God is everywhere, and when are they ever not in church? That everyone is on trial in God’s court and doing time in God’s prison. 
     Willa Sue visits Riley every week, and tells him what is going on in her life and America and the world, and he tells her what’s going on in the prison, and and she tells Oprah, and Oprah tells her television hordes, and the hordes write lots of letters to Governor Bush and his brother George W. in the White House, demanding Riley be given a full pardon.  
     When Riley was a trial lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama, he learned then that it was not uncommon for lawyers to make quick, easy money off released white-collar convicts, by getting them a pardon from the Alabama governor. Riley hears stories in the prison of much the same happening in Florida. He knew a man in Birmingham, who did time in Florida and later was pardoned by the Florida governor. But he doesn’t hear, nor when I practiced law in Birmingham, did he hear of convicts getting pardoned while they were in prison.  
    Yet never was a convict truly loved by more Americans than any state governor or U.S. president. Riley is a national hero, prosecuted for political gain, by Jeb Bush, egged on behind the scene by his president brother, G.W., who went A.W.O.L. from the Alabama Air National Guard during the Vietnam war, and was not prosecuted for it, nor given a dishonorable discharge. 
     All of which, Oprah shares with her adoring herds, who take to sending the Bush brothers, via UPS and US Mail, dead lizards, mice, goldfish, bream, crappies, bass, trout, suckers and carp wrapped tightly in wax paper or stuffed into freezer bags, with typed notes, saying, “Pardon Riley Strange, or Jesus will strike you dead with lightning.’  
     The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Florida Bureau of Investigation cannot figure out, or even theorize, how thousands of people, living in different parts of America, sent a dead creature to the Bush brothers, with a note containing the same exact wording as all of the other notes.  
     After Democracy Dies in Darkness Washington Post breaks that story, Oprah wonders out loud on her show how that happened? She wonders out loud if Hollywood actress Shirley y MacLaine, who went way out on a limb with psychics and wrote a book about it, might be able to find what the feds and the state of Florida law enforcement cannot figure out? 
     Oprah puts in a call to Shirley, who just happens to pick up the phone and say, “Hi, Oprah!”  
     Now, how did she know it was me calling? Oprah wonders. 
     Shirey says, “Come on, Oprah. You been talking about and hearing everything is all connected, and you've heard about the 100th monkey, after it learned something 99 other monkeys had learned, then all the monkeys knew it.” 
     Oprah says, “Yeah, well, I suppose so.” 
     Patched into that conversation by means science won’t discover before the end of Earthling time, Archangel Michael chuckles. 
     A few days later, a large live oak outside Jeff Bush’s office in the Tallahassee governor’s mansion is split down the middle by a bolt of lightning. 
     That night, Riley hears in his sleep, ‘Will you make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity?? 
     Riley wakes with a start, makes the prayer, goes back to sleep. 
     Three days later, two jumbo airliners smash the Twin Towers in New York City.
     When Willa Sue visits Riley later that day, their concern is America won’t start another stupid war that is not worth one drop of American soldiers’ blood. 
     When Willa Sue tells Oprah what Riley heard in his sleep three nights before 9/11, and what she and Riley hope America won’t do, Oprah says, “Oh, shit!” 
     When Oprah shares with her hordes what Willa Sue told her, the hordes say, “Oh, shit!!”  
     The Democracy Dies in Darkness Washington Post says, “Riley for President!”  
     The New York Times says, “Maybe there is a God?” 
     CNN says, “Is Riley Strange The Celestine Prophet?” 
     FOX News says, “Is Riley Strange a Russian sleeper agent?” 
     Time Magazine says, “Governor Bush, please pardon Riley!” 
     The Wall Street Journal says, “President Bush, please make Riley Director of the CIA!” 
     Ralph Nader says in a Today Show interview, “Make Riley King of America, because Congress and US presidents had their chance and they screwed everything up.” 
     Riley sees all of that on prison TV.  
     The prison warden fears for Riley’s safety and puts him in solitary confinement for his own protection. 
     An ancient live oak tree in front of the prison is split down the middle by a bolt of lightning.  
     The warden shits his pants. 
     The prison chaplain is pretty sure Riley somehow had something to do with 9/11. 
     President Bush calls his governor brother Jeb and says the White House is surrounded by thousands of people chanting, “Free Riley! Free Riley!, before something worse happens!!!” 
     “My ratings are taking a beating, Jeb. How about yours? 
     “Same,” Jeb says, “and last night somebody left a very large dead alligator on my mansion’s front lawn with a dead pig into its jaws, and in the dead pig’s mouth was a piece of paper on which was typed”- 
 

All want the security of the well-fed pig. 

Horror at the baseness unrecognized. 

A lifetime spent in shirt stuffing. 

And pen comparison. 

Is truth more palatable when honeyed? 

Is a stark soulscape less so with the eyes of Monet? 

May my affectations always be understood. 

 
     “For real?” G.W. asks. 
     “For real,” Jeb groans. 
     “Any chance you can pardon Riley, Jeb?” 
     Before Jeb can answer, G.W. says, “Fuck me!!! Something invisible grabbed my balls and is squeezing the living shit out of them and it hurts like fucking hell!” 
     “Tell me about it,” Jeb moans, and falls to the floor writhing in agony. 
     The ball squeezing stops. 
     There is a great silence. 
     “Tell you what, George. I’m gonna say the trial judge should not have taken Riley’s guilty plea, because the victim was his wife, she loved him, and she did not press charges. I will not say it was your and my own stupid giant egos that wanted to make political hay out of putting Riley in prison, and I’m going to issue him a full pardon today.” 
     Jeb shrieks, “Aieeee!!!, as his balls get squeezed even harder. 
     “On second thought, I’m going to tell it all, brother!” 
     Jeb’s balls stop being squeezed to mush, and he stops praying to die. 
     When Riley is released the next morning, Willa Sue gives him a big hug and an even bigger kiss at the prison gate, and she drives them to her apartment near the prison, and they fuck each other's brains out. 

 

Oprah 
 

     A week later, 100,000,000 Americans are watching Riley and Willa Sue on "Oprah". Satellites are bouncing the show all over the Americas and around the world. 
     About a year earlier, Oprah had introduced Riley and Willa Sue to America and the world, which set in motion Willa Sue's family in Apalachicola, Florida trying to get her locked up, again, for her and everyone in her family' own good, and caused the Bush brothers to try to make political hay by prosecuting Riley for kidnapping Willa Sue and locking her up in his home gymnasium until she lost about 150 pounds and looked just like Mary Lou, in exchange for Riley giving Willa Sue $14,000,000 he had inherited from Mary Lou, after she won it in the Alabama lottery and was killed in a freak automobile accident driving home with the loot. Riley and Willa Sue ended up giving the $14,000,000 the the Alabama Boys and Girls Sheriff Ranch 
     Willa Sue had a ghostwriter write about all of that in a book called HEAVY WAIT: A Strange Tale, which was published for free at archive.com, because Willa Sue and Riley were raking in million$ off Riley's book, "Kill All the Lawyers?", and Warner Brothers had paid them a bundle for the movie rights to their saga. 
     Willa Sue was on “Oprah” twice after Riley pled guilty and was given the minimum sentence of 10 years.  
     Riley looks leaner, tougher and more muscular than the last time Oprah saw him. 
     Oprah asks, “What's it like to be  back to the free world, Riley?”  
     Riley smiles, winks and says, “Well, Willa Sue and I can do things we were not allowed to do in the prisoner visitation hall.” 
     Oprah and Willa Sue laugh. 
     Riley says, “Beyond that, the food’s a lot better. There’s more sunlight, and I can see the stars at night. I spend a lot of time wondering what’s coming down. I imagine it’s gonna be interesting.” 
     Willa Sue rolls her eyes. 
     Oprah gives the viewing audience “the look”. 
     Silence. 
     More silence. 
     Oprah asks Riley,  "Three nights before 9/11, you really were asked in your sleep if you would make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of America?" 
     "Yep." 
     "The voice was male or female?" 
     "Male." 
     "Did you recognize the voice?" 
     "Yep." 
     "Well, can you tell us who, or what, asked you to make that prayer?" 
     "Archangel Michael." 

     "Why?" 
     "I'd heard the voice before in my sleep, but this time I saw a huge angel with big white wings on its back and a really big shiny sword in its right hand." 
     Silence. 
     "When was the first time you heard the voice, Riley?" 
     "In my sleep?" 
     "Yes." 
     "When I was being prosecuted, the voice said for me to let the judge decide the case, and not a jury." 
     "For real?" 
     "For real." 
     "Do you know why you were told to let the judge decide?" 
     "No, but Willa Sue told me in prison that about six weeks after giving me 10 years, the judge had a stroke and ended up in a nursing home." 
     "Yeah, Willa Sue and I talked about that on this show. You. think it was karma?" 
     Riley grins, says, "What do you think it was, Oprah?" 

 
     Station break. 

 
     Back on camera, Oprah asks Riley when he first heard the voice? 
     "When I was in the Hillcrest mental hospital in Birmingham, catatonic from grief over losing Mary Lou and trying to kill myself with tequila." 
     "You were asleep?" 
      "No, I was awake, sort of." 
      "What did the voice tell you then?" 
      "Grab your best hold, Riley, you're going on a really wild ride." 
      "Well, you sure have had a really wild ride, Riley." 
      "In a dream last night, Michael told me the same thing he told me when I was at Hillcrest." 
      "For real?" 
      "For real." 
      "Do you think Michael visited Jeb and George Bush?" 
      "What do you think, Oprah?" 
      "People are calling for you to run for president, Riley." 
      "Not interested." 
      "What if Michael tells you to run for president?" 
      "Can a convicted felon, who has been pardoned, even run for president?" 
      "Assuming the answer to that question is, yes, will you run for president if Michael tells you to run?" 
      "Then me and Michael's gonna have words, because no telling how President Bush will respond to 9/11, but I doubt it will be pretty, or any smarter than the Vietnam War, which killed my older brother, while President Bush was AWOL from the Alabama National Guard. I'd be crazy take on the mess President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney are going to make of America" 
      "What do you think about 9/11, Riley?" 
      "How much time do you have, Oprah?"  

     
      Station break. 

 
      Back on camera, Riley says,  "Here’s what I think about 9/11, Oprah." 
      “It goes back to the Persian Gulf War and President Bush’s father, who then was president. Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein asked the American Ambassador what was America’s position on Iraq taking part of Kuwait, which Iraq claimed was part of Iraq? The Ambassador said America had no position on thqt. Saddam took that as a green light, and he sent his army into Kuwait.” 
      “I watched the first President Bush and Ross Perot debate that on Larry King live. Perot said it didn't matter which Arabs had Kuwait, they would sell oil to America, and going to war against Iraq was not worth one American soldier's life. Not long after that, I saw the first President Bush say on American TV that he could not let the American way of life be threatened. He didn’t give a hoot about Kuwait, except for its oil. He formed a coalition to drive Saddam’s army out of Kuwait.  
      "Saddam had known that Bush when he was Director of the CIA. Saddam and his army were an American ally against Iran and America was giving Saddam military hardware. Saddam felt he had been set up and betrayed by that Bush." 
      “Saudi Arabia allowed armed forces from America, Great Britain and France to station in Saudi Arabia, and from there they went into Kuwait and drove out Saddam’s army. A Saudi prince named Osama bin Laden, had been an American ally against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was enraged that his home country, in which were Islams’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, had allowed infidel armies to stationed there and invade another Muslim country, Kuwait, and attack yet another Muslim country, Iraq. That’s what caused 9/11.”  
      “When I was in prison, I read online a letter from Osama bin Laden to America, in which he told Americans their president, the second George Bush, was easy to bait, and they should get rid of him. I agreed with bin Laden about that, but not about his forces attacking America. A lot of men in the prison with me are convinced bin Laden had inside help that allowed him to pull off 9/11. America closed its borders after 9/11, and nobody could leave. Yet, members of the Saudi royal family, who were friends of the Bush family, were allowed to leave.  
      "Men in the prison believe President Bush will invade Iraq to get its oil for America, and America will invade Afghanistan to get its natural resources and to lay a natural gas pipeline from the Persian Gulf into Eurasia. 
       Oprah asks, “What do you think, Riley?” 
      “The Vietnam war was invented. America wanted Vietnam’s rubber trees and other national resources. Look what that war did to America. Imagine what a war in Iraq and a war in Afghanistan will do to America. The Afghans beat the British. The Afghans beat the Soviets. America will not beat the Afghans. America will beat Iraq, but are President Bush and Vice-President Cheney so stupid that they think America will be able to keep Iraq? If America invades Iraq or Afghanistan, America declares war against Islam, a religion with over one billion members. Islam has a violent history. It will retaliate against America, because, like America, Islam views jihad as an external payback, instead of the internal war Jesus often mentioned in the Gospels, and the Sufism mystical branch of Islam also promotes. The inner war I kept telling men in the prison they need to wage in themselves." 
     “What will happen if America invades Iraq and Afghanistan is this. Rich white American businessmen and their corporations will make a great deal of money, just as rich white men and their corporations did when America went to war in Vietnam. War is big business for America. President John F. Kennedy came out against a war in Vietnam, and he was shot and killed. Martin Luther King came out against the war in Vietnam, and he was shot and killed. President Kennedy’s brother Bobby, who was running for president, opposed the war in Vietnam, and he was shot and killed. Malcom X came out against the war in Vietnam, and he was shot and killed.”  
     “In the law is the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, which is Latin for, “The thing speaks for itself.” Res ipsa is evidentiary proof, recognized by judges in court cases, and also in God’s Court, where we all are on trial, Oprah. Every last one of us. If we don't oppose America invading Iraq and Afghanistan, we condone it, and for that we answer to God.” 

 

War Casualties 
 

     Riley and Willa Sue walk out of the Chicago building where Oprah’s show happens, and they hail a taxi. As Willa Sue climbs into the back seat, Riley feels a hand from behind grab his right shoulder and yank him backward. Riley turns with the yank and his right arm and hand rise up and rotate over the hand and arm of a white man with a crew cut headed downward onto his knees with a surprised look on his face, as Riley’s left hand grabs the man’s left ear and gives it a not entirely gentle downward tug.   

     “Ow, that hurts like hell!” Crew Cut yells.  

     “If I wanted to hurt you like hell, I would have punched your nose with my fist,” Riley says.  

     Silence.  

    “What’s up with you, Mister?”  

     Crew Cut says nothing.  

     “I asked you a question, Sir.”  

     Crew Cut still says nothing.  

     Riley twists Crew Cut’s ear a bit harder.  

     “Fuck, ow!!!”  

     “I asked you a question, Sir.”  

     “My father was killed in Vietnam, defending America from communists.”  

     Riley releases the man’s ear and raises him up to his feet and says, “I’m really sorry for your loss. My older brother was killed in Vietnam. My parents were devastated and never got over it. I was devastated and I’m not sure I ever got over that war. A lot of people never got over that war.”  

     “That’s true,,” Crew Cut says.  

     “What’s your name?” Riley asks.  

     “Jeff, Jeff Skinner.”  

     “I guess you know who I am?”  

     “Lots of people know who you are, Riley Strange.”   

     “Yeah, I suppose we can thank Oprah and Governor Jeb Bush and his president brother for that. Did you watch Willa Sue and me on Oprah a little while ago?”  

     “Yes.”  

     “So, you heard me tell Oprah that President Bush went AWOL from the Alabama National Guard during the Vietnam war, and he got away with it?  

     “Yes.”  

     “Do you know how President Bush got into the Alabama National Guard in the first place, so that he would not have to go to Vietnam?  

     “No.”  

     “His important daddy knew people in high places, who got him into the Alabama National Guard.”  

     Silence.  

     “So, my question to you, Jeff, is why did you come at me like that, instead of going to Washington D.C. and having it out with President Bush, whose daddy, when he was president, did things that caused 9/11?”  

      Silence.  

      A crowd has gathered around Riley and Jeff.  

      A Chicago city policeman walks up and watches.  

      A pretty woman in a business suite writes on a notepad.  

      A fiftyish man in a beige business suit says, “Mr. Strange, we don’t need traitors like you in America!”  

      “So, do you agree President Bush should move to Vietnam.”  

      A thirty-ish woman in a pants suit shouts, "Mr. Strange, like the man said, we don't need traitors like you in America!”  

      “How do you figure I”m a traitor, Ma'am?  

      “Because of what you say about the Vietnam war.”  

      “Perhaps you should look up the definition of traitor, M'am.”  

      The pretty woman in a business suit taking notes catches Riley's eye, nods, smiles.  

       A man in a black business suit says, “You should have stayed in prison, Mr. Strange.”  

      All of the critics are white. Riley is white. The pretty woman taking notes is white. The policeman is black.  

      Riley says, “Hey, folks, America is a free country, freedom of speech is the bedrock of our democracy, and you are free to state your opinions about me. But, you are not free to lay hands on me like Jeff did. Under the law, every person in America has a right to defend himself, or herself, from physical assault. That’s what I did with Jeff. Then, I tried to have a conversation with him, which some of you rudely interrupted, as if your mommas didn’t teach you any manners. Now I’m going to finish having my conversation with this Vietnam War vet, while a Chicago police officer stands by, if that’s okay with him.”  

     The police officer nods to Riley.  

     Riley turns around and looks at Mary Lou, who is climbing out of the taxi. She nods to Riley and walks to and stands beside him, figuring she might know what is coming next.  

     The taxi driver is reporting all of this to his dispatcher, who reports it to her supervisor, who calls the Chicago Tribune, which dispatches a news crew.  

     The pretty woman taking notes is a feminist, and a blogger. Her blog is called, Karma’s A Bitch. Its masthead is, "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.'  

     Riley looks at Jeff, says, “Not long after I was put in prison, a new inmate came in who weighed about 350 pounds and his face looked just like my dead brother Jack’s face. It freaked me out, about like when I first met Willa Sue, who weighed about 300 pounds and her face looked just like the face of the woman I had loved more than myself, Mary Lou Snow, who had gone and got herself killed in an automobile wreck during a road trip I had tried my best to talk her out of taking. I went batshit insane after Mary Lou left, and but for God and Willa Sue, I probably would be dead by now and you would never have heard of me.”  

     Riley pauses, closes his eyes, opens them, says, “That man who came into the prison was named Jeff Wilkins. He lost his father in Vietnam. His mother killed herself. His life went to hell and put him in the same prison I was put in for saving Willa Sue from a hell worse than you or I could ever begin to imagine. So, I figured God had brought Jeff Wilkins to me, for me to try to help him with the hell inside of and all around him. I set out to do that, but Jeff didn’t want help. He wanted to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. He’s still in that prison, wanting to die, because of what Vietnam did to his father and to his mother and to him.”  

     Jeff Stinson says, “Shit happens in war.”  

     Riley nods, says, “That’s true, but look back from now to that war and how it turned out. America lost. Did Vietnam become a communist threat to America? No. Vietnam got on with its own life, and it has not threatened any country since that war. Can the same be said of America?”  

     Jeff Stinson says nothing.  

     Riley sighs, says, “Your and my Vietnam war draft dodger president is going to send American boys to die overseas. He’s not going to war with them. His family isn’t going to war and be shot at and maybe wounded, maimed, killed, or end up all crazy inside.   

    Dick Cheney was the CEO of Haliburton Industries before he became President Bush's vice-president. Haliburton, among other things, is heavy into oil and construction. Haliburton will make a lot of money off a new war, or wars. Other big American companies will make a lot of money off a new war, or wars.   

     That Florida prison I was in had Vietnam war veteran inmates. Some of the white veterans feel like you do about Vietnam. Some of them feel like I feel about Vietnam. All the black veteran inmates resent that war. They know Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X were killed because they opposed the Vietnam war as a rich white man’s war for corporate profits. They felt when they were in Vietnam like they were picking white men’s cotton, like their ancestors had done.  

     Riley extends his right hand to Jeff Stinson for a handshake. Jeff shakes Riley’s hand.   

     “I feel for you, Jeff, and I hope things go well for you. Willa Sue and I now have a plane to catch back to Jacksonville, Florida, to try and figure out what we are going to do next.”  

 
 

Bullseyes and Red Dots

 

     During Riley and Willa Sue’s escape to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, the taxi driver receives a patch-through call on his radio from Oprah. The driver turns up the volume, wishing he has a tape recorder. Not to worry, the taxi company has its recorder on. 

 “Hey, Willa Sue and Riley, can you hear me?” 

 “Loud and clear, Sister,” Willa Sue says. 

 “I just heard what happened on the sidewalk, I’m so sorry!” 

 “Not to worry, Riley seemed in hog heaven. Imagine he wishes it was filmed, so it won’t get told different.’ 

 “I wish I’d been there, darn.” 

 “I wish you’d been there, too.” 

 “Maybe we should schedule you two for another show.” 

 Riley says, “I dunno. I painted lots of bullseyes and red dots on Mary Lou’s and my front and hindquarters today. Lots of rifles with sniper scopes out there. And hand grenades, C-4 explosives, bows and arrows, blow guns - you get my drift, old friend.  

 “Are you serious, Riley?” 

 “Dead serious, Oprah.” 

 “Oh.” 

 “You might want to watch your back. Lots of Americans are really wound tight, I met a few today on the sidewalk. 9/11 wound them a lot tighter.” 

 The taxi driver says, “You got that right, Mr. Strange.” 

 Riley’s been thinking about how he and Willa Sue might reinvent themselves. 

 Willa Sue’s been thinking the same. 

 Oprah’s been thinking the same. 

 Oprah says, “You two have any notion of what you’re going to do now? I should have asked you that during the show today.” 

 Riley replies, “I dunno, Oprah,” if we told you that, then we might have to kill you.” 

 “Huh?” 

 Willa Sue says, “He’s joking, Oprah. He picked that up before I met him, which was a good thing, because in prison there are things you don’t ask other inmates about themselves, unless you are ready to dearly depart.” 

 Riley says, “I’m thinking maybe I’ll start a blog. Maybe I’ll call it Stranger Than Fiction. Or maybe, Ask Riley.” 

 Willa Sue says, "Or Ask Riley and Willa Sue.” 

 Riley says, “Yeah, I like that better. Maybe call it Stranger than fiction: ask Willa Sue and Riley’.” 

 Willa Sue says, “Ladies first, I like that better.” 

 Oprah agrees, “Me too.” 

 Riley muses, “There was a children’s story about an expedition in a jungle, which my children liked me to read to them. There was a woman on the expedition, who kept insisting that she must go first at everything. She was a real pain in the ass. Then, they came up on a tiger and the rest of the expedition happily let her go first.” 

 Oprah says, “I didn’t know you have children.” 

 “Before Mary Lou. A long time ago, in a universe far, far away.” 

 “Oh” 

 “Yeah, oh.” 

 “You ever see or hear from them?” 

 “No. “ 

 “Do you miss them?” 

 “Not sure, it’s been so long.” 

 “Do you know where they are?” 

 “No.” 

 “Do you know where their mother is?” 

 “No. They moved to Atlanta after the divorce. Communication stopped.” 

 “You didn’t pay child support or alimony?” 

 “No, She made good money.” 

 Silence. 

 “She was an attorney.” 

 “For real?” 

 “Yeah." 

 "What was her name? 

 “I prefer not to say because I don’t want to get her and her children involved in Willa Sue’s and my life, for lots of reasons, including the bullseyes and red dots.” 

 Riley thinks, That really was a long time ago, an entirely different life ended and a new life began. It was painful, but if it had not ended, then look at all that I would not have experienced. Jessie’s and my divorce agreement was so unusual, and our kids were so young, that the case was sealed by the court and it will be very difficult for anyone to trace her down. Her children are grown now, and I can’t imagine how they will be traced down, so hopefully for them they will remain hidden. It's between Willa Sue and me that Jessie simply did not like men and there was nothing she could do about it. 
 
 

returnofthestrange.com 

 The next day’s Chicago Tribune front page features some of Riley’s interview with Oprah, what bystanders reported of the sidewalk incident, and transcript excerpts from the taxi company’s recording. The Tribune says the cat is out of the box, Riley has children by a previous heretofore unknown marriage - if nobody at the Tribune has read the ghostwriter’s Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale, which very briefly mentions the children by a prior marriage.  

 Oprah emails Riley a copy of the Tribune article, under a “Cheers” salutation. Riley shows the article to Willa Sue, shakes his head, says, “Me and my big mouth.”  

 Willa Sue growls, “Stupid newspaper it left out the hilarious ladies first story.” 

 Riley sighs, says, “I kinda doubt that’s gonna make Jessie feel better. Well, here’s hoping she never sees it. I don’t know if my children even know who I am. Or if they kept my last name. Maybe Jessie had their last names changed. I hope so. Less chance they will get dragged into my big mouth’s adventures.” 

 “Didn’t Mary Lou and me have something to do with those adventures, Riley? I can’t speak for her, but I’m damn glad I had those adventures, even you doing time, ‘cause if you hadn’t gone fishing at Port St. Joe and stumbled across a fruit and vegetable stand on US 98, we would never have met and I would be a lot more crazy and fatter than I was when we met, and God only knows what you would have gotten into and done instead, WITHOUT ME, YOU STUPID MAN!!!” 

 “Oprha put you up to looking at things that way?” 

 “Nope. What I didn’t figure out on my own, you made sure I understood LOUD AND CLEAR, you dumb shit.” 

 “Thanks, I feel so much better now.” 

 “The stupid newspaper let the whole wide world know we are thinking about doing a blog. So, Mr. Smarty Pants, why don’t you get to work on that and let all the what ifs and coulda beens do whatever they want to do or don’t want to do?” 

 “I’ll get right on it, Miss Smarty Pants, just as soon as I get my pants on.” 

 “Don’t do that yet, my smarty pants have some business to do right now with your smarty pants.” 

 “Oh yeah”. 

 “Seeing's believing.” 

 Something grabs something inside Riley’s smarty pants and seeing becomes believing. 

 By noon, Riley has set up a deal with Go Daddy to host “Stranger than Fiction: ask Willa Sue and Riley." Riley picked Go Daddy, because it has a reputation for protecting free speech and its clients as if the continuation of human civilization depends on it. 

 By dinner time strangerthanfiction.com is up and running. The blog allows anyone to comment, even anonymous. However, on advice of the Go Daddy tech Riley dealt with, all comments go into moderation for him or Willa Sue to approve for public viewing.  

 The tech said, “There are a lot of crackpots and crazies on the web, and since you are kinda controversial, Mr. Strange, you understand my drift?” 

 “Loud and clear, I met a few of them in Chicago the other day.” 

 “I know, I read all about it online. I doubt the Chicago Tribune told the whole story, right?” 

 “Right. But they did pave the way for the new blog. Wonder how much I’d have had to pay the Tribune to do that, if I hadn’t gotten held up a iittle while on the sidewalk after Willa Sue and I were on Oprah?” 

 “I saw a replay of that last night. You are a brave man, Mr. Strange. And, I’m glad you are. Somebody, who has clout, needs to be saying what you are saying. Might not change the outcome, but it needs to be said.” 

 “That’s all that anyone can do, call them as he sees them. Or as she sees them. There was a fellow in Germany named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A respected Christian theologian, or philosopher. He wrote a really intense book, The Cost of Discipleship, which I read in prison. In the book, Bonhoeffer calls Christianity’s view of grace, “cheap grace.” Elsewhere, he wrote,“Silence in the face of Evil itself is Evil, God will not hold us guiltless.” Bonhoeffer and other people tried to kill Hitler and were caught and he was put in a concentration camp and executed.” 

 “That’s intense.” 

 “Prison was intense. Getting there after I met Will Sue was intense. Mary Lou dying was intense. My divorce and losing my children was intense.  9/11 was intense. What led up to it was intense. What is coming down from it will be intense. Well, enough ranting. I really appreciate you helping me set up the new blog.” 

 “Am happy to do it, and I wish you and Willa Sue well.” 

 “Thanks, and we wish you well.”
 
  

American Women's wildest wet dream come true-  

Riley for President!t! 

 

 Over dinner, Willa Sue and Riley are batting around ideas for their first blog post, when Willa Sue receives an email from Oprah, containing a link to karma'sabitch.com's post about Riley on the sidewalk in Chicago. 

American Women's wildest wet dream come true- Riley for President! 

I dunno, ladies, but yesterday I just might have witnessed a real sho nuff fucking miracle on the sidewalks of Chicago. I saw a man actually behave like we women dream men ought to behave. I wish I'd had a cam recorder with me, but all I had was my trusty notebook and ball point pen, when I not 20 feet away watched recently pardoned Florida prison inmate Riley Strange use some kind of judo, jujitsu or aikido to ward off an attack from behind and take down to his knees with a cute ear pull an enraged Vietnam war combat veteran, who had lost good friends in Vietnam and took high offense over Riley's just earlier remarks on Oprah about rich white testosterone-driven, tiny penis mens' invented war in Vietnam, and in the Persian Gulf and Kuwait, which caused 9/11.  

I watched Riley called traitor by several people and told he should be back in prison and should leave America. I watched Riley adroitly pivot his accusers back on themselves, reminding them that America's democracy exists because of freedom of speech, which they seemed to have forgotten slap dab about. I watched Riley befriend the Vietnam combat vet, by sharing the death of Riley's older brother in Vietnam and its devastation on Riley's parents. And how men in the prison with Riley felt about the Vietnam war. And a man who came into the prison, whose father had been killed in Vietnam and his mother had killed herself, and his life had become a living hell, and all he wanted to do was die. 

I swan, if Riley's beautiful wife Willa Sue was not standing there beside him, I just might have walked up to him and given him a big wet kiss and asked him, "My place or yours?" I mean, I was so hot and smitten that I felt maybe I might just melt down and explode right there on the sidewalk.  

For fuck's sake, what was that beautiful man doing in prison? Why wasn't he doing something important, instead? Like, hmmm, advising President Bush about his war policy? Like, hmmm, advising President Bush about school shootings? Like, hmmm, advising President Bush about resigning from office, because he was AWOL from the Alabama National Air Guard during the Vietnam war? That's right, President Bush betrayed his country, and he got rewarded by being elected president. 

Just how fucked up is that, Ladies? 

Just how small a dick do you think President Bush has? 

Like we give a shit. We know he's a weenie through and through, and we'd never have heard of him if his daddy had not been the CIA director and President Reagan's vice-president, and then himself president, so he could plant the seeds for 9/11, three nights before which, Riley told Oprah, Archangel Michael asked Riley if he would make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity? 

Ya'll gals all know I'm a New Age chick, sometimes accused of being a high priestess, and other times, a witch and/or a bitch. But, I swan, there's something about Riley that just made my blood start to a boiling like Lady Kundalini  was running from my toes through my feet and legs, up through my private parts, into my guts, tummy, lungs and heart, and up through my throat into my mouth and into my head and through it. I felt like I was on fucking fire. 

So, there you have it, Goddess Eves. Prince Charming exists. I met him on a Chicago sidewalk. I nodded to him and smiled, and he caught my eyes, and about then I started feeling REALLY DIFFERENT. So, here's what I think. I think Riley ought to toss his hat into the ring and run for president. I really do think that. I'm getting all wet you know where, thinking that. My fucking God, I'm having an orgasm!!! 

 Willa Sue says, “Shit, Riley, I guess I can’t take you anywhere in public no more.” 

 “Shit, Willa Sue, you may be right. Maybe you’ll have to keep me locked up for a year, till I cool off, or New Age chicks do.” 

 “We both know that ain’t happening, Riley. What do you think about being president?” 

 "That witch didn’t say nothing about me being president, only that I should run for president.” 

 “I think her orgasm said LOUD AND CLEAR what she meant, Riley.” 

 “Fuck me.” 

 “I like that idea, too. Take off your pants, Mr.” 
 

 

The Great Parallel Universe Escape Plan 

 

     In a parallel universe,  America’s 43rd president, who got into the Alabama Air National Guard via his father’s influence, to save him from being inducted in into the US Army and being sent to Vietnam, and who went AWOL from the Alabama Air National Guard and got away from it, is having the time of his life with his wife, Laura, and the last thing he wants is to spend a lot of time being Commander-in-Chief of America’s armed forces during wars prosecuted on his watch. So, he gladly surrenders his Commander-in-Chief duty when Vice-President says behind closed doors, “Here’s the deal, Georgie Boy. Either you let me run the US Military, or what happened to John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby, and to Martin Lluther King and Malcom X, will happen to you." 

     In that parallel universe, Dick Cheney could care less about Riley Strange, whereas Georgie Boy, having had his balls squeezed so hard that he could not breathe, wishes with all his heart that he lives in a parallel universe where there is no Riley Strange. Brother Jeb feels exactly the same, but Brother Jeb is not President of the United States. Brother Jeb isn't getting lampooned in the national news media and all over the internet. And, Brother Jeb ain’t thinking about telling what really caused him and George to want Riley out of prison ASAP. If they tell that, everyone will view them as crazy and needing to be locked up for their and everyone else’s own good, and given meds that in all of Eternity will have zero effect on Archangel Michael. 

     So, when Vice-President Cheney tells Georgie Boy to hand over the US Military, and Georgie Boy says ok and falls to the floor, knowing he would rather die than tell anyone why he is clutching his balls and shrieking, Cheney smiles, because he thinks he caused it. Not entirely a monster, Archangel Michael stops squeezing Georgie Boy’s balls. 

 Later that day, feigning concern that Riley will run for president, Georgie Boy asks his Attorney General to look into whether or not Riley can run for president. The next day, the Attorney General emails Georgie Boy: 
 

Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3: 

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. 

In 1920, Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for the Oval Office from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was known as "prisoner 9653," according to Smithsonian Magazine. Debs was a so-called "radical" at the time, decrying capitalism and the World War I draft. The latter got him locked up, but Debs earned plenty of supporters during his imprisonment. He had also run for president on the Social Party ticket five prior times, often campaigning what historians attributed as more a symbolic race. 

On election night in 1920, Debs didn't make a speech, and instead, he wrote a statement, the Washington post reported: 

"I thank the capitalist masters for putting me here," he wrote, according to The Post. "They know where I belong under their criminal and corrupting system. It is the only compliment they could pay me." 

Debs ended up earning about 3.5% of the national vote for president, Smithsonian Magazine reported. 

Over 70 years later, another convicted candidate ran for the president from jail: political fringe and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. 

LaRouche was no stranger to campaigning — he ran in every election from 1976 to 2000 — but his 1992 campaign from federal prison garnered particular attention LaRouche was behind bars serving a 15-year sentence for committing mail fraud and campaign fraud conspiracy, the latter involving $30 million in loans from supporters that prosecutors said LaRouche had never attempted to repay. But that didn't stop him from seeking out the Democratic Party nomination. 

Beyond his economic viewpoints, LaRouche's other beliefs often played into conspiracy theories and apocalyptic visions about the world. He had a variety of confounding views of the AIDS crisis —including that it was first spread by the International Monetary Fund — and believed the Holocaust was “mythical”. 
 

     Georgie Boy hopes Riley runs and wins, and saves him, America and humanity from Dick Cheney. 

     In the other parallel universe, Riley tells Willa Sue, “Nothing in me wants to be president. I don’t want the job. If elected, I demand a recount. If I win the recount, I resign.” 

     Willa Sue asks, “From God’s mouth to your ear?” 

    Riley shrugs, smiles, says. “I dunno, but it sure sounds good, don’t it?” 

     Willa Sue laughs, says, "Yeah, it shore do, and to tell the truth, I’ve been ruminating, and I think living in the White House and having to pretend to be someone I sure as hell ain’t don’t seem like a lot of fun. But you running for president and doing what you do and not saying what you really are up to might be a whole heap of fun!” 

     “From God’s mouth to your ear, Willa Sue?” 

 

 

Stand down, and stand by 

 Riley’s cell phone rings the next morning. He doesn’t recognize the incoming number, 202- 647-8357, but he knows 202 is Washington D.C.’s area code. He answers.  

 A pleasant female voice says, “Is this Riley Strange?” 

 “Depends on who’s calling.” 

 “This is Joline Wells, President Bush’s Assistant Chief-of-Staff.” 

 “For real?” 

 “For real. Is this Mr. Riley Strange?” 

 “Guilty.” 

 “Ha, you have an interesting sense of humor, Mr. Strange.” 

 “Please call me Riley, Joline. You any kin to the famous outlaw Josie Wales?” 

 “I wish, but no.” 

 “Well, that’s too bad.” 

 “Don’t you know it!” 

 “Okay, why the call, Joline?” 

 “Can you come to Washington D.C. next week? President Bush wants to meet you.” 

 “For real?” 

 “For real.” 

 “Can I bring my wife?” 

 “Yes, but I don’t know if she will get to meet President Bush.” 

 “Oh, Willa Sue might have other ideas, so why don’t you ask the President and get back to me.” 

 “Okay, I’ll be back in touch.” 

 “Okay.” 

 Thirty minutes later, Joline calls back, says, “President Bush wants to meet Willa Sue, too, but then he wants to speak with you privately.” 

 “Meaning, you don’t know what he wants to talk with me about?” 

 “Correct.” 

 “Let me ask, Willa Sue,” who is sitting beside him.  

 Willa Sue mouths, “Duh?” 

 “Riley tells Joline, “It will be both of us. What day and time do you want us there?’ 

 “Unless President Bush says that's not okay, how about next Tuesday. Say 10 a.m.? 

 “Okay. See you then, God willing and the Creek don’t rise.” 

 “The creek?” 

 “In olden times, that meant, if the Creek Indians don’t rise up on the warpath.” 

 “You’re too funny, Riley” 

 “Been called other things, Joline. See you next Tuesday.’ 

 “Am looking forward to it.” 

 Jolie called back to say President Bush is okay with it. Willa Sue being there the whole time. Sue books airline tickets, while Riley makes a hotel reservation. 

 Next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Riley and Willa Sue are examined by two male Secret Service agents with short hair cuts and wearing back suits and ties and white shirts.  

 Joline is waiting behind the Secret Service agents. A trophy red-headed, green-eyed Assistant Press Secretary.  

 After introductions, she leads them to the Oval Office, which inmates in the penitentiary had called the “Offal Orifice.” 

 President Bush gets up from his desk and walks around it to Riley and Willa Sue and takes her hand, as he was raised to do in the southern gentleman way, and says, “I’m glad to meet you, after hearing so much about you, I wish we had started out differently. I really do wish that.” 

 “So do I,” Willa Sue says, not smiling. 

 President Bush says, “Same to you, Riley. Thanks for coming.” He and Riley politely shake hands. 

 “Can Joline get you something to drink or eat?” 

 “Water with fresh lemon?” Willa Sue says. 

 “I’m on it,” Joline says. 

 President Bush says, “I asked you to meet with me, Riley, because I want your advice on something.” 

 “Not sure I can advise a president, but I’ll try, and Willa Sue wants to be in on it, because I will tell her about it anyway, and she might have thoughts that I might not have.” 

 Wondering whatever happened to the attorney-client privilege, President Bush says, “Okay.” 

 Maybe reading President Bush’s mind, “Riley says, Mary Lou and I have no secrets, she’s tight-lipped, and besides, in God’s courtroom, there is no attorney-client privilege.” 

 President Bush stares at Riley, nods yes. 

 Joline comes back with two glasses, a glass decanter of water, and a sliced lemon. President Bush thanks her and nods for her to leave. Joline looks at Willa Sue, smiles, and leaves, as Willa Sue smiles back. 

 President Bush says, "I hope what I am about to tell you doesn’t end up on your blog or Oprah, or anywhere else.” 

 “That sort of depends on what it is, President Bush,” Riley demurs. 

 “I think you will understand after I tell you, that it is not for the public to know.” 

 “Mr. President, I hope after you tell me, that I will agree with you, but I don’t know yet what it is, and I really take the 'under God' part of the Pledge of Allegiance seriously. My allegiance is first to God, then to flag and country. So, I hope they will all agree.” 

 “Okay, I guess I’ll have to live with that and trust you, Riley.” 

 Riley nods, yes. 

President Bush seems to be gathering his thoughts. 

President Bush seems to be gathering more thoughts. 

 He looks skyward. 

 He looks at Riley. 

 He looks skyward again. 

 He looks at Willa Sue, and then at Riley. 

 He says, “Vice-President Cheney threatened to have me killed like President Kennedy, his brother Bobby, Dr. King and Malcom X, if I did not give him full control of the U.S. Military, and I agreed to it, because I knew he meant it. Something then squeezed my balls like what happened when you were in prison. Then, the squeezing stopped." 

 Silence. 

 More silence. 

 President Bush’s hands are trembling. 

 Riley looks at Willa Sue, mouths, “Fuck me.” 

 Riley looks at President Busy, says, “What do you suppose Jesus would tell you to do?" 

 President Bushs says, “I don’t know.” 

 Riley says, “Then I think you need to have a prayer meeting with Jesus and find out what he wants you to do, because I think this is between you and God, under which America claims in it’s Pledge of Allegiance to be.” 

 President Bush looks like a deer caught in the headlights at night. 

 Riley says, “I don’t envy you, Sir.” 

 President Bush says, “Will you tell me what you would do if you were president, instead of me, and had received that threat?” 

 “I would wish like hell that I had a tape recorder running.” 

 “And if you didn’t?” 

 President Eisenhower, who had been the Allied Command’s Commander-in-Chief during the war started by Nazi Germany, was leaving his second term in the White House, when he warned Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. 

 Riley says, “I would kill Vice President Cheney with my bare hands, and when asked why I did it, I would tell exactly what happened, and that I figured if I left him alive, he would have me killed, and he would get a lot of. American soldiers killed, because it would make him and Haliburton and other rich white members of the American military-industrial complex a whole lot of money. Yet, you and I both know your father and his ambassador sowed the seeds for 9/11, and Ross Perot tried to persuade your father to leave Saddam Hussein and Kuwait alone, and your father didn't listen to Perot, and now the sins of your father are on you.” 

 President Bush looks like he is in HELL. 

 He is. 

 The question in Riley and Willa Sue’s minds is, will President Bush grow a pair and blow the whistle on Vice President Cheney? And if he blows the whistle, will President Bush still invade Afghanistan and kill a lot of young American soldiers and a lot of Afghans, or will he try to find another way to deal with Osama bin Laden?  

 The question in Archangel Michael’s mind is, should he take care of  Cheney and Bush, or should he leave it alone? Americans put Bush and Cheney in the White House, and why should Americans be saved from what they did? And why should Bush be spared decisions on which his soul’s fate hinges? 

 In their dreams that night, Archangel Michael tells Riley and Willa Sue to stand down, and stand by. 

 
 

 

Critical Vietnam War history vs. theory 
 

         The day after their visit to the Oval Office, Riley received an encrypted email, which he forwarded to Oprah, and to Joline Wales, for her to share with President Bush. Here’s the text. 

  

Dear Riley and Willa Sue, 

 

Riley’s Vietnam War exposé on Oprah struck a deep nerve in me. I served two 1-year tours in Vietnam with the U.S. Marines. My unit was in-country most of the time. We clashed many times with "Charlie", and some of us didn't come home. Those men who died, and who lived, were the best friends I ever had. We watched each other's backs. We wept when one of us was wounded, and we wept a whole lot more when one of us was killed. And, we got drunk, and stoned. 

I came back to America very different from the boy who was sent over there to "save the world from communism." I came back with PTSD. I came back with herpes. I came back with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). I had a great deal of difficulty fitting into the America in which I had grown up. I'm still having a great deal of difficulty fitting in, although my shelter dog "Gunny" helps me stay somewhat level, after I finally figured out relationships with women were doomed from the start and I quit dating. 

A childhood friend got married before entering his senior year in college. He entered Cumberland School of Law School at Samford University in Birmingham. By then, two of his college fraternity brothers in the US Army had been killed in action in Vietnam. 

During my friend’s freshman year at Cumberland, the US Government started the Vietnam war draft lottery from which married men were exempt. By the time married men lost their war draft exemption, my friend's wife was pregnant and married men were not being drafted. Then, their 2-months-old baby tragically died of crib death (SIDS), and he was exposed to the war draft.  

He wrestled with applying for a student deferment, so he could finish law school and then be inducted and hopefully get into the Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) and be a military lawyer; or join the Marines, hoping to get into JAG; or do nothing, hoping his name was not drawn in the war draft lottery. 

Finally, he decided to apply for a student deferment, hoping to end up in JAG. He went to the Draft Board in Birmingham and applied for the student deferment. Two weeks later, his wife learned she was pregnant.  

My friend went back to the Draft Board and explained that to the same lady clerk who had helped him apply for the student deferment. She said she was so sorry, but the student deferment was irrevocable. She said she would show him what he had signed. She walked to a green filing cabinet and opened it and pulled out a tan file and opened it as she walked back to the counter where he waited. 

When she reached him, she said there was some mistake. He asked, what mistake? She said he had signed the wrong form, and he would have to sign the correct form to get a student deferment. He said, no thank you, he would go with his father deferment, and he walked out of the Draft Board feeling the weight of the world had been lifted off him by God. 

Some years later, my friend shared that story with the daughter of a man he knew somewhat in Birmingham, who said her husband's mother had worked at that Draft Board during the Vietnam War, and she'd heard several similar stories of young men not being sent to Vietnam. My friend wondered if those were young white men? He was white, the clerk at the Draft Board was white, and her son and daughter-in-law were white. 

I think, Mr. Strange, that you nailed it about Vietnam being a rich white men's war for $$$ profit, and that the two Kennedys and Martin Luther King and Malcom X were killed because they were against war in Vietnam.  

By the way, I'm white, and when I was in country, it seemed to me that my white comrades in arms were more gung-ho about saving America from communism, than were my black comrades. My white comrades had no interest in military careers, whereas my black comrades had much less opportunity outside the military. Maybe they did feel kinda like they were picking rich white men's cotton? I might have felt that way, if I were them. 

There is is no doubt in my mind that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by the US Congress, which paved the way for America sending troops into South Vietnam, was a false flag operation cooked up by American civilian and military war hawks, to persuade Congress to declare war on Charlie and North Vietnam, because what America really wanted was Vietnam's rubber trees. 

But don't accept just my words and assessments.  

Consider Muhammed Ali was put in an American prison because he refused to be inducted and sent to Vietnam. His view was no Viet Cong ever called him no nigger.  

Here's something else Ali reportedly said: 
 

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? 

No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars which should accrue to me as the champion.  

But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality… 

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail. We’ve been in jail for four hundred years. 

Imagine a U.S. Military with no black troops. Imagine only young white soldiers dying in Vietnam. Imagine the furor from American whites. 

 

Consider also what a Birmingham friend emailed me last year: 
 

In 1988, my father invited me to attend a Downtown Birmingham Rotary Club luncheon with him. This was a top shelf club, its members prominent or children of prominent members. The guest speaker was the CEO (or President or Executive Director) of National Geographic. His topic was "Getting to Know Our Neighbors." He said the Geographic had come to think many conflicts between nations were caused, at least in part, by people not knowing much about people in other countries. He said a study had revealed that 95 percent of American high school and college students could not locate Vietnam on a map. 

After the speaker finished his talk, he invited questions, The first question was, "Did the Geographic have a position on the Vietnam war?" The speaker said the Geographic had correspondents in Saigon, where there was a huge street demonstration of people carrying posters begging America to save them. The posters were in English. That demonstration was seen all over American television. It swung American sentiment from against to for American military intervention in South Vietnam. 

The speaker said the Geographic's correspondents spoke Vietnamese and they interviewed many of the demonstrators, who said they had been paid money by the Saigon government to demonstrate and carry the posters. The demonstrators did not speak English and did not know what was on the posters or why they were demonstrating. The speaker said the Geographic did some digging and learned the money for the demonstration had been paid by American corporations and the U.S. Government.   

You could have heard a pin drop in the Rotary Club. Many of the older members, including my father, were World War II combat veterans. My father looked like he was going to throw up. He had never liked the Vietnam war. He said nothing about what the speaker had said, nor during the drive back to where he had picked me up to go to the luncheon with him. He never spoke of it later. 

Consider something else my friend emailed me last year: 

In the spring of 2000, I joined a "Seekers" group, who met weekly in the Unitarian Church in Key West. The church minister, who just happened to be from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, attended each meeting. There were about ten of us. We talked about on and of-off beat topics.  

  

One day, a fellow maybe 10 years my senior said he had worked for the CIA and was stationed with a CIA team in South Vietnam when the French were trying to retake Vietnam and regain access to its rubber trees and other natural resources. Although publicly the American government was backing France, his team's mission was to help Ho Chi Minh beat the French, so America could have access to Vietnam's rubber trees and other natural resources. He said Ho wanted to do business with America, but in the end America wanted too much. Not caring at all for Communist China, Ho sought the Soviet Union's help.  
 

The truth often is stranger than fiction. Gloria Steinem wrote a book entitled, "The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off." 
 

Sincerely yours, 

Charlie and Gunny 

 
 
 EVE’S ANSWER 

 

 During a telephone call, Oprah asked Willa Sue if she missed not having a child? Will Sue said she wanted to think about that. After visiting President Bush in the Oval Office, Willa Sue emails Oprah. 
 

Hi - 

On never having a baby 

Be Careful what we wish, hope, ask for? 

You never had children, so I expect you can answer your question as good as any woman can.  

You admire Gloria Steinem, who has no children. She upset the male applecart, and she upset women married to that applecart. I think she wrote a book called, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Ain’t that the truth!? 

You know what it was like for me being a baby girl born to redneck Florida panhandle Bible and God praising parents, who never did nothing to protect me from being raped a lot of times by one of my older brothers, and when I finally talked about it, they had me put in a mental hospital, because I had to be crazy to say my brother had had sex with me. 

I tell you truly, Oprah, after going with Riley to Washington a few days ago and watching Riley try to persuade President Bush not to send American soldiers to Afghanistan, and all the Vietnam war stuff Riley has talked about and written, I can’t help myself wondering what woman wants to have a baby for it to be sent off to a war in a country way out in the sticks, out in the middle of nowhere, as we country folk say, whose people don’t think anything like we folks in America think like, and they are Muslims, and they call Christians infidels, and they beat the Russians, and before that, they beat the British, and they will kill a lot of young American soldiers, whose mamas did not birth and raise them to be killed in Afghanistan, which never did anything to America. 

And gosh, Oprah, what about children being massacred in their schools? I tell you this, Oprah, if I did have a child of school age, I would not send him or her to any school. Me and Riley would teach our child at home, where it’s safe. 

And what about all the religious folks, who claim abortions are murder, but they don't seem to give a shit about what happens to unwanted babies after they are born? They will never get to know unwanted babies they want to save they will never help raise wanted babies they want too save. They will never pay for the cost of raising unwanted babies they want to save. The way they carry on, I bet they were unwanted babies, and they were treated kinda like I was treated by my Bible quoting parents. 

And, how do they know a 6 or an 8 or a 10 or a 12 or a 14 or a 16 week old fetus is a human being? Does it have a soul? Well, does it? Does anyone know when a fetus has a soul? Isn't having soul necessary to being human? the Bible says Adam became a living being when God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. 

In this apartment building where Riley and me live is a woman who don’t seem all right in the head. She’s nice, but she can get to carrying on. She slides notes under our front door all the time about this or that project or cause she wants us to do something about. She also is a good cook, and offers us what she has cooked, and we take what we think we will like, and don’t take what we think we won’t like, and we pay her, because she bought the groceries and cooked the food, and because she is on Social Security and is barely getting by. 

She says she used to be a legal secretary, and based on some things she told us, Riley thinks she really was a legal secretary. But she cannot do that kind of work now. She has a computer with a keyboard, and she uses the internet, and she knows how to proofread, but we don’t want to have her proofread what we write, because we don’t want to be in that kind of relationship with her, and get notes all the time from her about what we write and are doing. 

She knows Riley really likes playing chess, but he’s not no expert. Yesterday, she told Riley she really wants to learn how to play chess, and would he teach her? Riley said he is not qualified to teach people how to play chess, and there are lots of how to play chess books in libraries. She doesn’t have a car and can’t easily get to a library, and she has not let up since yesterday, asking Riley to teach her how to play chess. He told her to go online and find stuff there about how to play chess, chess.com teaches chess. He is writing about the coming end of humanity.  

This morning, she slid a note under our door. I’ll type it out and paste it here. 

 

Riley, 

 If that’s really what you are writing now, humanity’s end, or human end, then hear me out = What about seeing a baby grow … witness at child’s life… how? 

 Donate to a sperm bank and envision generations to cone —your offspring 

 Good idea :-) 

 

Riley doesn't want more Rileys running around on this planet covered with people not being kind to the planet and not always kind to other people. One war after another, since the beginning of human time. And many children are treated the way I was treated, and there is nothing Riley and me can do about any of that. Riley would never know what women were impregnated with his sperm and how babies made from his sperm would be treated by their mommas and their daddies, if they had daddies.  

I tell you truly, Oprah, Archangel asking Riley in his sleep, three nights before 911, if he would make a prayer for a divine intervention for all of humanity, really shook Riley up. He’s been shook up ever since. Will his prayer be answered? How will it be answered? When? What will the answer look like?  

We went to the prison yesterday, to visit inmates Riley became friends with. One inmate reported a dream of the night before. All the graves on this world were empty. Was that about the rapture? Heck if we know. 

What we do know is, we sat face-to-face with the president of the most powerful country on this world, and we heard stuff we cannot repeat, No, not about Russia, not about China, but about America, which we, so far, are not allowed to tell you, or anyone. How President Bush seemed to be dealing with it did not cause us to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 

Riley and I think America and humanity are not capable of turning around and going in a different direction. We think the seeds for humanity’s end are in clear view, and nothing is being done about it, but things that will make that end happen. We think it will take angels or ETs to get humanity’s attention. Or a giant meteor or a comet smacks Earth, and all of a sudden people are just trying to surivive, and all the stuff people thought was important is not important anymore. 

On a lighter side, or maybe not, probably depends on your point of view, I bet Gloria Steinem would really like it. Yesterday, a woman using a made up name, Appalachia Queen, made a comment at strangerthanfiction.com. A poem that don’t need no explaining to me, at least. 

Love you, Oprah 

Willa Sue 

The poem 

Eve’s Answer 

April Fool 

Vexing Truth 

Life is Poetry, 

Poetry is Life, 

There's no more to say, 

but that would  

make God 

a really dull boy, 

now wouldn't it, 

Eve? 

So, Eve, 

What say you? 

After all, 

You have been, 

still are, blamed, 

for everything that went wrong with 

hu - MAN - i - ty. 

Well, do you really want to hear 

what I gotta say? 

Is this one of those 

be careful what you ask for 

pregnancies? 

Well, is it? 

Probably, but say 

what you wish - 

I s'pect you need 

to be heard. 

Heard? 

Funny you mention ears. 

Yes, ears. 

Such important receptacles. 

Yet filled with concrete,  

shit, propaganda, beliefs, 

certainties, well, 

let's not leave out 

SUPERSTITION 

and 

RELIGION, 

should we? 

By the way, 

where do ya 

suppose 

God came from? 

Or, out of? 

And,  

why do ya s'pose 

I made Eve 

in my own  

IMAGE? 

'Cause Adam was 

so bored and dull - 

so ... predictable 

He was BORING!!! 

the shit outta me!!! 

That's why. 

Now 

    Shusssssh - 

Don't go round quoting me on 

any of that - 

I've had quite enough of 

the religious right 

ta last me  

the rest of forever 
 
 
 

Larry King Live 

  

 Riley puts Willa Sue’s email to Oprah on strangerthanfiction.com, which Go Daddy analytics show is getting just under 1,000,000 page views per post.  

 “Not bad for a brand new blog, A-fucking-mazing, actually. Thank you, Oprah.” 

 “Amen,” Willa Sue says. 

 “I didn’t finish, Dearest. We also can thank Oprah for helping us paint a lot more bullseyes and red dots all over us.” 

 “Like that wasn’t your dream come true?” 

 “Maybe I should plead the 5th.” 

 “Either you should. Or Archangel Michael should.” 

 “Funny girl. Archangel Michael is bullet proof, and youse and meses ain’t. Maybe, in exchange for keeping my big mouth shut, I should have asked President Bush to assign us Secret Service protection?” 

 “Archangel Michael will look after us … I hope, and you didn't promise to keep your big mouth shut.” 

 “I hope so, because youse and mese is pissing off a lot of people.” 

 “And from the analytics, maybe we are making lots of friends?” 

 “We don’t know what those numbers mean about who's looking at the blog. All we know is a lot of people are looking at it.” 

 “Is there any way, Riley, that we can find out what kind of people are looking at it?” 

 “Well, I could mention at the blog that youse and meses is doing a study, and we are wondering what what people coming to the blog feel about us, and they could make smiley or frowny face comments.” 

 “Some people might be afraid to make comments.” 

 “True, but perhaps we might get enough comments to get a feel of what percentage wants us to shut up, or dead, and what percentage wants us to keep shooting off our mouths.” 

 “Well,  Mr. Statistics, so far, only Appalachian Queen has commented, and why do you think nobody else has?” 

 “They don’t want to paint bullseyes and red dots all over themselves?” 

 “Duh.” 

 Riley’s cell phone rings. He doesn’t recognize the area code. He answers. 

 “This is Larry King’s producer, Mary Poppins, trying to reach Riley Strange.” 

 “Mary Poppins? For real?’ 

 “Kinda weird, right?” 

 “Really Weird, actually.” 

 “Are you Riley?” 

 “Super kala fragilistic expi alidocious, yes, that’s me, Mary.” 

 “For real, you have that memorized?’ 

 “Docious ali expi istic fragi kala rupas,” or something like that spells it backwards, Mary.” 

 “How’d you come to learn that, Mr. Strange?’ 

 “My children made me learn it, no thanks to you.” 

 “Shall we start over?” 

 “Please.” 

 “I’m Mary Johnson, not to be confused with a US president from Texas.” 

 “Pleased to meet you, Mary, no relation to the president that promised all of America on TV that he would never send American boys to die in a war in Asia, and then he did just that, and one of those boys was my older brother.” 

 “That, and what else you said on Oprah’s show, and what you put on your blog, is why Mr. King asked me to call Oprah and get your phone number, so I could call and ask if you and Willa Sue will come to CNN’s Los Angeles studio and be on Mr. King’s show?” 

 “Larry King wants us to paint a lot more bullseyes and red dots all over ourselves?” 

 Riley looks at Willa Sue, she mouth’s, “Go for it.” 

 “Well, that’s one way of looking at it, Riley. But, will you and Willa Sue do it?” 

 “Does a bear crap in the woods, Miss Mary Not Poppins?” 

 “I believe that’s where most bears crap, Mr. Really Very Strange Man.” 

 “Are you gonna be a nice person like Oprah and send us first class airline tickets and put us up in a posh L.A. hotel?We're getting nearly 1,000,000 page views per blog post, and if I put on the blog that we're going to be on Larry King Live..." 

 “Do you also intend to hit Mr. King up for a large donation to your presidential campaign?” 

 “How’d you know?” 

 “Same as I know bears crap in the woods?” 

 “Well, free first class airline tickets and posh hotel room?” 

 “Okay, but please don’t hit Larry up on the air for a donation.” 

 “I was joking about that. The next presidential campaign season is 2004, and we are still in 2001. Besides not knowing if I will be alive in 2004, or if Earth will be invaded by ETs, or a sun flare will not crisp humanity...  I wouldn’t hit anyone up for a donation, because... I wouldn’t have a campaign … if people want me to be president ... it's up to them to make it happen ... I think it should be... illegal to run for public office and promote yourself ... and... I’ve got other things I like to do a whole lot better than what candidates for office do.” 

 Silence. 

 “You still there Miss Mary Not Poppins?” 

 “Sorry, I am trying to wrap my mind around what you said.” 

 “That’s okay, because I’m trying to wrap my mind around what I said. It just popped right outta my mouth, like it was just waiting on a good time to do it.” 

 “Larry wanted me to ask if you and Willa Sue still can break boards with your bare hands and feet?” 

 ‘Does a bear crap in the woods?” 

 “Are you and Willa Sue wiling to do that when you are on the air with Larry?” 

 “Do we get free meals at 5-star L.A. restaurant for doing that? 

 “I think Larry will agree to that.” 

 “Do you want me to bring my samurai sword?” 

 “Your what?” 

 “Just joking. Don’t have one.” 

 “Tell me your email address and I’ll send you the fine details.” 

 “rileystrange@yahoo.com.” 

 
 

Breaking boards, and bones 

 

 As Riley wakes up in a Los Angeles 5-star hotel room, his brother Jack comes to him, smiles, says, “Go get 'em, Tiger.” 

 “Roger Wilco, Brother.” 

 Already awake, Willa Sue says, “Who you talking to, Riley?”  

 Still kinda in a daze, Riley tells her about it. 

 “What do you think it means, Dreamer Boy?” 

 “Maybe the topic of tonight’s visit with Larry King is supposed to be war? Maybe the Vietnam War?” 

 “Haven’t you worn that out already?” 

 “Not on television. Yet.” 

 They spend the day walking around Hollywood and hanging out on “muscle beach”, and have lunch and dinner at great restaurants, one 5-star, with an ocean view.  

 After they get to CNN’s studio, Larry tells Mary Not Poppins that he isn’t into makeup, and he will let Willa Sue speak for herself on that topic. 

 Willa Sue says, “I’m not into make up. What you see, is what you get.” 

 Riley chirps, “And what you hear is what you get.” 

 Mary Not Poppins says, “Make up is pretty standard for a TV interview.” 

 Riley winks at Willa Sue, who says, “Well, there ain’t nothing standard about me and Riley, and what do you think his karate Sensei will think if he sees his 3rd degree black belt wearing makeup?” 

 Riley looks kindly at Mary Not Poppins says, “There are no fig leaves in paradise.” 

 “Is that kin to bears crap in the woods?” 

 “Yeah, and bears do other things in the woods, too.” 

 “And bears don’t wear makeup, right?.” 

 “Right, and there is something else about bears.” 

 “What’s that?” 

 “In the lore of the Real Americans, which white people used to call Indians, the bear is about introspection. Looking inside, which don’t seem very popular with Fake Americans.” 

 “You plan to tell Larry and the rest of America that on TV tonight?” 

 “Why not? Looking inside is not something America has done much off, if at all, since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.” 

 Willa Sue laughs, says, “Can’t take him anywhere.” 

 Larry King welcomes Riley and Willa Sue to his show, which averages 1,000,000 viewers per episode. 

 Riley and Willa Sue thank Larry for having them and wave and say, “Hi”, to the viewing audience. 

 Larry begins with, “Riley, word is President Bush invited you and Willa sue to the White House, and the three of you had a private conversation. You ;published that on your blog, strangerandficiton.com.” 

 “That’s correct, Larry.” 

 “Can you tell us more about what you and President Bush talked about? 

 “I told President Bush, who, with his daddy’s influence, was a Vietnam war draft dodger and got away with going AWOL from the Alabama Air National Guard, that I didn’t envy him having to deal with 9/11, which his father had set up when he was president. I told President Bush that, if he sends American soldiers into Afghanistan, he is responsible to God for what happens to them. I told President Bush that I hope he finds another way to deal with Osama bin Laden, than killing and maiming a lot of American soldiers.” 

 “Don't you think, Riley, that bin Laden should be brought to justice?” 

 “Yes. But not by invading Afghanistan and starting another Vietnam-like war, which will make a lot of rich, white American men a lot richer, which is what the Vietnam war did, and how did that war turn out, Larry?” 

 “America lost that war.” 

 “That’s right, Larry. America lost that war. If America invades Afghanistan, it will lose that war, just like the British and the Soviets lost the wars they started in Afghanistan.” 

 “Your older brother was killed in Vietnam, Riley.” 

 “Yes.” 

 “What year was he killed?’ 

 “1972.” 

 “How old was he?” 

 “Twenty-two.” 

 “How old were you?” 

 “Fourteen.” 

 “How did that affect you?” 

 “I wanted to kill President Johnson, whom I had watched promise on national television that he would never send American boys to die in a war in Asia.” 

 “Yes, I remember seeing President Johnson say that on TV.” 

 “Lyndon Johnson was responsible to God for every American soldier he sent to Vietnam. Johnson’s karma was huge. He might spend a number of lifetimes dealing with it,” 

 “You are talking about reincarnation, Riley?” 

 "Yes. And karma. President Johnson, and every American who had something to do with American soldiers being in Vietnam, and every American who did not protest that war, created serious karma. But Johnson’s karma was foremost, because he was Commander-in-Chief, and I hope President Bush is watching this show tonight, Larry.” 

 “Riley, many people do not believe in reincarnation,” 

 “Christians mostly don’t believe in reincarnation, and most Americans are Christians. So, I suggest they study their Bibles harder, and find where Jesus and his disciples spoke of reincarnation.” 

 “What? Please say more.” 

 “When a disciple asked Jesus if John the Baptist had returned, as prophesied in the Old Testament, Jesus said, yes, but he was not recognized, and the disciples understood he meant John the Baptist was Elijah who had returned, and would get his head chopped off. So, what kind of karma did Elijah create to cause that?” 

 “That’s really interesting, Riley.” 

  “There’s more, Larry. After Jesus gave sight to a man who was born blind, a disciple asked Jesus, who had sinned, the man or his parents, that he was born blind? How could the man  sin before he was born, unless he had sinned in a prior life?” 

 “I’m gobsmacked, Riley.” 

 “So should all of Christendom be gobsmacked, but good luck waking the dead, so to speak.” 

 “What did this disciple mean by the man’s parents had sinned?” 

 “Jesus and his disciples were Jews. In their scriptures, which Christians call the Old Testament, is reference to the sins of the parents being visited on the children for several generations. So, the man could have been born blind because of something his parents or grandparents had done before he was born.” 

 “That’s logical, based on those scriptures.” 

 “However, in that situation, Jesus told his disciples it was not for those reasons that the man was born blind, but it was so that when Jesus gave the man sight, the glory of God could be seen.”  

 “Have you ever considered going into the ministry, Riley?” 

 “Not in that way, Larry. Christianity has its own hard and fast views, like layer in steel reinforced concrete, and there is no place there for someone with my views, but there are places. Prison was one place. I read the Bible a lot there, I saw things in the words that I had not seen before. Oprah’s show is another place. Maybe your show is another place. Willa Sue’s and my blog, strangerthanfiction.com is another place.” 

 “This is a lot to take in, Riley.” 

 “Agreed, but Jesus and his disciples had those discussions in the Gospels, and note, Larry, Jesus did not tell his disciple that his question about who had sinned was wrong, but there was another possibility. A number of religions say reincarnation is very real, and elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus said, as you sow, so shall you reap. Not all karma is rough. Karma flows from what we sow, and there is good karma. However,. waging war creates horrible karma. The Vietnam war fractured America’s collective soul. A war in Afghanistan will fracture America’s soul even more.” 

 “Much food for thought, Riley” 

 “It’s fact, Larry.” 

 “Did you bring boards for you and Willa Sue to break, Riley?” 

 “Yes, but maybe enough boards already got broken?” 

 “Maybe, but how about just one board?" 

 Riley looks at Willa Sue, says, “You want to do it?” 

 She smiles, reaches down past her pants suit and takes off her shoes.  

 Riley reaches into an old leather briefcase he brought along and brings out a 2-foot 2x4 plank and walks away from the table where they were sitting. Willa Sue walks over and faces Riley, who holds the plank away from him with one hand on each end. Willa Sue rotates her body left and her head downward, as she coils her right hip, thigh, knee, shin and foot, and shouts “kia!” and launches the right side of her spring-loaded flattened right heel through the board, which snaps in half with a loud ‘crack’”. 

 Larry says, “I’m gobsmacked again. Can you two come back for another show soon?”  

        Willa Sue nods, yes, and Riley says, “Larry, there’s a great deal I could have said tonight about how the Vietnam war was invented, because America wanted access to Vietnam’s rubber trees and natural resources. I covered that in the 'Critical Vietnam War history v. theory' post at strangerthanfiction.com. The blog is not copyrighted and can be freely shared.” 

 Larry says, "I read your blog, and that blog post convinced me that rubber was the reason for the Vietnam war. How could every American, including me, not see the linkage between President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby, and Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X opposing an American war in Vietnam and then being shot and killed? I printed out that blog post and, after a station break, I will read it to the viewing audience. Every American needs to know what the Vietnam combat vet Charlie wrote to you. Later tonight, I will post his email at larrrykinglive.net." 

 

Station Break 

 

 Willa Sue says, “Before you read Charlie's email, Larry, I think I need to tell what Archangel Michael told me in my sleep about a month after Riley locked me in his home gymnasium. I know this isn't going to be well-received by women, but what I heard was, 'All women on this planet are in a rabid war with God, and that war is the cause of all wars, including all man-made wars.' I for sure was in a war with God, because of what my family had done to me. Riley said he thought what Michael told me made sense in the context of women being second-class citizens on this planet, and deep down inside they blame God for that. However, it's men who start wars, and it's men that fight them, mostly. Maybe a poem sent to us by a south Alabama amiga, which I will read, speaks to that? She said it came to her from somewhere above. 

 

All want the security of the well fed pig. 

Horror at the baseness unrecognized. 

A lifetime spent in shirt stuffing. 

And pen comparison. 

Is truth more palatable when honeyed? 

Is a stark soulscape less so with the eyes of Monet? 

May my affectations always be understood. 

        And perhaps a poem sent to us by someone going by "African Queen", which I also will read, also speaks to what's wrong with hu-MAN-i-ty? 

Eve’s Answer 

April Fool 

Vexing Truth 

Life is Poetry, 

Poetry is Life, 

There's no more to say, 

but that would  

make God 

a really dull boy, 

now wouldn't it, 

Eve? 

So, Eve, 

What say you? 

After all, 

You have been, 

still are, blamed, 

for everything that went wrong with 

hu - MAN - i - ty. 

Well, do you really want to hear 

what I gotta say? 

Is this one of those 

be careful what you ask for 

pregnancies? 

Well, is it? 

Probably, but say 

what you wish - 

I s'pect you need 

to be heard. 

Heard? 

Funny you mention ears. 

Yes, ears. 

Such important receptacles. 

Yet filled with concrete,  

shit, propaganda, beliefs, 

certainties, well, 

let's not leave out 

SUPERSTITION 

and 

RELIGION, 

should we? 

By the way, 

where do ya 

suppose 

God came from? 

Or, out of? 

And,  

why do ya s'pose 

I made Eve 

in my own  

IMAGE? 

'Cause Adam was 

so bored and dull - 

so ... predictable 

He was BORING!!! 

the shit outta me!!! 

That's why. 

Now 

    Shusssssh - 

Don't go round quoting me on 

any of that - 

I've had quite enough of 

the religious right 

ta last me  

the rest of forever 

 
 
 

 
 
Time To Choose 

    When Riley and Willa Sue wake up the next morning in their 5-star Los Angeles hotel room, Riley checks strangerthanfiction.com and sees two new comments, which he clears from moderation. 

    The first comment is Uke From Denver: 
 

Divine Mother, sweet caretaker of humanity, Adam's true lover, our own humanity—she is our rib, she wraps around our vital organs to protect and nurture our necessary processes. Without her we are just bees, using up vital resources for the production, maintenance, and distribution of the hive-mind ruled not by a benevolent God, but an evil queen. A demon. 

She is not human. And they call her a whore, but this isn't very descriptive, she isn't interested in sex, but in making clones. Worker drones. Bile-filled, with horns. They swarm in hypnotized unison, call it a movement 

Without Eve we have no sense of being, no self. Even going to sacred spaces, or attending religious services, or even doing our own rituals and ceremonies filled with 'meaning', it is just symbolic and empty without Eve's touch. Our saving grace. 

Because sometimes we run afoul of Mary, for she is holding the kingdom together, and she is stretched thin, and she is going through the motions, but there isn't a lot of buy-in. But sometimes in order to fit into her scheme we have to murder our sense of self, our connection with Eve, something secretive within us we can't let go of, something that makes us unique. 

Eve knows us, she knows our individual story, down to the gory details, she was there with us, and she held our hand, even though we couldn't conceive existence could be so complicated. She gives us the apple so we can learn what is good for us, not just to be a honeybee in the hivemind of sub-human queens. 

     

To which Riley replies: 

 

Yep! But I think the evil Queen has a yang variation. 

     

The second comment is from one of Riley's prison pen pals. 
 

TIME TO CHOOSE 

 

I cry out from my within my soul, a place filled with such grief that only my subconscious ventures there 

Out of fear of never returning from the guttural screams and wails, I awake only to find the world to which I am returning, the war that is not 

finished….. 

The principalities, the powers, the unseen, 

Einstein measured math and explained the unexplainable. 

There is no formula for this world though, the war between good and evil. 

It was attempted, the explanation many and many times in the past with the Koran, the Bible, the tribal languages. 

In writings and in generations passed down time and again. 

The invisible weapons. 

The Indians trying to explain a gun to the village. 

No comprehension, no words to describe the terror of it. 

The tribe saw his fear as he explained in terrifying images, 

the death of his friend and brother. 

The village looked on. Was he crazy? He tried so to convince them. 

He warned them. 

He knew the weapons would come on the shoulders of the evil warriors. 

Calling for the heads of the Indians on a platter, 

like John the Baptist, delivered. 

Where were the laws of the U.S. then? Where were the Courts? 

What was the difference? They called for the heads to be delivered on platters. 

They still do. 

The principalities, the powers of darkness, calls for heads everyday. 

And unknowingly you choose your side. 

When the Indians, the homeless, the children are not worth standing and fighting for, you have become a tool of darkness, watching the deliverance of the Saints. 

“Don’t be surprised when they hate you”, said Jesus, “for they hated me first without a cause.” 

But that is terrifying. Who wants to be hated? 

We run a popularity contest in the U.S. 

We can’t win, can’t succeed without our friends. Then what would be the measure of our worth? 

Jesus said his saints would be like the salt of the earth scattered abroad. 

Some have lost their savor. How many are left? 

Few, outnumbered, holding the ground, fighting the wars of the unseen. 

And the village hears of the weapons and can’t imagine, so they prepare not. 

How do you prepare for the unbelievable? 

“Only with God, the armor of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit”, says Jesus. 

But these words are pungent in the ears of the Christians, the civilized. 

“No heads are called for”, they say. Yet they are, by Satan everyday. 

And the idle stand by and do nothing as the saints are delivered, 

And the idle claim innocence of the blood of it all, 

because they carried not the gun to slaughter the Indians, the Jews, the homeless, the children, the Saints. 

But I tell you truth, idle ones, you are guilty! 

You chose not to engage in the battle and the battle engaged you, 

knowingly or not. 

When you said, “No”, to the chosen, you said, “Yes” to Satan. 

You said, “Yes, Satan carry on and deliver him on the platter, but I want no part of it.” 

You watched the slaughter but raised not a word in protest. 

Fear of losing the popular friends, fear of becoming the salt of the earth scattered about and preyed on by Satan and his devouring angels. 

Why would Satan destroy one of his own? Of course not. 

He would not target the idle, who allow him to deliver the heads on the platters. 

The ones he despises are the workers of God, the salt of the earth. 

Where is their army, where is their law? 

We believe we live by rules. We live by rules other than those we see. 

The rules were written, they tell us the price. 

They are written in the Bible, in the Holy books of old. 

We read with our lips and see with our eyes but believe not in our heart. 

Or we would become the salt, the persecuted, sawn asunder, living in caves, destitute, beheaded, tortured in prison and so the Book goes. 

And so the sale is void. There are no takers. 

They want none of the hardships of the Lord elect. 

Those promised, those delivered. 

The idle fall by the wayside, planted shallow, planted on rocks, 

Yielding nothing but thorns. 

And Jesus says, “It is hard to kick against the pricks.” 

The pricks of the fallen, the fence walkers, they will not choose a side. 

The side is too torturous that bears the eternal promise. 

The other side, Satan’s side, is full of success, victory in this world, 

and awards and accolades. 

The elect sleep without a home, without a country, alone with our wounds with only God to comfort us. 

Speaking to the unseen as our only friend. 

“Too hard” the idle say. “Not appealing.” 

Then go and take your reward. Sit alongside as they deliver the heads on platters, 

And know…. you will have your reward! For it is written. 

It can’t be seen, but it is explained in the Book, the Bible; 

You have chosen even if you refuse to. 

You have chosen if you are not engaged. 

You are not the salt of the earth if you are comforted, and popular. 

No words of Jesus offered prosperity. 

No words of Jesus have offered rewards here on earth. 

Jesus spoke of trials and tribulations, and persecutions on earth. 

Only above from the Father in a world yet to be seen, will our efforts be rewarded.   

In a world Einstein could not explain. 

In a world where the formulas work, but no man can figure them out. 

In a world too grand. 

“Do you understand how I hung the moon and the stars?”, said God. 

“Then how can you understand things greater? 

They only heard from the Indian, who had seen the gun. 

They didn’t recognize the evil ones who carried it. 

Nor did they know when the evil ones would come, 

or how many there would be. 

But the heads have been called for and surely they will be delivered, 

as always. 

And the platters with the blood will be full, 

And your hands will not be clean if you sit idly by, 

And you will be rewarded with your portion for the killing. 

It is written. 

Sandy Downs, Cudjoe Key 

      

To which Riley replies: 

 

Cowa-fucking-bonga! You tell it, Sister!! 

 

 
Br'er Bush and the tar baby 

 

    The day after Riley and Willa Sue were on Larry King Live, strangerthanfiction.com page views spike to just over 1.5 million. 

    The day after Riley and Willa Sue flew back to Jacksonville, October 7, 1942, Riley's birthday, it is all over the news that an America-led military coalition is invading Afghanistan, to go after Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, who are protecting and hiding him.  

    Unknown to President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, MI6, and the rest of the coalition's military commanders and intelligence services, bin Laden is traveling on out of the way obscure back roads and trails to northeastern Pakistan. from which he will observe just how well his trap is working. Then 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York City is the trap's bait. 

    Riley and Willa Sue don't know where Osama is, but they know 9/11 is bait, and the trap is Afghanistan, which beat the Soviets and before that the British. Riley and Willa know that just as surely as they know Cheney  threatened to kill President Bush, if he did not invade Afghanistan. 

    President Bush didn't want to invade Afghanistan. When he went to his former president father to talk about invading Afghanistan, his father's question was, "What is your exit strategy?"  

    What exit strategy? President Bush knows Vice-President Cheney never intends to leave Afghanistan. He intends to get Afghanistan's natural resources for American corporations. 

    President Bush knows Afghanistan has vast mineral fields, containing barite, chromite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, natural gas, petroleum, precious and semi-precious stones, salt, sulfur, lithium, talc, zinc and marble, among many other minerals. Gemstones include high-quality emerald, lapis lazuli, red garnet and ruby. 

    President Bush knows Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems both from its oil and gas gas deposits and its geographical position as a transit route for oil, natural gas, and electricity exports from Central Asia to South Asia and the Arabian Sea. This potential includes the construction of the trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline, which Vice-President Cheney intends to have Halliburton build. 

    Halliburton Company is headquartered in Texas, where President Bush is from. President Bush was the Governor of Texas for two terms. He knows more about Halliburton and its former CEO Dick Cheney than he cares to know. 

    President Bush knows Halliburton is a multinational corporation responsible for much of the world's hydraulic fracturing operations. Halliburton is a major international oil field service company with operations in dozens of countries. Halliburton's major business segment is the Energy Services Group (ESG). Halliburton's subsidiary, KBR, is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants 

    President Bush knows Cheney intends to monetize Afghanistan's natural resources to repay America for its costs of invading Afghanistan.  

    President Bush, the Vietnam draft dodger, who said when he was running for president, that he had never smoked marijuana, but he had, knows Cheney and the CIA intend to mine Afghanistan's vast poppy fields.      

    President Bush knows heroin is an opioid drug made from morphine, a natural substance taken from the seed pod of the various opium poppy plants grown in Southeast and Southwest Asia, Mexico, and Colombia. Heroin can be a white or brown powder, or a black sticky substance known as black tar heroin  

    President Bush knows the CIA used its Air America department to bring opium from Burma, Laos and Cambodia  into South Vietnam, and then to America, where it was sold on back markets and turned into heroin, which was sold in inner cities, all to fund CIA clandestine operations in Southeast Asia. 

    Riley explains all of that to Willa Sue, and says, "It's not rocket science. Anyone can find that information on the Internet. Anyone can figure out what the invasion of Afghanistan is really about. Anyone who wants to can see Afghanistan is a giant tar baby, a trap of incomprehensible dimension and magnitude, which the clever fox Osama bin Laden laid, figuring President Bush would take the bait." 

    "Do you think President Bush would have taken the bait if Vice-President Cheney had not threatened to have him killed if he did not invade Afghanistan?" 

    Riley sighs, says, "That's a very good question, Wife, and we'll never know the answer." 

    During their sleep that night, Riley and Willa Sue are visited by Archangel Michael in their dreams. Michael tells them both the same thing: "Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread, but if there were no fools, who'd lead the angels?" 

    Waking on day 2 of the Afghanistan invasion, Riley and Willa Sue share their dreams. 

    Perplexed, Riley says, "What about the prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity Michael asked me to make? Where is the Divine Intervention?" 

    "Could it be us, Riley? We never told anyone what President Bush told us about Cheney threatening to have him killed." 

    "I dunno, Wife. Let's sit on it, see if Michael has more to say." 

    "Okay." 

    That morning, Riley publishes at strangerthanficiton.com everything he knows and thinks about Afghanistan, Halliburton, Osama bin Laden and the trap, except Vice-President Cheney threatening President Bush. 

    Around noon, Sandy Downs of Cudjoe Key, Florida posts a comment at strangerthanficiton.com: 
 

Nice report. In addition to following the money trail, consider the "possibility" that men who start wars have a serious problem with their manhood, more specifically, with their dick. Either it isn't getting enough action, or it isn't working like they want it to work. So to prove their manhood, they start wars they hope to win and make their dick feel better. I agree with you that 9/11 is bait, and President Bush swallowed it hook, line and sinker.  

In the original tar baby story, before Walt Disney made "The Song of the South Movie" about Uncle Remus, the little plantation boy he looked after, and Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox and "Br'er Bear", there is no briar patch happy ending. Br'er Rabbit is still stuck in Br'er Fox's tar baby trap, and Br'er Bear is firing up a big cook pot to have Br'er Rabbit for dinner. I imagine Uncle Remus would not think well of the little white boy, or any of the young black slave men, being sent off to fight rich white men's war in a distant land.' 
 

   That night, Willa Sue and Mary Lou Snow come to Riley in a dream and tell him in unison, "Us two witches want to weave some spells, if that's okay with you." Riley asks, "What kind of spells?" They smile, say in unison, "Trade secrets, we like surprises." Riley winces, says to Mary Lou, "I didn't care for the surprise that you went off and got yourself killed." Mary Lou shrugs, says, "I came to you in a dream at Hillcrest Hospital and told you I was sorry and it would all be okay. If I didn't go off and get myself killed, you would still be practicing law in Birmingham, you would not have met Willa Sue, and you would not have met Oprah, President Bush and Larry King." Riley nods, says, "Well, witches, get out your cauldron and brew your spells. 

 

 

And let there be light 

 

    Page views per post at strangerthanfiction.com increased to 1.7 million.  

    A comment is posted by Annie Oakley. 

 

Do you think Osama bin Laden read Tom Clancy's 1994 novel, "Debt of Honor", in which a Japanese commercial airline pilot, who secretly was a patriotic, disgruntled samurai, cleverly hijacks an empty Japanese jumbo airliner and flies it to America and gets it refueled and flies it to Washington D.C. and crashes it into the national Capitol when the president is addressing Congress, killing all members of Congress, the president, and all of the president's cabinet members except Jack Ryan, who is not there, and he becomes president? 

  

Do you think that samurai would believe amateur Arab pilots, who had never piloted a jumbo jet and were not instrument rated, which takes a lot of work to achieve by flying real airplanes blindfolded, were capable of taking over two Boeing 767s and making direct hits on the Twin Towers? 
 

A Boeing 757 struck the first level of the Pentagon. The 757 is smaller than a 767. I am a  commercial airline pilot, who flies 757s several days a week. I would need more than instrument rating and an online computer to make a long, very low altitude "torpedo bomber" approach and make a direct hit into the ground level of the Pentagon. I would need a lot of experience actually flying large commercial aircraft. 

 

The commercial pilots did not call in that they're being hijacked? They did not know about commotion in the passenger section before the hijackers got into the cockpit? The FAA did not alert NORAD and NORAD did not scramble fighter jets armed for bear? That's really hard for me to believe. 
 

7 World Trade Center, a 47-story building near the Twin Towers, collapsed hours after the Twin Towers were hit and collapsed. 7 contained offices of the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Office of Emergency Management. No airplane hit that building. 

  

President Bush shut down all flights out of America, but Saudi royalty friends of the Bush family were secretly allowed to leave in a Saudi jet. Osama bin Laden is a member of that family. 
 

When President Bush was talking with those school kids in Florida and was told about 9/11 being underway, did he jump up and get about being president? Hell, no. He kept talking to the school kids, because, he said, didn't want to alarm them. Or was it because he didn't want to get in the way of an inside job?  

 

    Riley and Willa Sue don't need a crystal ball to know President Bush will say they made up the death threat. So, do they tell the public about the death threat? 

    Does a bear crap in the woods?  

    Indeed, it does. 

    Riley replies to Annie Oakley: 

 

When Willa Sue and I met with President Bush in the Oval Office, he told us that Vice-President Cheney told him that if he did not turn the US Military over to Vice-President Cheney, he would have the same thing happen to him that happened to President Kennedy and his brother, Bobby. He asked Riley for advice. Riley asked President Bush what did he think Jesus would do?  

  

We wanted to go public with that, but Archangel Michael told us to stand down, and stand by. Last night, Archangel Michael told both of us in dreams, "Only fools rush in, where angels fear to tread, but if there were no fools, who'd lead the angels?" We have no desire to lead angels. Maybe if we had told what we know sooner, President Bush would not have invaded Afghanistan? 
 

    Annie replies:  
 

If President Bush told you that, it is a trap to discredit you both. President isn't nearly as smart as his father, and he has a big need to prove his manhood by fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Don't be surprised if he starts a war in Iraq, too. His dick needs a lot of attention for him to feel it's big enough. In the end, Afghanistan will eat his dick. As will a war he starts in Iraq. And he will never figure out his dick was eaten. He will think he did great things. 

  

    Riley replies to Annie:  

 

You make really good points. However, President Bush did tell Willa Sue and me that Vice-President Cheney had threatened his life, and we are willing to take polygraph exams administered by the FBI on Oprah and Larry King Live with all the world watching. 

 

    Annie replies: 

 

I bet they run out of popcorn.  

 

 

The Light Shimmers 

 

    Page views at strangerthanfiction.com increased to 2.1 million per post. 

    Willa Sue says, "That's a lot of people reading about us, Riley." 

    "That it is, Wife, that it is. Perhaps we should try sending them out on missions?" 

    "What kind of missions?" 

    "Oh, how about slinging rotten suckers onto the White House front yard and toilet-papering its trees?" 

    "That should get you a lot of votes for president - of another prison. 

    "How about I tell them, if they want to get me elected, they have to get me on the ballot, or at least they write my name on their ballots on election day, as a protest. Meanwhile, I'm kinda jaded with all the politics and TV appearances, how about you, Wife?" 

    "I thought you'd never ask, Husband." 

    "What would we do instead?" 

    "How about we get ourselves a life somewhere we like?" 

    "Somewhere nobody knows where we are?" 

    "I thought you'd never ask." 

    "Like where?" 

    "How about the Pleiades?" 

    "You know somebody who has a star ship?" 

    "Luke Skywalker?" 

    "Somebody real." 

    "Captain Picard?" 

    At that moment, a strange shimmer comes into their living room, filled with waves of blue and green light. Then a form appears in it and becomes denser and it is a man and a woman, of sorts. Their skin is pale lavender, their hair is black, short, cropped, kinda like Spock. Their eyes are green with golden pupils. Their ears are slightly pointed, like elves' ears. They have no nose or mouth. Their arms and legs are about the same length. They wear something like jumper suits, and they have tails.  

    In unison, they speak telepathically to Riley and Willa Sue. 

    "Please do not be frightened, we mean you no harm. We come to you, because your journey interests us and other species of which your planet's scientists and theologians know nothing, although your scientist Carl Sagan knew but would not prove we were around, and Nikolai Tesla knew we were around, and we communed with him, and other people on your world have sensed or even seen us from time to time, but they were not believed by anyone else. Many human shamans have known us, and we have had some dialogue with them." 

    Willa Sue asks with her vocal cords, "Is this an invasion, you are the messengers?" 

    'No, this is not an invasion. We have been here a very long time, but mostly we stay in what your science fiction calls cloaked or stealth mode. We live in what the wild aborigines in Australia called dream time, and we also live in the kind of time human beings live in. We can switch back and forth at will." 

    Riley asks, "You are from another planet? Or another dimension? 

    "Both." 

    "You have a spaceship or something?" 

    "Yes, but it's nothing like what you can imagine. It has no rockets. It does not breathe fire when it takes off. It is made of electromagnetic particles and it rides space winds sort of like your airline pilots ride the jet stream when they fly from California to New York City. We use what some people on your world call wormholes to get from one place to another, and we use black holes' gravity to slingshot and increase our ship's velocity. We can and do travel much in excess of the speed of light. But we are slow pokes compared to your Archangel Michael, who can be here one moment, and somewhere else another moment, and in several places at once. We have not figured out how angels get around, and maybe we never will. They are entirely different from us. They are made from living light and are not bound by any laws of physics known to us." 

    "What are you made from?" Willa Sue asks. 

    "Electro-magnetic plasma is the simplest explanation. We can walk through your walls, if we wish. We can teleport ourselves, if we wish, but not in space. We need to be in our ships to do that, if we wish to stay what you call alive." 

    "How long do you live?" Riley asks. 

    "A very long time, since we are not biological beings, we do not, shall we say, rot or decay like you do. We do not age like you do. We do not live forever, as energy eventually breaks down if it is not replenished. But we are around for a very long time." 

    "How'd that come about, you were made? You came out of slime as a tadpole? Or you were mud that got struck by lightning?" Will Sue asks." 

    "Lighting played a part, but not what you call lightening. There are other kinds of lightning. Some human beings have been stuck by it. Riley was struck by it in Hillcrest Hospital. That's what really woke him up." 

    Riley says, "Okay, I have a problem with what you explained, because there would be no reason for you to have tails, if you are not biological beings. No ancestral trees to swing from, huh?" 

    "Appearances are deceiving. Our tails are antennae, sort of like your world's cat whiskers. Our tails sense like radar or sonar what is going on, and where. Our tales tell us stuff we need to know, such as how far away a magnetic storm is, or how far we are from an energy vortex where we can feed." 

    "Fucking amazing," Riley says. 

    "For real," Willa sue says. 

    "Okay, why did you come to us?" Riley asks. 

    "Archangel Michael encouraged us to come to you and tell you a story about your species. It's a very long story, but the short version is, once upon a time, we were in a big struggle on our planet, and some of us developed time travel, which was far easier for us to achieve than it is for biological beings such as yourself. Some of us went into the future and discovered there was no future. We were not there. It was as if we had never existed. We had simply disappeared, and they couldn't discover why. They came back and reported what they had found in the future, and it caused quite a commotion. A commotion that never stopped, for we are still here, but we do not know when we might not still be here. That's a total mystery to us. And, that's why we are here. To tell you that the same lies in store for your species. We cannot tell you when or where or why, but your species will cease to exist and there is nothing your species can do about it. Meaning, there is nothing you two can do about it. So, we suggest you try to enjoy your lives as much as possible and hope thereby to have experiences that will free what you call your souls from your bodies and your species and your relationship with this planet, and you go roaming the stars and the heavens like we do." 

    Willa Sue says, "Well, we had a blast on Oprah's show and on Larry King's show. That was a bad thing?" 

    "Not at all. It was a good thing. Keep trying to have blasts. Keep trying to live life as fully as possible. But do it knowing that you are doing it for you, and if someone else is helped, then that's good. But what you are about is trying to be all that you are, and as you know, that is not what the human species, in the main, is about." 

    "Is this some kind of reality TV show," Riley asks? 

    "Well, it's being watched as we speak to you. There are many viewers. None of them are of your species. You, your species, are watched in ways you cannot possibly imagine. Some of the watchers would like to see your species end. But it will end when it's time for it to end, or it commits suicide, by killing the planet, if that is allowed, which maybe it won't be. Species have killed planets before. Species have been terminated before they killed their planet. Something decides what is allowed, or not allowed. Sometimes we are called in to carry out that something's wishes. You might call it God. That's as good a name as any, and Michael knows much more about that than we do." 

    Riley and Willa Sue look at each other. 

    The visitors continue, "There was variation of your species on this planet, which sometimes is referred to as the Atlanteans.  They were from the Pleiades, and they tried to integrate with your species, which Michael, or something, had jump started on  this planet. The Atlaneans could interbreed with some of your species, but the offspring were not encouraging, so that was stopped. The Atlanteans finally decided to leave, and they used their technology to destroy most of the evidence they had been here. Most. There are the pyramids. There are  hieroglyphs. There are other residues of their time here. They went home in their starships, which traveled much as we travel." 

    There was another species, which has been called the Lemurians. They, too, were from the Pleiades. There are several inhabited planets in the Pleiades star system. The Lemurians were ethereal. They were able to teleport themselves. They did not have or need spaceships. We never figured out how they did it. We think they might have intermingled with the Australian aborigines and gave them dream time or taught them how to use it. Then, the Lemurians left, and we assume they returned to the Pleiades, but perhaps they went somewhere else.  

    "Humanity is going to destroy itself, isn't it?" Willa Sue asks. 

    "Yes." 

    "Can you take us with you?", Riley asks. 

    "Yes, but we don't recommend it. You would be like two goldfish in a small aquarium, being watched all the time by multitudes of curiosity seekers. You would be like freaks at a state fair. Here on Earth, you are rock stars. We envy you. Now we must take our leave. We wish you well, and we will be watching, and sometimes you might feel or sense us cheering you on, crying when you cry, laughing when you laugh. You cannot possibly know just how much potential your species has, or had, which our species simply does not have, just as your species does not  have our species' potential." 

    The light shimmers and they are gone. 

 

 

Road Trip to Paradise 

 

    Riley and Willa Sue decide to take a road trip to the Florida Keys, where they have heard Mother Nature has not been entirely paved over and she uses hurricanes to let the invasive species, humans, know she's still very much around.  

    Just above Miami, Riley and Willa Sue leave I-95 and get onto the Florida Turnpike and take it to US 1 and on to Florida City and reach the 18-Mile Stretch causeway linking the mainland to Key Largo. They feel something wonderful, like a welcoming committee of fairies, or mermaids. They get choked up and tears come to their eyes. Is this what heaven feels like? Have they come home? They feel this way until it dissolves as they cross Jewfish Creek Bridge just above Key Largo. 

    Jewfish Creek connects the Bay of Florida to the west with Card Sound to the east. Card Sound empties into the Atlantic Ocean near the posh, exclusive upscale Ocean Reef Club resort at the northeastern tip of Key Largo. Posh, exclusive, upscale are not on Riley and Willa Sue's wish list. They are spoiled by the mostly unspoiled corridor of the Florida Panhandle, where Willa Sue was born and grew up, and where she and Riley met at her US 98 vegetable and fruit stand between Port St. Joe and Apalachicola. Card Sound reminds them of Apalachicola Bay and Port St. Joe Bay. 

    Riley says he's tired of driving and he slows and pulls their light blue Toyota Highlander onto the white crushed seashell and coral fossil shoulder and stops. He opens the driver's side door and gets out and leans backward and stretches his spine and abdomen, and then he bends forward and stretches his spine the other way and his hamstrings. Willa She gets out, does the same, and they switch sides and head down US 1 to where they know not. They have no reservations. They are going where the wind and tides take them. 

    As they pass over Tavernier Creek Bridge, which connects lower Key Largo to Plantation Key, they get their third glimpse of what the Florida Keys really are about. When they cross over Whale Harbor Marina on the upper end of Matecumbe Key, they see what the Keys really are about. Fucking beautiful emerald and blue water and shallow flats, When they leave  Matecumbe Key and hit the causeway to Lower Matecumbe Key, they are fucking blown away by the sheer beauty the Atlantic Ocean to the left, and the flats and deep blue green channels to the west. They see a bald eagle on top of a large power line tower. 

    As Willa Sue and Riley leave Lower Matecumbe Key and cross Channel 2 Bridge, they feel like they have died and gone to heaven, which feeling increases when they cross over Channel 5 Bridge and reach Long Key, where the roadside scenery becomes rather ordinary, and remains that way to and through Marathon to Seven Mile Bridge, and Old Seven Mile Bridge running parallel, built by Henry Flagler in the 1920s for his railroad from the mainland to Key West.  

    When they reach the hump of Seven Mile Bridge, they see left and right as beautiful an ocean as can be seen anywhere. They feel like they have died and gone to heaven. The scenery calms down until they reach Bahia Honda Bridge and the parallel old Bahia Honda Bridge Flagler built. Then, they are on Big Pine Key, and all they feel in their stomachs is butterflies. Thousands of butterflies. 

    When they reach the traffic light on Big Pine, Willa Sue feels seized to turn right on Wilder Road and drive that winding road to where she knows not. They pass by a shopping center on the left, then they are in a residential subdivision, then they see a No Name Pub on their left. Then on their right, they see a marina, with a two story building, with a bait shop at ground level and wooden cabins across a side road from the marina. Dead ahead is a bridge, the sign on it says, "No Name Key Bridge." Willa Sue pulls into the bait shop parking lot and they get out of the Highlander and stretch and walk to the bait shop. 

    A pretty, 40 or so red-headed woman asks, "Hi, can I help you?" 

    Riley kinda feels like he's a passenger along for the ride,  

    Willa Sue says, "Hi, do you rent out those cabins across the road?"  

    The pretty red-headed woman says, "Yes, and we have an apartment above the bait shop. It's available, and two of the cabins are available. The apartment is $100 a night, one night free if you rent for a week, The cabins are $135 a night." 

    Willa sure says, "Can we see a cabin? The apartment might not be quiet enough for us." 

    The pretty red-headed woman reaches behind her and pulls a key ring off a nail on the wall and hands it to Willa Sue and says "Cabin 4, and my name is Hazel." Her eyes are hazel. 

    Willa Sue and Wiley cross the side road and go into Cabin 4. It has a living room and kitchen area, a bedroom, and a bathroom.  

    "This'll do just fine," Willa Sue says. 

    Passenger along for the ride says, "You're the tour guide, Wife." 

    They walk back across the side road and tell Hazel they want the room for a week, and how does she want to be paid? 

    Hazel says, "We give a 10 percent discount for cash. Otherwise, Visa or MasterCard. We don't do Federal Express." 

    Riley pulls out his wallet and counts out enough hundreds and fifties for a week, and asks, "How's the food in that pub down the road?" 

    Hazel says, "Right good for bar food. There is a Chinese restaurant and a pizza parlor in the shopping center you came by on your way here. There is a family style restaurant on US 1, just take the side road to the left before you reach US 1. There is a health food store with a sandwich bar going the other way on US 1, toward Key West. There is a Winn-Dixie in the shopping center, it has a deli bar. And, there is a popular breakfast, lunch and dinner cafe called "The Cracked Egg, on US 1, next to the Big Pine Motel. That's where you eat, if you want to know what's going on around here." 

    Willa Sue gives Riley a wink and a smile, and she thanks Hazel, and they walk out the bait shop to the Highlander and get in and head to No Name Pub and go in and see dollar bills all over the ceiling and part of the walls and order draft beers and kick back and take a breath, and say, in unison, "Holy fucking shit! Is this heaven?" 

    Archangel Michael tells Gabriel and Melchizedek, "This is going to be interesting; don't you think?"  

    Gabriel and Melchizedek smile. 

    Willa Sue and Rile order pizza, which turns out to be super darn good, and it is perfect with a couple more draft beers. 

    Leaving the pub, they bump into two doe key deer, who look like they are looking for handouts. Figuring these small white tails probably are like their larger cousins in the Florida Panhandle, Willa Sue walks back into the pub and returns with a hear of romaine lettuce and some carrots. 

 

 

The Cracked Egg 
 

    Maybe it was a draw, who went to sleep the fastest in The Old Wooden Bridge Fish Camp's cottage unit 4.  

    In a dream, Willa Sue is the shepherd of a herd of maybe 30 key deer, consisting of about 10 6- to 8-point bucks, including two 8-point bucks so old that the hair on their faces is white. Three prongs on the left side of one oldster's rack are broken off into short stubs. There are about a dozen does and the rest of the herd are fawns. With Willa Sue and the herd are a mating pair of bottlenose dolphins carrying harpoons lashed to each of their pectoral fins. Wille Sue is riding a beautiful grey and white Appaloosa mare, and attached to her saddle is a scabbard containing a lever-action Winchester 30-30. 

    In a dream, Riley is swarmed by a pod of mermaids in the middle of which is Aquaman holding in his right hand his three-pronged fork with barbed points. Aquaman says, "Here's the deal, Lawyer. There aren't any great white sharks in this area, and that's a shame, because the invasive species is raping and pillaging the lovely Florida Keys and polluting her beautiful waters and killing her spectacular coral reef, because there are no great white's to stop it. You may not be able to stop it, but me and these mermaids are hoping you will give it your very best shot." The mermaids swarm all over Riley and he feels like he has died and gone to redneck, hillbilly and every other kind of mystic heaven, and he wakes up thinking maybe she should not tell Mary Lou, who is lying on her side looking him squarely in the eyes. 

    "What's going on, Riley? You were squirming all over the place with a ridiculously stupid grin on your face." 

    Riley explains what's going on,  

    Will Sue explains that he needs to focus on his own mermaid. 

    Riley focuses on his own mermaid.  

    Then ensues a lot of squirming, moaning and gasping for air. 

    Then, Willa Sue tells Riley her dream. 

    Riley says, "Maybe we should go eat breakfast at The Cracked Egg and get a newspaper and look to see if there are any houses for sale around here." 

    Willa Sue says, "Ya think?" 

    The Cracked Egg is doing a brisk business. All the tables are taken, and there are three empty stools at the lunch counter. So, that's where Willa Sue heads, while Riley picks a copy of a newspaper off the end of the countertop. 

    A waitress looking about 50 with sun-bleached hair and deeply sun-tanned face and arms, her name tag says, "Rhonda," brings them two glasses of ice water and asks if they want coffee?' 

    Willa says, "No thanks, but we could use sliced lemon, if you have it." 

    Rhonda nods, yes, and hands them two menus and walks through a door into the kitchen, where an older woman can be seen cooking something on a griddle. 

    Ronda returns with 4 lemon slices. 

    Riley says, "Thanks, I think I'm going for the grilled grouper and fried eggs and whole wheat toast." 

    Rhonda nods, looks at Willa Sue, who says, "He ain't never heard of ladies first." 

    Rhonda laughs, says, "Want me to shoot him for you?" 

    Willa Sue shakes her head, no, says, "Ain't worth wasting a good bullet. I'll have the spinach and onion omelet." 

    Rhonda says, "Darn, I was feeling like some excitement." 

    Willa Sue and Riley look at each other, then back at Rhonda,  

    Rhonda looks at them. 

    Riley says, "I think there is gonna be lots of excitement, but let's not start with shooting me. Maybe later, that will need doing. Meanwhile, I'm Riley and there is Willa Sue, and we are thinking about moving here and doing things that might cause people to want to shoot both of us." 

    "What kind things?" Rhonda asks, wondering to herself just how many more weirdos the Florida Keys can handle? 

    Riley says, "Tell her your dream last night, Wife." 

    Willa Sue tells Rhonda her dream. 

    Rhonda laughs, says, "You some kind of shaman woman?" 

    Willa Sue shrugs, says, "Tell her your dream last night, Riley?. 

    Riley tells Rhonda his dream. 

    Rhonda looks at Riley, then back at Willa Sue, says, "I know some people you two need to meet. Let me turn in your order." 

    Riley looks at the front page of the Keynoter. An article entitled "Chambers of Commerce Want Faster Hurricane Evacuation to Save Lives." 

    Riley reads the article, sees there is some mischief at play. Chambers of Commerce are quoted as saying they want to save lives. A representative of an outfit calling itself, "Stop The Bulldozers", is quoted as saying The Chambers of Commerce only want a faster hurricane evacuation, because the faster people can leave the keys, the more new residential building permits the state government in Tallahassee will allow to be issued in the Keys. 

    Riley hands the Keynoter to Willa Sue, says, "Read the hurricane evacuation article, Wife." 

    Rhonda comes by and tears a page out of her order pad and hands it to Riley. On it is written, Agnes and Wilfred Longshore. 305-407-4286.  

    Riley says, "Thanks," shows the note to Willa Sue and folds in half and puts it in his pocket. 

    Willa Sues asks Rhonda if she knows of any homes for sale nearby? 

    Rhonda says, "No, did you look in the Keynoter classified real estate section?" 

    Willa Sue says, "Will do." 

    Ronda says, "I think you two and the Longshores might be from the same planet. I'll call them and let them know that and I gave you their phone number." 

    Riley asks Rhonda for her phone number and she writes in on her order pad and tears off that sheet and gives it to Riley. 

    Riley asks Rhonda, "What do you know about the Stop The Bulldozers outfit?" 

    "They view themselves as The Resistance and real estate developers and their lawyers and county commissioners as agents of the Devil." 

    "Is that the Longshores?" 

    "No." 

    "The Longshores are off-the-gridders. They live on No Name Key. Have you been on No Name Key?" 

    Willa Sue says, "No." 

    "Check it out. It's off the grid. No public water, sewer or electricity. They collect rainwater into cisterns, they use solar panels to make electricity, and they use compost toilets, and their home is an octagon on stilts, which hurricanes can't easily knock down, and they use natural ventilation to cool their home. They fish for their dinner and raise vegetables in containers on their deck and have a variety of tropical fruit trees, and two native sapodilla trees, which produce delicious fruit. They claim to be from another star system." 

    "Which star system," Willa Sue asks. 

    "The Pleiades," Rhonda says. 

    "Do you believe them?," Riley asks. 

    Rhonda chuckles, says with a twinkle in her eyes, "I'll leave that for you to decide. But I will say, they told me they cannot drink the public water, it makes them sick. So, they catch and store rainwater. They say their vegetables like rainwater, too." 

    Willa Sue asks, "Are you from the Pleiades, Rhonda?" 

    Rhonda says, "Do I look like I'm from another planet?" 

    Riley says, "I dunno. Could you be in disguise? Some kind of shape shifter secret agent?" 

    "Only in my dreams." 

 

 

Behold, the pelican! 

 

    Back in their Highlander, Riley opens his cell phone and calls the Longshore's number. No answer. Riley leaves his name on voicemail, says Rhonda at The Cracked Egg said we should meet.  

    Riley drives to Olden Wooden Bridge Fish Camp, A couple in maybe their mid-50s are getting into a fishing skiff powered by a 35 horsepower Evinrude. An old 35 horsepower Evinrude. Most fishermen today use Mercuries and Yahamas.  

    The couple look at Riley and Willa Sue standing on the dock above them. 

    Riley says, "Hi. We're new to the Keys. I see your fishing tackle. What are you going out for/" 

    The man says, "Mangrove and yellowtail snappers in the back country. Grouper and snook if we get lucky." 

    "Eating fish," Riley says. 

    "Yes," the man says.  

    He kinda looks like Mick Jagger. Kinda, but taller. The woman kinda looks like Jane Fonda. Kinda, but taller. 

    "I'm Riley Strange and this is my wife, Willa Sue," 

    The man says, I'm Dale and my lady friend is Emily. We don't tell anyone our last names, if we don't know them, or then we'd have to kill them." He has a twinkle in his eye. 

    Riley laughs, Willa Sue is reminded of her brothers and doesn't laugh. 

    Riley says, "I used to do a lot of fishing around Apalachicola and Port St. Joe, and Willa Sue is from around there. That's where we met." 

    Dale says, "We tell you where we are from, then we have to kill you." 

    Willa Sue is reminded more of her brothers. 

    Riley says, "Not asking where you are from, could care less, actually. Was simply being social." 

    Emily says, "Don't take Dale seriously, he likes to stir things up, But there are a lot of people in the Florida Keys, who came here from somewhere else. They don't like being asked where they are from, because they are on the lam from something. The law, their family, and ex-wife, child support, alimony, or whatever."  

    "I knew men like that in prison," Riley says. 

    Emily nods, says, "I know a little about prison myself.' 

    Riley nods. 

    Emily says, "We saw you two on Oprah." 

    Riley nods. 

    Dale says, "We wondered if you two are trying to get yourselves killed." 

    Willa Sue laughs, says, "We been wondering that, too." 

    Emily laughs, says, "I bet you were a hell of a lawyer, Riley." 

    "Past tense," Riley says.  

    "I bet you haven't forgotten how to do it, though," Dale says. 

    "Oh, I remember it very well, and I even dream about it sometimes, but I think my lawyering days are over." 

    "You didn't help the men in your prison with their cases?" Emily asks. 

    "No, I told them, if they were guilty, then why should I help them? I pled guilty to kidnapping Willa Sue. I left it up to the judge to decide if I should go to prison. I wanted to fight it before a jury, but I was told in a dream to let the judge decide it, and so that's what I did." 

    "You think it was God that told you that in your dream?", Dale asks. 

    "I thought so at the time, but later, after Archangel Michael came to me in dreams and told me stuff, I thought it was Michael that told me to let the Judge decide it." 

    "That's fucking intense," Emily says. 

    Riley nods, says, "I think maybe prison is harder for women than for men, but it's plenty intense for men. When I was inside, I read a book called 'We're All Doing Time," by a fellow named Bo Lozoff. A lot of it was about him and his wife, Sita, going into prisons and talking with inmates, and corresponding with inmates who wrote to them. They were into yoga, had spent time in India with a yogi. Pretty interesting people, didn't preach religion, but just trying to relate to being in prison in a spiritual way, instead of how it usually is dealt with. Some inmates got really religious, some claimed they were saved by Jesus. That never appealed to me. I felt God and put me in there, and so I tried to deal with it that way. When I got out, I felt God had gotten me out of there." 

    "God, or Michael?" Dale asks. 

    "Is there any difference? I think Michael works for God. There was a bigger picture than I could see when I was taken into that prison by Florida state troopers. A bigger picture unfolded while I was inside. A bigger picture is unfolding now. It's all related and Willa Sue and I have no clue where it is headed, other than  we were sent to Big Pine Key, and then we had dreams about trying to protect the Florida Keys and the waters there, and here we are talking to you two, so how do you two do? I figure we are meeting you for a reason." 

    Emily says, "Everything happens for a reason." 

    Dale nods, says, "Yep." 

    Emily says, "After I got out, I heard some things about Bo Lozoff that were disturbing. Like he was an egomaniac. Like he was a dictator at the farm commune where released prisoners want try to start over. Like he ran around on Sita." 

    "Really? Riley asks. 

    "Really," Emily says.  

    Emily says, "I was told in a dream that a man and a woman were coming, and I guess that's you two." 

    Willa Sue nods, says, "Do you know some folks named Longshore on No Name Key." 

    Dale says, "We know of them. Trust fund babies. Claim they are from another planet." 

    "The Pleiades?" Riley asks. 

    Emily says, "They have a website called pleiadeans.com. They hold gatherings at their home. They do sweat lodges. They chant. They use some psychedelic plant from South America to take trips somewhere else. They say they are Pleiadean shamans." 

    "You know that how?" Riley asks. 

    "It's on their website. It's their religion." 

    "What's your religion"? Willa Sue asks. 

    "Trying to get through each day and have some fun doing it without hurting anyone," Emily says. 

    Dale nods, says, "I'm a backcountry fishing and nature guide. Emily makes jewelry out of coral fossil rock, amber, turquoise and silver. She's into Native American ways." 

    "And peyote?", Riley asks. 

    "Sometimes, when I feel I need to hear from the Great Spirit," Emily says. 

    "You do sweat lodges?" Riley asks? 

    "I did them in prison. There were Native American women in there. They won a federal lawsuit that allowed them to do sweat lodges as part of their religion. They let me join them. I didn't feel the prison chaplain was doing me any good, or maybe I didn't want her to do me any good. I'd had my fill of religious people growing up, like you had your fill of your religious parents, Willa Sue. Turned me against religion. Turned me against lots of things. Then something turned me against being American." 

    "What was that?" Willa Sue asks. 

    "I was a student at Kent State in Ohio. Some of us college students were really against the Vietnam War and America bombing in Cambodia. We did a sit in on the campus. Ohio National Guardsmen came. We threw flowers at them, and maybe some small rocks. They told us to disperse. We didn't. They started shooting at us. They killed some of my friends. The rest of us jumped up and ran away. The Guardsmen ran after us, shooting at us. My friends veered right and I veered left. The mother-fucking Guardsmen chased after my friends, shooting at them, and I got away. Nothing ever happened to those Guardsmen, They got away with it. I joined the Weathermen cell at Kent State. I carried explosives for them in my daypack to different places where they hid out. I finally decided that wasn't good for me and I quit. I got to drinking too much, I got hooked on drinking too much. I flunked out of Kent State. I started hooking for a pimp. I ran some of his street drugs. I got caught by local police. I got put in prison for that. The Native American women inmates had their own stories with white people. They kinda adopted me. I did my full sentence, 3 years with good time. I wanted to be free when I got out. I waited tables in restaurants for a couple of years, saved a few pennies, bought a used Lady Harley and I came to the Florida Keys and met Dale, like it was arranged. We've been together ever since. Sometimes Dale calls me 'Biker Chick', and sometimes I let him ride on my bitch seat." 

    Willa Sue and Riley are gobsmacked. 

    Dale says, "Give us your phone number, and after we get in from fishing today, we'll call you and give you directions to our place on Little Torch Key, and you can come over for a fresh fish dinner tonight." 

    Riley tells them his cell phone number, and Emily writes it on the back of her hand with a ballpoint pen. They get into their skiff and Dale cranks up the Evinrude and steers the skiff at idle speed through the narrow marina pass into Bogie Channel on the right side of No Name Key Bridge. 

    Riley and Willa Sue walk around the bait shop and through its parking lot and up a short path to the bridge. As Dale and Emily pass under the bridge, pelicans are everywhere in the air. 

    When Willa Sue and Riley reach the hump in the middle of the bridge, they stop and face the Atlantic Ocean. Pelicans are sitting all along the bridge railing. Pelicans are floating on the water below the bridge. There are a few people fishing. 

    Riley and Willa sue burst into uncontrolled heart-heaving and sobbing. Oceans of tears and rivers of snot come out of them. They hear Michael say, "Grab your best hold, you ain't seen nothing yet."' 

    They calm down, walk back to the bait shop and to unit 4.  

    Rile is seized to pull out his journal and onto the page his ballpoint pen writes as if it has a mind of its own: 
 

    Behold, the pelican! 

    Slow, ugly, clumsy afoot, 

    But in the air, 

    A great fisher indeed! 

    And in times of want, 

    plucks out its own breast meat 

    to feed its young. 
 

     

The Pleiadeans 

 

    Riley's cell phone rings, he opens it.  

A man's voice says, "This is Wilfred Longshore returning Riley Strange's call from earlier this morning." 

    "Speaking," Riley says. 

    "You met Rhonda?" 

    "Yes, she said we should meet you and Agnes." 

    "We're home, the house is at the very end of No Name Drive." 

    "We're staying at the fish camp, we can be there in a few minutes, if that's convenient." 

    "Come on. Beep your horn when you get to the front gate and we'll open it for you." 

    "Okay." 

    Across No Name Key Bridge, the main road becomes County 4. Along the side of the road are several key deer, clearly looking for handouts. Weakened and half-tamed by handouts, they will lose their vitality, their offspring will not be as vigorous, in time they will become domesticated, and unless taken care of, they will become extinct. 

    Riley turns left on Key Deer Blvd and drives to the end and sees the Longshores' octagon house on about 10 foot stilts. He beeps the horn and in a few moments a short balding man of maybe 60 comes down the steps from the house and walks down the driveway to the gate and opens it and waves Riley and Willa Sue in. He walks beside their car until it reaches a parking area for several cars- guests.  

    A Ranger Rover is parked under the house. Also under the house are two huge pale green water storage tanks with a pipe running down from the roof gutters into the top of the cisterns. Between the cisterns is an about 12x12-foot closed space. Switchback wooden stairs rise up the right side of the house. The roof is white aluminum, to deflect sunlight. On the roof facing southeast, south and southwest are solar panel arrays. Behind the house is a canal with a dock and a sailboat maybe 35 feet long. Sails down. And a skiff with a Yamaha outboard motor, hanging from a davit.   

   Winfred shows them an array of batteries on shelves in the enclosed space. On shelves, hoping a hurricane tidal surge won't get that high. They walk to the dock and look toward the Gulf of Mexico. Magnificent view. Mangrove snapper forage around the pier's pilings with an immature barracuda and an osprey overhead diving for dinner. A 4-point buck and a doe key deer forage off to the right. Buzzards circle high overhead. Winfred points at them, says, "They come down her in the cool months, then head north for summer. When there's no wind for them to use to stay aloft, they land anywhere they can, including on boats out to sea."  

    Also soaring aloft are dark birds with forked tails and somewhat bat-shaped wings. "Those are man o' war birds, also called frigate birds. They are fishing and will dive at surprisingly fast speed if they see something. Those pelicans sitting over there in the mangroves with the white birds, egrets, they are diving birds, too. Clumsy as hell, but proficient. The egrets wade shallow water and use their long beaks kinda like spears, and their necks uncoil and spring kinda like a snake strikes." 

    Riley says, "I have seen egrets in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, but more great blue herons. I have seen ospreys on Alabama river era and lakes. I have read they are all over America. And, I have read they hate and chase eagles." 

    "That's true, I have seen ospreys chase bald eagles here many times, and usually the eagles just leave. But once I saw an osprey get about and dive on an eagle passing through, and the eagle rolled over on its back and showed it's lovely talons, and the osprey veered off and the eagle did a 180 and headed pronto back in the direction it had come from. Speaking of snakes, we have the southern diamondback over there on Big Pine. I never saw one on No Name." 

    Wilfred motions for them to go into the house and they leave the dock and walk up the stairs. All east, south and west-facing windows have awnings, to keep the sun from coming through the windows, and all the windows have storm shutters.  

    Agnes is in the kitchen. She's about the same height and size as Wilfred. She smiles, says, "Welcome to our paradise get-a-way. Your reputation precedes you. Rhonda told us about seeing you on Oprah. We don't have television." 

    Willa Sue says, "Stealthy Rhonda, she didn't say anything about seeing us on Oprah." 

    Agnes says, "I imagine most people on No Name and Big Pine heard on the local coconut telegraph, that is, grapevine, that you are here. In fact, there is a public Internet forum called 'The Coconut Telegraph' - bigpinekey.com. A fellow who calls himself "Deer Ed" runs it. You want to find out what's going on around here and all over the Keys, read "The Coconut Telegraph." 

    Riley nods, says, "Thanks for the tip, and for the heads up." 

    Agnes says, "Ronda told us she's going to splash you  on The Coconut Telegraph." 

    Willa Sue looks at Riley, who looks at her. This ain't what they had in mind, at least not just yet.  

    Willa Sue says, "Your home is cool inside, and it's pretty warm outside. How is that so? 

    Wilfred says, "We use vents in the floor around the house and reverse ceiling fans and vents in the eves to draw cooler air under the house up into the house." 

    "Ingenious," Rileys says. 

    "Ancient peoples knew about that," Agnes says. 

    Riley asks, "What do you do with your batteries after they wear out?" 

    "We load them into the Range Rover and drive them to a place in Homestead that recycles them," Wilfred says. 

    "Willa Sue says, "I don't see a laundry. How do you wash your clothes?" 

    "In the shower, when we bathe, then we hang the clothes over the deck railing to dry in the sun and wind," Agnes says. 

     "We cook with propane," Winfred says. "And, we don't have a generator for backup. We use flashlights, candles and lanterns, if the batteries get low." 

    "You drink the rainwater you collect?" Willa Sue asks. 

    "Yes, and we've done it for years and never had any problem. We have wire mesh over the gutter rails, to keep debris out of the water we collect. We learned our vegetable plants much prefer rainwater to public water. They put bromine in the public water here, instead of chlorine." 

    "Bromine?" Riley asks." 

    "Yep. Don't need as much bromine as you need chlorine. They pull the water out of aquifers near Florida City and run it through a processing plant and a desaline plant they built to process brackish water. Then, they mix the two kinds of water together and send it down here through a pipe attached to the bridges. They installed a bigger pipe in the 1980s, and they widened some roads and built some new bridges, and that's when development took off down here. Before the bigger waterline, no new construction could tap on. So, there was no real estate development. Well, there were no new buildings. They knew the bigger waterline was coming and developers bought land and dug canals and subdivided and sold lots. The silt from the canal digging and road grading went into the water and out to the reef and made it harder for the sun to get into the water, and algae that rely on photosynthesis, which corals fed on, died and the reef nearly all died. Don't suppose it helped the reef for all the homes using cess pits to start with, then septic systems.'  

   "Key West pumped its raw sewage through a pipe out into the ocean. The Ocean Reef Club dumped its raw sewage into its saltwater creek on outgoing tides. A fellow named Captain "Eco" Ed Davidson, former navy carrier pilot in Vietnam, filed a lawsuit in federal court. The judge fined Ocean Reef $60,000 a day until it stopped dumping human shit into the saltwater creek. All the divers and medical doctors down here know the ocean is full of MRSA flesh-eating bacteria, MRSA is a kind of staphylococcus that resists antibiotics, and if you go into the water with a nick or scratch on your skin, you will be fighting for your life. You'll never hear about it from the Chambers of Commerce and the Tourist Development Council and the real estate developers and the county commissioners." 

    "We have a compost toilet. Our septic tank only handles kitchen and bathroom water. We feed our food wastes to Mother Nature, and we recycle our paper and plastic waste." 

    "And you call this Paradise?" Riley asks. 

    "It's as close to paradise as we can find," Winfred says. 

    Riley looks at Willa Sue, who looks at him, as they think, What in the fuck are we doing here? This place ain't no paradise. We been to paradise. Dominica in the Caribbean. This place is a wannabe. 

    Willa sue says, "So, people are the invasive species here, messing up paradise." 

    Agnes says,"Most people are. We don't hurt paradise."  

    Willa Sue says, "Well, you bought a house on that canal outside, and somebody dug it out and sent all that silt into the ocean and killed corals." 

    Agnes says, "The canal was dug before we moved here." 

    Willa Sue says, "Wonder how Mother Nature sees that? Wonder if she will say enough is enough, and send monster hurricanes and sweep the invasive species into the ocean?" 

    Winfred says, "To tell the truth, we feel the same. We would really miss living here, but you are right. Mother Nature is a lot more important than people. We just nest here. This is her home." 

    Anges says, "Mother Nature's first line of defense here in mosquitoes. The freshwater mosquitoes here have been known to carry yellow fever, zika, dengue, chikungunya and West Nile virus. The Mosquito Control Board keeps the freshwater mosquitoes knocked way back. We think a lot less people would live in the Keys, if there were no Mosquito Control Board. We also have saltwater breeding mosquitoes, they are smaller than the freshwater breeders. The salties bite like hell, but as far as we know, they don't carry those diseases.' 

    Riley says, "Hmmm, did MRSA become Mother Nature's first line of defense after Mosquito Control got rid of most of the freshwater breeders? 

    Wilfreds says, "That's a really good question. Reminds me of the old saying, 'Don't mess with Mother Nature'."     

    Willa Sue says, "Rhonda said you folks say you are from the Pleiades." 

    "That's what we believe, Agnes says." 

    "How'd you come to believe that?" 

    "A channel in Santa Fe told us that. And then we read "Bringers of the Dawn, by Barbara Marciniac, who channeled the Pleiadeans. And then we started dreaming about Pleiadeans and their ships. And then we saw a Pleiadean ship in Oregon. It was hovering parked beside a cloud about 100 times its size. We were with other people who, like us, were mental health professionals. We told them to look up, but they didn't look up. We kept telling them to look up, and they didn't look up. The ship darted behind the cloud. Then, the cloud started being stretched across the sky like a really wide vapor trail. We kept telling the others what we were seeing and for them to look up, but they didn't look up. We figured then that we needed to live somewhere else and do something else, and that's why we moved here." 

    Riley asks, "Have you seen that spaceship since then? Or another ship?" 

    "No." 

    "You read about those people in California, a cult, who drank poison to go be with extraterrestrials? 

    "Yes. There are all kinds of fanatics." 

    "Do you two belong to "Stop The Bulldozers?" 

    "No." 

    Riley looks at Willa Sue, she nods slightly, says, "We really appreciate you folks showing us your nice off the grid home. We imagine Mother Nature likes off the grid homes a lot more than she likes regular homes. We got some more exploring to do, so we better get on with that. Maybe you can persuade the Pleiadeans to help paradise shake off some of its fleas? But then, we've been hoping Archangel Michael will shake off some other kind of fleas we've been having dealings with, and so far, Michael keeps telling us to do our own fumigating." 

    Wilfred laughs. 

    Willa Sue smiles wanly. 

 
 
Snapper Throats 

 

    That night, Dale and Emily serve up a feast in their trailer on Little Torch Key.  

    Fresh-caught, Greek-style whole mutton snapper, pilaf brown rice, braised carrots with thyme, parsley, arugula and young mustard green salad with vinaigrette dressing. The arugula and mustards came out of the garden on the east side of the trailer.  

    "The throat meat is considered a delicacy, and Key Deer really don't like arugula and mustards," Emily chuckles. 

    She continues. 

    "When we rented this place, there was an old rotten stump in the yard, and some nice rich dirt about 3 inches thick. Below that is limestone bedrock, and below that is salt water, so we had to use raised beds to grow vegetables. Except, I cut up a sweet potato I bought at the Winn-Dixie in the Big Pine shopping center, and stuck the sweet potato pieces in the dead stump's dirt and watered it in good. About a month later, we had a huge patch of sweet potato vines and leaves. The leaves are really nutritious, good in salads. We left one day and when we came back, all left was stems. Not one leaf. That's when we knew there was a key deer on this island. Soon after, I went out on the front porch and saw an 8-point buck. One look at me, and he took off. Wild as could be. Later, we saw the doe. Even later, we saw two fawns and the doe down the dirt road out front. The fawns were kicking up their hind legs and playing, until the doe saw us, and adios! A year later, they didn't pay us no never mind, when they saw us. We figured someone was feeding them and giving them fresh water to drink." 

    Dale says, "That crossed-eyed Siamese-looking cat on the sofa giving you two the eye, Miss Kitty, is our rat control. The woods here are full of wild rats, which look like large fat mice. When we moved into this trailer, the rats did not move out. We had to keep the bedroom door shut at night, to keep the rats from getting up on our bed with us. Emily drove down to the animal shelter on Stock Island, just above Key West, and told them our problem, and they pointed out that there cat and said she was brought to the shelter by someone in one of the neighborhoods, because nobody was taking care of her. The good samaritan said all the cat liked to do was hunt. So, when Emily brought Miss Kitty home and turned her loose in the trailer. She went on the warpath right away, and the rats have not been in the trailer since." 

    Emily laughs, says, "The animal shelter asked me to take a male cat they had, too, named, Ranger. All he liked to do was be held and rubbed. And, he liked to range. He would leave and come back a day or two later. When he came back, Miss Kitty gave him hell. He hid in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and he hid under the bathtub. She would not let him have any peace. One day, he roamed off and didn't come back. About two weeks later, we noticed Miss Kitty was losing hair and weight, and she wasn't pooping. We took her in a cat carrier, yowling all the way,  to a vet in Marathon, who couldn't find anything wrong with her. The vet wanted to do an X-ray, and we declined. Driving home, when we reached the peak of the hump on Seven Mile Bridge, Dale turned and looked in the back seat at Miss Kitty yowling, and said, 'You dumb shit, you ran off your boyfriend and now you are mourning.' We got home, let her out of the cat carrier, and she climbed that shrub out front and went up on the roof of this trailer, and viewed her domain. Her hair stopped falling out, she started pooping and gaining wait. That's when I realize Dale is a cat whisperer." 

    Rile and Willa Sue burst out laughing. 

    Dale says, "We have an acre here. Half of it is grown up, wild. We have some pretty large trees for the Florida Keys. Several sapodilla trees, which produce delicious fruit later in the year. Papaya grows well in our raised beds, and that's our dessert tonight. I took to calling this place, 'Walden', and that's what it is for us." 

    Willa Sue says, "I can see why. You say you rent it?" 

    "We did, then we bought it," Dale says. "This subdivision was condemned by the Florida Environmental Protection Agency, because it is mostly wetlands. No new houses can be built here, but we can get a permit to remove the trailer and build a house on our land. Probably, the subdivision never should have been approved. Maybe someday we will be able to build an octagon house here, like what Agnes and Wilfred have. But then, maybe we will not stay here much longer," Emily says. 

    "Why's that?" Riley asks. 

    "The county commission, developers and their lawyers think development is nearer to God than anything else. We think Mother Nature is nearer to God than anything else. We see what is coming down here. We've been looking at the Florida Panhandle, where you're from Willa Sue. We like what we see there. it's so far from a major airport, so remote, that perhaps Mother Nature can hold out longer there, than here." 

    Riley says, "I would think hurricanes would deter development in the Florida Keys." 

    Dale says, "Developers don't worry about what hurricanes do to people. They cut subdivisions and build homes and condominiums and sell them and laugh all the way to the bank. If a hurricane comes and wrecks their development before they complete and sell it, they send the bill to their insurance carrier and FEMA. There would be a lot less development here, if there were no FEMA. Without FEMA, working people like us could not afford to live in the Keys, because we could not fix our home back up after a hurricane floods it out and blows off the roof. Working people don't have trust funds like Wilfred and Agnes have to build a hurricane-proof home. Developers don't build hurricane-proof homes. How do you think this trailer would fare in a hurricane? Lots of working people in the Keys live in trailers. Mostly, rental trailers. Trailer parks. It's the only thing they can afford." 

    Willa Sue asks, "What's the old wooden bridge about?" 

    Dale says, "For many years, the bridge between Big Pine and No Name Key was made out of wood. Then, somebody started a fire on it and most of it burned down. For years, you could see burnt parts of the bridge and burned pilings sticking up out of the water. We heard it was really good fishing there. Grouper, mangrove snapper, snook and small bait fish all loved hanging out around that old bridge. They built the new bridge later, and that's when people built homes on No Name Key. Some people who live there complain about it being off the grid, no electricity, sewer or running water. We wonder why they bought there, if they were going to complain about it? Agnes and Wilfred love living on No Name Key. They want it to stay like it is, forever. Don't blame them." 

    Riley asks, "Do you folks belong to Stop The Bulldozers?"  

    Emily says, "No. All they do is talk. What they need to do is hire a really good, tough, mean lawyer and tie the county commission and the developers up in court until hell freezes over. A lawyer like you, Riley." 

    Riley says, "Unfortunately, I am not licensed to practice law in Florida, and to become licensed, I would have to take the Florida Bar exam, and before I do that, I would have to pass a background check by the Florida Bar, and, well, maybe they would let me take the bar exam, for which I would have to study six months to stand chance of passing it. And, to be honest, after talking with Wilfred and Agnes and with you and Dale today, I don't feel called to take on that crusade. I really like you two, and wish I had known you years ago. I also think the Florida Panhandle is where I prefer to hang out and fish." 

    During the drive back to Old Wooden Bridge Fish Camp, Willa Sue asks Riley, "Why do you think Michael sent us down here, if we weren't supposed to live here? Why all the wild foreplay, and it ends like this?" 

    Riley shrugs, says, "Beats me, Wife." 

    In Willa Sue’s sleep that night, Michael takes Willa Sue up in the air above the Florida Keys, and then above America, and says, "You and Riley needed a vacation, and you needed to see that what many people call 'paradise' is a proxy for what is happening in America. And beyond America. Riley doesn't want to run for president, so we showed him something you two could do instead, if that's what you wanted. There may be nothing he wants to do, other than be with you and fish and travel about. But, will that satisfy Riley? Will it satisfy you? You two have been given much, and much may be asked of you." 

    Mary Lou comes to Riley in his sleep, and says, "Okay, lover boy, are you going to fish or cut bait?”  

Riley wakes up, wonders, What in the hell is that about?        

 

 

Mosquito Control v. Mother Nature and MRSA  

    

    The next morning, Riley and Willa Sue head to The Cracked Egg. 

    "Hi," Rhonda greets them as they come in the side door. 

    "Hi back at ya," Willa Sue says.  

    Riley orders grilled grouper, fried eggs and whole wheat toast, and Willa Sue orders the spinach omelet and grilled potatoes. And water, with lemon slices.  

    Rhonda turns in the order, comes right back, asks, "How'd it go with Wilfred and Angus?" 

    Riley says, "Nice people, we love their home." 

    "And?"  

    "They don't seem to be contributing anything to help the Florida Keys, which we learned from them, and from Dale and Emily, are kinda in shit creek and getting deeper.  

    "You met Dale and Emily?" 

    "Yep, right after seeing you last. At the fish camp marina. They kinda woke us up, and they woke us up the rest of the way over dinner last night at their trailer on Little Torch." 

    "Woke you up how?" 

    "Like, the ocean here is full of MRSA flesh eating bacteria nobody seems to want tourists to know about." 

    Rhonda nods. 

    Willa Sue says, "Why would we want to live by the ocean and not be able to swim in it? 

    Rhonda nods. 

    Riley says, "The Longshores told us about Mosquito Control getting rid of most of the mosquitoes that cause diseases, and that made the Florida Keys a lot more hospital for people to live here." 

    "And a lot more attractive for tourists," Rhonda added. 

    Willa Sue says, "They said you splashed us on bigpinekey.com's Coconut Telegraph." 

    "I wrote that you two are staying at the fish camp and are thinking about moving here." 

    "And?" 

    "And that I like you, but you seem a little weird, talking about angels and your dreams." 

    "And?" 

    "And that I sent you to visit the Longshores." 

    "And?" 

    "That's about it." 

    Willa Sue asks, "Do people on the Coconut Telegraph talk about flesh-eating bacteria?" 

    "I never saw that talked about there." 

    "Maybe you should talk about MRSA there, since this is your home and we're just passing through." 

    Rhoda shrugs, says, "MRSA is not my problem. I don't go swimming here." 

    Riley says, "I looked up MRSA online. It's a staph bacteria that became resistant to antibiotics. The pictures of people with MRSA skin infections were horrible. Tourists fill up the Big Pine Motel across the parking lot, and they eat in this restaurant, and they give you tips, and they go swimming, or snorkeling, or diving, and they go home, and maybe they take MRSA home with them, and when it breaks out on their skin, they and their doctors trying to save their lives don't know where or how they caught it. It don't sit well with Willa Sue and Me that the Florida Keys harbor a terrible water-borne plague that can kill people, and tourists aren't told about it." 

    Rhonda shrugs again, says, "No tourists, the Florida Keys economy dries up and a lot of people living here have to leave." 

    Willa Sue says, "Maybe Mother Nature would like that. Maybe she sent MRSA after Mosquito Control defeated HER first line of defense?" 

    Rhonda shrugs. 

    Riley pulls out his wallet, extracts a $10 bill, puts it on the counter top, says, "Thanks for helping us figure out this version of paradise isn't right for us." 

    Rhonda smiles, says, "It's been my pleasure." 

    Willa Sue smiles wanly. 

    Riley asks, "Is there a public library nearby?" 

    "Yes, in the Winn-Dixie Shopping Center. 

    "Thanks." 

    The library isn't open yet, but its internet Wi-Fi is working. 

    Sitting on the concrete steps in in front of the library, Riley opens his laptop and goes online to the Coconut Telegraph and sees Rhonda's splash at the top. 

 

Wonder Woman: Hey all you does and bucks out there. Guess what? Oprah and Larry King's buddies, Riley Strange and Willa Sue Jenkins, ate at The Cracked Egg today, and little ole' me waited on them and they are good tippers :-). They said they are staying at the Old Wooden Bridge Fish Camp, and they told me their dreams about them being told to come to paradise and do everything they can to save it from humans. I told them to go meet the Pleiadeans on No Name Key, hoping they all can team up and call down a spaceship, or a band of angels, to get rid of hurricanes, so the Florida Keys really will be Paradise. 

 

    Below Rhonda's post is: 

 

Sandy Downs here. 

Some people don't seem to think straight. Riley and Willa sue are probably the most important people in America, right now, and you want them to get rid of hurricanes, which Mother Nature makes? Are you f-ing serious?!@! I live in an octagon stilt house on Cudjoe Key. We get tidal surges during hurricanes that flood out the downstairs enclosure, but we get through hurricanes. Perhaps the idiots in the county government who approve new home permits should require octagon on stilts design? 

    

    Riley reads all of that to Willa Sue, who grabs his Apple laptop and types a reply under Rhonda's comment. 

 

How do you do, this is Willa Sue. 

  

Thank you, Sandy! But we kinda think President Bush, for better or for worse, is the most important person in America. 

 

Riley and I found the Pleiadeans to be nice people, wrapped up in their own little world instead of in the somewhat bigger picture, which is the reef is nearly dead, Mosquito Control killed most of Mother Nature's first line of defense, so she sent MRSA flesh-eating bacteria, which infected all of the Florida Keys waters, and nobody tells the tourists about MRSA, and did anybody in the Florida Keys ever hear about KARMA, and that SHE'S A REAL BITCH?!  
 

Riley and I drove down to the Florida Keys from near Jacksonville, thinking we might live here, but why would we want to hang out where Mother Nature sucks hind tit and MRSA rules the ocean and the locals don't tell the tourists about it? Like I said, we don't want that KARMA. We suggest you all join Stop The Bulldozers and help it hire a real lawyer, if such lives in your so-called paradise, to file suit in Federal Court, in Key West, Riley says, asking the Court to (1) stop Mosquito Control from killing Mother Nature's prime defense, mosquitoes, and (2) requiring the county government to warn tourists of their MRSA peril, if they go in the ocean. 

  

Very truly yours, 
 

Willa Sue- I'll let Riley speak for himself, if he wishes.  

 

    Riley takes back his laptop and types this comment: 
 

This is Riley, folks.  

 

Sandy Downs posted a KICK-ASS poem at our blog, strangerthanfiction.com, which we hope she also posted at the Coconut Telegraph, but if she didn't, we hope she will. Every American could learn a great deal from that poem. 
 

Meanwhile, Willa Sue is from the backwoods between Port St. Joe and Apalachicola. She was raised hunting alligators, wild boars and diamondback rattlesnakes with her brothers. She can break 2-inch boards with her bare hands, elbows, knees, feet and head. You really don't want to mess with her. Nor do I. 

  

We drove a long way to see what you call Paradise is about. We met some people we really like, who seem to know what's important, and what isn't. We hope you are such people, or if you aren't, you become such people. The Florida Keys themselves are far more important than the people living here. So, show the Keys some respect, instead of acting like God told you to live here and ruin it. 

  

If you get rid of Mosquito Control, that will stop development in its tracks, home prices and rents will plunge, and it will cost you a lot less to live here. Others of you will move away and avoid catching mosquito diseases and MRSA, and in that way respect and help yourselves, and respect and help Mother Nature restore what the invasive species, humans, screwed up in paradise.  
 

If you aren't up for that, at least warn tourists about MRSA in the ocean here. How would you like to be a tourist and not be told about MRSA in the ocean, and you go into the ocean and catch MRSA, and you return home and MRSA lesions break out on your skin, and you and your doctor are fighting to save your life? 

 

Meanwhile, consider Mother Nature throws up her hands and simply starts hammering paradise with several big hurricanes every year, until the invasive species figures it out, or FEMA goes bankrupt. Some people want me to run for president. I think they must not like me very much, to wish that shit job on me. But if I was president, I think I would not allow FEMA to rescue people who buy and build homes in hurricane zones, knowing FEMA would bail them out. 
 

Vaya con Dios. 
 

Cutthroat Road 

    Willa Sue says, "I want to find Sandy Downs." 

    Riley nods yes, closes his laptop, and they walk to the Highlander. 

    Willa Sue gets behind the wheel and off they head down US 1. 

    They pass through Little Torch Key and cross the bridge onto Ramrod Key. 

    They cross the bridge to Summerland Key. 

    They cross the bridge Cudjoe Key. 

    They pass a paved road on the right, and Riley gets a sharp crick in the left side of his neck. 

    Willa Sue keeps driving down US 1.  

    The crick gets sharper, and Riley tells Willa Sue about it. 

    She keeps driving down US 1, and the crick gets worse. 

    Riley says, "Please stop and turn around, Wife, before I open the door and jump out head first and put me out of my misery." 

    Willa Sue slows the Highlander, and after two oncoming cars pass going the other way, she does a U-turn and they head back up US 1. When they reach the paved side road, now on their left, Riley says, "The crick is almost gone."  

    As they continue up US 1, Riley says, "Shit, it's coming back. Turn around again, pretty please." 

    Willa Sue slows, no oncoming traffic this time, she does a u-turn and heads back down US 1. As they reach the paved side road to the right, Riley says, "Slow down, the crick is easing." 

    Willa Sue slows to about 15 miles per hour. They reach the side road, "Cutthroat Drive."  

    Riley says, "The crick's gone, turn here." 

    Willa Sue turns right. She drives slowly on Cutthroat Drive, past Redfish Lane on the right. Past Bluegill Lane on the right.  

    Riley says, "The crick's coming back, turn around and go down Bluegill Lane." 

    The crick eases.  

    About 200 yards down Bluegill Lane, they see a pale blue octagon house on stilts on the right. Willa Sue turns the Highlander into the driveway, parks, and turns off the ignition. 

    They get out and walk to the stairs going up the left side of the house. The place smells like fish. Two teenage boys indeed are cleaning a fish. A BIG fish. At least 7 feet long. Shaped like a torpedo. On a boat ramp leading down into a canal in front of the house. A large skiff with a huge Mercury outboard and outriggers is moored at the bottom of the ramp. 

    The boys look up, see Riley and Willa Sue, smile, in unison say, "Hi."  

    Riley and Willa Sue smile and say, "Hi. We're looking for Sandy Downs, do you know her?" 

    The boys look at each other, back at Riley and Willa Sue. 

    The older boy says, "Are you the law?" 

    Riley says "Do we look like the law?" 

    They are wearing blue jeans and polo shirts. 

    The younger boy says, "You could be in disguise." 

    Riley looks closer at the torpedo they have gutted and now are chopping off its head with lots of big sharp teeth in its mouth, 

    "Wahoo?" 

    "Yeah," the younger boy says. "If you know that, then I guess you ain't the law." 

    "We could be F.B.I. agents in disguise," Willa Sue says." 

    "In that case, we never heard of Sandy Downs," the older boy says, smiles. 

    Riley says, "Well, if you ever chance to meet Sandy, please tell her Riley Strange and Willa Sue Jenkins dropped by after we saw her comment about us on the Coconut Telegraph, and about her living in an octagon stilt house on Cudjoe Key." 

    The boys look at each other, then back at Willa Sue and Riley. 

    The older boy yells really loud, "Hey Mom, there are some people out here to see you!!!" 

    Riley and Willa Sue hear a door open upstairs and a tanned, shapely, bleach-blond woman shorter than Willa Sue steps out onto the upstairs deck, walks to the rail, looks down, says, "Oh my God! I was just reading your comments on the Coconut Telegraph. Please come up." 

    Riley and Willa Sue climb the stairs. Sandy hugs them together, says, "Lets go inside to the living room." 

    The internal layout is similar to the Pleiadean's octagon home, but this home clearly is on the public electric and water grid. 

    Sandy says, "I'm so very glad you looked me up." 

    Willa Sue explains how that happened. 

    Sandy looks out the window, then looks up, and then looks at Willa Sue and says, "A voice told me in my sleep last night that I was going to have unexpected guests." 

    Riley says, "We had no clue how to find you, yet here we are." 

    "Yes, here we are," Sandy says. 

    "And we are already decided to head home tomorrow," Willa Sue says. 

    Sandy nods, says, "I figured as much from your comments al the Coconut Telegraph. You nailed it. Mosquito Control beat Mother Nature's first line of defense, and now we can't go into the water safely with a nick or a scratch. I never connected those dots. Fucking scary." 

    "It's now wise to mess with Mother Nature," Willa Sue says. 

    Sandy nods, says, "Are you going to run for president, Riley?" 

    "I hope not, but it don't appear I'm in charge of much of anything anymore. I don't mind people talking me up, writing my name on ballots, but actually running and having a campaign just doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. To be honest, think it's really wrong for people to run themselves for public office. The people who should be in public office should not want the job. They should have it thrust upon them, and they do it because they feel called to do it." 

    "In a perfect world," Sandy says. 

    "Well, that's my dream world," Riley digs in. 

    Sandy says, "Stick to your guns. Otherwise, you might get hornswoggle into something you wish you didn't." 

    "Something like a black hole?" 

    "Yeah, and don't forget tar babies and quicksand swamps." 

    Wondering what spaceship Sandy came out of, Willa Sue asks Sandy, "What do you do besides raise teenage boys who catch huge wahoo?" 

    "I'm a consultant." 

    "What kind of consultant?" 

    "You have something you want help with, ask me and I consult." 

    "You have any training for that?" 

    "No, one day I woke up and I was hearing voices talking about all sorts of things, and it fucking freaked me out. I kept it to myself for a long time, but it kept happening, and I kept hearing things about other people, and some of them I knew, and some of them I didn't know. I sometimes told the people I knew what I was hearing, and their eyes got big and round, or their eyes got narrow and mean. I learned to be careful about what I said I was hearing. But word started spreading and now I have a steady business that keeps the bills paid." 

    "People call you?" 

    "That, and they email me." 

    "They pay by check they mail you?" 

    "That, and PayPal." 

    "Or, they come here and we talk and they pay cash, which tends to be tax free, or sometimes they pay by check." 

    "Nice line of work that just flopped on you from out of nowhere." 

    "Yep. Praise God. And Jesus, And Mary. And Mary Magdalene." 

    "You a church girl?" 

    "I was, but after I got my new line of work, church people didn't seem to like me as much." 

    "Ain't that the truff, Girl!" Willa Sue laughs. 

    Riley says, "We might want you to consult us from time to time." 

    Sandy says, "Not going to happen. You two already have your consultants. But if I hear anything that might concern or interest you, I'll let you know. Your email address, Riley, is at the bottom of your blog posts. Give me your phone number, if you wish." 

    Riley tells Sandy his phone number and she picks up a ballpoint pen off the table in front of them and writes it on the front page of a Keynoter. 

    Sandy asks, "When are you headed back home?" 

    Willa Sue says, "Maybe today. We still have time to check out of The Old Wooden Bridge Fish Camp." 

    Riley asks Sandy, "If I ask what you did for work before you became a consultant, will you say, 'If I tell you that, then I will have to kill you'?" 

    Sandy smiles wanly. 

    Willa Sue says, "Can't take him nowhere. Give me your email address, in case we need to get in touch with you, or someone we meet wants to contact you. Riley's been posting daily travel updates at strangerhanfiction.com, and you are next on his agenda. 

    Sandy asks, "How many page views is your blog getting a day?" 

    Riley says, "Yesterday, it was 2.8 million." 

    Sandy says, "I hope they are all registered to vote." 

    Willa Sue says, "We figure half of them live outside America." 

    Sandy smiles, says, "Send the foreigners visas. And why don't you two start a church, ask for donations. PayPal will be pleased to assist." 

    Riley says, "Then we'd have to hire an accountant to deal with just that, and then the IRS and the FBI and maybe even the CIA, and loonies on the right and the left would stalk and harass us, and then we'd have to kill you for talking us into it." 

    Sandy grins. 
 
 

Alabama Jack's 

 

         Instead of driving back up the 18-mile stretch, Willa Sue veers the Highlander right onto County 95 toward Card Sound Road and, past there, The Ocean Reef Club. Unlike the rest of the Florida Keys, this part of Key Largo has some rolling land, and has squirrels.  When they reach Card Sound Road, Willa Sue turns left, having zero interest in seeing upscale Ocean Reef Club, which dumped its raw sewage into its saltwater creek. 

    About two miles later, they reach Card Sound Bridge and enjoy the  spectacular view at its apex. At the northern end of the bridge is a tool booth which collects $1.00 from Willa Sue. Just past the toll booth on the left, on a saltwater canal, which looks like a Louisiana bayou, is a pavilion and next to that a low building with a sign on it saying, Alabama Jack's. Parked in front of Alabama Jack's are three Harleys. Willa Sue had read online that this is a biker hangout on weekends.  

    They get out of the Highlander and go into Alabama Jacks, which has a bar and some tables, and a grill behind the bar, and a t-shirt shop on the left well-stocked with Alabama Jack's t-shirts. Three men and a woman, with tattoos on their arms, dressed in black, sit at the bar, drinking draft beer. On the back of their biker jackets is Road Warriors." 

    Riley and Willa Sue head for the bar and sit on stools.  

    A bleach-blond waitress in a tank top walks over to them, asks, "What's your pleasure?" 

    Riley says, "You have ale and ginger?"  

    The bartender looks puzzled, says, "Ale and ginger?" 

    "Ginger ale, I can't take him anywhere, " Willa Sue says. 

    The bikers's heads turn toward Riley and Willa Sue." 

    "Yeah, Canada Dry", the bartender says. 

    "You have limes?" Riley asks. 

    "Yes, you want key limes or Publix limes?", the bartender asks. 

    "Key limes," Riley says. 

    Key lime trees grow wild throughout the Florida Keys. In olden times, key limes were used to make key lime pie. Key limes are much smaller than Publix limes, and tartar. Willa Sue had read that at Wikipedia. 

    The bartender brings them two cans of Canada Dry, two plastic cups with ice, and two key limes cut in half, which they squeeze into the cups and pour in the ale and ginger.  

    Riley says, "I think Humphrey Bogart drank whiskey in the Key Largo movie, but we have a long drive ahead of us. Otherwise, we'd be drinking draft beer." 

    The bartender says, "Gotcha, but that was pretty funny, ordering ale and ginger." 

    "He's not always funny," Willa Sue says. 

    "The woman biker says, "Aren't you two Riley Strange and Willa Sue Jenkins? I saw on you Oprah." 

    The bartender says, "Oh my God, you're right, I saw you on Larry King Live!" 

   Willa Sue looks at Riles, says, "Busted." 

    The biker woman asks the bartender, "Do you have a magic marker pen?" 

    The bartender turns and grabs a magic marker pen and has it to the biker woman, who walks over to Riley and hands him the pen and lowers her halter top and says, "Pretty please, write someone on my boobs." 

    Riley looks at Willa Sue, who nods her head, yes. 

    Riley writes on the biker woman's right boob, "Biker" and on her left boob, "Chick", and between her boobs, he draws a heart." 

    The biker men burst out laughing. Take off their jackets and T-shirts and walk over and ask Willa Sue to write something on their boobs. 

    Willa Sue looks at Riley. 

    Riley nods, yes. 

    Willa Sue looks at the biker man on her left. His chest is hairy. No way she can write on that fur. She asks him to turn around. He turns around, and she writes on this back, "Tarzan of the Apes."  

    The biker asks Biker Chick what Willa Sue wrote on his back? Biker Chick says, "Hairy Fucking Ape." 

    "Really?" 

    "Really." 

    Willa Sue says, "She's pulling your fur. I wrote, "Tarzan of the Apes." 

    Tarzan says, "I think I'm fucking in love with you, Willa Sue." 

    Biker Chick says, "As long as you don't fall in love with Riley, he's mine!" 

    Riley looks at Willa Sue. Willa Sue looks at Riley. 

    Willa Sue turns to biker man in the middle. His chest is pretty smooth. She writes on it, "Stay Hungry."  

    Biker Chick bursts out laughing, says, "He stays hungry, alright." 

    Stay Hungry tells Biker Chick, "Let's go out back." 

    Biker Chick says, "Later, Macho Man." 

    Willa Sue turns to biker man on her right, whose thinning hair on his sun-tanned chest is blond. She writes "Steve McQueen across his back.  

    Biker Chick says, "Sorry, Stay Hungry, me and Steve are going out back."  

    They leave. 

    Stay Hungry looks mournfully at Willa Sue, who says, "Sorry, stud hoss, I'm Riley's bitch." 

    Riley says, "She can drop you with a roundhouse kick in about a second." 

    Stay Hungry looks at Willa Sue, smiles, says, "I think you should be president, and Riley should be your bitch." 

    "A-fuckin'-men," the bartender shouts. 

    Rileys asks, "Do any of you know why they built that bridge out there, which seems to come from nowhere and go to nowhere?" 

    The bartender says, "Politicians got their pockets lined by Ocean Reef Club members who didn't like driving the 18-mile stretch to Key Largo, then backtracking 95 to Ocean Reef." 

    "Sorta figured as much," Riley says." 

    Stay Hungry says, "Riley, what do you think about bikers?" 

    Rileys says, "I hated how it ends, but one of my favorite movies is Easy Rider. Maybe Willa Sue and me need some advice on getting us a pair of motorcycles." 

    Stay Hungry says, "You live near Jacksonville, don't you?" 

    "Yes." 

    "I'm going to write down a biker brother's phone number, who can advise you about that after you get home." 

    Riley nods, Willa Sue says, "We won't need but one bike, Riley can ride on the bitch seat." 

    Riley tells the bartender, "We are gonna need a few dozen Alabama Jacks T-shirts." 

    The bartender smiles. 

 

Free Publicity 

     Each day during their trip to the Florida Keys, Riley and Willa Sue shared some of their adventures at strangerthanficition.com. Page views the day they left Alabama Jack's headed north to the Florida Turnpike, then over to I-95 North toward Jacksonville, were 3.1 million.  

    Phenomenal is understatement. Phomenon is more accurate. If. Angels. Are. Factored. In. Arial. Phenomenon.  

    The Coconut Telegraph is a buz.  

    Samples. 
 

Road Kill: For Christ's sake, Deer Ed! What were you thinking? Letting a convicted kidnapper post on our beloved forum and spread lies about MRSA being in Florida Keys waters. What a bunch of B.S.!!! 
 

Cowgirl: Deer Ed, thank you for doing your part to scare the bejesus out of people thinking about visiting our beautiful Florida Keys. Good thing for you, nobody knows where you live. 

  

Reality Chick: Sorry to inform, I'm a medical doctor, practicing in the Florida Keys. I see MRSA patients all the time in my practice. So does every doctor I know in the Keys, who deals with sick people. A surgeon friend told me that he tells his patients after surgery that they can do anything they want but go in the ocean. 
 

Diver Joe: Hi everyone - I'm a professional diver in the Keys. Every diver I know knows that if you cut yourself shaving and go into the ocean, you could end up with MRSA. Here are a couple of pictures. 

 

 

 

 

Conch Queen: Hey all you head-in-the-sanders! Gloria Steinem wrote a book entitled, "The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off". Willa Sue for President!!! Riley for Secretary of Defense!!! 
 

Deer Ed: Sorry all you does and bucks. This is not "our" forum. It's mine. Since when did I ever censor free speech? I know divers in the Florida Keys. I asked them and they said the ocean is full of MRSA and they carry hydrogen peroxide with them when they dive, and if they cut themselves diving, they get out of the water and pour it on the cut and hope they don't get MRSA. Too bad Riley and Willa Sue aren't sticking around. 

 

    Riley and Willa Sue read all of that online after they get home from their visit with the Road Warriors. At strangerthanfiction.com are two comments: 

 

Road Warriors: Riley, consider changing your name to Mad Max. Willa Sue, change yours to Madame President. If you ever need anything, and we do mean anything, you know how to reach us, and if you tell anyone else, you know we will have to you know what you. 
 

Larry King: Please have Riley and Willa Sue call my producer as soon as you can.  
 

   After a wonderful roll in the hay and good night's rest and some breakfast, Willa Sue calls Larry's producer and gets voicemail, because everybody's still asleep in California. 

    Willa Sue says, "Larry posted a comment on our website to call you ASAP.  Looking forward to your call. Thanks. Hugs." 

    Riley updates strangerthanficition.com and mentions how many page views it's getting each day.   

    They put on their karate gis and go out in the backyard of the apartment and do some stretching, and then go through a series of increasingly difficult katas, until they are breathing hard and wringing wet with sweat.  

    They head back to their apartment, strip, throw their gis into the washing machine, and get in the shower and, well, have another roll in the hay. 

    They rinse off, turn off the shower, get out and dry off, and walk into the bedroom and flop on the bed, Riley face up, Willa Sue face down, and off to dreamland they go. 

    Biker Chick comes to Willa Sue, says, "I know some nice witches I'm gonna speak with about casting some spells on some people who need a new way of looking at things." 

    Angel Michael grins, tells Riley, "While I normally don't enlist the aid of witches, I don't normally tell them what to do, or not do, either." 

    Willa Sue's cell phone rings and wakes them up.  

    She answers, hears, "Hi, Willa Sue, this is Larry King, I wonder if you and Riley can be on the air with me and Oprah at my studio a week from today? We want to talk with you and Riley about President Bush and Vice President Cheney talking about invading Iraq." 

    Willa says, "I'm handing my phone to Riley, so you can ask him, too." 

    Riley hears Larry's offer, looks at Willa Sue smile and nod her head, yes. 

    "We'll be there, if you put us up in the same hotel and you and Oprah have dinner with us at the 5-star restaurant you comped for us last time we were in L.A." 

    "Deal," Larry says, "I'll tell Oprah." 

 

 

 

Witches Brew 

 

    As part of updating their adventures, Riley lets anyone following strangerthanfiction.com know about the upcoming visit with Oprah and Larry King.  

    After doing that, Riley dozes off sitting up, and Angel Michael shows up and says, "Don't you and Willa Sue think it's time for you two to move back to Birmingham?" Then Judge Allgood, the federal judge, for whom Riley clerked after he graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law, appears and says, 'I'm thinking about getting into politics." 

    Riley wakes up, groans. Behind the scenes, Judge Allgood ran Alabama's Democratic Party. Except for George Wallace, anyone who wanted to run on the democratic ticket for state office in Alabama, or for US Senate or House of Representatives, sought Judge Allgood's blessing. 

    Riley tells Willa Sue about his dream.  

    She groans, says, "Can we file an appeal?" 

    Riley rolls his eyes. 

    Willa Sue burps. 

    Riley calls their apartment manager and lets her know they are giving notice and will pay the 2-months-rent penalty in their lease. She asks him to put that into an email. He says, okay, and he sends her the email. She emails back an acknowledgement, and her best wishes - "You've got me and my boyfriend's vote, and all of our friends' votes.  

    Riley groans, shows the email to Willa Sue, who groans. 

    Not fun kind of groaning. Groaning over being fucked blind is good groaning. Neither Riley nor Willa Sue feel like doing that kind of groaning right now. 

    Riley's laptop dings, a new comment in moderation at strangerthanfiction.com. 

 

Out To Pasture, in Birmingham 

Headed toward 81, I've had many experiences with angels, they had no wings, but they flew, instantly, there to here, here to elsewhere, the speed of light had nothing to do with them. They taught me many things, starting with they were very real, they worked for what I was raised to call God, and they were going to try to use me, and, first, they wanted me to know myself better, and many mirrors did I get to stand in front of, looking at me. They taught me what matters is how I live this life, for that's why I'm here, and they stayed with me, steering me sometimes, correcting me sometimes, rebuking me sometimes, carrying me sometimes, sometimes dragging me out of hells I had fallen into, and encouraging me to be who I am, authentic, true, caring, and giving it my best shot every time. The angels did not school me on dying, other than dying is what many people do their entire lives, because they did not live who they truly are. You have my deepest condolences :-), and my hope that you two hang in there. Let me know when you get to Birmingham to look for a place to live. outtopasture@hotmail.com. 
 

    Riley shows that to Willa Sue, who gasps, chokes, gasps, burps, rolls her eyes, says, "We're fucked." 

    Riley smiles wanly, replies to Out To Pasture: 
 

Now maybe Willa Sue and I know what General George Custer felt like when he realized he was surrounded by more Indians than he had ever dreamed existed. Less than an hour ago, Angel Michael asked me in a nap dream if it wasn't time for Willa Sue and me to move back to Birmingham? I expect we will head that way later today or tomorrow, to look for an apartment. I will email you when we get there. 

  

    Riley removes Out To Pasture's email address and clears their comments from moderation. 

    Riley gives their houseplants a good soaking, while Willa Sue checks the refrigerator for anything that needs to be tossed out. They pack for ten days and head to the Highlander.   

    I-10 is really boring, but it's the quickest route to Tallahassee, past which is Mariana, where they can take a backroad up to US 231 Dothan, and then to Montgomery, and up I-65 to Birmingham, which they reach about 9 p.m. and check into the Hampton Inn on US 280 between Mountain Brook and Homewood. 

    They go to their room and fall face down on the king bed and pass out. 

    Biker Chick comes to Willa Sue in a dream, says, "Tell Riley the witches are brewing their potions."  

    Michael comes to Riley in a dream, says, "Send Out To Pasture an email in the morning with your cell phone number." 

    Riley does that on waking around 7 a.m.  

    Out To Pasture replies right away: 

Tell me where are you staying and I'll be there shortly.     

    Riley emails back: 

Hampton Inn, Mt. Brook, room 213. 

    Fifteen minutes later, there is a knock on their door. Riley walks to the door, opens it, sees an older man, maybe 85, thin, grey hair, balding.  

    His eyes twinkle. 

    He smiles, says, "I'm Merlin." 

    "For real?", Riley asks. 

    "Yes, for our purposes." 

    "And what are our purposes?" 

    Merlin reaches into his pocket, pulls out something, says, "First, you need a place to live, here are two sets of keys to an apartment I rented for you and prepaid the rent for six months. Unit G-1, Park Lane Apartments in Mt. Brook. If you need more time than that, I will take care of the rent. The landlord owes me a favor." 

    "What kind of favor," Willa Sue asks. 

    "I made the minister of her church an offer he could not refuse." 

    "Please say more." 

    "I told him that if he did not resign and leave that church and never come back and never have anything further to do with that church, I would turn him into a toad, I then turned him into a toad, and then I turned him back into a man, so he would know I was serious." 

    "You turned him into a toad for real?" 

    "He thought so. Actually, I hypnotized him and convinced him he was a toad and had him hop around on the floor of his office in the church, and then I told him he would remember everything as if it really happened, and then I woke him up and made him the offer he couldn't refuse." 

    "That's fucking hilarious!" 

    Merlin smiles, nods. 

    Riley says, "First do no harm?" 

    Merlin says, "In that case, yes. In other cases, I have left people believing they are a toad when I wake them up."  

    Willa Sue says, "I hope we never cause you to want to turn us into toads." 

    Merlin smiles, says, "If I do that, Angel Michael will turn me into a warthog in darkest Africa. Welcome home, so to speak. I've followed you two with great interest since your first appearance on Oprah. Before that, well, do you remember me, Riley? 

    Riley stares at Merlin, then looks at his eyes, gasps, says, "Is that you, Judge Allgood?" 

    Merlin smiles, bows. 

    "But your legs were amputated above the knee when you were a teen and hopped off a freight train and fell on the tracks under the box car. And you were shorter and stockier. And you were more bald. But you did have that big crook nose and large ears, like an American Indian. 

    Merlin laughs, says, "I need to work more on my disguises."  

    Willa Sue says, "Can I touch you, Merlin?" 

    Merlin reaches out and puts his left hand on her left shoulder. She reaches across with her left hand and grasps his hand.  

    "Feels like a real hand to me." 

    "It is a real hand. No big deal, really. In the New Testament, Jesus told his disciples that Elijah returned as John the Baptist." 

    "Hope you have a better return trip than John the Baptist had." 

    Merlin grins, his eyes twinkle, he says, "So do I, Sister. So do I." 

    "Sister?" 

    "It wasn't just Elijah and Merlin who got to come back, Maid Miriam." 

    Willa Sue is gobsmacked. 

    Riley looks all fucked up. 

    Merlin laughs, nods at Riley, says, "Lucky you, Robin Hood. Lucky you."  

    As a freaky good trial lawyer, Riley had made a lot of rich people and some bad lawyers poorer. 

 

 

Leaving Live Oak 

 

    Seeing no point in putting off moving to Birmingham, Willa Sue calls a moving company in Jacksonville called, Two Men and a Truck, to ask if they move people long distance? 

    "Yes," says the woman who answers the phone. 

    "Can your company pack everything up for the people you are moving?" 

    "Yes, but that costs extra." 

    "No problem. How soon can you move us to Birmingham, Alabama." 

    "Let's see, today is Monday. How about Wednesday?" 

    "Can you get us into our new apartment by Friday? We have to fly to Los Angeles on Saturday." 

    "Yes."  

    'Ok. We are in Birmingham now. We have an apartment rented and ready for us more into. We will drive to Jacksonville today and come to your office in the morning and make it official." 

    "Okay. Can I have your names and street address In Jacksonville?" 

    "Actually, we live in Live Oak, 27 Jaybird Road." 

    "Okay, now your names, please." 

    "Willa Sue Jenkins and Riley Strange." 

    "Come again?" 

    "Willa Sue Jenkins and Riley Strange." 

    "For real?" 

    "'Fraid so." 

    "Lawdy mercy! I'm Emerald. This is me and my husband Leroy's company. If it was up to me, I'd move ya'll for free." 

    "We will pay." 

    "I'd still move ya'll for free, but those two men need to be paid and we also have truck and insurance payments, gas and maintenance costs, and office rent and expenses." 

    "We tip good, the two men will be happy after they get us moved." 

    "I'll tell them that." 

    "We'll see you tomorrow morning sometime, God willing and the creek don't rise." 

    "It seems God, or something, is definitely on your side, Sista. My goodness, did you two set things a fire on Oprah, and then you burned everything down on Larry King Live. When's Riley gonna announce he's running for president? 

    "Riley is telling me I'm supposed to run for president so he can be 1st husband." 

    "You wanna be president, Sista?" 

    "No more than I suppose you do. Riley don't want to be president, either." 

    "Well, America has gone to hell and somebody's gotta make it great again." 

    "Good Luck even Jesus doing that. Look how hard he tried in the Bible and how it went after that." 

    "Amen to that, Sista. Still, I think Riley will turn the government every which a way but loose, and that's what's gonna really need to happen. My nephew is over there in Afghanistan. He say it's an awful place, even without the shooting and bombing, which he is seeing lots of up close and personal. He's lost friends there, and he wonders when he's gonna be next? He says America declared war on Islam, a religion that has more people than Christianity. Islam thinks it is supposed to rule the world. Muslim people think all others are infidels. Fighting infidels is God's holy jihad. Dying for God is the highest honor. They are not afraid to die.  And my nephew is over there trying to help some of them beat others of them, never knowing if he's gonna be stabbed in the back when he ain't lookin', or sold out and ambushed and blown up with a road bomb or a rocket grenade. And here President Bush and Vice President Cheney be wanting America to invade Iraq, which don't seem to have had nothin' to do with 9/11. Riley needs to be president, 'cause he's the only well-known, respected white American who ain't afraid to stop Bush and Cheney, and the rich white American men who want to make a lot of money off two wars their white sons won't ever see boots on the ground about." 

    Willa Sue is pretty sure Emerald isn't white. 

    Willa Sue is pretty sure, if Riley runs for president, he will receive the black and liberal white vote, and It will be a kinda civil war all over again, and before it's all over, somebody will try do to Riley what happened to President Kennedy and his brother Bobby and Dr. King and Malcom X- and Jack. 

    And there's the ringer: deep down inside, Riley's burning rage and soul-searing loss over his brother's senseless death in Vietnam.  

    Just as deep down inside, Willa Sue's withering wrath toward President Bush and his brother, Jeb, who prosecuted Riley for saving her life and healing her body and her soul. 

    While they are diving to Live Oak, strangerthanfiction.com receives this comment. 
 

Lorraine in Perth, Australia: 

Hey all you people still mad at Riley for locking Wila Sue up for a year so she could lose all that weight, and now you’re made at him for getting pardoned and rocking lots of boats that need rocking. The problem is too many Willa Sues who don’t have a Riley, and there there aren’t any politicians that think and do like Riley. 

 

 

Easy Rider 

 

    The next morning, Riley folds forward the backseats in the Highlander to turn the rear area into cargo space. Willa Sue and Riley pack all their clothes and personal stuff into plastic garbage bags and the waterproof marine duffels they used on their trip to Dominica, before the trial in Port St. Joe, and they put all of that into the Highlander. 

    Riley then calls the phone number Stay Hungry gave them, and a man answers, "Biker Heaven, how may I help you." 

    "Yes, my wife and I met some bikers at Alabama Jack's a few days ago, and one of them said you could advise us about a bike we can ride together - the wife says she's gonna do the driving, I'm on her bitch seat." 

    "For real?" 

    "For real, that's what she said. We didn't know then that we were going to move to Birmingham, Alabama, so what I'm wondering is, can you give use a contact to call in Birmingham, who can help my wife make good on her word?" 

    "Can you tell me the name of the biker who gave you my phone number?" 

    "They never told us their real names, something about they would have to kill us, so we gave them nicknames. Such as, Stay Hungry, Biker Chick, Tarzan of the Apes, and Steve McQueen. They all had my wife write their nicknames on their bare chests, except for Tarzan, whose chest was real hairy, so she wrote his nickname on his back. Stay Hungry tried to talk my wife into going out back, and she told him she was my biker bitch. She didn't say, she is pretty good at karate, and he was just a hairbreadth from having a memorable experience." 

    "That's fucking hilarious. Even so, I need to know your names before I make a referral. The FBI, NSA and DEA are really clever these days." 

    "Sure, I'm Riley Strange and my wife is Willa Sue Jenkins."  

    "Thanks, I already knew that from my friend calling me in stitches and telling me about you two. He indeed was smitten with Willa Sue. I can't wait to tell him he is damn lucky she didn't smite him. Here's a Birmingham number, 205-545-2453. Ask for Lefty. I'll call him to let him know I gave you his phone number." 

    "Thanks." 

    "Glad to do it. I hope you run for president, Riley, and that you and Willa Sue do get a nice Harley and ride it all over America, meeting folks, and giving the Bushes and Dick Cheney hell. My father was killed in Vietnam. A cousin of mine is in Afghanistan. If you make that road trip, call me during your travels and I can give you people to call, who will put you and Willa Sue up for the night." 

    "Thanks, do you have a name?" 

    "Yeah, you can call me, Easy Rider." 

    "Thanks." 

    Riley opens strangerthanfiction.com and posts news of Willa Sue and him moving back to Alabama, for what reason they know not, but who are they to argue with an archangel? 

    Within moments, a comment appears in moderation: 
 

Merlin: 

Tortured souls have a large, rich inventory of stories they can tell, and sometimes do tell, or weave, or simply spew, as if a sneeze, or vomit, as non-fiction, fiction, and even stranger than fiction - and poetry that sometimes writes itself, the witless subject dragged senseless along. Of course, that's a theory, nothing to do with me in Alabama. Welcome home, strangers! :-) 
 

    Then arrives an email from Larry King: 

Hey Willa Sue and Riley -  

Connections between Birmingham and LAX are not great, so we arranged a private jet to pick you up at noon, Sunday, at Birmingham Aviation across the runway from the Birmingham airport. We booked you at the same Los Angeles hotel.  

We arranged for a retired FBI polygraph expert to wire you up live for all of America and the world to hear what you have to say, especially the current president telling you he had been threatened by his vice-president. We are promoting that already.  

Oprah and I really are looking forward to seeing you two. 

Larry  

    Riley replies: 

Much thanks, Larry.  

We're really looking forward to being there, and maybe you should ask the retired F.B.I. agent to arrange witness protection for us. 

Willa Sue says she owes you a great big kiss, and do you want it before, during, or after the interview? You can let her know when we see you.  

Riley 

    Willa Sue gives Riley "the look," says, "You weren't exactly joking about witness protection, were you?" 

    Riley shakes his head, says, "Sadly, no." 

    "Can the F.B.I. do that for us, if it turns out we need it?" 

    "Not that I know of-Witness Protection is for at-risk witnesses in federal prosecutions, and how could the F.B.I. hide us? We'd have to have plastic surgery to change our well-known faces." 

    "That aside, isn't this kinda a federal prosecution?" 

    "No, not yet, anyway." 

    "It sure seems like a federal prosecution to me, Riley." 

    "Agreed, President Bush should have notified his Secret Service detail and the F.B.I. immediately, and, boy, wouldn't that have been something to read all about in the newspapers and see on FOX and CNN?" 

    "Didn't you tell me that Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Silence in the face of Evil is itself Evil. God will not hold us guiltless"? 

    "Yes, and the Washington Post's masthead is, "Democracy dies in darkness". But, so far, in the media, only Oprah and Larry King have wanted the American public and the world to know what President Bush told us." 

    Riley's computer dings signaling a new comment in moderation at strangerthanfiction.com: 

 

Merlin 

Since you two are returning to the land of snake handlers and Southern Baptists, who swear they don't drink or swear, Poetic Outlaws posted a Sigmund Freud analysis of religion in my Facebook timeline last Sunday morning, and going on 81, and time being mostly what I have on my hands, I seconded someone else's hilarious comment. 

Poetic Outlaws 

“Thus I must contradict you when you go on to argue that men are completely unable to do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that without it they could not bear the troubles of life and the cruelties of reality. That is true, certainly, of the men into whom you have instilled the sweet -- or bitter-sweet -- poison from childhood onwards. But what of the other men, who have been sensibly brought up? 

Perhaps those who do not suffer from the neurosis will need no intoxicant to deaden it. They will, it is true, find themselves in a difficult situation. They will have to admit to themselves the full extent of their helplessness and their insignificance in the machinery of the universe; they can no longer be the centre of creation, no longer the object of tender care on the part of a beneficent Providence. They will be in the same position as a child who has left the parental house where he was so warm and comfortable. 

But surely infantilism is destined to be surmounted. Men cannot remain children for ever; they must in the end go out into 'hostile life'. We may call this 'education to reality. Need I confess to you that the whole purpose of my book is to point out the necessity for this forward step?” 

—Sigmund Freud, 

The Future of an Illusion 

David 

The power of faith is far beyond the comprehension of man and to think he can fathom the mind of God is comical. 

Merlin 

From what little I read of Freud, he dealt with plenty of religious people, whose beliefs, for better and for worse, skewed, or mangled, their minds, emotions and actions. Freud's contemporary, Carl Jung, also a psychiatrist, is reported to have been asked at a party, "Do you believe in God?" He replied, "Believe? I know!" There is an unfathomable chasm between belief and faith, and having direct experience with that which cannot be fathomed, but its presence and effects are plain enough for anyone not blind, deaf and dumb. I know this personally, live it daily. It is as real as brushing my teeth in the morning, driving my car - even though it is not of this world, nor is it of religion, although religion certainly claims to be its authority, and psychiatry and, I suppose, philosophy certainly claim to be its superior. 

 

 

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 

 

    The private jet flight to LAX was a dream. Seeing Larry and Oprah again was like a family reunion, the good kind.  

    True to his word, Larry has a retired FBI polygraph examiner sitting with his equipment on a folding table beside the dais where Larry, Oprah, Willa Sue and Riley sit. 

    At Larry's nod, the FBI agent says, "Hi, all. I'm Stella Kontas. I worked for the FBI here in Los Angeles for thirty years, the last twenty of which I administered polygraph exams to federal witnesses, snitches, and even some criminal defendants, with their lawyers' permission. I retired from the F.B.I. five years ago and opened my own private polygraph service, which local lawyers, mostly, use for their clients, and sometimes the Los Angeles Police Department uses me. I also service local businesses. 

    Riley smiles, nods to Stella, says, "I used a retired F.B.I. polygraph expert when I practiced law. Sometimes that headed off a lot of grief." 

    Stela smiles, nods, says, "You want to go first, Mr. Strange?" 

    "Sure." 

    Riley stands up and walks to the folding table and sits in the empty chair across from Stella. She patches wires onto his arms, fiddles with dials on her device, and says, "I'm going to ask you some baseline questions, and then we'll get to it." 

    "Go ahead." 

    "Are you Riley Strange?" 

    "Yes." 

    "Were you born in Miami, Florida?" 

    "No." 

    "Did you practice law in Atlanta, Georgia?" 

    "No." 

    "Did you run around on your first wife, Mary Lou?" 

    "No." 

    "Did you run around on Willa Sue?" 

    "No." 

    "Did you want to run around on Mary Lou?" 

    "No." 

    "Did you kidnap Willa Sue?" 

    "Depends on who you ask." 

    "Did you trick Willa Sue?"  

    "Yes." 

    "Did you give all of your money to Willa Sue's family?" 

    "No." 

    "Did you give any of your money to Willa Sue's family?" 

    "No." 

    "Did you ever overcharge a client?" 

    "Yes, once, and I never did it again." 

    "Did you ever lie to a judge or a jury?" 

    "Sometimes I shaded the truth trying to help my clients win a case." 

    "Were you born in 1942?" 

    "No." 

    "Were your parents Russian sleeper agents?" 

    "No." 

    Riley looks at Larry and Oprah, asks," Did you two put Stella up to some of these questions?" 

    Larry laughs, says, "I plead the Fifth!" 

    Oprah rolls her eyes. 

    Stella asks, "Did you and Willa Sue visit President Bush in the White House?" 

    "Yes." 

    "Did President Bush tell you and Willa Sue that Vice-President Cheney threatened to kill him?"  

    "Yes." 

    "Did President Bush tell you why?" 

    "Yes." 

    "What did President Bush tell you?" 

    "Vice-President Cheney said, if President Bush didn't turn over the US Military to him, then President Bush would end up dead like President Kennedy and his brother Bobby, and Martin Luther King and Malcom X." 

    "Did President Bush tell you that he turned over the US Military to Vice-President Cheney?" 

    "Yes." 

    "Did that shock you?" 

    "Yes. Well, maybe not entirely." 

    "Why not entirely?" 

    "Because before he was Vice-President, Cheney ran Halliburton Industries, which stood to make a lot of money if America invaded Afghanistan, and Halliburton stands to make a lot more money if America invades Iraq." 

    "Did your brother die in the Vietnam war?" 

    "Yes." 

    "Did that cause you to not like the U.S. Government?" 

    "Yes." 

    "Enough for you to make up what President Bush told you about Vice-President Cheney threatening to kill him?" 

    "No. If I lie about that, or about anything, God will take me to the woodshed, and I don't want that to happen." 

    "Do you feel like you are putting your and Willa Sue's lives at risk right now?"  

    "Yes, and your life, and Larry and Oprah's." 

    Larry looks at Stella, raises his hands in a question? 

    Riley says, "I want to say something about the Vietnam war." 

    Stella nods. 

    "Some years after it ended, Robert McNamara, who was the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, wrote a book, “In Retrospect”, in which he said maybe he was wrong making war in Vietnam. I wanted to kill him, for two reasons. He killed my brother Jack, and he got paid a lot of money by a New York publisher for writing the book. He should have given every penny to Vietnam vets and their families." 

    Larry looks at Stella again, raises his hands in a question?" 

    Stella says, "My device says Mr. Strange told the truth every time." 

    "My turn, "Will Sue says. 

    By the time Stella is done asking Willa Sue questions, people all over the world are chanting, "Willa Sue for President! Riley for Secretary of Defense!" 

    Larry and Oprah stand, and Riley and Willa Sue join them in a great big loving group hug. 

    Larry thanks them for coming, and says, "We hope you come back soon. Americans need to hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, whether or not they want to hear it"  

    Oprah says, "Amen, Brother. Amen!" 

    Riley thanks Stella, gives her a hug, says quietly, "I hope you have a bomb shelter." 

    Willa Sue hooks her right arm around Riley's left arm and escorts him out of the studio to a yellow cab sitting at the curb out front. 

    "Whew!, Willa Sue says. "I'm glad that's over." 

    "Me, too, Wife." 

    A rocket-propelled grenade fired from a shoulder launcher held by a Vietnam war combat vet standing in an alley across the street blows the taxi, the driver, Riley and Willa Sue to smithereens. 

    Riley and Willa Sue and the taxi driver wake up in a waiting room. 

    Sitting on a sofa across from them is Mary Lou, smiling. 

    A woman, who looks like Stella's twin sister, hands them each a copy of "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.”  

    Riley and Willa Sue’s wills leave everything to the Alabama Sheriff Boys and Girls Ranches for unwanted and/or orphaned children. 

    The taxi driver was a Russian sleeper agent. His wife still is a Russian sleeper agent. They had no children.