Stranger than fiction...

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. 
     Shirely 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.