The Tragedy of MacBush
Act 1
The beginnings of things are often shrouded in a fog of mystery and legend that cannot be ascertained. Once upon a time U.U. MacBush, scion of the MacBush clan of the Midland plain, had an apparition. Passing through Waco one stormy night to escape the lightening and rain he laid over at a McDonald’s for a Big Mac to ride out the tempest.
The first clue that something was afoul and amiss was when one of the employees bussed him a little kiss with his McMuffin and with a tiny leer and a twist of her lip asked, “haggis anyone? As she backed away, provocatively beckoning him with her index finger to follow, he knew it was an enticement he would never be strong enough to resist.
Once the doors were locked for the night, the driving rain still washing against the window panes and the golden arches dimmed down to an unearthly pale and dawning glow; he was led into the back by the three sisters on duty, Angie, Tracy and Nadine. They were dressed in traditional tartan McDonald goth for Halloween, black leather, chains and Harley gear. They gathered around him, pulled forth the cauldron – really the mop bucket – soaped and lathered and heated steaming hot. Its stench was overwhelming, shocking his nostrils with the desuetude and putrefaction emanating from the brew.
It was there, in that unholy and unprepossessing place that the unsuspecting child of the panhandle, the eldest son of the MacBush clan, was to receive, either by god or its alternative, his life altering vision. As, proceeding according to ancient unwritten ritual, lit only by the gloaming of the exit lights, the pilot light of the fry machine and the eerie, unblinking red eye of a smoke alarm, the three little women made their mysterious predictions.
“Double, double, toil and trouble; soil, boil, oil and stubble, cauldron burn and lysol bubble. With eye of Newt, french fry grease, motor oil and mice ditty; cricket tails, heart ‘o grasshopper, fingers of chickens (with three savory sauces) aplenty; tooth of lizard, mouth of mouse, dragonfly wing and tater tots. All now bow and hail, son of Midland, Thane of Austin, President.”
“Wow, yeah sure, sure I understand the son of Midland part for I am one but Anne of Richards is Thane of Austin and as for the other why there are many, many more worthy, well maybe not worthier, but better situated, candidates before me for that job…”
“We stand by our prophesy,” Nadine responded dryly, wiping back a disheveled lock of hair from her brow, showing the tattoos on her forearm. “But buy a McDeal meal and we’ll tell you another tale.”
When MacBush agreed to the terms Tracy added:
“You will win all that you want only through losing. Less votes will ensure your win, more votes your loss. It’s a conundrum writ on the winds of time that cannot be gainsaid. Forsooth,” saith the three soothsayers and they all agreed and nodded their heads. In the background heavy metal music blared, Angie began to sing and Tracy and Nadine together danced, eyes closed, swaying around the metal bucket like groupies at a concert of the Grateful Dead.
“That don’t make sense. Like that’s gonna happen. Less votes is really more? I never heard such a thing. But just say if I, say if I do, will I get a second term? I want a second term, no MacBush has ever risen so high…”
“Yes thou wilt. You will win and win again. But there is cost for thy favor, for thou shalt divide the country, thou shall not be popular and thy party shall part into pieces and you will not start a dynasty. No other MacBush will rise.”
Out on the interstate MacBush asked Raving Karl MacDuffer who was there to see, “Did you see it, Karl? Did you hear? Could it ever be? They must be mad. But, oh well, forget it now, I think I’ll think on this later. For now, McDuffer, drive on.”
Afterward many saw that moment as the start, the genesis of the desire. For as the odd augury slowly augered and burrowed deep into his being, turning up the virgin soil there, it mixed actuality and hope into compost and made them indistinguishable in his mind.
Is it a passive predetermination that guides our striving stars in their orbits or force of will that holds them to it? Were the Waco Wackos really reading the wilted lettuce leaves in the salad bar or were their proclamations, like embryos of desire planted deep in the malleable loam of impressionable womb of mind, father to the man the way thought is mother to action? Unfortunately all such inquiries lay just beyond the ken of MacBush’s mortal ability to understand. So he merely took his greatness to heart as a matter of faith in his mind and yearned to play the part.
In any case that night the weirdly wired sisters set in play a chain of reciprocity of motions which eventually led MacBush to see all their predictions uncannily fulfill.
Because, soon after this, things began to break decisively his way. Like an actor entering triumphant to tremendous applause in a theater, it seemed MacBush had only to push on the flimsy false curtain of insubstantial life to see it part before him and allow him to assume his rightful, privileged place on the public stage. As if by strange ordination, without his even having to learn how the pulleys and gears were set, they seemed to move by themselves as if invisible stage hands were arranging the scenery to shift with him in concert to a dance of his own desire. The fact he had so little studied and poorly understood the art of why and craft of how the world works is exactly what lent his successes such a mystical tincture in his mind.
First, with surprising ease he achieved the title of Thane of Austin. But be careful what you wish for, for he next found himself arrayed against the much more formidable forces of Al of Gore, the legendarily ferocious enforcer of the mighty Clinton clan. A fearsome struggle was enjoined. To the very end the contest swung to and fro in the imbalance as if hanging by an invisible silken strand of a drunken spider’s web. Finally, certain magical electoral Al-gore-rhythms were secretly intoned in the recount of the election battle on his behalf that again, marvelously to his mind, enabled MacBush to achieve a structural victory even though Al of Gore actually WON MORE VOTES than he.
Chills ran up MacBush’s spine as he realized the implication of this. Exactly what the hags of Waco had foreseen had come to pass. By losing he had won. Could there ever be a more clear validation of their prophetic gift than this? Surely it was witchery and if not witchcraft then destiny. Either way, after that all his doubts – never robust to begin with – disappeared. From then on he knew he really was signally favored and ordained to rise over the slights and slings and arrows aimed against him by the logic and misfortune of lesser mortals to overcome all challengers who might dare oppose him.
But he hadn’t long to savor his success because soon another titanic opponent arose to challenge him. This was the austere John of Gaunt Carreigh. This contest too, was hard tried and long in doubt. But MacBush was calm. He knew he had nothing temporal to fear. He was invincible. Though Carreigh fought valiantly he may as well have been arm wrestling against God himself to ever imagine he could best the blest MacBush. Gamely did he fight until finally his mojo began to falter when the MacBush camp deviously claimed that the war wounds that he had built his reputation on had really been just so much ketchup daubed on bug bites. After having to pause to wipe the swift boot of the catsup smear off his rear the noble Lord of Carreigh got so turned around he could never quite catch-up.
So facts displaced fancy in MacBush’s mind. He was president. He had won once then won again, something that no MacBush before him had ever done. In just a few years the remarkable prescience of the weird sisters’ coven of the Waco McDonalds had come to pass. They really had been able to peer into the deceiving fogs of the future and divine the way ahead clear as gin. Yet even as proof of their omniscience mounted MacBush began to succumb to the purely human temptation to doubt it.
Soon, in his human frailty, he began to believe that only the positive appraisal of his legacy had been accurate whereas the second, cautionary part of the divination was wrong or if true could by his genius be overcome. This gradually lulled him toward a fatal complacence and hubris and into the fateful denial, like unto rivers in Egypt, of the vital second part of the three hags of Wacos’ dire prophesy in its entirety.
Act 2
But pity th’ fool who plays at prophesy and fate. Curiously oblivious to the danger looming before him, strange and stranger things began to happen to MacBush. He was at an official function. As was the prerogative of the most honored guest he and Lady MacBush entered the hall late. The chair at the head of the table had been reserved for him but when he was politely motioned toward it, he inexplicably stalled, seemingly petrified as stone at something only he could see before him.
“What is it, U.? What dost thou see?” Lady MacBush asked solicitously, using her own affectionate diminutive for Double U. “Why won’t you take your rightful seat?”
“Where? There’s no empty chair there. Someone’s already seated in my place.”
In fact, as he looked more closely he recognized the man. It was Ross Perot who MacBush thought had been vanquished many years ago. A look of horror passed over U.U.’s visage, his face turned as ashen white as, well, a ghost, as if he had seen, well, a ghost.
“Avaunt ye!” the outraged MacBush thundered. “Quit my sight old man! Let the earth hide thee. Thou bones are marrowless and thy blood is cold, H. Ross Perot. Go! Go! Quit the speculation I see in thy empty eyes, you whoreson villain dog, you impish devil slave, flee from here and exorcise your presence from out my soul!”
He turned and left the room. Lady MacBush made some excuse and followed him, alarmed.
“Who in the world is it, U.U? Is it yo’ ma?” she asked.
“Huh? Yo Ma? You mean Yo Yo Ma, the cello player, no, no of course it’s not a cellist, are you insane? Why would I fear a stringed instrument? No this is worse, it’s horrible, do you really mean to tell me you can’t see him?”
“Who? Sure as I’m here there is no one there. On the contrary I believe your nemesis lies within thee, projected into an empty chair and manufactured into mortal face and form by your own insecurity. I think you are victim to thine own mutinous bravery, for ‘n truth there is no enemy so pernicious as our own fear.”
“No, no don’t be daft, woman, it was H. Ross I perceived there clear as day, he who ruined my father’s reelection many years ago. Why would he return now? What means this omen? Must Ross Perot’s ghost haunt we MacBush forever? Get thee gone ye whited spectral spectator!” he screamed to the deaf heavens.
Lady MacBush tried to comfort him but for naught. He was obsessed by the bad juju of the omen. He was bummed and couldn’t sleep. He knew the legend that whenever things seem certain set in politics the nightmarish goblin of Ross Perot (or someone very much like him) always returns to disassemble the soft punditry of low expectations. Now the ghost of H. Ross Perot had returned to bedevil him. He was afrighted. The next day he cancelled all his appointments and borrowed a truck and he and the MacDuffer hied their hineys back to the Waco McDonald’s.
As before, it was not till after closing, when all other patrons had departed, that the three demonic siblings, those sisters of Hellsgate and Hecate, reappeared. Gathering around the rusted mop bucket once more they murmured their ominous and ruinous incantations.
“Round about the cauldron go, in the poisoned entrails throw, hairy nose of Newt and toe of toad, gollops of trans fat and tongue of doe. Double, double, toil and trouble, cares ablaze as clorox pukes and gags you; open the doors and lock and latch it, behold bane of foxhead and hatchet, something wicked this way comes.”
When they grew quiescent, expectant, MacBush still hesitated for a bit, intimidated, before he finally dared ask his question. “Uh, am I secure? Is my office threatened? Can I succeed at all my goals?”
“Brave Thane of Austin, thou hast made a Faustian bargain w’ the thin o’ the air, You must be willing to dare to bear the burden the responsibility your own success lays bare or else lay down now thy reins and abdicate thy cares,” cackled Nadine like a hen, scratching her armpit with long black fingernails.
“But worry not, be bold, scorn advice, no need to make nice and thou wilt surely receive the fate due you and well deserved, your grace. Only bankruptcy and debt can start to sow the seeds that grow the dark wood that will ensnare you into its bitter roots and bowers,” so Angie, he thought it was she, intoned.
“Good, no problemo there, little twisted sister, I have the greatest economy in the world at my disposal. Our treasury’s bottomless, like a good little mule the people work like fools. Surely no stray, crass profligacy by me could ever plumb the bottom of such hard earn’d prosperity.”
Then Tracy added, “But have fear, sir, quake and beware, to let no enemy steal upon thee unaware and, without arms, attack thy greatest city and do great harm.
“Fine Ok, am I missing something here, sis? How can unarmed folks inflict harm? Don’t get it. Never will. If they don’t have arms they can’t even swat a gnat much less tote a sack.”
“Physical harm’s a drag but psychological fear is direr. He who overreacts to bad acts will be victimized twice, once in the done to and twice in the doing or, as I should better say, to be exact, once in the act and twice in the reaction to it.”
“Yeah sure sister, I’m sure I’m going to worry about unarmed enemies I can’t e’en see.”
And Nadine: Be a lion, mettled, too proud and take no care, who chafes, who frets or hunts where conspirers are. Worry not. For not unless you causelessly assault a far away unarmed land and are beaten there may you suffer ignominy and defeat by a party that has no plan.
“Sweet happy meal deals, don’t I love ‘em though? This means I can’t be beat, don’t it? Holy Ronald McDonald. Let me get this right, not ‘less I attack and lose in an unarmed land can I be beat by a party that has no plan? Hey, I got the greatest army in the world at my command just sitting around with nothing to do. Why would I attack a far away land, lose to an unarmed foe and then get beat by a party that has no plan? How stupid do you think I am?” (He paused but there was no answer.)
“So I conclude by your silence that I win. It’s just what I thought. I’m right. You can’t con me, you three weirdlies you, you’re trying to trick me with a thin tissue of false qualifications I can easily circumvent, to disguise the fact that the first part of the prediction you gave me was right on and the second part was far off. Ha ha. Screw you ghost of Ross Perot. Let’s go Karl. Lay on, McDuffer, full speed ahead.”
Act 3
To borrow and to borrow and to borrow, creeps in this petty, fogging debt from day to day, till the bottom line runs red as blood stains in the end of fiscal year ledger. And all yesterday’s tax cuts have raised some but drove most to dusty debt. Out, out tax scandals! Political poseurs are but shadows, com-promisers of our poor taxpayers, who flit and lament their way through campaign speeches and then are referred to no more. T’is a tale spun by an idiot and his press spokesman; full of unsound figures and furious oratory, signifying nothing.”
Lady MacBush: “How now, U.U., what’s all the why, who and how’s its, why all the wail, whine and wherefore?”
“Because alas, I bleakly see now that it starts to come to pass. First we are attacked by unarmed men and now I’m told I’m gunning the world’s largest economy too fast and it’s reving empty, trillions lagging behind. Just like the weepy Waco witches predicted. But what can I do? I’m alone. My policies are unpoliced by my politicians and are such general criminals to lazy disposition that I can’t refrain from applause line parodies of policies even when only ruin results from my polity. By proposing easy placebo cures to diseases that endure I ensure the illness remains and grows more severe. Still! Aren’t I against all taxes, even taxidermy and taxis, and especially morally opposed to taxing myself most of all? So how can I not be right and if I am how can the wilding sisters be too? I pace the hollow echoing chambers of my soul and crying moan, ‘how can fate be so bold and fickle to take back what it has once’t so freely given? Am I really a tickling child of destiny or just a dupe of my own infantile fantasies? In fact, I swear by all that’s unholy that I can no longer tell my heaven from my hell.”
“But why so sadly morose, U.? Surely thou protesteth too much.” Lady MacBush inquires. “What canst really be troubling you? Our time has arrived, all our saplings have took root and born fruit, here for the cherry picking and gnawed to the nub of our own content. Like rodents locked in the larder, we may sup to our own delight, fat and happy as rats away from the same keys and hasps of government that neatly lock the cats away from us.”
“Because foul is fair and fair is foul, that’s why, madam. I am sucked and stuck into the snare of my own devices. I can’t tell if I’ve done or been done to. If it was not to be why was it so easy come, lions lying there for the capture to be won, tamed, against the grain of all wayward odds? Bodikins! I fear my own fate has seduced me pregnant and wedded me like a shotgun to it. To deny it now or even admit my mistake or quit it outright is to engage in a psychic suicide, a divorce of me from myself, a sad alienation of affections from my own being. All I am or ever sought to be, will be exiled, orphaned, unloved and homeless, f’ever lost to me, if I ever once admit I’ve been wrong.”
“No, no, we are alright, hon, we are pretty sitting. Stop these sad forensics! I see you’re of two minds in this and weakly let one engage in casuistry and sophistry ‘gainst the other. Doubt not. Fear neither antelopes in the grass nor wildebeest in the sun when a fox is already ‘i the trap, well ginned, skinned and then fired on the spit.”
“Yes, dangnabit all, my little rascally rarebit, thou has got it put right finally. Though I fear the fox of which thou speakest is already feasting in my hen house, I agree, I must quit these timid, tumorous remonstrances ‘gainst myself and learn to lean ease in my victories. Half of my success has been hid in the belief of its inevitability.”
Act 4
Back from the violent war enter Donaldbain, the ancient Laird of Rumpots; Barney, Thane of Fife and the general, Oscar Meyers Franks.
“How goes it, boys,” MacBush asks hopefully.
Donaldbain – Fine and dandy, sweet and yellow as cottoned candy. The war was simple, presumptive, preventative and preemptive as you know. We cannot fail at what we can’t succeed at unless we try without trying and win without defying.”
“What of the current state of our strategery?”
“Foolproof. We are using the McNamara band’s game plan, following it to a “t” as well as all the other letters. All o’ the t’s are dotted and the eyes are crossed.”
“And that’s worked and proven before?”
“Why no, no its never worked at all. Not i’ the least. Actually it failed miserably. Why do you ask?”
“Well, OK then, how many are the enemy?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Don’t know. We know there are noses we know we know. Noses we know but wish we didn’t know we knew, you know? And noses we don’t know we don’t know we know and couldn’t know if we tried to know them even if we woulda, shoulda, coulda known them and won’t ever know now until its too late to know if we might’ve known them after all. In short, there are known knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns and unknown knowns. And now we can’t know whether if we had known now what we knew was known then whether it would do any good to know or not to know that, after all, is the question. Now whether it is nobler i’ the mind to bear…”
“Give me not this Rumspeak! Give it to me Texas plain not in Scottish plaid, all cross hatched. Cut the complexity. I’ll have my orthodoxy straight, neat, wrong or right, black and white, not parceled and nuanced all in some deep treatise. I like it single syllabled and plain not mountainously multisyllabical and alpine. I’ll have none of that, it makes my ears pop, skin creep and eyes weep.”
Oscar Meyers Franks: “Oh, in that case, the war’s not going well at all. Though it’s not and never has been our fault. Afterwards I’ll give an overview but for now, first our left flank left and went right, right over to get left over under in the underbrush right over under the overpass, see? Until, while waiting for light at night there in drearest sight we saw we might have under and overestimated our oversight and overlooked our insight, all at one and the same time.”
“And you Barney, Thane of Fife? What addeth you to this monstrosity of morosity?”
“Aye, foul whisperings are abroad, unnatural deeds that breed ungrateful musing in infected minds. Unfortunately, like the fish that bit the whale, we are less military than militarist and know not what we are doing. In short, we are dogs after our own tails.”
“Thanks, helps a lot. God, preserve us from all my dunderheaded warriors. How can we be losing a war ‘gainst an enemy unarmed?”
Oscar Meyers Franks: Its only in our heads we are losing. The army has won the war already, it is only rigid and fearful politicians who persist in defining our way to certain defeat. It’s become a catch-22 of dereliction.”
“What the Hecate is this dubious numerology of which thou speakest?”
“That’s when the second condition for victory can’t be fulfilled until the first one is, but the first can’t until the second is. So in this land we are occupying, you see, we can’t leave until peace is secured but peace can’t occur until we leave.”
Lady MacBush: “Oh, U.U. What means this general doggerel to me and us, U?”
“Toil and trouble doubled and trebled, that’s what. As it’s only polite to always solicit advice before I ignore it, what dost thou suggest we do?”
Donaldbain: “Straight from the horse’s mouth? Then stay the race course, of course, of course, and ride our horses all the way around it. What? You’ve never heard of a talking horse? Why U.U., well, I uh, ooh…”
“I mean Franks.”
“Oh, you do, do you, U.U.?”
Oscar Meyers Franks: We must remove and regroup, fall back, take heed and shrink from disaster which is coming both before and after. We must embrace our triumph already achieved rather than run rabidly as bloodhounds in pursuit o’ the scent of our own defeat. We must act hot and fast and furious to cut our losses now if we are to preserve our gains.”
“Nay, cowards, slaves, all. You make me want to spit. I care not if all desert, I’ll never quit. I know too well me fate, it’s well foreordained and permanent set. Grim though trouble comes, even if the witches’ first prophesy has turned proof agin me and our city was successfully attacked by a handful of unarmed and empty headed and hearted men, I’ll nae change me fateful course. The second condition they gave me, to attack a far away land and be beaten in’t still cannot be met. OK, I did attack it, true, so that one’s on me, but still I say I don’t see it. I cannot afford to lose. So stay and fight men. Die if you must. I don’t care. The sages say as long as I win I’ll ne’er lose. So don’t worry I’ll be all right. I’ll ne’er quit me course, lads, get it? If e’en I be left with just me lass and me old dog, Spot left, I’ll not quit and run. This can ne’er come to pass. I am fortune’s stepchild, the ghost of Ross Perot be hung. I will hang him to, I vow it, if only cord can be found fine enough and strong through, I’ll strangle that spectral stuff of which he is composed wi’ me own hands once and for all. Meantime, I’ll not believe my own eyes e’en when they come to see it.”
(aside) “This is bad,” Oscar Meyer Franks said. “I’m afeared our Lord MacBush has retreated to a kind of cloud palace in his mind, he is passing mad. An air of unreality and denial marks his course. He claims things which aren’t true are and insists true ones wrong.”
Barney of Fife: “Aiii, Gods, spare us from lice and ideologues. Ideologues are men whose minds are too narrow shaped and set. They are like rusted clocks and broken watches – right just twice’t i’ a day. The rest of time they are dead wrong, waiting for the world to revolve for their time to come back by again. Beware of being led by such men, they have value, use, but not in charge o’ the enterprise for then ideologue becomes more properly just a longer term for idiot.”
Franks: “We must alert the boy genius architecteur, MacDuffer. He’ll know better. He’s a political particularist we just generalist generals.
“Not me nor I,” Donaldbain replied, “Franks, you’re just a hot dog. Not I, I won’t get involved. Getting involved crossways to my own escape would share me in the responsibility of the escapade I share it and I share nothing with anyone anywhere.”
Act 5
Meanwhile, the war continued to rage badly. Donaldbain was lost to the enemy and the party without a plan made significant progress, even putting themselves in position to threaten Dunce-inane.
“Aye t’was there I saw him last,” Oscar Meyers Franks told them in his report of the preliminary to the aftermath. “He had retreated to grandiose Randal Hall where, arms akimbo like a Lord, he stood and gazed o’er the wild moor of Crawford from his castle at Dunce-inane, his ancestral home. It was in that setting fine that sure, MacDuffer and I heard the great MacBush opine:
“Alack and alas, now even these, my fine dreams, dawn black as night and come slowly to pass with a certainty that unmans and buggers me bassackwards, boys. First, I can’t even beat a blowhard satrap in an unarmed land and now I am about to lose to a party that has no plan. My God, men, it’s putrid bad luck, now e’en my trusty dog Spot, lifts his leg to mine, and urinates so profuse around the house that he’s come to suit his name ironically.”
“‘Out damned Spot, out I say,’ I heard my ranting wife muttering yesterday, grown half mad herself afore she threw my dog Spot out of Dunce-inane. Then she pretends to take regret and carrying his dog bowl like a beggar, follows after all in a huffer as if only to lure and trick him from his recalcitrance back to his supper. But I think it t’was a ploy, boys, ‘cause she ne’er returned, MacDuffer. I think she and Spot fled together away in search of a calmer spot to stay, or so I say. No excuse, though, I can’t blame her, but I may track her because, unhousetrained, the poor incontinent mutt, like footprints i’ the snow, leaves his stains everywhere they go.
“And though I said the course I was on, I would stay to it e’en if just my wife and dog Spot supported me on it, as if I would e’er abandon it, I lied, Karl. That’d be like me agreeing to my own betrayal and that cannot ever be. It’s my course and on it I will stay, of course. And as for the party that has no plan I say ‘A plague on’t, on both their houses. To them, I may feign an ‘umble aspect and conciliatory air but I’ll not grant an inch to them anywhere. And Ross Perot be damned and damned again, for I have need of friends, I need aught but me and my thoughts on which no man can intrude.”
“Thou art too good for the world that’s too good for thee. But what will ye do? The stars have decisively arrayed against thee. Those witches ha’ brewed a bitter tea.”
“What choice have I, I mean we? Can Neptune be Mars? We can’t change our spots like our dogs, MacDuffer, just ask Spot, because e’en the ones his behind left behind can’t come clean no matter how hard I scrub. Nor can we rewrite our own histories, man, they stain our souls like Spot stains couches and if our orbits must collide with other trajectories and immovable reality then so be it so. We cannot reform the science in our head, it turns just the way it will, the way our lusts and upbringing required it to be, until we all be dead.”
MacDuffer: “OK, I see, we must not just take a truism and spin it to our advantage, but actually create a new context where truth itself becomes expendable. Only then we may spin ourselves free of the dilemma. You’ve swayed me with this argument. I’ve changed my mind and now I believe we will win. I have my metrics and semantics and antics on which to rely. Now I’m convinced and quite convincingly so, that that I’m convinced totally. (Aside: Besides I’ve no where else to go.) So I’ll loyal be, true to the bitter end.”
‘”Good ‘cause e’en in a bad cause, I’ll ne’er yield to kiss the feet of mine enemies and be burned with that rabble’s curse. E’en though I lose wars agin unarmed foes and though the party with no plan soon to Dunce-inane come, I will stay my lost cause course strongly for all it’s worth, e’en alone. So lay off, McDuffer and damned be him that first cries - enough.”
“But the situation still grows desperate, dim, it’s as if the whole land was on the march agin thee.”
“I have a new plan. Since I fought this war as if t’were but a game, I may invent a new game of the old war and call this war game golf and continue to stay the course on the course, the golf course I mean, of course. So here follow my muse i’ this, MacDuffer, take my leaden lead. Take this crooked stick and that round ball and hit it a-round and e’en as we change and stay the old course no more, we may still say we stay the course same as before. And to those who claim we change courses we claim we stay and change both simultaneous and alternatively. So e’en as we lose we may still claim we’ve won.
“That’s marvelous circuitry, sir, but then what of the original course, stay to it or stray?”
“Stay the course, I say. Stay on it. Stay. There is no other way. Feint and switch but then after thou has confounded them definitionally, stay to it anyway, stay long past the time it makes sense to. There is no other way for me to play it but to stay on it till I have got a chance to get away. Then let some other fool critic inherit it and suffer the opprobrium and blame of losing the war once I am far away from it. Then I’ll claim it to be all o’ their fault none o’ mine. And whilst they get lost in the layers of these last circumlocutions while we temper them back with false shrill cries of ‘enemy sympathizers (!)’, I predict we’ll baffle and cow their elocutionists who’ll try to encircle our tergerversations to say we lost and changed. So here let’s play on, old McDuffer, you old campaigner, lay ‘er up there, and we’ll make up our own rules as we go along and ne’er change our minds come hell or bygone.”
“That’s thy genius, my noble Lord MacBush. If we ne’er change policy only terminology then it’s ne’er a lie as long as we agree to the pretense, at least in our own minds. Besides if we call war golf there are no bad lies only bad golfers and no untruths only bad liars. My Gawd, sir I think I start to get the hang of this. It’s the gift you’ve had all along, as a visionary of convolutions of excuses and disingenuous explanations, thou art an artist without peer.”
Meyers Franks: “Aye and that was that sure as this is this. There you have it whole. After that I left them there, the two of them. And though word has come that the elder MacBush has sent forth men to rescue the lesser one - the Bakers, butchers and candlestickmakers, etal. - who among us knows if they will arrive in time. As for me, I finally left that forlorn place, that palace of clouds, with heavy mind. And I fain reflect upon it now that somewhere hearts are laughing, somewhere hearts are light. But there is no joy in Dunce-inane for MacBush, the noblest of us all, has holed hisself out.
“And as far as I know he still wanders there to this day without warders in a land without rules or borders welded to that course that ne’er comes to a point but that merely goes round and round. There he hits his little round ball around and hasn’t realized that on the spherical globe o’ earth we’re on, big as it is and many as we are, there’s no hiding place from our own fate, be what we are, and that what goes around one way front comes back the other way behind until all has finally balanced all out.”
Barney, Thane of Fife: “But the question I have, why will he not just do the honorable thing and just end the mess he has started?”
“No, I believe he hasn’t got in him to be so forthright, so prepare thyself, for things will surely get blacker before they get bright. For I do know this and I’ll tell ye plain, MacBush ’ll not change his course unless forc’d to it. He’s married to his faults and all his habits. To admit his mistake is to break the very premise he’s built his life upon. It’s rare among we sinning mortals to find someone with courage to unblinkingly face their alternatives without first a fork at their back.
“No, wrong or right I believe he’ll stay his course o’ least resistance like a mariner o’er board at sea holds desperately to anything that floats by whatever it may be. The floating thing becomes dearer than his own immortality. It’s the new found, fleeting thing he wraps his arms around and surrounds with all his hopes and dreams. He’ll not give it up, but when pressed, hold more strongly to it. It is life itself, glory or tragedy, with but little breathing space in between. It’s the same narrowness on which all our beings balance but tenuously in their precarious fragility, until finally the floating thing we wrap our lives around sinks and takes us with it beneath the windy seas.”
