He was an old man, Elijah J. Coyote, the camel hunter. He hunted in the Sahara desert and had gone 84 days without taking a camel or an Excedrin. In the first 40 days the boy had been with him.
The boy was quiet, mostly because the old man practiced tying knots with his tongue. Thus tongue tied, the boy had bad breath, cauliflower ears and a face that looked as if he had entered life directly from an explosion. He was in a word, a Republican.
The old man was in sad shape, too. He had only one eye and suffered from post nasal drip and he was addicted to watching Glenn Beck on Fox TV Network News. He was, nonetheless, quite talkative and lively. Unfortunately, most of his witticism was expended on the empty night and his mentally challenged donkey, Kyoto, for the people of the oasis had long since given up on his incoherent babbling and conspiracy theories.
Nevertheless, the duo brought much merriment to the oasis. They were spat upon by the lowest of camel drivers, evangelical, born again, Conservative Christian End of Timers and periodically stone in the market place, for they were Southern Baptists.
After 40 days without a camel, the boy's parent had insisted that the old man was a dirty pervert, which is the worst kind of Southern Baptist, and the boy had gone at their insistence with another camel herder.
On the 84th day the old man return from his trek in the desert once more empty handed. The boy met the old one and offered him some fermented sheep dip.
“Yo, old man, you vant thum vermented sheep dip?” he lisped, for the boy was also tongue tied by his new camel herder, Newt Gingrich.
“Yes, that would be lovely,” answered the old one, who accepted because in addition to being old, unlucky in the hunt, he was a freeloader. They sat beneath a curb and drank the lumpy dip and talked.
Their talk soon turned to the Great Sport: The Pat Robinson Conservative, Evangelical, Right Wing Politics and its number one pluck, Sarah Palin. They spoke admiringly of Rush Limbaugh and of his affair with Ann Coulture before she turned gay and started sleeping with Bill O' Reilly. At this point, the boy made the mistake of saying that he considered Bill O' Easily Riled Up an even greater threat than Rush.
The old one explained that such thoughts were the result of eating too much sheep dip and would not be tolerated by the NRC central committee and that the boy would be banished for not being Conservative enough. The boy attempted to appease the old one by saying that Bill and Rush were equal. This so enraged the old one that he jumped to his feet and kicked the boy squarely in the groin. Then he kicked the sleeping camel squarely in the groin, in a groin kicking frenzy without a groin to kick, he kicked himself squarely in the groin. (The old one liked to kick. He had played fubol in his youth).
The boy thanked the old man and they quickly went off to prepare supper. After a hot meal of camel hump and deep friend goat nuts, the old man fell asleep in the dirt, still kicking himself in the groin, and the boy went home alone. The old man slept and dream t of traffic jams in New York City and of his early youth in the Young Republicans and of abstinence. He was awakened just before first light by Sarah Palin licking his feet for an early vote. The old one rose, scratched Palin's twisted sister's head and told her, “We're through! Go Home to Alaska, your family needs you – America does not!”
The old one led his slow witted donkey to the boy's shack only to find the boy still asleep. As was his custom, he bite deeply into the boy's leg to awaken him, then stumbled outside to consider the day's course of action.
The boy moaned and sat up on his rag-pile bed. He groped in the corner for his little box of used flesh-colored band aides. He was able to close this latest gaping wound with seven well placed band aids and one ounce of Crazy glue. The boy then gathered a tuft of grass and a length of new rope from a shelf and went out to the old man, who was sitting in the dirt idly killing flies with a hammer. The boy bowed deeply and presented the rope and grass. The old man fondled the gifts momentarily and then placed them on his still sleeping donkey.
“Where'd ya get 'em?” he asked suspiciously.
“I sthold 'em from the 'Weeper of the House', Johnnie (The Cry Baby) Boehner, while he was having sex with a lobbyist on the floor of the house,” the boy answered proudly.
The old one had read the Oxford Concordance Bible and new that stealing was wrong.
“How many damn times, I tell you no steal? Huh?” he screamed. Banging a lobbyist is OK - stealing is bad,” he said. He must have intended it as a rhetorical statement, for he did not wait for a reply. He smashed his fist into the boys groin and cursed, “Heathen!”
His moral obligation fulfilled, the old man climbed on his donkey and rode toward the edge of town and the vast desert. He had not been out long before his confidence weakened. For one thing, he realized that he was lost.
The sun was high in the sky and it burned his only eye. He stared at if for several moments and wondered why it didn't burn his eye at night. He wondered, too, where the sun went at night. Such metaphysical questions soon gave the old man a headache and he turned to more practical matter like stomping out the grass fire that raged in his hip pocket. He beat the fire out with the palm of his hand, placed the grass in his Dr. Garbo pipe and smoke pleasantly.
Bouncing along on the back of his now deranged donkey, scorched, thirsty, and in the need of a piss, he wondered about the wisdom of his decision to become a glorious camel hunter. He once had a good job back at the oasis, as a Congressional aide, until his Congressman stuck his hand too far down the front of his pants. It paid well and wasn't too difficult but the constant calls from Glenn Beck were tedious and worn him out.
As a child, he had heard of the great struggles of the camel hunters and of the crossed eyed virgins they conquered upon returning from a hunt. And then one day he saw the picture of a renowned camel hunter on a bubble gum card, and he knew that camel hunting was his destiny.
“So, here I am, “he snorted defiantly, “hunting camels.” The old one knew in his bone, and in his stomach, that this was his day to catch a camel or take an Excedrin. Not just any camel, but a truly great camel, a camel who would fight honorably and fiercely . . . and they just quit like the Democrats did in the midterm election.
The old one rode farther into the desert than he or the donkey had ever gone: past the Howard Johnson's, past the American advisory outpost, even past the Freudian phallic symbol.
The old man was on the verge of slashing his wrists with his rusty army bayonet when suddenly the black cloud of flies hovering over his head froze in mid-flight and dropped to the hot sand. The old man raised his wrinkled head and listened. Somehow he knew, without actually seeing, that a giant camel was on the other side of the dune. Perhaps it was the hunter's sixth sense. Perhaps, it was the large neon sign that blinked on and off:
“GIANT CAMEL ON THE OTHER SIDE OF SAND DUNE!”
Methodically, as if in a trance (which he was, since her was drunk), he tied the rope into a square knot and slipped it securely around the clump of still smoldering grass. He tossed the knotted end of the rope expertly over the sand dune and waited. The old man waited and waited and waited. Why he hunted like this no one knew, there he was lurking behind a sand dune. The tension mounted, the pressure quadrupled, but the old man maintained his composure by screaming and guzzling on a flash of kerosene.
He felt the camel take the knot. He waited the camel to swallow; for he knew that setting the knot before it reached the camel's stomach would be cowardly and ineffective. He was many things, but he was not an ineffective coward.
He heard the camel munching the grass. He waited. He heard the camel swallowing the grass. He waited. He heard a loud belch. He jerked. Suddenly without fair warning, the camel lunged backwards, dragging the screaming old man and his reluctant donkey.
The rope snaked through the old man's fingers and he feared that he might lose his giant. He feared also that he might lose his pants, which during the excitement had fallen to his angles. The sun was hot on his cheeks. The camel, a four humped sardonic one, lunged forward in a desperate attempt to break the old one's hold. The old man retained his hold, but not his trousers.
Across the burning sand dunes the camel dragged the duo, stopping only once to relieve himself. The old man frantically tied himself to his donkey. He was glad that he had practiced many times with the boy's tongue. The camel bolted forward – this time more powerful than a locomotive, faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall sand dunes with two attempts. He was an extremely powerful camel - probably, the most extremely powerful camel in the Sahara Desert, a little clumsy, but powerful.
The old man prayed to God and promised Him 10 psalms, then 13 psalms, then 100 psalms if He would let the old one take the camel honorably. The donkey, insane, but not stupid, locked his legs in protest. It was a futile gesture. The camel dragged the stubborn donkey and trailing old man as effortlessly as if they were on water skis, which, of course, they were.
The old one curses the camel and told him how he would beat him, and kick him in the groin, if he could find his groin. Finally, the old one grew bitterly angry, like a Conservative Radio Talk Show Host and told the camel how he had always hated the camel and the cold desert, and, of how he would obscenity in the camels ear when he caught him.
The camel, however, wore ear muffs and did not hear the old man's cutting remarks.
Exhausted from his continuous battle, the old man collapsed and again dreamed of traffic jams in New York City and of a Tea Party/Mental Illness rally that he attended in the Village. Visions of Rand Paul running for re-election danced feverishly in his head and he saw Lindsey Graham in a dress lip locking Mike Huckabee in a Dallas Airport Men's room stall, while a line of Conservative Born Again Christians waited patiently in cue.
The giant camel, feeling the effects of a Pell Grant cut in half, sailed effortlessly over the huge sand dunes, flinging the old man and his donkey high in the air behind like a whip snapping over an invisible herd of incontinent Tea Republicans waving copies of the Constitution in one hand and the Confederate Flag in the other.
The old man awakened and again prayed to God. He promised another 1700 psalms, 5 preambles, 53 Pledge of Allegiances and a fifth of gin if he could just take the camel. Again he cursed the camel, the Tea Party and Glen Beck, in particular, for exposing the caliphate. And, again his hands were bleeding. But the giant camel pressed onward dragging the exhausted old man and his sleeping donkey.
Soon, too soon, they were near the Dead Seas Scrolls and the old man could see the Sun Also Rising from the dark salty water and he thought to himself, “So, that is where the sun goes at night. Well, I'll be damned.”
And damned he was, or at that precise moment the camel abruptly swerved and leaped into frothy brim pulling the near hysterical old man and his surprisingly calm donkey behind him. The old man cursed his fate and the John Birch Society who Society. When he got back to the oasis, if he got back, he promised himself that he would renounce his membership in the Republican Party and again vote for OBAMA, for he understood that now, more than ever, he would need his health care coverage.
Before long the giant camel, pulling the old man tied to the still sleeping donkey passed a giant fish pulling an old man in a boat. The old man shouted to the occupant of the boat as they passed each other, “Hell of a way to make a living, ain't it?” But his words went unanswered by the boat's occupant, who was too busy shoving a loaded shotgun into his mouth.
The camel eventually tired and turned instinctively toward the shore. Soon the old man was close to his giant camel, close enough to kick him in the groin, and he wondered about the size of his reproductive organ. But, before he could investigate, the camel, foaming at the mouth, like the Tea Party in 2012, fell dead, and drifted to the ragged edge shore.
The old man thought it sad that the camel had died. He had hoped to club it to death. Then, too, there was the problem of returning to the oasis. He thought of slinging the camel over the donkey's back, but then where would he ride? He would have to drag it as he did everything else, including the boy. The old one coaxed the donkey homeward with strategically placed judo chops and nude photos of Michelle Bachman. He knew that the vultures would soon come and prey upon his great giant camel. Anxiously, he goosed the donkey over the sand.
The old man saw the first one; it was a black speck in the sky. It hovered above for a short time, then glided down to rip at the camel's entrails. The old man shouted and threw his gym shoes at the offending vulture. The vulture, in a natural display of enviable athletic prowess swooped up his tattered gym shoes and flew off in the direction of the Tea Party Convention and disappeared from sight.
The old one cursed: “Damn it and damn the Tea & Nuts Party, now I've got no shoes to protect my feet from the hot sand. I am a stupid ass.” The donkey, in a moment of lucidity, nodded his head in agreement and spoke for the first time since the midterm massacre, “Dick Cheney Should Be Tried As A War Criminal. The lying sack of sh#$,” he said in perfect harmony.
The camels entrails and Obama birth certificate spilled on the scorching sand and the old one knew that soon more vultures would come to prey upon his giant camel and his baked red ass. He wished the boy were there. He would let the vultures eat the boy.
It was late afternoon, just after tea, when they came, hundreds of screeching, flapping, blood sucking vultures and registered Conservatives. They descended on the exposed carcass like wild dogs on a gut wagon. The old man screamed again and passed out. The Tea that he had consumed earlier was just too much for him to bear.
Soon there was nothing behind the donkey but the colossal remains and the long and lanky spinal cord of the once great camel. The donkey, dreaming of a water trough and of taking Congress back, dragged the old man and the belched white skeleton of the once great camel toward the oasis and the return of sanity.
The old man swooned and dreamed of a former Congressional PR director, who under the influences of much fermented goat milk, and given over by John Boehner, had gone to bed with him and was immediately turned to stone.
It was early morning and still dark when they arrived. The camel hunter were preparing to set out on their Arabian horses when they stumbled over the old man tied to his donkey and discovered the spinal cord and head of the once great camel. It was the largest camel ever caught in the written history of the oasis and there was much talk and a great deal of excitement, then the old man was stoned to death for bringing garbage back to the oasis, and, the donkey set free and made a hero.
In 2012, he took back the House, the Senate and won once more the White house!
In memory of Frank Corey! BILL WISSMAN and a Life Time Ago when people read poetry, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe, Sandburg, Kalih Gibran, Shelley, Walt Witt-man, Tennessee Williams, O'Neil, Bernard Shaw, Woody Allen, Mark Twain, Edwards Rice Burroughs, The Beatnik Poets, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, played guitars and listened to the wind - back then, when we were young - dancing, dancing in the wind. Backpacks for a headrest, a jug of wine, a book a verse and thou - back then when time stood still - when the world was before us!