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Deadlock Above the KeysMickey knows the call - Down on Main Street, in the Sphere, Walt has prophesied. Hello? It's Al. Al? I can barely hear - ah, it's okay, it's better now. I'm on the cell phone. Ah, I've got one of those too. Well, heydiho, Al. Tough night, it's a - we've all been so nervous, just reaming our hands, you know. Ah, yeah. But, it looks like ... Congratulations, George. Well you sure fought a tough one, Al, and - Laura would you shut the wind - thanks - sorry, Al, I swear there must be thirty thousand people out there cheering in my front lawn - probably quieter in Nashville - you were sayin? Well, we did fight a battle, but as they say it wasn't a war and I respect the rule of the law and the will of the American people. Tipper and I have come to a decision, after conferring with more than thirty people who've been traveling with us across this great nation. Alber Whitney, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who works on his family farm, and Martha Crandall, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who can't afford to pay for both her weekly dialysis and the prescription drugs necessary for her to survive, and - Little lower, Laura. Rocks, Dad. Mr. Vice President, you were sayin? ....elsewhere, in Roswell County, New Mexico, five shadowy figures drag several rectangular voting machines and ballot boxes through the red silt of dry alluvial bedrock, all the way to the edge of Coyote Thumbnail Gulch, wherein they toss them and they land, far below, with a muted thump. In Iowa, amid the plenty, the Lebanese Mafia pauses in the middle of a cornfield to let an eighteen wheeler go by on the highway. The lumbering giant passed, they resume their work, burying several shoebox- sized ballot containers deep below the stiffening winter crop. It is a Field of Dreams to which none will come. Still elsewhere, in Milwaukee, while the locals feast on a victory diet of macrobrew beer and Poznan kielbasi, a tall man in a well-tailored impeccably tidy shoes walks up to a newspaper-clad wino in a filthy, puddle-dotted alley. They talk, briefly, and minutes later the man with the Rolex escorts the man with the brown paper bag to the nearby public school, today the polling place, whispering into his ear as he slides a pack of cigarettes into the poor fellow's torn overcoat pocket. Somewhere overseas, or rather above them, in the net-slung cargo hull of an old military transport, agents of the "Fisc" tear open the sealed ballot returns of low-income soldiers serving in the terrorist-tortured Gulf, and affix new stamps, new postage and new hole punches where none had previously been.... That's right, and can you hold on, can you just hold on a minute Governor, we're going through one of those ah roaming ah interference spots. - look Al this ain't right a hundred percent is a hundred percent not ninety eight. But stop, hang on you won't believe this - look we're looking at maybe a thousand maybe maybe nine hundred Al it's like three hundred in the last precinct- and things happen Mr. Vice President - Jesse just called they had troopers out there checking black guys for convictions scaring them away - Look Pat Buchanan just called says there's like three grand people didn't vote for him voted for you Al cut it out now give me that phone Al wouldya? Hey driver - youeee, right now. So we won? -Maybe. There's real margin. All sorts of things happen. Who knows? How the butterfly ballots reel down the throngs. Hello? You won't - It's Al again. Al! Oh, hi there, Al. Dick and I were just talking over the cabinet. How you like - you mind I ask you? - Liddy for Defense? You won't believe it, but - or maybe you will, you know - I don't - don't know if things Things may have turned around. The - you mean? I don't, it's all to soon to say, still. Things may still turn, may turn around. But I have, George, I've turned around. I'm headed back. No speech, speech, no. It's up in the air! Well! Sort through it all, recount the people's will! Ring up the vote on special interests' till, Reveal the mandate that our shining leader must secure, impel the pundits, readers, viewers of the tube to revel, unified! The feeble victor won't be deified. No grassroots will propels those two. The corporation rules all - even you! This pair is like The Emperor and Vader - They only look to Liberty to raid her. Is that a Bush on Austin's granite hill? Don't fret my Jeb, we'll have the voting will. Panhandle's pulse will pound poor Al. Dade county yields something altogether else, bounty for Buchanan. Nader may have tipped it as old folks bitch that they have slipped it - But not their bowels, and not their bank account. The scowls! A crook ... a Florida recount! In dear God's waiting room they fidget, flit beneath the sunshine, tarry, carry it! The lawsuits gather, pennies in a fount. And O! how tensions and confusions mount! "First of all, we are sick and tired of you people talking in iambic pentameter and using easy rhymes to distract us from what's really going on. What is that shit?" The regulations lay it all out clear: This form is proper in election year. We measure out our speech now word by word As canvassers enumerate the herd. "Kiss my ass, ye Yalies. Harvard boys too. We should have elected Jesse speaker, not you. But before you run away with your CNN erection Would you just tell me, please, who won this election?" Altogether elsewhere, vast herds of asses move across miles and miles of elephant grass silently, as votes are cast. 
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