Forget the Super Bowl, the GOP primaries and the unceasing competition of dullards in round tables and panels presided over by Tim Russert or Chris Matthews.
“All
right,” the big one said. “You can quit stalling now.”
I opened
my eyes and sat up . . .
“You got
fun, pally?”
I looked
at what made the sound, what was in front of me and what had helped me get
where I was. He was a windblown blossom of some two hundred pounds with
freckled teeth and the mellow voice of a circus barker. He was tough, fast and
he ate red meat. Nobody could push him around. He was the kind of cop who spits
on his blackjack every night instead of saying his prayers. But he had humorous
eyes.
He stood in front of me splay-legged, holding my open wallet in his hand, making scratches on the leather with his right thumbnail, as if he just liked to spoil things. Little things, if they were all he had. But probably faces would give him more fun . . .
“Cops?” I asked, rubbing my chin.
“What
do you think, pally?”
Policeman’s
humor . . .
The
big man handed me my wallet. I looked through it. I had all the money still.
All the cards. It had everything that belonged in it. I was surprised.
“Say
something, pally,” the big one said. “Something that would make us get fond of
you.”
“Give me back my gun.”
The terse he-man set-up continues, winding up for the
literary kill with the jar of pulp fiction and the precision of
Jane Austen:
He
looked at me again. “And what would you want your gun for, pally?”
“I want
to shoot an Indian.”
“Oh, you
want to shoot an Indian, pally.”
“Yeah—just
one Indian, pop.”
He
looked at the one with the mustache again. “This guy is very tough,” he told
him. “He wants to shoot an Indian.”
“Listen, Hemingway, don’t repeat everything I say,” I said.
First hit. Marlowe names the big, dumb wallet stealer
Hemingway. It gets worse for Ernest:
“I
can’t think of any reason why he should call me Hemingway,” the big one said.
“My name ain’t Hemingway.” . . .
The
big man leaned down from his hips and bent his knees a little and breathed in
my face. “What for did you call me Hemingway, pally?”
“There are ladies present.”
“Okay,
Hemingway.”
“He’s doing that again,” the big man said sadly. “Calling me Hemingway on account of there are ladies present. Would you think that would be some kind of dirty crack in his book?”
The big man said: “Now that we are all between pals and no
ladies present we really don’t give so much time to why you went back up there,
but this Hemingway stuff is what really has me down.”
“A
gag,” I said. “An old, old gag.”
“Who
is this Hemingway person at all?”
“A
guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe
it must be good.”
“That must take a hell of a long time,” the big man said.
Back to those televised panels: The reason most of the commentary has the heft of chips of debris bobbing around on polluted waves is that Tucker Carlson, E. J. Dionne, Joe Klein, Dana Milbank et al. are doing their best to deny or to conceal that election 2008 was largely stolen before it started.
The only hope right now is that Obama can pull it out.
Stumble It!