My Interview with Pravda (Part II of II)

[Continued from yesterday]

Brit Hume said, "It's in south Texas. Wide-open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it's wild quail. It's some of the best quail hunting anyplace in the country."

"A low-ranking Politburo member visited me last night," I explained. "It was Randall Larson, Director of the Institute for Homeland Security. He climbed the tree outside the spare room window. He waved his arms, as if that could chase away the pestilent squirrel family living in the bole."

"Now, it strikes me that you must have known that this was going to be a national story," Brit Hume said.

"Larson's face was pale, a brackish yellow sheen wiped across his eyes."

"Tell me what happened," Brit Hume said. The comfortable hump of his stomach rose and fell.

I haven't even begun to eat all the plants in the apartment, especially the new green one with the fat, bumpy fronds that smell like petroleum and bacon.

I said, "His accent is Texan. I was appalled. I rushed to coat my body with my tongue."

"Would you describe him as a close friend?"

"When are the hibakusha coming to protect our ports from Ann Coulter?"

"Is he just a friendly acquaintance?"

"I asked him outright: Why is Ann Coulter guarding U.S. ports in Miami, New Orleans, New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, and Philadelphia? She hates democracy, hates the troops, and can't hold a job."

"There was just two of you then?" Brit Hume asked. A sound engineer rushed to wipe the blood off his American flag lapel.

"The only God Randall Larson knows is Mammon."

"What was he wearing?"

"I tried to explain to him that Ann Coulter hates democracy even more than the President of the War on Terror does."

"What was he wearing?"

"In 2002, Ann Coulter said: My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

"Then what?"

"Larson postured on a low-hung branch," I said. "He cracked and blabbed his idiotic huckster tumbleweed drawl."

"Tell me more about it."

"Larson said, Ann Coulter is not going to affect port security. I mean, Indiana leased its toll road for 75 years to an Australian company and a Spanish company, so that's a legitimate debate. Do we want to do that? I just don't see the security element in this.

"Then what?"

"I trotted into the dining room and showed Tony the tail dangling from my prodigious mouth."

Was that a goldfish in the window?

"But, Shimmy, there were some things you knew," Brit Hume said. The corner of his upper lip curled, a hang-nail smile.

He continued: "I mean, you knew Whittington had been shot, you knew he was injured, you knew he was in the hospital, and you knew Dick Cheney shot him."

"Australia and Spain rent a highway in Indiana. But just looking at Ann Coulter is like stepping into the path of a tuberculosis cough."