The Cat's Pajamas

The president stopped.

“Dim-bulb bastards,” someone suggested.

“Rum-headed, bastard idiots!”

Everyone nodded.

“Maniac, lunatic, mindless, stupid jerks! Jesus God, God almighty!”

The president opened his eyes. “Do you realize that, in comparison, this will make the United Nations look like a gathering of angels? A congress of Einsteins! A full house of Fathers, Sons, and Holy Ghosts!”

Silence.

“Mr. President, sir, your face is very red.”

“I thought,” said the president, “it would be purple. Is there anything in the Constitution that would let the president beat up, kill, massacre, hang, electrocute, or draw and quarter these dumb-cluck senators?”

“Nothing in the Constitution, Mr. President,” Smith said.

“At the next session of Congress, put it in.”

At last he ceased and let his fists fall open. He stared at each empty paw to see if some answer lay there. Tears fell from his eyelashes.

“What’re we gonna do?” he bleated. “What’re we gonna do?”

“Mr. President.”

“What’re we gonna do?” he cried again, quietly.

“Sir.”

The president looked up.

A Native American gentleman in a tall hat stood there. He was very short and resembled a squaw.

The short Native American gentleman said, “May I make a suggestion, sir? The Chief of the Iroquois Waukesha Chippewa Council and owner of this casino and now proprietor of the United States of America wonders if you would want an audience with him.”

The president of the United States tried to rise.

“Don’t get up.” The short man in the tall black hat turned and opened the door and a great iron-eyed solemn shadow glided through.

This man drifted in on soft wild bobcat feet, a tall shadow within a shadow. He was not quite seven feet tall, and the look on his serene face was the look of Eternity; the stare of dead presidents and lost Indian braves now come alive in the precipice face of this new visitor.

Someone, perhaps the small squawlike pathfinder, seemed to be humming a celebratory tune under his breath, something about a chief, something about hailing.

A great voice of muted storms spoke on high from this owner of many casinos.

The small squawlike servant below translated.

“He asks, what seems to be the trouble here?”

At this there was a collective impulse in the senators to hurl themselves at the exit, but something froze them in place: the small sounds of veins popping in the brow of the president of the United States.

He massaged his head to calm his raging veins and gasped: “You have stolen our country.”

The voice spoke above and was translated below.

“Just one state at a time.”