LatinosUSA

I was surprised to hear from my cousin Sherry again. We hadn’t spoken since our telephone dust-up several years before, at the height of the Covid epidemic, when she vented her spleen on Dr. Fauci, Joe Biden, African Americans, and the like. Spying Sherry’s name on the caller ID, I picked up the cradle of my land line and whispered warily, “Hello?”

“Hi, Cousin,” she said robustly, as if all were forgiven. I reminded myself that we were both well into our 70s now and, if there was ever a time to make amends, it was clearly now.

When I didn’t say anything more, she asked, “You there, Billy?”

I replied that I was.

“Hey,” she said without preamble, “what do you think of my main man being back in the White House?” And she cackled gleefully.

I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” she cautioned at once. “What do you think of Richie Rich now?” she asked with a snicker.

“My opinion hasn’t changed in the past several years,” I told her.

“Well,” she said, “it had better. Because if you keep writing this slanderous shit about our president, then your ass will land in Menard,” she said, referencing one of our most notorious state prisons.

“You’re thinking of libel,” I replied, correcting her.

“Whatever. Hey!” she said, “I read a magazine with something you wrote in it.”

“Really?” I asked, instantly flattered. “What was it?”

She told me.

“What did you think of it?”

“Garbage!” she bellowed, nearly rupturing my eardrums.

I tapped the side of my head to restore my hearing.

“Now, you know I’m not judgmental,” she said, and then went on to enumerate a half dozen Commandments I’d shattered in writing “that trash!”

Reasoning that discretion was the better part of valor, I merely shook my head.

“And quit shaking your head at me!” she snapped.

I instantly stopped.

“That’s better,” she said.

How did she do that? I wondered.

“You can write anything you want, Billy,” she said. “But, don’t show it to anyone. Least of all a newspaper or a magazine.”

“Why not?” I inquired reasonably.

“Because,” she said, “they’ll put your name on an effing list?”

“So let ‘em,” I said carelessly, but then listened carefully as a mechanical sound emanated from her end of the phone. “What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m on the Musk25 AI Directory,” she whispered.

“What’s that?” I asked again.

“Elon Musk has all my devices under surveillance,” Sherry told me furtively.

“That’s illegal!” I cried.

“Not if you voluntarily put your name on the master list,” she corrected me.

“Why would you do such a thing?” I asked my cousin.

“It’s part of Project 2025,” she said. “It’s an effort to locate, isolate, arrest, try, and imprison the damn migrants.”

“Huh?” I wasn’t certain I’d heard her right. My ears were still ringing from before.

“The effing aliens came across Sleepy Joe Biden’s southern border in caravans,” Sherry told me. “Then they snuck into Red States for the purpose of replacing the regular white citizens with coloreds. It’s very insidious, Billy. You should sign up your devices, too.”

“I’ll pass,” I told her in a dismissive tone.

“Suit yourself. But, when they come knocking on your door, dressed in brown shirts and jackboots, and carrying torches and pitchforks and jack handles, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t,” I replied. “But, why should government thugs even think to come to my door?”

There was silence at the other end. I listened intently and could hear Sherry breathing into the phone. “How long do I have, Sherry?” I asked, “before their cruiser comes rolling into my driveway.”

“You have enough time to finish our call,” she assured me. “Well,” she said, finally changing the subject, “Covid is now a thing of the past.”

“Looks like it,” I agreed.

“You see? I told you we’d get through without a vaccine. And nobody died.”

“Sherry, more than a million people lost their lives in this country alone!”

“I told you how that worked,” she said. “Person gets run over by a tractor-trailer, the ER doc calls it Covid, and the hospital gets six times as much money from the government that they would otherwise.”

I almost rolled my eyes, but stopped myself, because I knew she’d catch me. “What do you think of the international scene?” I asked. The war in Ukraine didn’t exist when we last talked. I felt more confident conversing about world politics.

“That damn Zelenskyy!” she exploded with hatred. “He’s a card-carrying Nazi and has been torturing innocent Russian soldiers taken captive. That bastard invaded the Russian Republic,” she raged. “And Zelenskyy is a non-elected dictator!”

“But…”

“He has an approval rating of like 2%,” she charged. “I saw it on Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal and heard it on Steve Bannon’s radio show, so I know it has to be true!”

I was considering calling the paramedics so that Sherry could be medicated, but before I could, she blurted, “I’m getting married!”

I was startled. Sherry, like her mother and our grandmother before them, was married 7 times already, and had sworn she would never walk down the aisle again.

“Well, uh, congratulations?”

“Thanks, Cuz,” she said happily.

I was afraid to ask, but I did anyway. “Um, who’s the lucky guy?”

“I could tell you,” she said, “but then I’d have to kill you.” She laughed, then named someone very far up on the ladder of alt-right politics.

Taking into account that person’s comparatively tender years, I remarked, “You don’t think the 30-year age difference will be a problem?”

“Well, could be,” she allowed. “But for the first 10 years, I’ll take it easy on him, sort of get him broken in, you know? Hey,” she said out of nowhere, “what about the Trumpster pardoning the Jan. 6 tourists?”

“You mean the vicious felons who ransacked the nation’s Capital and threatened the lives of hundreds?” I asked sarcastically.

“It was peaceful,” she came back. “No one died.”

“Five people,” I corrected her.

“Nobody important,” she amended. “Members of the deep-state.”

“Sherry, you are certifiable!” I said, at my wit’s end. I checked my watch; we had been talking for two hours.

“Billy, I’m worried about you,” she said. “I’m gonna have my fiancé send over an emergency force of Republican operatives so you can get your mind right.”

“Don’t do me any favor…” But before I could finish my sentence, I gazed out the window and saw a tiny clown car run up my porch steps. Out popped a dozen maniacal men dressed in colorful wigs and bright yellow jumpers, rubber noses, and giant shoes. The last thing I heard before I lost consciousness was the sound of one of them pounding on my front door. I’ve been in isolation for almost two weeks, and I keep hearing the same canned speech over the PA system, but they have given me a pencil and paper and…