Think Tank…

The guys are playing round robin euchre four to a table but the games break up when Jap and Meg come to the door and she kisses him on the cheek and leaves. Jap says, “Please continue, gentlemen. Don’t let me insurrect. I harpoon no desire to be the friar in the annointment.”

Freddie says, “Nah. You’re alright. Games don’t feel right tonight. Clay just got laid off. Ray’s got to leave on account of his kids, and I got a bitch of a headache. Get you a beer and pull up a chair.”

When Jap comes back, Freddie said, “Jap, meet Oliver. He works with Jefferson down at the warehouse.”

Jap says, “The pressure is all mine,” and bows in the Oriental manner.

Oliver smiles pleasantly and nods his head politely.

Colby says, “My car’s rattlin’ and smokin’ worse than ever, Jap.”

Jap says, “My friend, you’re in dark need of a new convenience.” Jap is a wizard with automobiles. He’s helped Colby out before—and he wouldn’t be giving up on a car if it weren’t past saving.

Colby says, “I can’t buy tires for the one I got and just barely gas.”

Freddie says, “I’d trade you mine only I wouldn’t be doing you any favor at thirteen miles to the gallon. With car prices in the shitter, I’d lose a bundle trading it into the agency and it’s only three years old.”

Ray says, “The economy as a whole sucks. It’s wheel-driven and the cost of fuel determines the cost of everything else. The big wigs are determined to drive the price up to an arbitrary profit level where it helps sustain the market. The people are supposed to spend and save money at the same time, money that they don’t have. Save, and businesses go broke, people lose their jobs. Spend, and you go broke, and lose your house. It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

Phield says, “Maybe the new president’s stimulus program will be of some benefit. It might take some time to work, but confidence in itself is supposed to have some impact on the markets almost immediately, and that loosens up trading, spending and lending reluctances as a consequence.”

Clay says, “Ah ain’t got no job w’at ta spend with, ‘r git a loan with, ‘r core ta trade, and Ah’d ruther git money th’n one ah tham thar reluctances.”

Nobody laughs.

Jefferson says, “I get the feeling that this president wants us all in Ivy league suits and wingtips. And he talks just like any other white man to me. I don’t get that he’s ever been through what the rest of us’ve been. How’s he supposed to help what he don’t know to help?”

Phield says, “Well, he’s a politician, and politicians all seem to believe that the solution to any problem is to throw money at it. Keynesian economics, they say, where the government is the chief instrument and guide of the country’s cash flow. This president is a great fan of Mr. Ronald Reagan, rest his soul, and Mr. Reagan believed that the more money people at the top make, the more trickles down to the rest of us.”

Jefferson says, “It’ll take a whore of a trickle to get down to me and Oliver over there working for minimum wage. And Colby.”

Colby says, “I don’t know half the time who’s president. It don’t make no difference. I finished high school ‘cause my mom supported me and made me do it so’s I could join the army and got took care of. When I got hurt, she made me try out for college, and she was gonna have to pay for it. Only I couldn’t make heads or tails out of them tests. All I remember is Lincoln was the first president and he freed some guy named Dred Scott.”

Nobody laughed this time either.

Freddie says, “How’s your mom doing, Colby?”

“She’s okay. She’s got some kind of killer TB and they sent her home sittin' down in a bag, but they’re still working on her in a hospital in Maryland.”

Jap’s cell phone plays Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” and he goes into the kitchen to answer it.

Phield says, “You’re a thinking man. What do you make of the situation?”

You say, “I’m not much on politics or economics. The first and last time I ever voted in presidential elections, it was for Jimmy Carter. I won one and lost one. If I’d voted this time, I would have voted for Ralph Nader. Shit rolls downhill anyway. Anything trickling anywhere goes upward from the blood, sweat and tears—and taxes, of those at the bottom. Anytime anything changes, it’s mostly more of the same thing and maybe worse,. ‘The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer.’ I’ve heard that all my life, and I’m just now getting to believe it. I hate to sound clichéd, but if I’d known I was going to be asked that question, I would have written something more cerebral.”

Jap comes back from the kitchen and says, “Well expostulated, mon amígo. I have to disembark, gentlemen, but before I do, let me ejaculate these words of remonstration: The U and S of A has selected—and only time will tell if the choice was fortituous. We can assume that our commandant-in-chief’s intentions are to entrance the conditions of all men no matter whether they be Anglican, Afro-American, or of the Hispanic pervasion, and it dehoofs us all to be patients. Remember that no man is an Ireland. Irregardless, the dime is cast. We can only hope that Numero Uno can regress us to the Marquis De Soto’s philosophy of “Let’s eat fair” and depart from the former executioner’s Gregorian policies at home and his varicose activism abroad. We, as patrimonious citizens—and those in military servitude—must encumber a position of stonicism and fortitude, and euthanize our umblical sense of pregnantism, and gavotte emperor.’

‘With that, I bid you guy cabalists a fare-thee-well, and a bon mot.” He bows and exits.

After Jap leaves, the group stays silent, and Oliver, who has yet to say a word tonight, has a quizzical look on his face and his hands palms up and extended, as in a plea. The group, to a man, looks to you—as “pretender” and sole challenger to Jap for the crown of “wordsmith”— for comment.

And thinking about “reticence” as a trait of your people, like Oliver, you think you probably shouldn’t ever open your mouth again, but you say, “I don’t know. But I have a umbilical feeling that Japhet is right.”

Noe.