Jumping up from his table in the Polka Palace restaurant, the soft worn fringe on Casey Weatherhogg’s brown suede jacket fluttered like waves in a Ripple wine spill on a windy coastal California day.

Pointing to the front window, he squawked.

Look, look, he said, it’s a Polish falcon.

The sparse lunch crowd looked out the window, giving Casey the few seconds he needed to sprinkle three drops of fresh LSD on the plate of pierogies that sat piled in front of Lackawanna County President Judge Stanley “Stash” Dombroski.

Stickler for control and accuracy that he was, Dombroski corrected Casey.

You mean a Polish eagle, he said.

Yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean, Casey said.

I don’t see no bird, the judge said.

Must have flew the coop, Casey said.

Digging into his pierogies, the judge scowled. Casey dipped his last hunk of crusty bread into his last spoonful of red beet soup and split. Ten minutes later so did the judge, without leaving a tip or paying the bill.

Back at the courthouse, a bewitched, befuddled and bewildered Dombroski read a few emails. Seeing a flash of red, he pushed back his chair, stood from his desk and walked to the window. The Polish eagle sat wearing a Biden/Harris t-shirt and flapping his wings in a tree outside the bell tower.

Dombroski froze.

That’s when the music started in his head, peppy polka music that filled his cranium with the sounds of an army of oom-pah-pah tubas and dulcet accordions, making him want to dance. The judge could hear and feel musical notes dripping and dropping from his ears, pouring from inside his brain and falling on the floor where they bounced, grew little legs and danced the polka led by escaped G and F clefs barking words to the tune with some notes even singing in Polish.

New, rare and wonderful, the lively number boomed around the room, an instant polka hit called Let’s Name the Baby Kielbasy. The judge began to sing, warbling shrill lyrics that came at his brain like intergalactic comets streaking through space as he sang at the top of his voice as free as a born-again sinner speaking in tongues.

Let’s name the baby Kielbasy

This kid burps fun and good cheer

Let’s name the baby Kielbasy

We’ll never run out of cold beer

Let’s name the baby Kielbasy

Break out the good times this year

Let’s name the baby Kielbasy

We don’t got nothing to fear.

Now the judge began to dance, twirling and swirling around his chambers. Sweating like an iced beer barrel on a sweltering summer day, fat beads of perspiration dripped down his forehead. Pulling at the Windsor knot in his tie, he undid his neckwear and tossed the red and white striped cravat over his shoulder. Next went the white dress shirt, then the pin-striped pants. Before he ran from his office, down the stairs and out the emergency exit into Courthouse Square, he opened the second-story window and threw his paisley-patterned briefs into the breeze where they fluttered like a deflated campaign balloon to the ground. For whatever unknown reason, the judge kept on his knee-high black dress socks and oxblood-colored wingtips.

A bored local TV crew doing a story on young professionals living in overpriced downtown lofts spotted him first when Judge Dombroski ran singing his way across the wide expanse of lawn. A skinny veteran reporter chased him down by the Civil War memorial, yelling her question in his flushed face as she stuck her mic under his nose.

Do you have a comment? Do you have a comment?

The judge stopped.

He panted.

He spoke.

Kielbasy, he said, kielbasy.

The cameraman focused on the judge’s private part.

Kielbasy, the judge said.

Kielbasy.

The reporter backed up. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the pink plastic throw-away razor she used to shave her legs in the satellite truck. The judge leered a dirty old man leer that would have put the late hustler Larry Flint to shame.

Kielbasy, my dear, he said.

Wave that spicy sausage at me one more time, you pervert, and I’ll cut it into pieces you male chauvinist pig in a blanket, you, the reporter said.

Of course he waved it.

And the chase was on.

Film at 11 showed the reporter bearing down on the pro-Trump registered Democrat as he danced the almost naked polka while yelling words that sounded like hoopa and yashimash. Before a SWAT team threw a net over his head, the judge screamed out one last phrase, a motto with which newspapers and websites won journalism awards nationwide.

Polka people are happy people, Judge Dombroski said.

From where Casey Weatherhogg stood hiding behind the Christopher Columbus statue, he felt enlightened knowing no matter what happened to this crooked, immoral bench-sitter, no matter which psychiatric hospital admitted him for a 30-day evaluation, the judge was right.

Undoubtedly the man was happy.

Happiness is the root of upheaval.

Power to the pierogi.

You lied to me, Zerelda said.

The second-in-command of the bugaboo revolutionary movement held a hockey stick.

I found this in your closet, she said.

I was thinking about trying out for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, Earl said.

I found this, too.

The photograph showed Earl standing among shards of glass with his back to a broken Capitol dome window. He stood stooped over, pulling down both sides of his pants, looking over his left shoulder and grinning. Earl’s bare buttocks looked like a giant pimpled honeydew melon stacked in a supermarket fruit display.

Zerelda spoke through clenched teeth.

What do you call this?

Moon over Scranton, my personal message to Joe Biden, Earl said.

You were there.

The president invited me, Earl said.

To the riot at the Capitol?

Only for a little while.

You told me you were in seclusion, praying all day Jan. 6 in the basement and couldn’t be disturbed for 24 hours.

I was on a secret mission for Jesus.

Jesus who?

Aw, Zerelda, don’t be like that. We’re troops for the Lord. Digital soldiers for Trump.

She fingered the point of a sharpened Chinese throwing star.

Earl started a war dance, leaping in small circles, whooping and hollering the way he did that fateful day in the nation’s capital.

Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!

I was stuck here all day polishing ammo for your crown of bullets, Zerelda said.

A woman’s work is never done, Earl said.

The metal star caught Earl above the nose, cleanly splitting the skin on his forehead and bouncing off his thick skull. Amazed he didn’t pass out, Earl shook his head to clear the silver points of light that flashed before his eyes.

Don’t be mad at 1776, Zerelda. .

Sitting on the floor in the corner of the living room, Timmy Kelly grunted through the gray duct tape across his mouth.

You shut up, too, Zerelda said.

UMMMMUMMMM, Timmy said.

I’ve had it with men, Zerelda said.

Turning to Timmy, she sneered.

By the way, that loud-mouthed tramp sister of yours had an accident and won’t be voting for Biden no more.

Timmy repeatedly grunted so hard he fainted.

Earl passed out, too.

Meanwhile in the Hill Section of Scranton, worried unduly about the planet’s health, Casey Weatherhogg painted blocky green and purple letters on a protest sign and nailed the poster board to a 2-inch-by-2-inch-by-7-foot tomato patch stake.

The sign said: BEWARE OF PUDDING PEOPLE.

Throwing the picket sign over his shoulder, he headed downtown to U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s office on Lackawanna Avenue where the lifeless lawmaker reigned as King of the Pudding People with his mushy bureaucratic advocacy, custardy leadership, and tepid tapioca courage.

If Berkeley during the 60s taught Casey anything, his radical college education molded his unswerving regard for the First Amendment. The sacred legacy of free speech is why last year he stopped writing letters to the editor of his local fish wrapper where anxious news executives, complacent corporate company men of the lowest order, regularly censored his missives until enough was enough. Casey picketed the paper for a week, walking up and down in front of the building each afternoon with a handmade sign that said “Fuck the Times Tribune.”

Cops told his mother on him but she said he had every right to free speech and that they should stop badgering two upstanding senior citizens.

A week later Casey urged a boycott of a city seafood restaurant’s Friday tuna steak specials, claiming the casual eating establishment bought fish from an outfit in New York that bought Atlantic bluefin trapped by nets that kill dolphins. Casey used an ice pick to puncture the two-story tall red inflatable crab hanging outside the restaurant entrance. Then he called the TV stations. Cops released him to the custody of his mother.

But he knew he wasn’t getting through. Casey needed a bigger, better revolt. Scranton wasn’t San Francisco but you make do with what you’ve got. All he usually got in return was aggravation from The Man, from The Establishment and even from younger generation pseudo-hipster millennials who considered themselves artists and foodies and worth more than they would ever be worth, convinced how they already knew all they needed to know without paying their dues.

Casey had it with these young bastards. One young shitster in the supermarket recently called him “Pops.”

Excuse me, said Casey, skinny as he was trying to keep social distance while squeezing past the zucchini display.

No problem, Pops.

Then the kid stood so close behind him in the check-out aisle with his mask hanging from under his chin, Casey turned and politely asked for some space.

The kid said it again. Cool, Pops.

After a lifetime fighting racism, sexism, and every other kind of bigotry, now Casey squared off against ageism.

Getting old made seeing, hearing, peeing and simply being a drag. People needed to get hippy. Casey figured his first batch of happy homemade acid should be ready to go by the weekend. Nobody would make a better guinea pig than that bloated plutocrat of a county president judge Dombroski who fined him for his seafood protest.

Community service?

Casey would give him all the community service he could swallow.

Each Wednesday for lunch Dombroski inhaled a plate piled with pierogis at the Polka Palace restaurant where Casey sometimes ate borsht. How hard would it be to punch up the judge’s pierogis with not one but two drops of handcrafted LSD?

Get ready to turn on, tune in and drop out, your honor.

Time to let your freak flag fly.

A city police officer cutting through the courthouse parking lot for a smoke found Shannon Kelly on her back buried in a snow drift with her arms and legs stiff and extended like a bug caught in an icy slate sidewalk crack.

Frantic, he called in the corpse over the radio.

Deceased white female, dressed in a faux-fur coat, wearing red stiletto heels and a blue pageboy wig, the officer said.

She looks like Cher without the Cher, he said.

The supervisor sergeant who arrived on the scene immediately showed his investigative skill.

Wonder if she’s local?

I know her, sir. She’s Timmy Kelly’s sister, the patrolman said.

That goof from Minooka who’s running for mayor as a Joe Biden look-a-like?

One and the same.

We got a missing person report on him just the other day, the sergeant said.

Yeah, I heard from the chief’s secretary that Judge Dombroski called and demanded we work harder to find Kelly. The bigger news is that this gal is the judge’s girlfriend, the cop said.

Go on, Judge Dombroski is a Catholic.

So was JFK.

The judge is married, too, the sergeant said.

That didn’t stop Donald Trump.

I heard the judge and the president play golf together, the sergeant said.

My sister works in the courthouse and says Dombroski’s supposed to be at Mar-a-Lago now.

Looks like the judge got himself a nice fat alibi, the sergeant said.

Don’t they always?

Yeah, this crime scene looks like a Super Bowl party accident, anyway, the sergeant said.  Drunken party girl, passed out on the crawl to the next bar and that’s all she wrote.

Who’s that across the street waving?

Harry Davies.

The ex-con former mayor who got the pardon from Trump?

The sergeant walked across the street to the federal building steps.

Nice to see you out and about, Harry.

What do you have over there?

Judge Dombroski’s girlfriend stiffer than frozen custard, the sergeant said.

You tell Dombroski yet?

The judge is in Florida, the sergeant said.

I hear the judge’s lady friend was a Biden supporter, Harry Davies said.

Go on, Dombroski’s with Trump all the way.

Knowing full well he got the police sergeant’s attention, Harry struggled to keep a straight face, Now the sergeant was asking questions.

You think this has something to do with the election?

Look at all the people the Clintons killed. Socialists are capable of anything. They even want to defund the police.

Dirty bastards, the sergeant said.

At that very moment, Judge Dombroski pulled back the venetian blind in his courthouse office and peeked out at the action unfolding on the Square. Recognizing the faux Persian curly lamb coat he bought Shannon last Valentine’s Day, he gasped. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. At least this year he didn’t have to worry about what to buy her for Valentine’s Day.

Staring hard at Harry Davies, the judge pointed his forefinger and raised his thumb in the shape of a make-believe pistol.

You’re next, he said.

Dear President Biden,

My name is Mabel Weatherhogg. I’m 95 years old and was born and raised in Scranton. Unlike you, I still live here. I’m a Marywood College graduate who worked as a public librarian for more than 40 years. I’m writing to invite you to be my date at next month’s Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner.

You’ve attended this annual all-male gathering three times as featured speaker so I don’t have to tell you about the gang who runs the show. Big-feeling blowhards for the most part, they’re white men run amok among the masses, the majority of whom are women.

Go Kamala!

The event this year is online so it will be easier for us to appear together. I won’t have to punch any blockhead bouncer trying to keep me out and all you have to do is announce you’re escorting me as the first women to attend this shindig that has banned women for over a century. I’ll wave to the virtual crowd, throw out the first cabbage and make history for women’s rights that you’ll no doubt take credit for.

I don’t have much time to make history but neither do you. Getting old’s a pain in the ass, Joey, but you already know that.

Think of all the women who voted for you because they support Kamala to step in when you take your naps. Besides, it’s about time you did something to make up for the cruel way you treated Anita Hill after her ordeal with Clarence Thomas who you helped get appointed to the Supreme Court.

You see where that got us.

I have to be honest. I don’t care much for the way you’ve behaved over the years. With all that coal-miners-in-my-family malarkey and your other fibs you climbed over Scranton natives to get what you wanted. But you’re in office now so we expect a return on our investment.

Making amends includes awakening those misguided colleens in the Irish Women’s Society who think they’ve shown up the boys by starting their own group and holding their own yearly St. Patrick’s Day dinner. They let men attend, although the only ones who do are male political candidates who want to use the women by campaigning at both dinners. Opportunists just like you, they want to have their ham and eat it too. I can’t tell you how many otherwise smart women lawyers, judges, professors, doctors and elected officials won’t buck the patriarchy by even asking to go with their husbands or fathers to the men’s affair.

Not me. I’m demanding the right to attend. And after breaking the glass ceiling I’ll announce I wouldn’t be caught dead with that pack of Paddy’s pigs. They can go shit in their hats. Sorry, Mr. President, I got carried away.

So get out your best tuxedo, shine up those presidential cuff links and plant a couple of new hair plugs.

I’ll order a new green dress from Boscov’s at the mall in Central City.

Let’s make history, Joey.

Joey.

Joey!

It’s not nap time yet, young man.

PS: I’m out on bail for chaining myself to the new Joe Biden Way street sign pole outside your childhood home and would appreciate if you call the police chief and tell him to be kind to senior citizens. OK, so I was smoking a joint but you need to legalize pot anyway. Kamala got high. Maybe you ought to jump on the soul train, too.

I grow some real good stuff in the attic, Joe. I’ll give you a couple of joints the next time you’re in town. Or maybe just mail you a box at the White House. You can share it with that nice young premier from Canada. They legalized pot up there, you know. Health care for all, too.

Canada’s even better than Scranton.

Yours in the spirit of women’s rights,

Mabel

Serving in Congress is now a matter of life and death.

That’s why congressional leaders must stop colleagues who pack loaded pistols on Capitol property and pose a threat to kill somebody. Disarmament is long overdue for federal lawmakers who prowl the Hill with itchy fingers on the triggers like gunfighters in a shoot ’em up Western movie.

All members of Congress, including my congressman, U.S. Rep Matt Cartwright, D-8, Moosic, are legally permitted to carry a loaded firearm in their Washington Capitol offices.

Is Cartwright a pistol-packer? If not, does he mind if others, including dangerous right-wing conspiracy theorists with whom he shares the House of Representatives chamber, keep loaded guns in their offices or as they stalk the polished halls of American law and order?

You’d think a federal lawmaker endorsed by Giffords (an organization dedicated to saving lives from gun violence that is led by former congresswoman and shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords) would have the courage to publicly stand against future violence. But my wishy-washy congressman refuses to answer my questions about whether he’s willing to take action to help head off murder.

A 1967 law bans civilians from carrying guns on Capitol Hill, even if they have concealed carry licenses. But the law carves out an exception for lawmakers who can keep firearms in their offices. Guns aren’t allowed everywhere. They’re prohibited in the House and Senate chambers and their adjoining lobbies and cloakrooms, the Marble Room of the Senate, and the Rayburn Room of the House, according to a recent story at the Trace, America’s only team of journalists exclusively dedicated to reporting on our country’s gun violence crisis.

So where does Cartwright stand? And will he join Democrats on the Congressional Progressive Caucus in opposing lawmakers who want to continue carrying loaded firearms on Capitol property?

Last week I emailed basic questions to Cartwright’s Scranton and Washington offices.

Has Rep. Cartwright ever possessed a gun in his office? If so, when? Does he support proposed legislation to ban guns on Capitol property, including in the offices of members of Congress? If so, why? If not, why not?

I sent my inquiry to Scranton District Director Bob Morgan, a company man whose official bio highlights his 25 years in financial services and how he was responsible for providing investment and client relationship services to individuals and institutions.

Seasoned Chief of Staff Hunter Ridgway got an email, too.

Morgan responded he was “forwarding your questions along to our Washington Press Secretary Matt Slavoski.  Matt replaced Melvin Felix in DC.”

I mistakenly sent an email to Felix who at least responded that he no longer works for Cartwright. He has signed on as Communications Director for the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. I hope Felix does a better job there than at Cartwright’s office where he regularly ignored my emails as a constituent, veteran journalist and active independent member of the working press.

In a follow-up email to Morgan I asked for Slavoski’s email address. Morgan failed to respond and Slavoski never answered my questions from Morgan’s forwarded email.

Ridgeway also didn’t respond to my email or a follow-up in which I wrote, “If you received my questions for Rep. Cartwright please let me know as I want to give the congressman every chance to answer my questions.”

Cartwright regularly evades legitimate questions that challenge his outmoded and risky bad conduct, yet another reason his colleagues on the Congressional Progressive Caucus should kick him out of their good company.

With the exception of a low-level office staffer who answered the phone and called back one day when I asked why Cartwright was slow in signing on to Trump’s second impeachment, neither Cartwright nor any ranking member of his staff has responded for over a year to my written questions for the congressman about his public policy positions.

As a longtime progressive Democratic voter in Cartwright’s district, I’m a good citizen who takes government accountability seriously. Cartwright takes political opportunism seriously. He wants mostly white male gun owners to see him as one of the boys.

My expectations for government service are more demanding.

I expect Cartwright to stand firm as a legislator brave enough to step from behind his dull shield of silence and face questions he and his arrogant staff are clearly too self-absorbed to answer.

Lives are increasingly at risk on Capitol Hill.

You’d think Cartwright, a Jan. 6 siege survivor at the Capitol where a Capitol police officer and four others died, would understand the urgency of exhibiting good judgment.

After finagling his way into Democratic leadership, Cartwright sits on the House Committee of Appropriations and serves as Chair of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science.

You’d think by now he’d have his finger on the pulse of reason rather than providing cover for a shooting gallery loaded with anti-government fanatics, paranoid rioters and gun nuts bent on destroying law and spreading disorder.

Not Matt Cartwright.

The congressman prefers we live in the deadly shadow of the gun.

Wearing a tight puckered face right out of an OIC television commercial, Timmy Kelly confessed.

I hate Joe Biden, he said, especially when the dorky bastard jogs that gawky dash he makes with his arms pumping psychostimulants or whatever juice he’s on to show off geriatric dexterity.

Earl piped in.

What is he, 100?

The president is 78, Timmy said.

Earl spit dip juice into an empty Budweiser bottle.

I can’t tell anybody I hate Joe Biden, of course, Timmy said.

You told me, Earl said.

That’s because you’re threatening me with an electric volt cattle prod. If anybody finds out I cracked under pressure my new career as a professional Joe Biden impersonator will go right down the shitter. I can kiss all them Atlantic City casinos goodbye.

Timmy ramped up his whine.

I’m younger and look better than him, too, like a youthful Joe Biden. I’m like Elvis in the Aloha from Hawaii concert. Trim. Fit. I’m a little nervous. But when the bars get packed again after the COVID’s all cured I ought to do OK with the crowd. This is my last shot. Just like Joe.

Let me hear you do a Joe Biden, Earl said.

C’mon, give me a break, man.

Earl raised his eyebrows.

You sound just like that goof.

Guys like me don’t matter much anymore, Timmy Kelly said.

Yeah, Black lives matter, Earl said.

That’s why my mayoral campaign slogan is Scranton Lives Matter! You like that? I bet you do. Can I count on your vote?

You can count on me sticking this joy stick where the sun don’t shine if you don’t help me and Zerelda attack the government.

I thought the rioters already did that.

They did in Washington. We’re attacking the Friendly Sons dinner. They’re going virtual this year. All the elected government officials will be online watching when we hack into the stream and show porn movies about Irish priests and Wolfhounds. Because we matter, goddammit.

Timmy already had his virtual ticket for the dinner. Still, he got so excited he started waving his arms around and stepping dangerously close to the electric prod.

Cats and dog lives matter more than us white guys, he said. Local television news reports consider pets dying in house fires to be breaking news. Parakeet perishes in apartment inferno; film at eleven. A piss ant garners more respect than Timmy Kelly.

Time to rise, Earl said.

Timmy hyperventilated.

Earl put down the prod.

You want to join the Bugaboo, Mr. President?

What’s the Bugaboo?

Our revolution, Earl said..

Pounding rattled the glass panes in the front door.

I know you’re in there, Timmy Kelly, Shannon said.

Earl rushed to the foyer and tore open the door.

May I help you, sister?

I’m Timmy Kelly’s sister, not yours. Where is he?

Would you like to come in?

Is that rifle you’re carrying loaded?

It is.

You know how to shoot?

I do.

You interested in work as a political assassin?

Who’s the target?

Former Mayor Harry Davies.

Republican or Democrat?

Pardoned by Trump.

Trump got yellow and let the people down.

So?

So count me in.

Can you do two hits for the price of one?

Who’s the second target?

Some crooked Polack judge named Dumbroski.

With her hair piled on her head like a sticky pink cotton candy beehive, Timmy Kelly’s sister, Shannon, painted her toenails cranberry red and sipped a strawberry wine cooler straight from the bottle. Wearing a headset and baby doll pajamas she took the first call of the day.

When Shannon started her home business making psychic telephone connections at the beginning of the pandemic she hit the motherlode. Making personal contact with long dead Irish relatives in the great beyond became her greatest talent for snaring the typically stupid Irish-American wives of typically stupider Irish-American husbands who craved a link to the old sod but never thought to leave Scranton on a AAA tour.

On this call Shannon breathed into the phone between sips of warm cooler and said, your great-great-great-great-great granny’s coming through loud and clear.

Oh, my God, what’s she saying?

That she’s so proud of you getting elected as president of the Irish Women’s Society.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, how does she know?

The angels gossip, Shannon said.

Does granny see me from heaven?

Yes, yes, she says you look just like her when she was young and beautiful and living in Scranton’s sister city Ballina in County Mayo where Joe Biden’s people come from.

Mother of God, she didn’t say I’m beautiful, did she?

She did.

She didn’t.

She did.

Can I call her back next week?

I’ll see what I can do to get you a discount, Shannon said.

Shannon hung up struggling to keep from laughing and spitting cooler across the room.

The next call came immediately.

Goddammit, get off the phone and get your skinny ass over here fast. We got a problem, Judge Dombroski said.

Don’t you talk to me like that you fat tub of shit, Shannon said.

Harry Davies is trying to blackmail us.

What do you mean us?

 He’s threatening to tell my wife we’re having an affair.

That’s your problem.

It’s yours too if he posts them pictures I took of you on parade day that shows you wearing nothing but a green pointed St. Patrick’s Day hat doing the Riverdance while I played the accordion.

Shannon dropped her voice several octaves, lower than the guttural howls of an alley cat coupling in sweltering summer street heat.

I’m seeing a holy vision, Shannon said.

Frazzled, the judge took the bait.

What? What do you see?

I already posted the pictures on Facebook, Stash. They got more likes and shares than the video of my dog saluting during the national anthem at Trump’s inauguration. What I’m seeing is your wife weeping in divorce court and you losing your re-election bid. I’m seeing your million dollar ten-year-term salary flying out the courthouse window. I’m seeing me getting national publicity as a centerfold poster girl for an alt-right psychic militia and telling my story on CNN.

Shannon, please.

Pretty please with Irish Mist on top?

We’re going to have to kill Harry.

With kindness?

No, with a car bomb.

At that very moment while deeply pondering his existence, Casey Weatherhogg stared at the vanilla peppermint candle he lit five minutes earlier for his daily meditation. A voice in his head told him Zen is knowing you’re alive and doing something about it. Zen is doing nothing that’s sometimes doing something. Zen is doing something that’s sometimes doing nothing.

Doing his best to find peace of mind, Casey worried he might hurt somebody if he dosed the Scranton reservoir drinking water supply with a whole batch of basement-brewed LSD. Casey wanted to help, not hurt. Maybe he could find a way to just get the acid into the water fountains at the county courthouse where the mind-blower would at least add points to the sheriff’s office staff IQ. Or put it in the bishop’s aspergillum he uses to sprinkle holy water on the faithful with the words in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Jerry Garcia.

Casey asked himself a serious question upon which his whole existence was based: How far do you want to take this mission of mercy?

Further, he said.

Further.

Digging into his bowl of soggy corn flakes, Gino chewed hard and loud, loaded with pride in his refusal to watch one second of the inaugural swearing-in ceremony on TV. With the inmates storming the asylum two weeks ago and COVID-19 bugs spreading all over town, as far as he was concerned Joe and Kamala should have taken the oath with the same sense of urgency as LBJ aboard Air Force One, Jackie at his side wearing JFK’s blood on her dress.

But, no, mega-celebrity Lady Gaga ruled. Access, prestige, power, corporate cash, authority and elitism made Gino sick. Garth Brooks singing about amazing grace made him sicker. Country music sold out a long time ago. Tex Ritter would have refused a spot at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Gino wondered if Joe was a closet drinker. And he bet Kamala got high. Born of Jamaican ganja heritage on her father’s side, she’s a California girl where recreational pot’s been legal since 2016 and was now living in the VP’s residence in the District of Columbia where pot’s also legal. If Gino was a member of the White House press corps he’d ask Kamala when she last smoked a joint. Yesterday? Today? As far as he was concerned, Kamala had weed written all over her.

Retired for only a few days, Gino already had way too much time on his hands.

When he first went to work 25 years ago at the federal prison in Lewisburg, he saw himself as a tough, no-nonsense law and order disciplinarian.  Now he couldn’t even keep the crooked former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies out of the trunk of his car. So he put in his papers instead of putting up with an internal investigation and local news reports insinuating he had something to do with Davies’ prison escape. At least they couldn’t blame Davies’ presidential pardon on him. That surprise came right from Trump.

Welcome home, Harry.

Shoveling stale breakfast cereal into his mouth got Gino thinking about Corn Pop.

To hear Joe Biden tell it, Corn Pop was a bad dude and he ran a bunch of bad boys. The guys in their Minooka neighborhood tagged Gino with the nickname Corn Pop as soon as Biden’s questionable story started making the rounds in 2017.  Other than the snooty lace curtain Micks in the upper middle-class Green Ridge oasis where Biden lived for the first decade or so of his life, nobody in any legitimate American blue-collar neighborhood believed the Corn Pop saga.

Biden’s I-grew-up-in-Scranton-timeline is debatable, of course, because even Biden’s handful of childhood pals can’t seem to agree on the exact dates he lived at his grandparents’ house or moved to Delaware. Ask Joe and he’ll exaggerate, forget, not quite remember or tell you he walked on the moon in 1969 with his best girl, Jill, who was wearing an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow polka dot bikini. Loyalist Biden lore claims their hero lived on North Washington Avenue for years, but nobody seems to know exactly how many.

By the time Biden publicly told the Corn Pop story, the real Corn Pop was long gone, dead and buried in the first state. Nobody in Scranton gave the story much thought even if the seemingly tall tale were true. The legendary Wilmington confrontation highlights 19-year-old honkey lifeguard Joe Biden carrying a six-foot length of chain, Black gang leader Corn Pop wielding a rusty straight razor, and two bad boys in a gang called the Romans also wielding rusty razors Joe said developed lethality from dipping them in a rainwater barrel. These marauders eventually backed off. Joe’s body parts remained intact instead of jiggling in Corn Pop’s pocket or dangling from the mirror of a stolen Cadillac.

With Gino’s Calabria Italian-American olive complexion, as they say in Scranton, some of the guys had tagged him as colored long before America elected Biden Vice President. Previously known in his Irish neighborhood simply as Gino the Wop, for many years Gino felt good about his heritage and station in life, not at all like the Stations of the Cross Jesus endured. He had that nice federal prison job with great benefits. He loved his wife until she died. And most people respected his position as a guard, or correctional officer as he demanded people characterize his career.

But when he said he believed Biden’s Corn Pop story the Minooka gang let him have it with all the bigoted white male malice they could load into abuse that would follow Gino until six peers carted him off to the cemetery in a box. That first day Gino proclaimed he believed Joe, neighborhood hero Timmy Kelly led the brutal verbal assault.

You’re shitting me. Joe Biden made that up like he makes up everything else. I bet he had Corn Pops for breakfast that morning he first told the story to them American-African kids, Kelly said.

All these years later, Gino had an idea. Stepping to the cupboard, he reached for a new box of cereal and froze deep in thought.

Corn Pop and Joe had a bond, right? What if Joe and I continue that relationship in these terrible times of racial unrest, a black-and-white connection like Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson singing Ebony and Ivory? What if I announce I’m Corn Pop’s son, Sugar Pop? After all, back in the 50s Corn Pops cereal was called Sugar Pops.

Ever since Ann Marie took a stroke and died last year, Gino lived like a recluse drinking too much, eating Progresso canned minestrone soup every day and going to work surrounded by white-collar millionaire convicts and Mafia degenerates.

Everybody thinks they’re better than me, Gino said out loud.

He lit a Parodi cigar and had to admit he never felt like he mattered. Gino felt tears form in his eyes. The strong smell of tobacco burned his nostrils. Gino wanted a piece of the action. Why couldn’t he get something out of Biden’s election? Gino embedded his own scrappy roots in Scranton all his life and didn’t own a $2.7 million beach house in Rehoboth Beach like Biden does.

I’ll make Biden’s election work for me, Gino said. I’m dark-skinned whether I like it or not, been dark since I was a bambino. Guys call me colored and mean it. If Corn Pop had a kid with a white woman he’d be just about my shade and age. Maybe I can cash in by asking Biden’s people for a couple of small government contracts in Scranton, ghost work like the good old days where I can just pick up a check and only show up at the office for the Christmas party.

Yeah, OK, everybody knows I’m Italian. A couple old-timers still remember my christening. But I’ll say I’m strong enough to admit I’m adopted, that my parents never wanted to tell the truth to protect me, and Corn Pop wanted his boy to grow up in Scranton just like Joe Biden. Yeah, yeah, I’m feeling Black already.

Alive and woke and living in Scranton, Sugar Pop was, as Joe Biden might say, ready to build back better.

Oogabooga, my brother, said Earl Schmidt.

Timmy Kelly lifted his aviator glasses and looked hard at the reverend.

Huh?

Earl explained.

Black cave men used to say boogabooga. White cave men said oogabooga. Now that’s our battle cry for the civil war, Earl said.

Civil war?

Earl kept talking.

Pay attention, boy. White cave men warring with Black cave men started at the beginning of time. We won because we stood our ground evolving into people like the Flintstones and the Rubbles, Fred and Barney cruising around after work at the factory, marrying beautiful white girls like Betty and Wilma. Black boogs hid in the trees grunting and blaming white men for all their problems just like they do today. Oogabooga is our code so the deep state swamp people and them Black Lives Matter boogaboogas won’t know what hit them now that the shit storm has arrived.

Kelly stood spellbound realizing for the first time just how severely nuts Trump had made his paranoid followers who believe with all their burned brain stems their man is the white Messiah leading them from the cave and into the embrace of heaven.

Still, the pastor raised more questions than answers.

Kelly scrunched up his face.

The shit storm?

Two capital S’s, like the German Waffle SS. Why do you think we meet at Waffle Houses all over the country? The Waffle SS, the shit storm, that’s what we’re calling the race war.  

Timmy saw no value in telling Earl the Nazi Waffen SS had nothing to do with sourdough syrup. As a professional Joe Biden impersonator with big dreams of performing in Atlantic City, Timmy needed to beware, especially among berserk Trump freaks inspired to stop the steal after Dems rigged the election.

Timmy Kelly held out his hand palm up.

You got the hundred bucks, Earl?

You got the VIP inauguration passes?

Timmy pegged Earl as a pushover. Word on the street described Earl as a low IQ redneck hillbilly with a speaking-in-tongues church in West Side who was looking for a way into the swearing-in. Timmy had every intention of ripping off the reverend and disappearing back into his own tribal neighborhood where he felt safe. Only Earl was nobody’s fool.

Where’d you get the tickets, by the way?

That’s confidential, Timmy said.

You going to the inauguration in Washington with us, Mr. Kelly?

They need me here.

You ain’t got no real tickets, now, do you, boy?

With that, Zerelda glided into the room with the harsh grace of First Lady Melania guiding the televised White House Christmas tour that never was.

Put your hands up, she said, pointing a Sig P226 9mm equipped with night sights at Timmy’s nose with all the glee of a SEAL war criminal getting pardoned from a life sentence for massacring civilians.

We got him, Earl, she said.

We got who?

We got ourselves a captain in the Joe Biden Clone Army, Earl. The Jews are breeding battalions of look-a-like Bidens to unleash across America trying to cloud our minds and sperm our women to do their bidding.

Earl screamed.

Sperm our women? Inject them with wild liberal spermazooms? My God, Zerelda, that’s worse than shape-shifting, blood-sucking reptilian humanoids invading Earth to control the human race.

The Joe Biden Clone Army is a million times worse than the lizard people, Earl.

Turning on Timmy, Zerelda spoke with the cold authority of a guerrilla field commander.

How’d you like to make a hostage video, Joe? Tell the world you voted for Trump.

Meanwhile back in his basement, Casey dipped a soup spoon into the tub loaded with liquid LSD for a taste. Ummmm, he said like he was sampling chicken corn soup at the German church bazaar. Upstairs in the attic, Mabel lit a joint and planned her next mission.

Back in the Minooka section of town, Gino wrote a resignation letter to the prison warden.

And former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies settled in to make a few phone calls to friends who were always good for bribes and kickbacks, political cronies who would do anything he wanted for fear he would rat them out to the feds.

Pssst, he said when the first potential felon answered the phone. Did you hear what Joe Biden did in law school?