I have been having a recurring fantasy lately about being in
a movie, a remake of an old Clint Eastwood western called "The Outlaw Josie Wales." It could be called "The Outlaw Georgie
Bush."
The place is a barren desert wasteland a couple hours north
of Yuma. The time: January 2009. The cast: just Bush and me. In the opening scene, Bush and I have just broken camp after
a breakfast of cowboy coffee and biscuits. The sun is coming up over a mesa and we are starting to feel the heat. Now we are
on our horses, and Bush is wearing dust-covered rattlesnake boots, faded jeans and a greasy, old cowboy hat. He is unshaven;
a toothpick hangs from his slightly-parted, dry lips. I am wearing an Amnesty International baseball cap, and smoking a crooked
hand rolled cigarette. The scene opens with me talking to Bush:
ME: "Georgie…you been drinkin'? (long pause)
BUSH: (annoyed) Well there ain't no harm in a man's
having a little taste now and then, is there?
ME: Well, I reckon you got yourself a point. I don't aim
to be contrary. But I got something I been wantin to tell you. I'll give it to you straight… There's talk in town.
Folks say you're thinkin' you're Harry Truman. Your name's Bush, not Truman. I knew Truman, and you're no Harry Truman…
BUSH: Now don't you start in to talkin' to me like one of them
no-count, back-east liberals, you hear? I ain't havin'any of it.
We come up over a hill and before
us is a small Indian village. Children are playing while black haired women draw water from an old stone well. Their menfolk
eye us suspiciously as we ride through in nervous silence. Georgie quietly reaches down and feels the cold reassuring gun
metal of the Colt .44 revolver he has hidden inside his pants. He mutters something under his breath about weapons, mass construction.
WI think to myself, he's a hard one, this outlaw Georgie. Finally we are outside the village. Bush breaks the silence.
BUSH: You know what all that was about?
ME: Don't know what yer talking about."
BUSH: You know...the way them injuns was eyeballin' us back there...
ME: What about it?
BUSH: It don't feel right...The way I got it figured is -they hate us for our freedoms.
They hate us because we are a free people.
ME: Dang it all, you just don't git it do you? Maybe them injuns is mad for a reason.
YOu remember them smallpox blankets, don't you?(I pause, and my voice changes to a softer tone in an appeal to Bush's reason.
I'm glad this guy isn't in any kind of leadership position) Now listen and don't you go bein stubborn. Nothin good can come
from it, you hear? Go away from here, Georgie! And do it while the gittin's good. Go start over in Paraguay... They
can't touch you there... And them folks down there take to your kind…You can learn yourself some German. Why, folks
say Paraguay's a place where a man can put on his cowboy boots, ride out all day and clear brush on his own land, have his
own homestead; it's a place where a man can forget.
Bush looks pensive, the monotonous silence of the desert is broken only by the clip-clop
of horses hooves; We move southward toward the Mexican border.
ME: You got yourself a good grubstake from all them Hally-burtin' contracts, don'tcha?...
And them Carlyle Group fellers is goin to take care of you and yer kinfolk, ain't they? (Bush grunts to indicate yes)
Well then, there you are. And Georgie, I ain't no preacher. I ain't got no call to lecture you none. But there's one last
thing…Don't forget to exonerate yourself preemptively from prosecution before leaving office. Time's a runnin'
out. I reckon folks in these parts is getting' mighty ornery bout things. Now do it, Georgie. Before it's too late,
before they find out what you and your daddy done…
