Liberty

by Garrison Keillor

  “Get out of here, Art. You’re drunk,” said the mayor. Art ignored her. “Hoping you can come up and see my motel,” he said. “They tried to take it away from me but I got it back. Got a bottle of whiskey to wet your whistle. I know how to treat people right.” He walked alongside the car. “You talk to the president, right? That’s what I hear.” The man’s breath was enough to strip wallpaper. “I got an idea I want you to pass on. Instead of bombing Iraq, Air Force ought to drop manure on them. Take those big tanker planes and fill ’em up in Iowa and cover the country with shit.” The old guy walked alongside the car, hanging on to the governor’s sleeve. Where was Todd? Where was the security? Those guys clung to you like lint all day and when you needed them they’d gone off for lunch. The governor looked beyond the old drunk and tried to wave to the crowd but the old guy had a death grip on his arm. “You know about Muslims. They consider pork unclean, so they’d right away imagine it was pig shit, otherwise why would we drop it? Right? And so they’d all be ranting and raving and praying to Allah but meanwhile you’d be fertilizing the country so in a few years it’d become the breadbasket of the Mideast. You win the war without killing anybody and you do some good for the long run. What about that?”

  And then the old guy cried, “Hey! Why do you wear your watch on your right arm? That makes no sense at all.” He started to peel the watch off. Great God in heaven. He was the governor of Minnesota and he had to fight a drunk for his watch!! He looked back—no Todd, no highway patrolman—and he told the drunk, “Get the hell away from me.” The drunk held on tighter—“What’d you say?” The drunk turned and yelled to the crowd—“I’m trying to tell my guv’nor sumthin and he tells me to get the hell away!”—he stuck his face up close to the governor’s—“Who pays your salary, chickenshit? Tell me that. Who paid for that watch? Me. The taxpayer.”

  “Hey, Governor!” It was Georgia Brickhouse, dismounted from the dead man whose left testicle she had stepped on, striding up the CNN side of the street, red boots, blue tights, white blouse of Congress, her adherents chanting her name. She yelled, “Governor! It’s me! Georgia!” And the high school choir, thinking the TV cameras were on, raised their fists and chanted—

  WOBEGON

  We said it once, we’ll say it again

  WOBEGON

  Wobegon, Wobegon, that’s our team,

  You are the curds and we are the cream.

  So pick up your trash and step to the side

  Lake Wobegon will not be denied

  Go, Leonards!

  30. THE COLLISION

  But master control was not ready for Lake Wobegon yet. Ricky said, “Sorry, folks! We’ve got to do it all over!” and raised his index finger and waved it clockwise. Three feet away, Clint got on the horn—“Bring ’em around again,” he told Carl who was stationed at the parade’s end at the park. “Ours not to reason why. Recycle the parade. Send them back around.” He meant for the parade to circle back by way of Elm Street and sent LeRoy dashing up there to clear traffic but Carl in his excitement waved the first units to make a sharp U-turn and head back along Main Street where they met the rest of the parade approaching who had to sidestep to the left, bands and wagons and horses and all, and soon there was a two-way parade—“I love it!” cried Ricky—the mighty sixteen-Percheron hitch towing the wagon with the band playing “Tiger Rag” passing the haywagon with the Lake Wobegon Whippets aboard, twelve ballplayers in uniform, bats on their shoulders, looking glum, followed by the “Yankee Doodle” fifes and drums, the Pork Queen waving to the Queen of Soybeans, and Miss Liberty gallivanting along behind Uncle Sam lumping along on his stilts, and Abe and George marching arm in arm, Martha having retired due to painful bunions, and the Gothic Woman and Man With Pitchfork marching in tandem, followed by the old Chevys and Pontiacs of the Car Club, and the Ladies Sextette on a forklift, lip-synching “To Know Him Is To Love Him”—a fine mess of images on CNN’s monitor—“Beautiful!” Ricky cried. “Keep going! It’s perfect.” Flags swirled as honor guards swerved to avoid each other and the eight-horse hitch pulling the Arabian Nights wagon passed the Future Farmers chorus and Miss Liberty’s robes swirled around her, the seven-pointed crown slightly askew, she waved her torch as she passed Clint and blew him a big kiss and then there was the governor of Minnesota approaching in his convertible, a small grim woman by his side and a giant red-blue-white Congress person striding along, trying to catch up with him, pushing small Catholic children out of her way, shoving a nun—the governor glanced over his shoulder like a hunted animal—the huntress was shrieking, “Governor! Governor!”—she wanted a photo, her and the gov, holding hands aloft—a team—working together to protect our country from terrorists—and the psychic Miss Liberty felt the dark aura of his dismay. His face was a cry for help—and now Miss Falconer sensed her moment and the choir in blue and gold sang, with ferocious diction, O flag of freedom, grandeur bright, shine O flag of yore with radiant beams of glory’s light from freedom’s rocky shore—to Miss Liberty the governor’s energy field said: Trapped. Between his robotic radiant face and the harpy on his tail and the TV camera beaming the show to the far corners of the world and his dream of becoming vice president of the United States, he was wedged tight and hard in a small space that did not permit him to run free—her heart went flying out to him—he and she had been lovers in a previous life, she sensed—perhaps in a Conestoga wagon on the Oregon Trail, they had seen each other through the flames of a cooking fire and taken a walk at night through shoulder-high grass and lay down in it and joined in passionate congress—she wanted to offer him comfort now and inspiration. She held her torch high and called to him, “Courage, my darling!”—just then Ricky shouted, “WE’RE ON!”—actually screamed—he’d been waiting four hours for this moment and air pressure had built up inside him—and the governor’s car slowed so as not to run over the squat man with the handheld—and Angelica struck a pose for the governor who was clambering out of his car, trying to escape the clutches of Georgia Brickhouse. O flag of light we bless thy name and to thy Maker pray, protect us from the tyrant’s shame on Independence Day. He opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement, the car moving at 2 m.p.h. and he lost his balance and caromed off the front fender and Miss Liberty reached out to him and he took her hands, a radiant look of expectation on his face and stepped on her gown which fell to the pavement and she stood naked except for her red sandals, her torch held high. O flag of love within thy folds lies freedom’s mighty rod that raised up high in truth embolds a song of praise to God. Clint saw this out of the corner of his eye, her bare back and legs, and beyond the governor Georgia standing frozen—a nudity alarm had gone off in her head—but the governor was still smiling his radiant parade smile at the naked woman with the torch and he bent down to retrieve her robe just as she bent down too and their heads bonked hard and he got the worst of it—he straightened up, bug-eyed, poleaxed, and then dropped to his knees, his face, which now looked somewhat wolfish, was just even with her abdomen and he grimaced and fell forward, his forehead against her navel and her hands on his head, and a dozen people with zoom lenses on their digital cameras captured it, what appeared to be (which it was not) a sexual act in a public place, a public man addressing a woman’s privates. O flag of knowledge let us tell the world of freedom sweet, O blow the horn and ring the bell, its joyful song repeat. Lights flashed on many cell phones. And that was the picture that everyone saw over and over everywhere in the Western world for the next few days—a dazed man in a dark blue suit and red tie kneeling before a young naked woman, her long back and her womanly hips and firm buttocks, engaged in some sort of activity in her groin area which she, holding a torch high in the air, seemed to enjoy, and an angry Amazon behind him, horror writ large on her face and CONGRESS across her chest—it went straight to the Internet and people who’d never been to Minnesota e-mailed it to their friends and they sent it to their friends and without it ever being noted in the Times or the Post or the CBS Evening News it
entered the Great Swamp of National Consciousness and the governor’s name became one that you associated with S-E-X and bigwigs in Washington crossed the governor’s name off their lists instantly and his career skidded off the road and into the sea and though he himself would go on walking around and serving on boards and panels and consulting on things, he was a dead man from that moment. He had been crushed by Liberty’s thighs.

  A yellow-and-black butterfly had landed on Ricky’s control board and distracted him—he picked it up gingerly by one wing and it fluttered away—and then New York was yelling, “What’s going on out there?” and then he cut away to the cherry-picker and a high shot of the Will Jones Drum & Bugle Corps and “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” but in the delay an image was burned on the national retina that joined Marilyn Monroe in gold lamé singing “Happy Birthday” to John F. Kennedy and Monica Lewinsky radiant in the crowd welcoming Bill Clinton. Within minutes, twenty-two seconds of video was up on YouTube and a frontal view on various subterranean websites which spread like mushrooms and what was so riveting was not the woman’s buttocks, handsome though they were, but the man’s expression of wonderment as if he had been closeted in a monastery for years and now he knelt in adoration of the female form, and pressed his face against her, at least until the Amazon (his wife? his mother?) hauled him off her and read him the riot act.

  31. IRENE ARMED AND DANGEROUS

  It was a wonderful parade, according to everybody who hadn’t seen the Statue of Liberty naked—she was naked only for a few seconds before Clint Bunsen rushed to her side and re-draped her and led her away—they loved the circus wagons, the mighty steeds, the blaze of pageantry, the bands. Irene did not see it. She had walked south along Main Street and smelled pig manure, rich and sour, and there, parked on the street, a plastic tarp over the box, were three old bachelor farmers in a pickup truck, passing a bottle of whiskey around. They looked at her as if they’d never seen her before.

  She walked up to the window. “Where you going with that?” she said in a friendly tone of voice.

  Mr. Boe was at the wheel. Rheumy-eyed, grizzled, snaggle-toothed Mr. Boe. “Going to join the parade,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. You’re going to turn around and drive out of town and take that wherever you got it,” she said. They laughed. Apparently they’d never been ordered around by a woman. So she pulled the pistol out of the bag and pointed it at Mr. Boe and cocked the hammer. He rolled up the window. She tapped on the glass with the pistol barrel. He started the engine. She tapped hard. He rolled the window down a little. “This shoots through glass, I believe,” she said. “And if you don’t do what I say, I’ll blow your brains out.” She had never said those words before. A first for her.

  Mr. Boe turned to consult with his friends and Irene reached in and turned off the ignition and pulled out the keys. “You see what happens when you don’t listen?” She walked away. The lake was two blocks to the east. She’d walk down to the shore and throw the keys in and then go looking for the Statue of Liberty. The woman was not going to waltz out of town scot-free. No, ma’am.

  Susan B. Anthony was resting in the shade of the Statue of the Unknown Norwegian, sitting on the grass, her shoes off, and saw Miss Liberty being towed away by Clint Bunsen and had no idea what had happened, and neither did most other people, even those who’d gotten a glimpse of pink naked flesh—it was all over so quickly. The governor fled, his face twitching, and galloped up the street in search of the black Lincoln. Todd ran along beside him and the governor yelled, “You’re history, shithead.” The governor ran up the alley behind Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery and the highway patrolman had brought the car around to the front. “What’d I do?” cried Todd. The governor poked him in the sternum. “J’ever think to put a goddamn sign on the side of my goddamn car, you jerk?” Todd gulped. And then someone laughed nearby and the governor turned and saw through a window in the back of the Mercantile people watching TV and the woman with the seven-pointed crown and the torch—the robe tumbling to the ground and her bare back and proud young buttocks and the camera zooming in on the governor as he held her by the hands and the goofy grin on his face as if he had never seen a naked woman before—the people in the store whooped and laughed.

  Clint had seen the whole thing, standing behind Ricky. He saw Angelica on a collision course with the governor and his big foot on her gown which fell with a whoosh and she was naked in the mob, and then the slapstick head butt, and the governor on his knees, and her gorgeous rump so firm and proud and the delicate cleavage below it, an immaculate and inspiring sight, and then he was at her side, picking up the robe and parking it on her shoulders and saying, “Come, my darling” and helping her away through the stunned seniors in rows of folding chairs and around the corner of the Chatterbox, Dorothy in the doorway snapping pictures of the passing parade, and past the fire department garage where the volunteers stood around the truck drinking beer and watching CNN. One of them saw Angelica and whooped and whistled and she took Clint’s elbow and they walked in stately fashion to the Lutheran church and in the back door. “I’ll go get your clothes from the garage. You okay?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “The dang robe was too long, I’ve been hoisting it up all day. My arm got tired.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s not as if people had never seen a beautiful woman before.”

  He left her in the annex and trotted down the alley to Bunsen Motors, his walkie-talkie squawking in his back pocket: “Clint, come in. Come in,” said Carl. “Art’s on the warpath. He thinks you took over his motel and you told the governor to stiff him. He’s pretty mad.”

  32. PREPARING FOR FLIGHT

  He let himself in the back door and got Angelica’s bag out of Clarence’s office. His cell phone was ringing. He looked at the ID screen. The Associated Press in Minneapolis. Damn. The Honor America show was getting started in the park. He could hear the choir singing on the public address system—

  Shining Mother, we salute you,

  Perfect grace of golden years.

  Loving Mother, see your children

  Bid farewell with shining tears.

  Through life’s dangerous lonely voyages,

  ’Long the coasts of grief and fear,

  In our hearts we e’er remember

  How you taught and loved us here.

  His phone rang. It was Griswold. “You disappointed me, Buddy. Today was the day—”

  “You’re breaking up, sorry, bad connection.” He hung up.

  And then his phone rang again. Irene. “Where are you?” she said. He told her he was heading home in a few minutes. “That’s not my question. Where are you now?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I’m only going to say this once,” she said. “You go away with that girl and you’re never coming back. Just so you understand. No freebies. So make your choice. I’m just telling you. You want to run away, go, and have a good time, but when you go, you’re gone. Where are you?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do but whatever it is, I’m coming back.”

  “No, you aren’t. You’re running away. Tell the truth.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “You’re running away with a 28-year-old yoga instructor is what you’re doing. And if you do you’re not coming back. Where are you?”

  He said nothing. He looked around. One last look at the old shop, his workbench, his tools laid out in rows, the service manuals. Odd to think that he had spent his youth and middle age here, raising cars on the lift, lowering them. He walked into the showroom. There was Daddy’s high desk with invoices sticking out of the pigeonholes and there was Daddy in his big white hat and golden smile, waiting for the sun to shine. The boy tiptoed to his side and touched his arm and said, “Happy Fourth of July, Daddy.” And Daddy said, “Happy Fourth of July to you, Clinton.” And he took his boy’s hand and he said,
“Did you enjoy it?” The boy nodded. “That’s good.” Daddy looked away, sad and forlorn, he missed Bonita his contortionist pal. He said, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Clinton?” and he said, “A fireman” though he didn’t. Daddy said, “Firemen are happy people because they help others.” And then he pulled a flask of whiskey out and took a slug of it. “Life is hard, Clinton. You have to get happiness where you can find it.”

  Bang! And now he was 60 and being careful on the stairs and not eating big dinners anymore and asking people to repeat what they just said and looking at the page with blurry eyes. And where was the happiness? Daddy died at 60, eaten up suddenly by colon cancer. In May he was his old bouncing self and in June he sickened from colon blockage which he thought was constipation. He couldn’t poop. He took mineral oil and got bloated and gassy and on the Fourth he sat on the porch and wept. The parade was routed up Taft Street for his benefit and he sat in his rocker and feebly waved a hanky at the majorettes who curtsied to him and the brass band who played “Tiger Rag,” his favorite, and a sad-faced bozo trotted over and squirted him with a trick flower, and Hjalmar Ingqvist of the State Bank marched up with a photographer and gave Daddy a bronze plaque which Daddy took out to the garage that evening and bashed with a ballpeen hammer and flattened the lettering—To Clement Bunsen in recognition of a lifetime of meritorious service—Daddy didn’t want an award: He didn’t want to die, which was what the award was for. It was a death prize. He wanted more life and to see Bonita again and intertwine with her as Frank Sinatra sang. One more time! Just one more! Please.