Heaven Can't Wait 3- Hanoi Hellton

(A cave skillet. Red glow that casts no shadow. Silence. Enter Lieutenant Commander Juan McCain with both arms splinted and bandaged, one bony crutch steps in for the lifeless left leg. No blood. Just white tape a violent pink in the ruby light.)

McCain

And here I wanted to be young again.

(A short, thin, Southeast Asian man with a narrow heart shaped face and long grey wisp beard dressed in grey pajamas meets McCain mid-oblivion.)

Uncle Ho

The Vietnamese people have an expression for that.

McCain

Don’t go there?

Uncle Ho

Can’t go there. 

McCain

At least my way allows for the option.

Uncle Ho

Whether to go with reality or a memory of a delusion that you got wise to and now miss? 

McCain

Like youth?

Uncle Ho

All the children here when you were here grew up in war. 

McCain

And I grew up here. I sincerely hope that the people of the United States and the people of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam-

Uncle Ho

The people. But you and I did not die as part of the people. We chose to command.

McCain

I represented and I tried for command. Didn’t get there. 

Uncle Ho

I ran our revolution when we were in the bush but by the time you Americans came I was a figurehead. 

McCain

Uncle Ho.

Uncle Ho

Comrade McCain, didn’t you find what you were looking for the last time returned?

McCain 

Last time I was looking for what I thought I had lost of myself. 

Uncle Ho

And now?

McCain

I’m looking for what I thought America had lost.

Uncle Ho

Thought lost but you don’t think so now?

McCain

The war divided our nation.

Uncle Ho

And kept my nation divided.

McCain

Maybe America’s was earlier - like the Civil Rights movement.

Uncle Ho

Which was just a later battle in your civil war that has never ended.

McCain

Reconstruction. Jim Crow.

Uncle Ho

Civil Rights, Affirmative tokenism, Black Lives Matter.

McCain

What about Obama?

Uncle Ho

Last straw of Affirmative tokenism.

McCain

Yeah, another Harvard Law School genius with a white mother. 

Uncle Ho

Versus another Academy hotshot with an admiral father.

McCain

And grandpa. I was the better senator.

Uncle Ho

It wasn’t about that. It never is. They kept me around because I was still the face of change. 

McCain

I couldn’t close the divide either. Obama was right. The government can’t close the divide. Only the people can bring themselves together.

  

Uncle Ho

You know I’ve always been a big fan of the United States. 

McCain

So I’ve read. 

Uncle Ho

It broke my heart when Eisenhower supplied the French after promising us that our country would be ours again after the Japanese were driven out.  

McCain

The Cold War was all fear. Nobody wanted to win. What was there to win? My party claims that during George H’s tenure the Cold War was won? Won how? The Berlin Wall which never worked in the first place was pulled down. The hats and name tags change and some adjustments to the pecking order and what have we got? Russia and China in our face again and they’re more dangerous than ever and we’re more dependent. And we say we won that cold one?

Uncle Ho

The second you assholes left we had China muscling in.

McCain

You had a straight out border war.

Uncle Ho

They’re too big to forgive or bargain with. My country is my pussy. Push into it an inch and I’m cutting your whole fucking tiny dick off. 

McCain

I thought China was nuts. 

Uncle Ho

I’ll cut those off too.

McCain

That’ll change China’s voice but it won’t change their tune.

Uncle Ho

It’s what power does to big dogs.

McCain

How did you bring Vietnam back together?

Uncle Ho

I didn’t. You were not driven out until seven years after my death.

McCain

When I was alive I thought that wars ended.

Uncle Ho

When you’re alive you have to believe in life. 

McCain

And what do you believe in if you’re dead?

Uncle Ho

Peace.

McCain

I’m dead and I don’t believe in peace.

Uncle Ho

The United States of America has no peace to offer at this time.

McCain

I failed.

Uncle Ho

Obama was right. The government can’t close the divide. Only the people can bring themselves together. 

McCain

Now I know why they call you Uncle Ho.

Don Arrup

Satire1

Hevan Can't Wait 2- Cielo

Ridwan bid McCain goodbye and our hero trekked the dawn to Cielo or Mexican Heaven. Funny how everyone’s heaven looks just like where they live except prettier. The flea market is busy and almost all of the customers are fully dressed skeletons.

McCain walks up to a Tamale stall. He looks at the tamales in disbelief. He begins to pour through them. Sweeping his arms out as best he can. Enter behind the counter dead aristocrat La Calavera Catrina wearing no flesh and a big 19th Century European lady’s chapeau.

Catrina

Senator McCain!

McCain

Senorita Catrina.

Catrina

The Arizona Senator knows Mexican culture. Not bad for a Norte Americano.

McCain

Mexico happens to be in North America as well. So El Dia de los Muertos via our conquests in the Spanish-American War is as American as crabapple pie.

Catrina

You know what butterfly is the most beautiful in all of America?

McCain

The Monarch is the most beautiful and most plentiful that I have seen in Arizona. 

Catrina

Where do they come from?

McCain

America.

Catrina

America.

McCain 

Hey, what did you call yourselves before the fathers of this pale mug arrived? 

Catrina

We called ourselves people. 

McCain

Funny, I always thought of you as people. 

Catrina

You were new in Arizona when you first represented the people. 

McCain

I didn’t grow up in Arizona. So when I hear those who migrated here less than four generations ago pull up the welcome mat to people whose families have been here almost as long as the dirt-

Catrina

Sweet Senator Juan McCain, we are not in Arizona.

McCain

You’re right, Calavera Catrina, I felt like an outsider every place I ever lived. And I grew up everywhere. In Arizona, at least, I wasn’t alone in being alone. 

Catrina

You were Marinero brat. Every port in world. Now you wander the afterlife. Is it Heaven? Expectation? Or just another journey?

McCain

I’m sure I’ll be wandering as long as I’m still front page news.

Catrina

But we dead like to be remembered. I am expert in this.

McCain

By our families, certainly. I want my grandchildren to remember me. But to the people of Arizona and the nation, I replaced Senator Goldwater and lost to Obama. Soon I’ll just be the guy who replaced Barry.

Catrina

Is that so malo?

McCain

No, Señorita, es muy bueno. Just let me be dead grandpa.

Catrina

Any regrets?

McCain

A few.

Catrina

Unfinished business?

McCain

Campaign finance.

Catrina

Anyone you can haunt about it?

McCain

Haunt the Supreme Court? They’re spooks in black sheets. Half of them want the dead fathers to continue to tyrannize the living civilians even though half the dead fathers were slave owners.

Catrina

You should have written a new constitution when women got the vote.

McCain

You think? We could have put the rights of human beings over the rights of property.

Catrina

Hard to do when some human beings are property.

McCain

Now we just treat human beings as consumers. We sell their likes and dislikes, ailments, credit history and social encounters. We sell their privacy instead of their bodies. 

Catrina

Didn’t you try to fix your country’s immigration policy?

McCain

We had a bill and everybody hated it. The only true sign of a just bill to address a controversial problem. Everybody hated it but they didn’t hate it enough to pass it.

Catrina

And how about your beloved Los Estados Unidos? What shape have you left your house in?

McCain

Divided. With all the advantage going to the dividers. I just wish we could put all the idiots screaming no compromise in the same room with the fools yelling treason. 

Catrina

There is no middle ground?

McCain

Maybe that is what I am still searching for.

Catrina

And if you find it?

McCain

If it still exists and I can find it I’ll just have to fly to the closest Ouija board or seance to report it.

Catrina

Not to your former colleagues in Washington?

McCain

I’m afraid most of the them would drown in the middle ground. It’s political quicksand these days.

Catrina

Do not despair, gentle John. Where there is death, there is hope. 

McCain

But how many generations will have to die off before-

Catrina

No one has forgotten that you fought for all the people, abuelo blanco. You are always welcome here. 

McCain

I thank you for that but I still hear the call.

Catrina

Always the marinero in the mar espero. Siesta with us, Juan. Just for a moment. Just for a song. 

McCain

Make it a long one, por favor, because when it’s finito I will be gone. 

Don Arrup

Satire1