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
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