The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Big Walter had a black plague mask with white words printed on it that said This Mask Is As Worthless As My Government. He had it pulled down so it only covered his mouth and not his nose, his idea of a personal protest. He and the Trump Boosters were sitting in the corner of the South End Marina’s Pilot Lounge, lately Revolution Central for the hotheads who come to congregate after a hard day of driving their 4×4’s up and down the island with their political signs and their semi-automatics in full view, no doubt a reminder to the rest of us commies that the day was coming when they would exercise their 2nd amendment rights if we won the election.

Little Jimmy was wondering loudly if maybe they should go down Tuesday and guard the polling station against ‘outside agitators’. Fairlane Fred was on his 3rd White Russian, an irony that apparently escaped his attention when he opined that the ‘Russkies’ were definitely trying to put their ‘finger on the scale’ for Biden and it might be time for an ‘intervention’ down at the polls. He’d heard on social media they would be there in force to coerce the voters.

“Hell yes they’ll try to intimidate the sheep!” Big Walter shouted as he tore off his mask, casting a wary eye toward Leonard, the new weekend bartender who only shook his head slightly and turned to a customer down the bar. That customer would be me. Two Toke sat an extra stool away, social distance in this Year of the Plague. “We’ll take some personnel down there and make sure things are on the up and up,” Walt declared.

“I’m in, Walt, count me in!” Little Jimmy declared resolutely. Fred and Jerry volunteered too. Two Toke chuckled. “Looks like we got ourselves an army in search of a war.”

Walter scowled and said if Two Toke Tom wanted a war, he’d gladly give him one. “My point exactly, Walter,” TT said and laughed.

Little Jimmy wanted to know what time they should show up and Fred said when the damn polling station opens up and Jerry asked where was the damn polling station anyway. This cracked Two Toke up. “Leonard,” he said, “give these vigilantes directions to the war, they’re short a GPS.” Leonard, despite being new to the job, stayed diplomatically out of this, just kept drying beer pints with a towel and putting them on the rack below the bar.

“That’s right, go ahead and laugh, Bernie Boy,” Walter growled, his mask on the table, definitely worthless now. “But when America turns socialist, you won’t be smiling anymore and that, my leftist friend, is a fact.”

“Walt, you wouldn’t know a fact if it ran you over with your own truck. But hey, I’m totally okay with you boys patrolling the polling station. Really, I am,” Tom said amiably. “ More power to you, more power to the people. I’d even go with you. You know, if I had a gun, but being a peacenik and all, I don’t. “

“Sure you would, Tom, sure you would,” Big Walter said, shaking his head sadly.

“I would, Walt, sure as you believe in facts, I would. Tell me what time to show up, maybe I’ll join the militia.”

“Leonard,” I said, “give these patriots a round on me. And Thomas here too. I think we’ve found some unity at last in these divided times.” And so, a few days before the election, we all drank a good will toast to an honest vote, long live the queen. Two Toke and I left together and neither of us told the boys our state was strictly mail-in ballots, no more polling stations to guard.

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The other day I was clearing brush down by the road when I heard horns honking and engines revving, a cacophony audible from half a mile away. I put down my sickle and waited to see what parade was going to pass by me on its way to the head of the island. Half a minute later a convoy of trucks proceeded past me at half the speed limit, TRUMP 2020 signs propped up in the pickup beds, American flags half tattered from the wind shear snapping in the wind, horns blaring, lights on emergency blinkers. At the head of the line was Big Walter dressed in military camo, MAGA hat worn proudly, arm out the rolled down window, an assault rifle in the gunrack behind him. When he saw me standing by the side of the road, he gave me a big thumbs up and yelled, ‘Resistance is futile, Skeeter!!’

Rather than yell something obscene back over the road roar, I just stood at attention and gave him a salute. Okay, one finger only. Big Walter thinks he’s the Commandant of the South End Militia these days, the patriot who’ll guard the county’s ballot drop box against possible tampering, the guerilla warrior who’ll take on the Antifa when they turn up after Trump’s victory to protest what they’ll claim is a bogus election, the gunslinging take-no-prisoners vigilante who’ll guarantee liberty for the white males of the country who he claims are under siege and discriminated against.

Behind his lead vehicle came a ragtag assortment of Walter’s militia. Fat Phil and Little Jimmy rode together in a Ford 250 jacked higher than the gigantic tires looking like an escapee from a monster truck show. Behind them came a couple of half tons, one dump truck, a WW Two jeep, two flatbeds, three or four vintage cars and trucks and oddly, taking up the rear, Two Toke with his battered Volkswagen van circa 1966, peace signs plastered all over it and a Grateful Dead insignia hand painted on the front . Behind him were the half dozen poor folks who were stuck in the traffic jam, probably embarrassed to be part of the parade. Or maybe not.

Two Toke grinned happily, shot me the peace sign and I just shook my head as he rolled past in that micro bus like an acid flashback to the Viet Nam protests of our political youth. Here we are again, I thought, back where we started, nothing much changed. I picked up my sickle and went back to slashing sticker bushes and blackberries. By spring they’d be grown back and I’d be at it again.

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