Praying Hard, Landing Hard

“Speaker Johnson! If I could deter! For just a minute! One minute!” A journalist wired up with all sorts of photo and audio devices broke from the gaggle of reporters and TV crews to maneuver adroitly towards the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. 

As the Speaker turned to face the man whose video cable had just snagged the protruding brass lock of his imposing briefcase, a look of saintly annoyance crossed Johnson’s saintly face. For a saintly split second. While Johnson would allow no one to deter him from his pious mission, that errant wire had undeniably introduced a delay.

“You’re leaving D.C. quite promptly after cancelling the House for another week,” the reporter shouted over the sound of a mighty engine roaring in the background. “The eighth straight week in this shutdown.”

“That’s right,” Johnson shouted back, jerking his briefcase free from the reporter’s wire. 

Intent on his questions, the reporter neither noticed nor apologized for his wayward equipment, but drilled on in stentorian tones: “Is that because you have so much work? A whole lot of work now that the House has been out of session for, like, two months?”

“You betcha,” Johnson bellowed confidently. “A whole lot of work.”

“The Democrats’ compromise,” the reported bellowed back. “To end the shutdown in exchange for a one-year extension—” 

“Zero chance!” the Speaker whooped. Rueful mirth wreathed his cherubic face. “You have to understand,” Johnson schooled the reporter as sternly as mirth would allow. “You can’t compromise with the devil!”

“Divulged as one who enjoyed it, Mr. Speaker! And now you’re leaving D.C. for the weekend with 42 million people left waiting until maybe next week to get food for their kids?”

“We want to feed those kids!” Johnson shook his pretty head, the look of mysterious jubilation still animating his features. “President Trump wants to feed those kids! He’s desperate to feed those kids! He loves poor kids!”

“Hungry kids?” the reporter prompted. “Starving kids? Traumatized kids?”

“You betcha! The president loves them all! And he agonizes over, has agonized over, is going to agonize over —” Johnson was about to reveal something but, deciding not to, stopped rather abruptly. 

“So you’re leaving D.C. to agonize over it,” the reporter picked up right away. “And the president is leaving for a weekend of golf to agonize over it.”

“You betcha!” Johnson concurred rosily. A pretty sharp reporter for once.

“Are you going to pray over the weekend, too?” the reporter cut in. 

“I pray all the time, young man,” Johnson assured him curtly.

“What will you pray for this time?” the reporter asked with keen interest.

“What I pray for all the time!”

“Those kids?”

“That the Democrats do the right thing!” the Speaker corrected him.

The reporter stood firm. “Do you ever pray that you do the right thing?”

“Pure impertinence! With the Lord on my side —” the Speaker began testily, then composed himself. “Bless your heart. Of course, I do.”

“Have those prayers ever been — Hey!” Interrupting a key moment in his interview, the reporter pointed in alarm to Johnson’s collar, leaned close, and confided sotto voce, “Mr. Speaker, your makeup is running.”

“I don’t wear makeup,” Johnson answered with offended dignity, drawing back.

“Blush?”

“Blush is powder!” Johnson huffed. “It doesn’t run.”

The reporter’s concern persisted. “Well, something’s happening. A popped artery? A bleeding heart?”

Turning away from the reporter and the media gaggle behind him, Johnson pulled out a hand mirror and a handkerchief to inspect, then jab at the dark spots that had indeed appeared on his collar, although he didn’t think they were coming from his heart. His efforts had no effect and, to tell the truth, he was just a little rattled. Returning mirror and handkerchief to their respective pockets, Johnson turned up the collar of his overcoat. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said civilly to the reporter, “I have an aircraft waiting for me.” With that, Speaker Johnson pivoted away from the reporter and the knot of media maniacs, careful to keep his briefcase clear of any media paraphernalia.

“Bless your heart, Speaker Johnson,” the reporter called as Johnson moved hurriedly away. 

Johnson froze, turned, and snarled: “Don’t pull that crap on me.” 

That was a gaff, Johnson noted as he resumed his awkward getaway across the lawn toward the helicopter pad where indeed a hulking Marine One was waiting, roaring to the heavens. In his clumsy progress toward the magnificent machine, Johnson’s ungainly briefcase with the large, snappy, but troublesome brass fixtures jounced conspicuously against his thigh. Only he knew, Johnson hoped, that his exceedingly expensive, oversized, rather showy briefcase held nothing, absolutely nothing, but the sandwich he would be eating on the honorable journey ahead of him.

Johnson’s big reward was the ride Trump had promised him in Air Force One down to Mar-a-Lago if he kept the House of Representatives out of session for as long as Trump wanted.

After Johnson had, without assistance, heaved his nimble bones and briefcase up into the magic Marine chariot, it roared and lifted, roared and swung low, roared and swept the diminutive Speaker, engulfed in deafening bliss, to Air Force One where he was to await the arrival of the president himself, who, Johnson had been informed, would be arriving in that self-same Marine One, but somewhat later, preferring to fly not with Johnson but with his own thoughts, meaning in unmitigated solitude as Trump seldom had thoughts. Johnson didn’t mind a bit. His big reward was not some heady trip with the president in Marine One to Air Force One, but the ride Trump had promised him in Air Force One down to Mar-a-Lago if he kept the House of Representatives out of session for as long as Trump wanted. And Johnson had, and he would, for ever and ever, if the president told him to.

His reward having come somewhat sooner than expected, Johnson was nevertheless ever so tingly about it until, de-helicoptering at Air Force One and getting hurried aboard the sanctified presidential aircraft, he found himself getting ushered through it the wrong way: toward the rear, past the reporter section, to the very back where stray luggage and the maintenance crew kept quarters, an area that smelled faintly of grease. Perhaps, Johnson ruminated with chastising insight, the mighty president thought of him as maintenance personnel. Yes, Johnson acquiesced readily with a mild nod, maybe he was maintenance personnel. Something very practical indeed, he realized, perking up. Nothing wrong with being maintenance personnel when it was God’s world he was maintaining, was there? The thought revived him entirely. And he had his sandwich, he remembered, fiddling with the protuberant brass lock on his briefcase. Why couldn’t the 42 million starving people in America just pack themselves one of those? 

He nodded briefly to the solitary soul lodged in one of the six somewhat grimy seats allocated to aircraft mechanics, settled himself into a seat opposite, and pulled out his sandwich simply to admire it. 

“What’s the matter?” Johnson asked, noticing the mechanic’s close attention. “It’s a sandwich.”

In that instant, the mechanic lunged and grabbed it out of Johnson’s hands.

“Hey! That’s my sandwich,” Johnson cried. “Give it back!”

With the sandwich grasped firmly in his upraised hand, the mechanic punched the air as he howled: “Snap! Snap! Snap!”

Johnson eyed him grimly. “That’s my sandwich.”

“Ever get so hungry you snap?” the mechanic asked. 

Sitting back, he unwrapped the sandwich with the nimble fingers of a practiced wheel gear expert, which is what he was. As if witnessing the defoliation of a virgin he had carefully set aside for himself, Johnson watched in horror as the mechanic ate his sandwich. 

“Very good. Very good indeed,” the man said between mouthfuls. “Tasty. Crisp, but juicy. Very good indeed. I’m indebted to you. We’re on furlough, as you may know. No pay and no meals.” He munched away happily. “How are you getting back, by the way?”

“Back?”

“You got the okay to fly down, which is not bad. The boss is happy with you, apparently. But not happy enough to put you on the guest list or the meals list at Mar-a-Lago. And, as you must know, the plane will be staying down there until the boss decides to fly back. And . . .” The mechanic hesitated, a shimmer of compassion infusing his meaty features.

“Well?” Johnson prodded, feeling somewhere between pretty uncomfortable and miserable. “What?”

“You’re not booked for the flight back.”

“I’m not booked for the flight back,” Johnson repeated sardonically as if nothing else of significance could possibly go wrong now that a mechanic had eaten his sandwich. 

“No,” confirmed the wheel gear expert, placing the last morsel of Johnson’s lunch and dinner in his mouth and chewing it thoughtfully, contentedly, and thoroughly before moving it down his gullet with a muscular gulp.

“That was my sandwich you just ate,” Johnson told him levelly. “My only sandwich.”

“Bless your heart,” the mechanic said kindly. “It was very good of you. I was very hungry. And to think it was your only — Hey!” Interrupting himself, the mechanic leaned forward and pointed at Johnson’s collar. “Something’s going wrong there.”

Johnson shot up out of his seat. “How do I get out of here? No, no, no, you goon! Off! I mean, off! No, not that way! Some back way. Come on! You just ate my sandwich. Tell me how to get off this thing without anyone finding out. No, no, no! No one! The president will not mind. Believe me. Just get me off. Now!”

“There’s a mail chute just behind,” the mechanic pointed toward the very rear. 

“A mail chute,” Johnson echoed. 

“Yeah,” the mechanic said. “No problem or permission or anything required to eject stuff that way if the plane’s not prepped for takeoff, which it isn’t . . . yet.”

“Is it a hard landing, a drop, maybe, or do they have a kind of cart . . . No, no! It’ll do. Just get me off this thing, like now!”

The mechanic laughed heartily. “Sure thing! All systems go for shafting number forty-two million and one!”

It was a hard landing. Speaker Johnson dropped a foot or so onto the tarmac, but managed to land on his briefcase. The fall scuffed it up badly, but that wasn’t all bad. It gave the oversized pocketbook a look, finally, of having seen some service. And the tumble only slightly bruised Johnson, who managed to jolt off and out of sight before the arrival of Marine One conveying the regal girth of the man Johnson would be so willing — now that Michael Cohen had conveniently moved himself aside — to take a bullet for. Giving up his sandwich for the man, though, had hurt. 

Striding incognito into the D.C. sunset, so to speak, Johnson mulled over his chances of rustling up some grub for himself, but that hope extinguished itself the moment it flared. The government was all shut down. Thanks to him. It had been so easy. With presidential backing. A snap, he thought ruefully. So no grub for God’s maintenance man. But maybe Trump would agonize over him, too? He knew better than to wonder.

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