The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror (19 page)

The blob whistled. “You gotta be more careful, or you’ll starve to death.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I snorted. “I eat all the air I need.”

“Newfangled nonsense. Food is for eating. Air is for breathing.”

“Blasphemy!” I gasped.

“Lunatics like you scare me,” he said. “Show some common sense for a change.”

“Common sense,” I scoffed. “It’s common sense that got us into this mess in the first place. It takes the uncommon sense of a man like the Prophet to show us what progress really means.”

“There’s nothing wrong with eating food,” the man insisted. “You just gotta do it in moderation.”

I stared at his bulk, the pile of empty crates below. “You call inhaling your food through a snout moderation?”

He opened his mouth wide. Rotting brown stumps speckled the inside of his jaws. “It’s not a snout,” he said. “It’s a Browntooth Hands-Free Eating Apparatus.”

“Which you wouldn’t need if you weren’t so fat!”

The mountain of flesh scowled at me. “Don’t call me fat,” he snapped. “’Cause I’m not. OK?”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Then get up and walk out of here.”

He looked around him. His head bobbed, as though he were trying to move. “Don’t want to,” he said. “I’m comfortable where I am.”

I held up my open palm. “Gimme five.”

He glanced down at the mass of fat in front of him that covered his arms. As we later discovered, his fingers had glued themselves to the keyboard. We had to employ a surgeon to separate him from the keys.

“Not in the mood right now,” he said finally.

I pulled my hair. “How can anyone be so stupid? Why can’t you see what your problem is?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied. “Now tell the waiters to get back to work.”

“Your eating days are over, big boy.” I hefted my laxative rifle. “You’re going straight to Fat Camp, where you belong.”

The blob smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, but I cannot let you starve me to death.”

All of a sudden the conveyor belt advanced, and I began to fall. I let go of my weapon and grabbed hold of the window ledge.

“Where’s. My. Food?” the blob bellowed. The control tower swayed from side to side. Concrete girders shrieked from the strain. Plaster dribbled from the ceiling.

I pulled myself up into the room. I scrambled over a radar screen and perched against the slanted glass of a window. It was a tight squeeze. There was barely enough room for his fat frame, much less my own.

Up close the immensity of the man was overwhelming. How could any human being grow so large? He made Rat Boy look like a midget. You’d have trouble loading him onto an eighteen-wheeler. I reached out and sank a finger into the flesh behind his head. A wave of fat rippled around the room and came back again.

“That tickles,” the man giggled. His eyes narrowed. “You’re not food. Go away and don’t come back until you bring me food.”

I had a job to do, and it was time I did it. I held up my badge. “You’re under arrest,” I said. “You have the right to be thin. If you refuse this right, you will be sent to Fat Camp at no extra charge. You have the right not to eat. If you do eat, anything you eat can and will be used against you in a Food Court of Law. Do you understand what I’ve just told you?”

“On what charge?” he demanded.

“Multiple violations of the Food Understanding Country Koolaid Yowzee Outrage Understatement Act.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Ignorance is no excuse,” I scolded him. “Now, who are you, and what have you done with Air Traffic Controller Blobbalicious Superfattypants?”

He chuckled. “You’re looking at him.”

I held up the printout Too Secret For You gave me. The gaunt features of an air-eater stared back.

“You don’t look like him to me.”

“Maybe I’ve put on a few pounds,” Superfattypants conceded.

“A few pounds!” I laughed. “You looked in the mirror lately?”

“And desert my post during a time of war?” the man shook his head. “As soon as we do that, we let the food terrists win.”

I shouted out the window, “General!”

O’Shitt wiped his lips. “Just having an air snack!” he shouted up at me. “What is it?”

“Send me up one of your shiniest decorations! It’s urgent!”

He squinted down at his much-decorated chest. He fingered a medal. “How about my Purple Stomach?” he shouted. “I got it fighting in hand-to-hand kitchen combat with a French commando-chef. Took my fingernail clean off.”

“No,” I shouted back. “I need something bigger. Shinier!”

He took hold of another, larger medal. “Or my Air Force Cross? Got it when we nuked them South Pacific food terrists last year. You remember Operation Enduring Hunger, when we deposed the dictator of Micronesia?”

“He was a major threat to world thinness,” I replied. “That was good work, General.”

O’Shitt shuddered. “The evil we saw in Micronesia. Before we dropped the bomb, that is. The horror! I will never forget it as long as I live. The doctors tell me I have postprandial stress syndrome.”

My heart went out to the man. “I’m so sorry to hear that, General!” I shouted. “But your Air Force Cross is still not big enough. What about that shiny one around your neck?” I pointed. “The one in the shape of a bubble?”

The General clutched the medal. “Not my Congressional Medal of Air!” he exclaimed. “I got it for killing defenseless women and children!”

“And they deserved it too, I’m sure!” I shouted. “But right now I’ve got an emergency here!”

O’Shitt unclipped the two-foot-wide medal from around his neck. He kissed it and said, “Bless you, Mine Prophet, who didst bestow this greatest of honors upon me,” and put the medal on the conveyor belt.

When it got to the top, I held it up so Blobbalicious could see. “Now tell me you’re not fat.”

He studied the image in the medal. I compared him again to the printout. The nose was the same. So was the red birthmark that covered half his face. It was him, all right.

The man laughed. “That’s funny. You get that out of a cereal box?”

“Afraid not, big boy. That’s you.”

The laughter stopped. “You’ve had your little joke,” he said. “Now go away and bring me back some food before I starve to death.”

Unbelievable! How could I make him see?

“
There is a way,”
my Twinkie sang, “
a savage little way…”

No. I can’t do that. There has to be a better way.

“Be a man, Spam.

Or are you just canned flan, Stan?”

But it won’t teach him anything. I want to save his soul.

“Nothing like a Dover sole

fried in lots of crispy fat.

Don’t fall down that deep-deep hole
—

lots of other feeshees, cat!”

My Twinkie was right, dang gummit. Blobbalicious wasn’t the only misguided soul who needed saving. The Fate of the Food-Free World Hung in the Balance. I needed information. I needed it now.

I would have to resort to torture.

Thirteen and a Half

I leaned out the window again. “Send me up some chicken wings!”

“Good choice!” The General licked his fingers. “That sauce is tangy!”

He chucked an open box onto the conveyor belt. It halted just outside the window.

Suppressing my disgust, I picked up a chicken wing and held it inches from Blobbalicious’s lips. He lunged for it. My hand darted back.

“Got some questions for you first.”

The man’s head rolled on his neck. “I’m dying already,” he moaned. “I can feel it. Just wasting away. The hunger is terrible. Terrible, I tell you! Like an African orphan in famine!”

My vision clouded with tears. My voice broke. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Just a few questions, and you can have all the food you want.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire

sucking on a Twinkie tire.”

His great cow eyes gazed up at me. “Would you really let me starve to death?”

My hand shook. I hardened my face. “If you don’t cooperate, you give me no choice.” I threw the chicken wing out the window. “Fly, chickie chick! Fly, fly!”

“Alright!” he screamed. “I’ll talk! Whatever you want to know!”

Success. But in that moment I felt part of myself die. I was torturing a fellow human being. What did that make me?

“Tell me about your agreement with Fatso.”

“Let me lick it,” he begged. “Just a taste!”

“He flew out of here last Wednesday, right? Going to Cuba?” I held another chicken wing close enough that he could smell it.

“Saw him climb out of his limo and walk up the gangway of his private jet, ‘Big Boy.’ Now gimme, gimme, gimme! I’m going to collapse here!”

I pressed onward. “He’s coming back tomorrow morning, right?”

Quivering with desire, Blobbalicious consulted his computer screen. “ETA 0630 hours. Should be here just before dawn. What do you want to buy, anyway? Why don’t you just make an appointment, like everybody else does?”

Is that what he thought we wanted?

“That’s none of your business,” I snapped. I teased his lips with the chicken wing. “One last thing and I’ll tie your snout back on.”

“Oh please…oh please…,” he whimpered in agony.

“This is a
surprise
party,” I said. “If you warn Fatso we’re waiting for him, I will personally make sure you starve to death. Am I clear?”

“Clear!” he shouted. “Now hurry!”

I retrieved his snout and tied it back on, leaving him to his gluttony. There would be time enough to cure him once Fatso was in custody. Teach him to eat air. Right now it was more important to ensure his cooperation.

In the meantime, I had a great deal to do. We had to organize Fatso’s “surprise party.” As I rode the conveyor belt down to the ground, my phone rang again.

“My bags are packed,” Chantal said without even saying hello. “You coming home tonight or aren’t you?”

On second thought, the Air Force could organize the welcoming committee.

“Why don’t we have a romantic dinner?” I suggested. “I’ll pick up some flowers on the way home. We can open a window. Suck down the exhaust from the highway overpass across the street. What do you say?”

She purred. “Don’t forget the flowers.”

As a footnote, Blobbalicious was eventually freed from his control tower prison. It took a small army of chainsaw-wielding liposuction experts to cut away the excess fat, and a team of helicopters to lift the remaining blob of flesh from the toilet seat where he’d been sitting for more than a year. Later measurements of man and blubber suggest he weighed upwards of three and a half tons.

Our civil engineers tell me that another couple hundred pounds and the control tower would have collapsed. As it is, the tower suffered serious structural damage, and has since been condemned as unfit for use.

I am pleased to report that Blobbalicious is successfully undergoing rehab in a fine Fat Camp in upstate New York, where he has discovered the joy of taco air and, I am told, has even fallen in love with a fellow camp attendee, a former Miss Obese New York. They plan to get married and have children, just as soon as they get their waists down to fourteen inches.

Fourteen

I bought a dozen red roses on the way home. Completely illegal, of course. They were smuggled into the country by so-called coyotes, who risked their lives to cross the New Mexico desert with hundreds of long-stems strapped to their backs, and a watering can to keep the flowers cool.

But my wife and I had a lot to celebrate. She deserved a treat. Take care of Fatso, I mused, as I drove through light traffic, and the Food Mafia tumbles. Supply would disappear, Chantal would get over her withdrawal symptoms and the three of us would be a happy family at last.

I thought of Nathan and smiled. I was so proud of the kid. Just last week he’d won an award for air-eating at school. The teacher had gushed over his technique and applauded his faith. I couldn’t wait to see him tonight, give him a big hug and tell him how much I loved him.

By force of habit, I swung past Green’s house. Crazy, that accident. And there was something I was supposed to do. What was it? I shook my head. It would come to me. I drove the extra two blocks home, parked the Smart Car and limped up the drive.

I opened the front door, and Nathan came running to meet me. I put the roses down and threw open my arms.

“Hey there, skin and bones,” I called out. “How’s Daddy’s favorite walking skeleton?”

His limbs, like sticks, flailed as he careened down the hallway at full speed. Five minutes passed. Ten. My arms began to ache. Finally he fell into my embrace, gasping, “Daddy, Daddy, how was your day?”

“It was air-yummy-licious,” I said. I held him at arm’s length. His stomach bulged like a beer belly. That was new. I frowned. “Has your mother been giving you beer?”

“No, silly,” he giggled. “Beer’s an addictive caloric substance. You know I’d never do
that.”

I fought back tears of joy. “I am so proud of you, son.”

“Well I’m not.”

Chantal stood in the former kitchen doorway, arms folded across her chest.

“Oxy,” I said, in my warning tone of voice. “Not in front of the boy.”

“I’ll say whatever I feel like,” she said. “You’ve brainwashed him. It’s disgusting.”

I ruffled Nathan’s hair. It was falling out in patches. “Run along, kiddo. Go snack on some air.”

When he was gone, I picked up the flowers and turned to her. “Can we not fight tonight?” I asked. “I brought these home for you.”

“Flowers,” she said with contempt. “Is that all?”

I backed toward the wall. “I thought you liked flowers.”

She grabbed the bunch of roses and bit off a flower head.

“But—what—what are you doing?” I stammered.

“You going to report me?” she sneered, chewing the rose petals. “Put me in Fat Camp again?”

“What has gotten into you?”

“You mean what
hasn’t
gotten into me,” she snarled, and bit off another flower head. “Why can’t you bring home the bacon like all the other ATFF agents?”

“Bacon?” I cried. “Are you crazy? You have any idea what the penalty is for possession of preserved pig flesh?”

“I don’t want to
possess
it,” she said, spitting flecks of rose petal in my face. “What I want is to FUCKING EAT IT!”