The Ex-President

by Jeff Soloway

  This was the man I was supposed to interview.

  Clark, almost directly in front of me, and not too far from Chomp, had also begun to approach the barricade. He was gesticulating at a young man who looked like a protester—young, skinny, dark-haired, tanned, T-shirted—but who stood on our side of the barricade. If this kid was a protester, I had no idea how he had been able to hop the barricade and slip by the cops. Perhaps they were distracted by the pandemonium of Chomp’s arrival. Most were now focused on Chomp, some grinning under their helmets, thus revealing their humanity for the first time. A few of them began, unprofessionally, to wander from their posts, zombies attracted by the odor of celebrity. None of them noticed Clark or his antagonist. Neither did the protesters.

  The young man accepted Clark’s abuse for a moment and then rushed at him, his arms flailing like the wings of an angry goose. A backpack careened around his shoulders. My first thought was that Chomp’s long-promised terrorist nightmare was about to become true. But the young man’s face lacked that look of divine inspiration I associate with the suicide bomber. He was merely pissed off.

  He stopped in front of Clark, perhaps ten yards from the barricade, and opened his mouth. He must have been screaming, though I had no chance of hearing him over the crowd. He shook both arms, as if about to club Clark on the shoulders. Even now, none of the cops were paying any attention; the young man was on our side of the barricades, the side of law and order.

  My mother was at my elbow. “Help him, Jacob!” she shouted. “Go!”

  I ran. As I closed in on them, I could hear only the protester’s howling, but at the same time could feel a dozen different sensations over my body: the tingle of sweat oozing from every exposed inch of my skin, the heat of the asphalt below my feet, the vibration of my ribs with every heartbeat. I had been in scarier places, even scarier protests. But I had never been so unnerved by mass unrest. People say that watching your country descend into violence is like watching one of your parents clobber the other. Was America becoming one of those countries?

  I finally got close enough to hear Clark: “You aren’t fit to lick her shoes!” The image made me want to leave him to his beating.

  The young man dropped his fists and pointed one long arm back at the crowd. “Do you see her?” His voice and his arm shook with rage.

  “Let’s go, Clark!” I shouted.

  Clark ignored me. “See who?”

  “Are you blind? Now look at him.” He pointed at Chomp.

  To the exasperation of his entourage, Chomp had redoubled his mooing. He was now twisting his torso, like a guy watering a wide patch of lawn with a hose, so that more of the protesters could get soaked in his abuse. Cops were trotting toward him from the far reaches of the loading zone.

  “You hear that?” The young man bounced on his toes, and his arm fluttered like a flag in a gale. “Are you proud of him?”

  “Let’s go, Clark!” I screamed again.

  Clark was unbudgeable. “Look, buddy—”

  “Carlos! Say my fucking name!”

  “Look, Carlos! You were yelling at my woman! What did she ever do to you?”

  Carlos shrieked in coherent rage. “Your redcaps took my mother!”

  The word redcaps drove through the chaos around us like a bullet in the storm. Clark, for the first time, dropped his outrage and tried, perhaps involuntarily, to understand. “Took what?”

  “My mother! She’s in detention. What’s my little sister supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Clark’s honesty failed to pacify.

  “Now look at her!” Carlos’s swept his arm into his chest, as if to backhand Clark across the face. Instead he shot his arm out again, pointed this time toward the crowd. Clark and I both turned our heads to look. There, across the parking lot, a young girl’s face appeared just over the top of the barricade. She was staring back at us.

  Off to the side, Chomp was shouting, “The redcaps are coming! They’re checking passports! Better swim for it!”

  That was a lie, or a joke (with Chomp, it could be hard to distinguish the two). Since Chomp’s resignation, the Federal Immigration Task Force had retired their red caps and, more importantly, had been forbidden from operating in public places and without warrants. Malicious brutality was now frowned upon.

  But the old ways would never be forgotten. At the word redcaps the crowd erupted. So did Carlos: “Tell that girl why they took her mom! Tell her why you love Chomp!”

  He grabbed Clark by the shirt and started hauling him toward the maddened crowd. Some protesters finally noticed us. They leaped in excitement.

  Clark let himself be dragged, shaking his head. His eyes were cloudy and confused. Carlton Chomp’s presence apparently had varied effects on people; it could inspire, enrage, and enervate all at once.

  The cops near us had gone to protect Chomp. The protesters were pounding their fists against the barrier. This craggy-faced plutocrat was about to be fed to the sharks. Only the little girl was motionless, even calm. Her arms made an X over her chest—a shield that looked like a target. The metal barrier before her was hopping on its metal feet.

  “Let him go!” I shouted, uselessly.

  “He’s running!” someone screamed. Several protesters pointed at Chomp.

  We all turned to look, even Carlos. Chomp’s men had finally managed to coax Chomp away from the crowd. He was retreating amid a pack of staff. Cops formed a phalanx around him and his posse. Some pulled clubs from their hips, others canisters; none of them pulled guns, not yet, but then none of the protesters were yet leaping over the barricade. What if they did?

  Except for his bright tuft of hair, Chomp was hidden amid the scrum. His retreat toward the terminal was slow and orderly. I thought I saw him bend his face to his phone, tweeting even as he escaped. Cheers began to rise up from the crowd. To them, Chomp’s march to the cruise terminal—to his vacation—was a victory. Even Carlos now had only one arm around Clark’s midsection; the other was raised high. Protesters began embracing one another in excitement. They had walked all morning in the heat, shouted their throats ragged, stood for hours in the parking lot, and now it was all worth it.

  Suddenly, a moan rose up from the crowd. I looked again at Chomp’s withdrawing scrum. In the middle of it one hand was upraised. Chomp’s. He was giving the great Miami anti-Chomp protest the finger.

  Someone far down the barricade threw a mashed-up Gatorade bottle in the general direction of the limo. In response, one of the few cops who had remained stalwart at his post hurdled the barrier to hunt down the villain. Frightened protesters in his path tried to lunge out of his way, but there was no room in the packed front lines. A ripple spread from the rampaging cop throughout the crowd. Cops detached from Chomp’s phalanx and came running to reinforce that stretch of barricade, which was starting to topple. They used both hands to shove against the metal rails. Other cops leaped over them.

  With a new war cry, Carlos again began to drag Clark toward the protesters. There were no cops near our stretch of barricade. The little girl stepped back and was swallowed into the crowd. I hoped someone was protecting her. The protesters on the front line had their arms outstretched over the barricade, fingers spread like claws. They looked ready to grab Clark, pull him up and over the barricade, and trample him to death. Everyone had gone insane.

  “Stop!” I sprinted forward and shoved Clark in the back. He flew out of Carlos’s hold and went stumbling into the barricade. Numerous hands pinned him fast to the metal. Protesters screamed in his face. He flung a terrified look back at me.

  “Let him go!” I lifted Shell’s mister. “Or I’ll spray!” Every protester in American must know by now to fear pepper spray.

  But no one heard me in the general commotion. In my peripheral vision, I saw more cops vaulting the barricade into the crowd. Clark kept loo
king at me, his eyes huge and white-rimmed.

  I shoved the bottle next to Clark’s head and spritzed every face within range.

  Of all the senses, touch inspires the fiercest emotional response. We’re all used to the visual and aural illusions of movies, television, and the Internet. The third sense, taste, is almost entirely absent in normal human activity, except when we’re dining or (sometimes) screwing. Smell, at its worst, merely disgusts. But touch is the nearest to pain and pleasure. More immediately than any other sense, touch activates affection and desire—but also fear. When those grasping, yanking, jeering kids felt the cold spray in their faces, they wailed. Some of them leaped away, their hands frantically swiping at their faces.

  “It’s Mace!” someone yelled.

  That’s not what Mace—or pepper spray, or tear gas—feels like. But this crowd didn’t know that, not yet.

  I dropped the bottle and jerked Clark from the fence. The protesters were still wailing and yelping, still unaware they were fine, panicking those around them who hadn’t seen what had happened, who assumed the cops were sending in gas, as they had at protests in Manhattan, St. Louis, Oakland, everywhere.

  Now at last cops started to run our way. Protesters screamed louder and shoved at the barricades. The madness was about to boil over into violence. The devils that in recent years had been hovering over the American people had been waiting for just this spark—my stupid spritz—to set Miami on fire, as they had in so many other cities since Chomp’s election.

  “It’s water!” I screamed, much too late.

  “What did you do?” Carlos’s face was a swirl of fury mixed with confusion. Clark, finally free, struck at his chest. Carlos shoved back. An approaching cop screamed some incomprehensible order at us. Carlos turned to him and thrust his hand in his hip pocket.

  My stomach flopped. All noises seemed to vanish. Carlos had a gun. He was a terrorist after all. It was real, all of it, all the Chompian fears, which are really all our animal fears, fear of the unknown, fear of the stranger, fear of the wolf hidden in the dark. I hoped my mother had got to safety. I had brought her here. This was all my fault.

  Suddenly, my senses returned and the world restarted. The sounds of screaming people, clomping feet, and clanging metal rushed back to me. My body returned to me. I gathered myself to spring at Carlos.

  Then I saw that he was holding up not a gun but a smartphone.

  “I have a ticket!” Carlos held his phone up high.

  The first cop arrived. He didn’t shoot Carlos or gas him—he just tackled him. A kind of groan rose from the crowd, and then a gasp, as the second cop came and leaped on the writhing pair. I hit the deck, pulling Clark down with me—pre-tackling ourselves would reduce the chance of a broken bone.

  But now a gang of protesters, adrenalized by the action both inside and outside the pen, managed to kick over a nearby barricade. More cops were coming. Some had already whipped out their extendable clubs. From the ground, I looked back for my mother. A white-haired passenger, his hair Einsteined in the port sea breeze, was shouting to the cops and windmilling his arm toward the breach. A few protesters suffered a sudden attack of sense and scrambled back to the safety of their crowd and their pen, but two remained. The first raised his arms and skipped triumphantly in place like Rocky. The second dropped to his knees.

  The first was tackled; the second, clubbed. Both were swarmed.

  “Stay back from the fence,” a new, amplified voice ordered. “Trespassers will be arrested.”

  No one was attacking me. I eased myself up from the ground. Clark did the same, though much more laboriously. Someone hooked my elbow and tugged me away. It was my mother. When Clark started to follow us, Carlos pointed at him and shouted, “He attacked me!”

  And then Clark too, unprotected by any woman, was swarmed by security.

  My mother and I walked on, past the roadway, up to the cement walk that led to the terminal. Now the howling of the crowd was replaced by the roar of arriving vehicles: not buses, but police cruisers, Emergency Service vans, and big armored BearCats, urban tanks. These last came in a slow procession, like a military parade. Miami-Dade, like so many police departments these days, had happily blown their Chompian security stimulus on militarized crowd-control essentials. The vehicle’s engines drowned out the protest.

  My mother continued to lead me down the path to the terminal. I was a child again, trustingly following her through the dangerous tempest of some town carnival, terrifying teacup rides, and careening adolescents all around me.

  I looked back again. Chomp and his entourage were gone. Clark and Carlos were being frog-marched away—combatants now linked in detention. The two barricade-defying protesters, one of them bleeding from the head, were just behind them. Between two police vans, I could see a troop of their bravest comrades cheering the martyrs and taunting the cops.

  Chomp had brought this chaos to life. What was he hoping to do with it?

  Chapter 6

  The cool white world within the check-in terminal seemed oblivious—or impervious—to the violence outside, as if an opiate had been added to the HVAC system. Cruisers inside were behaving exactly like cruisers anywhere—chatting up old friends and new, joking about their spouses’ packing skills, checking their phones to hoot at the weather back home. Younger cruisers were sipping from plastic bottles, presumably to save money by arriving pre-drunk. This inhibited the orderly flow of the security line but added to its conviviality. Older female cruisers lamented the effects of the climate on their hair. Their husbands were dressed in loose white shirts and slacks, some even in white belts and white shoes, as if the trip were a 1950s Elks convention. The men’s handshakes were like gunshots. If there were real gunshots outside, nobody could hear them. Hardly anyone even glanced out the windows, where the view was mostly obstructed by armored vehicles anyway. The apocalypse outside might have been rolling by on Netflix.

  Line ambassadors in fluorescent vests smiled and pointed the way to the end of the security line, confident in the obviousness of the system. Determinedly confused cruisers asked questions anyway. But none of their questions were about the disturbance outside. The cruisers all seemed to believe the protesters were gone. Chomp had made them disappear.

  Did Chomp too believe in his powers of sorcery? What did he believe? Even now, no one knew. The opposition insisted that all that mattered was what Chomp achieved, or destroyed, not what he believed or desired in his heart of hearts. Let the biographers slog around in that muck. To the families of the deported, nothing mattered but that their loved ones had been taken away. But now, as my own audience with Chomp was approaching, I was more than ever determined to discover his guiding principles. At some point, just before he quit, Chomp must have considered himself, on his own mysterious terms, a failure. If I could understand why, I might also understand what he was attempting to accomplish now.

  I felt ready for our interview. Now that I had personally witnessed Chomp’s childish gestures and heard his stupid insults, it would be easy to convince myself, if only for half an hour, that he was no longer mighty ex-President Chomp, breaker of brown families and avenger of white suffering, mighty force of American history. He was just some guy who had leveraged his charm, knack for outrage, and inherited wealth into popularity and power. I had known bloggers who had used some subset of Chomp’s gifts to achieve Internet fame and even, sometimes, a comfortable living. Chomp wasn’t so different. Just about a billion times more successful. I could figure those bloggers out in five minutes. Chomp might take ten.

  I soon discovered that not all the passengers were blasé about the protest. As my mother and I took our places in line, I could hear scattered bits of nervous chatter.

  “In Venezuela, they’d be cutting avocados in prison camp.”

  “When I was that age, I worked weekends.”

  “They’re lucky he didn’t round
them up when he could’ve.”

  “Won’t be our problem much longer.”

  At one point, several different people throughout the room all laughed at once. It turned out that Chomp had just sent a new tweet. One man started to read it out loud: “Professional yahoos attacking my Chompians…” A woman finished for him: “Enjoy sunstroke and jail time, losers! We’re on to the beach.”

  Critics said all Chomp was good at was tweets and one-liners. But throughout history, ambitious people have used a knack for the latest information medium (radio, television, now Twitter) to achieve world-altering influence. And not just modern history. Think back two thousand years to the silver-tongued carpenter’s son who was first to exploit the hitherto unappreciated medium of the parable.

  * * *

  —

  The next room in the terminal, equally cavernous but much less sunny, held the security checkpoint. Check-in security on most cruises is a playtime version of an airport’s. Your bags and body are scanned, but the agents are watching mainly for illicit stashes of alcohol, not bombs. Their demeanor is cheery and helpful, their frisks perfunctory. They dispense with the airport TSA’s self-seriousness and racial profiling.

  The Chomp cruise was different. Linebackers bearing hip holsters and glossy CHOMP team jackets—soldiers from Chomp’s private force—stared balefully over the serpentine line. Each soldier nevertheless made it a point to nod at any cruiser who looked their way, to acknowledge shared values and common cause. You’re not under suspicion, they seemed to say, but let’s keep an eye on your neighbors. The devil can take human form to confound us.

  Like most veteran travelers, I disdain security theater, but I couldn’t deny a certain logic to this particular concern. Wouldn’t a cruise ship make a better terrorist target than an airplane? Why would a radical Islamist choose to blow up a two-hundred-passenger Boeing instead of a three-thousand-passenger floating city dedicated to mindless leisure and excessive consumption of alcohol and molten chocolate cake—especially one carrying Carlton Chomp?