A tragicomedy in one presidential term.
A tragicomedy in one presidential term.
Waiting for Barack
by Samuel Feckitt
JOTUS
Cackela
Festermann
An oval-shaped assisted-living facility.
Midmorning. The day nurse has called a full lid.
JOTUS sits behind the Irresolute Desk, struggling to unfold the instruction manual for his sunglasses. Cackela takes up space on a sofa.
JOTUS:
(declaiming) Let me start off with two words: Made in America!
Cackela:
(earnestly) We have the power today to have an impact on tomorrow. And we can’t shortchange the significance of that.
JOTUS:
I want to find a woman to adore me again.
Cackela:
I think marijuana gives people a lot of joy. And we need more joy.
JOTUS:
I’m not the kind of guy everyone likes. My personality either grabs you or it doesn’t.
Cackela:
I like to think about a lot of things in the context of a Venn diagram. I love Venn diagrams. Always ask, “Is there a Venn diagram for this?” I’m telling you, it’s fascinating when you do. So, Venn diagram, those three circles, right?
JOTUS:
(dejected) I’ve done some dumb things. And I’ll do dumb things again.
Cackela:
We cannot wait for Congress to act. Congress must act. But also, we cannot wait for Congress to act.
JOTUS:
(with regret) I hadn’t been to class enough to know how to do citations.
Cackela:
(brightly) I think that, you know, I actually wrote a book many years ago.
JOTUS:
(pounding the desk) We choose truth over facts.
Cackela:
(defensive) We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border . . . we’ve been to the border.
JOTUS:
I think I can feel and taste what is going on.
Cackela:
(firmly) I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.
JOTUS:
(shouting) I’m sick and tired of smart guys!
Cackela:
Figure out what kind of gives you, you know, your brain, like a tingle.
JOTUS:
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.” I promise you: The president has a big stick.
Cackela:
Listen, women are getting pregnant every day in America, and this is a real issue.
JOTUS:
(voice rising) Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks. But he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people.
Cackela:
(patiently) So, Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine.
JOTUS:
(defiantly) You may cut me, man, but I’m gonna wrap this chain around your head.
Cackela:
The president has been clear: On this issue and on a very important issue in addition to that important issue.
JOTUS:
Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented as white kids.
Cackela:
(indignant) There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me.
JOTUS:
(arms outstretched) We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.
Cackela:
We have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen.
JOTUS:
When I said I was arrested, I meant I was not able to move.
Cackela:
You need to get to go and need to be able to get where you need to go to do the work and get home.
JOTUS:
My younger sister used to be three years younger than me. Now she’s 23 years younger. There’s not a single, solitary Biden man that is younger than any Biden woman.
Cackela:
(with wonder) The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.
JOTUS:
I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.
Cackela:
I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled.
JOTUS:
My ancestors worked the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after twelve hours and play football for four hours.
Cackela:
(slowly, in order to be clear) When we’re talking about health care, the body doesn’t just start from the neck down. It includes the neck up. And that’s called mental-health care.
JOTUS:
I do know that I could never be another Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Cackela:
Never let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.
JOTUS:
(sneering) Well I’m telling you, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.
Cackela:
(with resentment) I’m the vice president of the United States. Anything that I handle is because it’s a tough issue.
JOTUS:
I had a nurse named Pearl Nelson, military. She’d come in and do things that I don’t think you learn in medical schoo — in nursing school. She’d whisper in my ear. I didn’t, couldn’t understand her, but she’d whisper, and she’d lean down. She’d actually breathe on me to make sure that I was — there was a connection, a human connection.
Cackela:
And that’s why I do believe that we are living, sadly, in real unsettled times.
JOTUS:
Corn Pop was a bad dude. And he ran a bunch of bad boys.
Cackela:
When you see our kids — and I truly believe that they are our children, they are the children of our country, of our communities — I mean, our future is really bright if we prioritize them.
JOTUS:
You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. And I’m not joking.
Cackela:
(imploring) Why are conservatives bad, Mommy?
JOTUS:
Hey, Esther! You! Off the board or I’ll come up and drag you off!
Cackela:
Listen, I think you frame the point quite accurately and well, which is America’s policy has been and will continue to be focused on the real issue at hand.
JOTUS:
Because of the actions we’ve taken, things have begun to change. End of quote.
Cackela:
I think there can be no higher priority than what, we have been clear, is our highest priority.
JOTUS:
I want the record to show I don’t know what questions I didn’t answer.
Cackela:
We will work together and continue to work together to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work, operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements that we will convene to work together on to galvanize global action. This is a matter of urgent priority for all of us, and I know we will work on this together.
JOTUS:
(bewildered) My mind is going blank now. What’s the song that is played where everybody is on the chair?
JOTUS rises from the desk, trips over a sandbag. Cackela laughs, which causes staff members to enter and move JOTUS to a safer chair.
A dietary aide enters, bringing JOTUS an ice-cream cone in a This End Up wrapper.
JOTUS:
(with satisfaction) A successful dump!
Cackela:
Today, the business of our work is for the Council to report on the work that has occurred since our last meeting across these areas. We will today also discuss the work yet ahead, the work we must still do to continue to move forward.
JOTUS:
That’s why they make the big bucks; that’s why they get the limos and you don’t.
Cackela:
Always dream with ambition. Have big dreams.
JOTUS:
When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “Look, here’s what happened.”
Cackela:
But we all watched the television coverage of just yesterday. That’s on top of everything else that we know and don’t know yet, based on what we’ve just been able to see. And because we’ve seen it or not doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.
JOTUS:
I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.
Cackela:
I love Hanukkah because it really is about the light, and bringing light where there has been darkness. And there is so much work to be done in the world, to bring light.
Festermann enters, dressed as a Druid.
Festermann:
Hunger is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. It’s all of our issue that we have to take it on.
JOTUS:
I said, “You look like a thug!” I said, “You’re so damn big.”
Festermann:
My doctors, the real doctors that I believe, they all believe that I am ready to be served.
Cackela:
He reminds me of that guy in The Wizard of Oz. You know, when you pull back the curtain and it’s a really small dude?
Festermann:
I do support fracking. And I don’t, I don’t. I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.
JOTUS:
Clap for that, you stupid bastards.
Festermann:
And that’s exactly what’s wrong . . . about what’s wrong . . . when Washington. An unelected Supreme Court justice will try to blow up our economy. That’s on them . . . if they have to . . . judge on that.
Festermann exits.
Cackela:
So I think it’s very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders, for us at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past, but the future.
JOTUS:
I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect.
Cackela:
We know community banks are in the community, and understand the needs and desires of that community as well as the talent and capacity of community.
JOTUS:
(with aggression) I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours, Frank.
Cackela:
While we send our prayers, and our love, we also, with each day, renew our commitment to the urgency of now and the ability that we have collectively, all of us in it together, to do something about it.
JOTUS:
There have not been many of the senators from Delaware. It’s a small state. As a matter of fact, there has never been one.
Cackela:
This is a community of the Mississippi Delta that has a long history of being part of America’s history.
JOTUS:
(voice rising) A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States — Barack America!
Cackela:
I am here, standing here on the northern flank, on the eastern flank, talking about what we have in terms of the eastern flank and our NATO allies, and what is at stake at this very moment, what is at stake this very moment are some of the guiding principles.
JOTUS:
I got hairy legs that turn blond in the sun. And the kids used to run up and reach in the pool and rub my leg down so it was straight and then watch the hair come back up again. I love kids jumping on my lap.
Cackela:
When we talk about the children of the community, they are a children of the community.
JOTUS:
Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?
Cackela:
And I haven’t been to Europe. I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.
JOTUS:
We’ve got to recognize that a kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate.
Cackela:
I’m excited about electric school buses. I love electric school buses. I just love them! For so many reasons. Maybe because I went to school on a school bus. Hey, raise your hand if you went to school on a school bus!
JOTUS:
(angrily) You’re a damn liar, man! . . . Let’s do push-ups together, man, let’s run, let’s do whatever you want to do. Let’s take an IQ test?
Cackela:
(with wonderment) You are literally going to see the craters on the moon. With your own eyes.
JOTUS:
(even louder) You’re a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!
Cackela:
I’m here to ask you to do what you know how to do, because when you do what you do, on all of these issues, the American people win.
JOTUS:
(abashed) I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid.
Cackela:
We’re working on bringing down, basically, the cost of what life requires for people.
JOTUS:
It happens to be a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S.
Cackela:
We must together. Work together. To see where we are. Where we are headed, where we are going, and our vision for where we should be. But also see it as a moment to, yes, together, address the challenges and to work on the opportunities that are presented by this moment.
JOTUS:
They’re gonna put you all back in chains.
Cackela:
We’ve got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are — because you have been forced to take it seriously. The whole nation should understand, and have a level of empathy to understand, that this can happen anywhere.
JOTUS:
Whether you like it or not, us cruddy politicians can take away that First Amendment of yours if we want to.
Cackela:
It is the responsibility as a chief legal officer, which each of them has a responsibility of being.
JOTUS:
(suddenly angry again) Don’t tell me I can’t point a finger. I oughta go outside with you.
Cackela:
I acknowledge that one must acknowledge that prices are going up.
JOTUS:
We have fewer democracies in the world today than we did 15 years ago. Fewer. Not more. Fewer!
Cackela:
We also recognize just as it has been in the United States, for Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue that is economic in the way of its impact has been the pandemic.
JOTUS:
Why in God’s name don’t we teach history in history classes? A black man invented the light bulb, not a white guy named Edison. OK?
Cackela:
We know that we really are quite behind in terms of maximizing our collective understanding about how we will engage on the technology of today and what we can quickly and easily predict will be the technology over the next decades.
JOTUS:
You had to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window. That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer.
Cackela:
To see where we are, where we are headed, where we are going, and our vision for where we should be.
JOTUS:
I went to law school on a full academic scholarship. I won the international moot-court competition.
Cackela:
Space is exciting. It spurs our imagination and forces us to ask big questions. Space — it affects us all, and it connects us all.
JOTUS:
Covid has taken this year, just since the outbreak . . . has taken more than 100 years. Look. Here’s. The lives. I mean, just . . . you think about it. More lives this year than any other year for the past hundred years.
Cackela:
Culture is — it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right? And present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment, and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know . . . it comes in the morning. [Laughs] We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way, too.
JOTUS:
I can die a happy man not being president.
Cackela:
We got the meanest, baddest phone trees in the world.
JOTUS:
So the bad news for you all is I’m here because of you.
Cackela:
It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day. Every day, it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us.
JOTUS:
(with intensity) For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.
Staff enters, leading JOTUS to another room for lunch. Cackela follows.
Curtain
A native of Dublin, Ohio, Mr. Feckitt now resides in Paris, Ky.