Catcher McCall ... Outsider

I'm Catcher McCall; Army helicopter pilot, war hero, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, candidate for the presidency of the United States and more titles too complicated to mention. My story begins in Afghanistan and after a convoluted excursion into the world of fame, fortune, debauchery and assorted transgressions, I return to the scene of the crime to search for the only woman who loves me.

[Excerpts from Afghanistan]
"9/11 is our excuse for being here [Afghanistan]. What I still don't understand how two jets take down three skyscrapers [World Trade Center complex], while all three collapsed the same way. The odds of that happening is like picking the correct eight numbers in a super cash lottery and with the same numbers win the lottery again and again, ten times in a row. I guess that's possible; our government thinks so?

As for bin Laden, he could have been taken out in the first weeks after invasion, but was the perfect cash cow to be kept alive. Ten years later, the "Find bin Laden" game was up. Two hundred and thirty one million cyberspace viewers knew his exact location. Local Internet traffic and kids scribbling graffiti on the outer walls of his not-so secret compound in Pakistan, which declared – BIN LADEN LIVES HERE, was more of an embarrassment not to kill him.

[Excerpts on the presidency]
"You will win the election and become president. That fact is a given less a catastrophe or withdrawal. No further attempts on your life will happen before the election. Voltaire said, 'the ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.' You will be assassinated in public view on January 20th, the date of your inauguration."
I laughed. "That's absurd! You are going to kill me in plain view?"
"John F. Kennedy was killed on national television. The first day of trading on New York Stock Exchange after his death the market went up. Within three months everything was back to normal. Johnson reversed all of his crazy ideas, and the rest is history. There's no such thing as public opinion, only public perception. So, what will it be, Mr. McCall?"
"My policies will survive …" Wavy Black Hair waved his hand as if shooing an invisible fly and continued to say, "Nothing will get out of committee."
"The public wants me to …"
"Stop Mr. McCall! Everything dies with you, except the memory. Kennedy is remember today as a great president; nothing during his tenure confirms that, but being assassinated in office did the trick."

[Excerpt on love]
"There are two kinds of love - compromise and abeyance. Though quite distinct, passion rules both from different directions."

"Love is suffering with one partner always loving more."

" As for me, I was a prisoner within a prisoner. I became complete with her and now I have unraveled with her; no longer a whole person, but a caricature being constantly redrawn to fit the scene. Love was not in the equation, only an uneasy truce between guilty, self-interest and piety. I was still a young man, under forty and basically intact with the expectations of a normal life, not stuck in a fuckin' cabin in the middle of nowhere with a sixty pound bundle of shit to care for."

"I fell to my knees and kissed her for the first time since she regained consciousness. When she kissed me back, I knew everything would be all right."
___________

Look for Catcher McCall versus Wall Street due March 15, 2013.