Karl Rove Saved From Bullying
In 1960, at the age of nine, Rove decided to support Richard Nixon, got into a physical fight about it with a politically-motivated girl, and lost.
—Wikipedia Entry on Karl Rove—
On his first day at the new school, KR hangs at the edge of the playground, hands thrust in pocket. His shoulders are simultaneously hunched and defiant. There’s never been a fourth grader with such a high forehead, or so much flabby skin around his neck. A whisper shimmies through the crowd around the monkey bars.
Nobody bothers him. They don’t have the energy to tell him they hate him, and they aren’t even sure why. Something about him; something impure.
Katie, a former Catholic School girl, feels the hair on her neck tingle when she looks at him. As they bustle through the hallway to their lockers, she brushes up against him and quickly blesses his neck. The skin on her fingers nearly peels off from the burn. KR feels the girl’s tiny little hands on his neck. A disgusted arousal bubbles through his body. How would Dick Nixon handle this?
“Kennedy loving elitist Pope Worshipper,” he says.
It’s like he could sense who she was, where she came from.
How she voted, if she could vote.
Commies.
In class, day after day, year after year, he floats in a dream of hope. He’s too smart to need to study and there’s no point in listening. Everyone knows the teachers are just part of the great Soviet robot network, slowly infiltrating every element of American society until the world speaks Russian and bows at the altar of Kruschev.
He’s writing a book. Lighting Karl and The Intergalactic Pinkos. It’s book one in a seven part series. A huge bestseller for sure. When the Soviet Teacher Robot tries to speak to him, he imagines his pencil is his “neutron gun” and she is obliterated into a million collectivist little pieces.
On the playground, he knows they’re watching him. The beatnik greasers with their copies of “On the Road” and “10 Days that Shook the World” rolled up in their t-shirt sleeves. After a few months, they finally wander his way. He’s sitting on a swing, writing a fan letter to Joseph McCarthy, when he feels a not very hard thump on his arm.
“Hey, kid,” he hears. He will not look at them. He cannot look at them.
“Kid,” one of them says. “Why you sitting all by yourself? Come on over. We ain’t gonna bite ya.”
His hands tremble and he breaks his pencil lead. Fear and hate. They are here to infiltrate his freedom. He knows this is just another trick, another plot by the dirty Reds to suck out his brain juices and replace them with mushy pumpkin guts. He opens up his briefcase and takes out his Dick Nixon Commie Vaporizing Ring that he made out of a sucker-pop and a box of Cracker Jack.
He points it at them. In his mind, he is on the planet Sovieteroid 72 and Lightning Karl has vaporized them all. In his mind, he is waiting for his trusty spaceship Checkers to swoop him out of this awful place so he can return to the beautiful freedom of the United States.
But they just see this little fat kid with the ridiculously high forehead who looks like their Uncle Saul pointing a little plastic ring in their faces with his eyes closed. They hate his face. Does he have a chin? How can you be balding in the fourth grade?
They laugh at him, but it only makes it worse. He blinks rapidly and thrust his plastic ring into their faces.
They’ve had enough.
A circle forms, a chant starts.
Lightning Karl doesn’t understand why his vaporizer isn’t working. He is battling a new horde of aliens and they are coming closer, closer and then suddenly, she is in the middle of them.
Katie has braved the crowd. She is standing in the middle, protecting KR from the punches about to be thrown and the words being shouted. She knows that they won’t punch a girl, even the girls in the mob. They aren’t really bad kids, she knows. KR has just gotten under their skin. He can’t help it.
The crowd disperses, confused and worried that they will get in trouble. They try to look innocent. A few of them break into tears.
Katie tries to help KR up, wiping the dirt off his forehead. This takes a few swipes with her handkerchief. He does not look at her. He doesn’t open his eyes. She notices his ring, which makes her smile. Then she sees it, on the lapel of his blazer. A Nixon button. Her family loves John Kennedy. There is a picture of him in the dining room, next to the Pope and FDR. She doesn’t care really. She likes to read Nancy Drew, not worry about elections. But Nixon? No wonder everyone hates him.
“Nixon?” She says smiling. “I think Kennedy is the guy for the job.”
KR starts to wail. Not cry, not scream. Wail. An end of the world kind of thing. Like The Blob just guzzled up his mother. Like his body had been snatched. He’s writhing and hopping. Pointing at her and shrieking.
She stares at him. A weird force takes over her body. For the first and last time in her life, she clenches her fist and punches another human being.
He is knocked out. She stands over him, regretful but elated.
“Racist,” he gurgles through the blood and chipped teeth. “Elitist. Commie.”
The words make no sense to her. But she can see the look in his eyes, wild and empty. He wobbles away, a fat little penguin stumbling down the street.
The world is going to pay for what she’s done. But she doesn’t have time to think about that. It’s lunchtime and her stomach is growling.
