The Vice President’s Dream   In the vice president’s dream the morning is always perfect, sometimes late summer, sometimes early fall, but always that smell that just says lovely (the vice president can smell in his dreams) and always that sound of violins and birdsong (the vice president’s dreams have soundtracks) just before the cellos ease in, low at first, more a feeling than a sound, a vague tension, something not right, and then the terse message, sometimes the hot line, sometimes a breathless flunky, sometimes the vice president just knows (the vice president is blessed with extraordinary powers of intuition) but always that message: they’re coming, they’re coming, sometimes they’ve got planes, sometimes missiles, sometimes they’re brandishing fiendish- looking curved swords, but they’re coming, they’re coming, no time to scramble the air force, no time for procedures, no time for going by the book (in his dreams, the vice president never goes by the book), no time to work down the chain of command, just one chance: go straight to the top, and at this point the president himself just appears, as though cued by the vice president’s extraordinary powers of intuition, and sometimes the president is dressed for clearing brush on his rancho, and sometimes he’s in a monogrammed robe, and sometimes he’s just naked, and the vice president has only to say, “Sir, they’re coming” in a voice historians will call grave, yet calm and resolute (often, in fact, the vice president dreams that historians are narrating all of this) and at this point in the dream the president, normally a pliable ninny, is supercharged by the moment, by the vice president’s grave, calm, resolute demeanor, and with a swelling fanfare of brass and kettledrums the president’s stature grows, he sees and hears and smells his destiny (in his dreams the vice president even knows what other people smell, it’s uncanny) and suddenly the president is in his flight suit and he smiles that crazy, cocky, crooked sideways smile of his at the vice president, and sometimes he says, “I guess this is it, old buddy,” and sometimes he just winks, and the vice president says “Good luck, sir” and the historians record this as “Godspeed, Mr President” or “Vaya con Díos, Señor Presidente” (the vice president’s dreams are often bilingual) and the president races outside to a waiting jet aircraft, a single-seat Vietnam-era trainer, all fired up and ready to go, right there on Pennsylvania Avenue, and as the president climbs nimbly into the cockpit an aide rushes up, the president’s closest advisor, a sinister, porcine fixer the vice president has always secretly feared and detested as a rival who, in turn, fears and detests the vice president, and this aide is shouting above the jet roar, “Sir! Your parachute!” but with a wry smile the president waves him off because sometimes, as historians will later quote the vice president, Destiny Wears No Parachute, and the president buckles himself into a complicated harness, and the plexiglass canopy comes down with a committed click, audible even through the jet roar, and the president glances over to the vice president and gives him a thumb’s-up and does that crazy smile thing again, and then flips down his helmet’s visor, disappearing into its mirror bubble, and suddenly flames dart from the back of the engines like blue tongues of hell and the presidential jet catapults aloft, rocketing skyward, and somehow, as if through the vice president’s miraculously precise and telepathic powers of navigation, the president knows right where to go, right where they’re coming, and the president’s last words, crackling to the vice president over the radio, are “Ima gonna git em, cause this here’s the End Times, heh heh heh,” and the historians relate this as “I love Jesus and I love the U S of A!” and “Amo Jesús y los EEUU!” and there’s a blinding flash and at this point in the dream the vice president always wakes up and it’s morning in America.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont April 2011