The Quest

It had been two years since Glenn Michael Beckmann had seen his mother in a vision, rising from the lake [Potomac River] to hand him Excalibur.  The fact that Excalibur was an ax in no way dissuaded him from the epic reality and importance of Excalibur, and his role in destiny.  Nor did it matter that this memory had been supplanted in his mind with a different memory from one year ago of his mother handing him Excalibur at Fat John's Lake.  Excalibur (wrapped carefully in deerskin) was kept reverentially at his Southwest Plaza apartment--under his bed when he was sleeping, under the couch while he was watching television, under the table while he was eating, etc., etc.  The fact that Bristol Palin (daughter of the President of the Hunter-Gather Society, Sarah Palin) had broken off her engagement with that silly Alaskan boy to have Beckmann's love child could not distract him from his sacred duties to fix everything that was wrong in this country, and let Excalibur lead the way.

A legend in his own mind, Beckmann believed that Excalibur (in his hand) had slain 5,000 terrorists, 2,000 illegal aliens, 1,000 zombies, 600 Russian and Cuban spies, 400 Saudi bankers, 200 Chinese spies, 100 liberal politicians, seven Kardashians, three members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and the General Counsel of Au Bon Pain.  The death toll was barely a fraction of that--since most of Excalibur's action was in his dreams and it was easier to carry guns and knives on public transit--but there was certainly dried blood on Excalibur, and Excalibur was certainly coming out to play today.

The target was the Japanese Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue.  He would sneak up from the hiking trail in Rock Creek Park, toss hand grenades into the embassy, then chop up Japs as they fled the fire.  This plan had come to him in a dream last night, after he was whipped into a frenzy by American media accounts that Japan was not being very apologetic about the terrible things they had done seven decades ago.  (Never mind that over 200,000 Japanese had been killed by American atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki!  No, nobody needed to apologize about that!)  Beckmann was realizing today that he had been quite remiss about punishing Japanese, and there was no need for a patriot such as himself to wait for even-numbered anniversaries to go after the wicked.  He was plodding along the trail, pondering whether he should also be doing more to kill insufficiently remorseful Koreans, Vietnamese, or Panamanians, when he was suddenly accosted by John Doe, whom he had not seen in a long time.

"Thank Goodness I caught you in time!" said Doe, a little out of breath.  "Ghost Henry says I need to tell you that the Japanese are our allies now, and have been for seventy years."

"What?!"

"We don't kill Japanese anymore!  But Ghost Henry said we can still kill neo-Nazis.  I mean, not me, you!  I'm an autistic-mystic-shaman; you're a killer."

"I'm not a killer!  I'm a patriot!" protested Beckmann.

"Yeah, I dunno know all the details, but Ghost Henry--"

"Ghost Henry?!"

"You remember him:  he's in the Ghost CIA."

Beckmann put down his backpack (really heavy from the ax and the bomb) and sat against a tree.  "Is this going to take long?"

"No:  here's the address where you can find her."  The brain-damaged amnesiac with temporal lobe epilepsy handed Beckmann a slip of paper, and sat down against another tree.  "Ghost Henry says she has a meeting set with the KGB to sell CIA secrets."

"The KGB?" asked Beckmann.  "Why is a Nazi selling secrets to the KGB?"

"Neo-Nazi," said Doe.  "She needs money, and there are no Nazi buyers.  She hates the Chinese and the Saudis and the Israelis and the Spanish."

"What's wrong with the Spanish?"

"They're not white enough.  The KGB are really white:  they're a pale people."

"What about the KKK?  They wear sheets to look whiter."

"What?!  They don't buy CIA secrets!"

"You want some water?" asked Beckmann, taking a swig from his canteen, then handing it to Doe, who looked hot.

"Thanks," said Doe, who naturally had no idea that by "water" Beckmann meant gin and tonic on the rocks.  "Whoa!"  Doe quickly went into an epileptic seizure, and the ghost of Henry Samuelson went apoplectic.

Beckmann pulled some beef jerky out of his backpack and watched in amazement as Doe began mumbling nonsensically about a potpourri of things like recorder music, squirrel babble, the recent meteor shower, helicopter landing practice on the South Lawn of the White House over and over and over again, and the record total of 233 minutes of Washington siren wails in the last 24 hours.  Beckmann chewed thoroughly and thoughtfully as Doe pressed his fingers like a pretend gun against his own temporal lobe and started chanting, "shot, shot, shot, shot, they were all shot, shot, shot, shot, I was shot, shot, shot, shot."  Doe had actually never been shot--his brain injury had come from a vicious baseball bat attack--but he was seeing visions of all the city's shooting victims from the past week.

"Guns aren't the problem, man," said Beckmann, reaching over to pull Doe's hand away from his head.  "Guns are our friends!  One of these days I'm going to be riding Metro at the right time and shoot the Hell out of these crazy knife people!  Or maybe at a movie.  I never get a movie theater shooter to shoot at!  That's my dream.  Oh, who's the big man now, loser?!  Bam, bam, bam!"  Beckmann was now using his own hand as a make-believe gun, and aiming it at a jogger passing by.  "Are you done yet?  I can't just go to this address and kill somebody:  you haven't even given me a name or a description."

Five minutes later, Beckmann had finished his beef jerky and canteen beverage, and John Doe was waking up.  "What happened?" asked Doe.  "Did I have a vision?"

"Sure, plenty," said Beckmann, waving the piece of paper in Doe's face.  "Who's this neo-Nazi?  What does she look like?"

"She looks like death dressed up as a Girl Scout in blond braids," said Doe, trying to refocus as Ghost Henry poked and prodded him.

"Blond braids--got it," said Beckmann, standing up.  He put his backpack back on, offered a hand to pull John Doe up, then said, "tell Ghost Henry I said 'hey'."

And so it was that Glenn Michael Beckmann aborted his plan for carnage at the Japanese Embassy, and led the Federal agents following him around today straight to the Wardman Park house at which Barbara Hellmeister was squatting while its owners were in Europe for the month of August.  Hellmeister was in the back yard doing experiments on a litter of baby squirrels when Beckmann pulled out his ax to hack through the Bamboo hedge.

"Hey!" shouted the Federal agents at Beckmann.  "Federal agents!  Drop the ax!"

"She's a neo-Nazi!" protested Beckmann, just seconds before Hellmeister shot him in the shoulder.  By the time the Federal agents got to the hedge, Hellmeister and her backpack of emergency belongings were already racing in the opposite direction, through the neighbor's yard, and onto her motorcycle (with sidecar).  "Damn it!  You let her get away!" exclaimed Beckmann, before passing out.

And so it was that Glenn Michael Beckmann was separated from Excalibur, and his destiny was altered....

Meanwhile, a few miles away, a catbird reluctantly removed the cursed Rolex from her late-season nest and flew off to deliver it where Ardua of the Potomac had ordered her to....

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TO BE CONTINUED....