Ricardo “Shoeless Dick” Santorum spoke at the GOP convention on Tuesday. He spent Monday night in the hobo camp near the convention center, drinking stolen Cigar City Jai-Lai Pale Ale and eating Cuban sandwiches and black beans salvaged from the dumpster behind the Columbia Restaurant. The one-time senator is very fond of beans. “Goddamn,” he told his fellow hobos. “Those are some damn good beans.”
But it wasn’t all dumpster sandwiches and beer swilling for Shoeless Dick. Sure, he had to give a speech for that wretched man-bot, Willard Romney, but he also had some important networking to do. The 2016 primaries were four short years away. Later that week, he had scheduled meetings with the heads of the Five Hobo Families, some prominent Iowa pig-men, and members of the New Hampshire Guild of Maple Miners. His hobo bindle was stuffed with 2016, BITCHES t-shirts to give away. He briefly went over a draft of his speech with his advisor, Stinky Pete Johnson. Then he made his farewells to his hosts, a colorful group of Florida sea-hobos, and made his way through the maze of abandoned cigar factories down to the wharf. The greasy waters of Tampa Bay lapped against the seawall. It was time for Shoeless Dick’s next meeting.
A forlorn figure stood by the water.
“What up, Skeletor?” Shoeless Dick asked. The figure turned. It was the 3000-year-old shaman stoners call Ron Paul. He fixed Shoeless Dick with an unearthly glowing stare. Dick tried not to look directly at him. Goddamn, he thought. What are those weird glowing things? Eyes? Some sort of weird magic balls? The old man was creepy.
“Your japes do not amuse, shoeless mortal,” Ron Paul rasped, his voice like cold marbles rattling in a coffee can.
“Goddamn, you’re cheerful. Okay,” Shoeless Dick said. “I’ll cut the chit-chat. Let’s get to it. I don’t like Romney. You don’t like Romney.”
“He is not a man, he is a mechanism,” Paul croaked. “Like a cunning toy for a pharaoh’s child. He spins and spins, by artifice.One cannot trust such a one. A pharaoh’s toy cannot be pharaoh.”
“What?” Santorum asked. “Oh, right. The robot thing. I’ve heard that too. But I’ve been to his creepy-ass castle in the mountains. I’m not entirely sure he is a robot. I think maybe he’s just a rich jackass. Besides, if he’s a robot, how’d he get all them goddamned kids?”
“Perhaps he bought them,” Paul replied, making a ghastly wheezing sound. It took Shoeless Dick a moment to realize the hideous wraith was laughing.
“That’s goddamned hilarious, Freakazoid,” Santorum said. “Look, I’ll be straight with you. You’re a bajillion years old. I feel bad about your curse thing or whatever, but you’re never going to be president. Not gonna happen. Now, if I get to be president, I can help you out, though. Get some NASA scientists working on your curse problem. Make you ambassador to Egypt. Whatever. But…you gotta help me.”
Ron Paul said nothing. His eye-orbs glowed in the darkness.
“I think Newt Gingrich is on board. You should help, too.”
“It was Gingrich who had your clothing stolen in Nevada,” Ron Paul said. “He will not aid you. He sought to make you a laughingstock.”
“What!?” Santorum yelled. “That fat bastard!” The Nevada primary had been a low point for the Santorum campaign. Out of money, he was reduced to eating at soup kitchens and bathing at the carwash by the Liberace Museum. At one point, his shoes and clothes were stolen and he campaigned for a while wearing only a Caesar’s Palace towel. That was where he got the nickname “Shoeless Dick.”
“That fat son-of-a-bitch,” Santorum muttered. “Anyway. Look, Grandpa Munster, here’s the thing. I think I’ve cobbled together a pretty good coalition of hobos, gypsies, people who hate gypsies, religious nutballs, and moon-landing-deniers to have a decent shot at the early primaries. But I need some of your people. Crackpots. Goldbugs. That whatchamacallit–Gathering of the Shrugalos. Kids that like weed. With your help, I can totally take this thing in 2016.”
“2016?” Ron Paul croaked. “But what if the Pharaoh’s Toy wins now?”
They both laughed. “Christ,” Santorum wheezed, tears streaming down his face.” You’re a hoot, old man. Goddamn. What if Romney wins? Hoo boy. You crack me up, old man. You like beans? Let’s go eat some beans.”
“I am no longer a man,” Paul whispered, sadly. “I have gone to a far place that you cannot see, shoeless mortal. It is beyond your horizon. But yes…in the pavilion at Karnak…millennia ago…banners of the pharaohs fluttering in the warm breeze, I would often break my fast on hot flatbreads dipped in the beanpaste you call hummus. I acquired a taste for it when we exterminated the Canaanites. Yes, mortal, I like beans. You are the first of the candidates to offer me hospitality. I like beans. And I shall speak to the Gathering on your behalf.”
The two one-time rivals walked down the wharf to the hulking ruins of the cigar factories, on their way back to the hobo camp. At the end of the wharf, they saw some dumb tourist being dragged from his rental car by large, ape-like men, who proceeded to give the tourist a brisk, efficient beating. “Goddamn,” Santorum realized. “That’s Tim Pawlenty, poor dumb bastard. Why are those goons beating him? I mean, who would bother?”
“Behold!” Ron Paul cried, pointing out to the bay, at a gleaming, flood-lit hover-yacht flying the flag of New Jersey. “They do the bidding of Chris Christie, who will brook no rival.”
“Christ,” Shoeless Dick muttered. “Pawlenty’s not much of a rival. They shouldn’t beat a poor defenseless governor like that.” He stepped out of the shadows. “Yo, lardass,” he yelled. “Knock it off.”
The goons dropped Pawlenty, who fell to the ground blubbering, “Why are you hitting T-Paw? Why? I’m a GOOD governor! Why god, why?”
“Well, well,” said the lead goon. His hands were covered with Pawlenty blood and spit and snot. Pawlenty was a moist crier. “If it isn’t Shoeless Dick himself. Boss’d be real happy if YOU met with some sort of unfortunate accident.” He advanced toward Santorum. Shoeless Dick pulled out his hobo shiv.
Ron Paul emerged from the shadows, eye orbs blazing. “Begone, carrion of Chris Christie!” he cried in his unearthly voice.
“Listen, old coot, we got no beef with you,” the lead goon said. “But if you get in the way…”
Shoeless Dick was never entirely sure what happened next. Ron Paul’s eye-orbs flamed an unearthly light, there was Sicilian cursing, a stifled scream, a flash, a bang, and Santorum fell down. When he got up, there was a whiff of ozone, and the two goons were gone. Pawlenty had wet himself. “What the hell just happened?” Santorum asked.
“Best you know not. Some dark secrets must not be revealed,” Ron Paul said.
Santorum went over to the whimpering Pawlenty, writhing on the ground, who was repeating over and over, “no hit T-Paw, no hit T-Paw…”
“Goddamn, Tim, you’re a mess,” Santorum said.
“You know who I am?” Pawlenty squinted, his vision obscured by tears and snot and pummeling. “You know the old T-Paw?”
“Goddamn, Tim, of course I know who you are. That thing you did with the corndog at the Iowa State Fair was pretty goddamned unforgettable. I think Rick Perry shat himself, he laughed at you so hard.”
Pawlenty wiped his snotty, bloody face on his sleeve. “T-Paw’s gonna be president some day, they’ll see.”
Santorum sighed. “No, Tim, you’re not. All you’re going to get is beating after beating. But you know what? I can help you. I offer you my protection.” Santorum tossed him a 2016 BITCHES t-shirt. “Here. You’re a mess.”
Pawlenty stared at the shirt. “But…but I gotta give a speech,” Pawlenty whimpered. “Be a good party soldier. Support the nominee.”
“Aw, hell, Tim. I gotta give a speech too. It’s a big ol’ ridiculous thing. Stinky Pete wrote it for me. I’ll talk about my grandpa working in a mine, and there’s some weird bit about hands or America loving hand-jobs or somesuch. I gave the American Dream a hand-job or whatever. But you should do what I’m gonna do. Just phone it in. C’mon, Tim.”
Ron Paul came up to Shoeless Dick. “We dare not linger” he said. “The eldritch magicks I have unleashed will not go unnoticed. The lackeys of Rinse Pubis shall soon arrive. We must make haste. We dare not tarry for the weepy one.”
“Right,” Shoeless Dick said. “C’mon, Tim. Let’s get you a hot bowl of beans, maybe some gin. Let’s go give our speeches. Come with me.” He held out his hand. Old T-Paw grabbed it, and the three of them headed into the darkness of the cigar factories, to the hobo camp beyond.
