Episode Thirty-Two
From Part 3 of the Sacred Clown's Modern West Trilogy, The Pecos Poet
Dharma in a White Stetson
“The gates to freedom will cease to be gates, if people start clinging to the hinges.” ~ Buddha
“Sometimes the only thing you can change is your hat.” ~ The Clown
High time for a breather. It had taken his all to throw his hat in the ring. Doing so meant confronting his own dark traits. The dojo had taught that acting all judgy gave birth to rage. But here he was.
He thought about the new office of Commissioner of Culture. Wasn’t that just invented to prove there was culture in Texas? Choking back the bile rising in his throat, he grasped the inevitability. He’d be a shoo‑in. The ballot was already a loyalty card, and half the electorate circled the R like it came with a free oil change. The Sacred Clown grinned at the dashboard warning light that read “Culture Low—Refill Spirit.” But what lay ahead?
Good luck had found him presiding over meets-and-greets and an occasional town hall, the hat doing most of the visual work while he moved his mouth underneath it. That white Stetson he’d bought in Fort Worth for two hundred and fifty clams was worth every penny. He found himself thinking that hat loved Texas more than he did.
Hiding behind a folksy grin, he noticed that not a single person, including “his own self” as the locals say, had questioned the purpose of the Office of Culture. The Clown, lounging in the back of his mind, flicked an imaginary Stetson brim. Culture, huh? You mean the stuff that grows when nobody’s cleanin’ the fridge? No one had inquired about how this new office would improve the lives of Texans, nor had they asked about how much it would cost oil companies. The absence of these questions hung in the air like the dry Texas heat.
He knew running for office was toxic business. He’d unknowingly prepared himself by writing poetry on the Santa Fe Plaza. But, it was one thing to mind meld with a Texan at his card table and quite another to try to engage in self-reflection with a room full of haters. In that very way his campaign was an abject failure. He’d changed no one’s mind, had brought no higher karma to his audiences, all the while eating his way through small mountains of pecan pie.
None of this helping his own karma and that flattened him. How would he rise? Would he ever be able to recapture his earlier buddhist beliefs in the beauty of other humans? The Clown guffawed. Spouting off about humanity’s beauty would get most people shot in a hang dog town.
His pulse throttled back when he recalled that he hadn’t once told a lie the campaign trail, unlike like other Republican candidates. He’d shaded some things and ignored catcalls from audiences asking him to kill his democratic opponent, a rural schoolteacher east of Dallas who’d had the temerity to volunteer for the Democratic nomination.
“Hell, that little Jezebel ain’t nothin’ more than a socialist what ain’t got no right to breathe the same air as us true Texans! Imagine what she teaches those kids!” The Poet shut and rolled his eyes when he heard that and similar imbecilic remarks on the campaign trail, but he hadn’t challenged them, dharma be damned. He’d sunk low when he played along and now with two weeks left until Election Day, he was asking himself why. Preachin’ to fools is noble work chuckled the Clown — until the fools start applaudin’.
He realized fear had stolen his tongue. He’d converted many more Texans in Santa Fe than he ever could in Texas he thought. The months on the campaign trail produced no real breakthroughs. It was easy for his audiences to act on the idea that they could be as stupid as they wanted to be. No consequences. His speeches put more dog in evidence-free dogma.
Don’t Mess with Texas the signs along the highways said. But, what next? Should he put his tail between his legs and head back to Santa Fe leaving Texans un-messed? Should he stay and quit playing along? He could dispense with being amiable, smiling, and all country-like, or revert to a combination of bluntness and timidity that already had capitulated him to fame among those Texans visiting Santa Fe. Never underestimate the power of sprinkling a few “fuck you’s” in his public remarks he thought.
There was no risk in either approach. Then it occurred to him, as he considered Buddha’s call to renounce the World and engage with suffering of others that a combination of bluntness and timidity could carry him to the finish line. He would stay the course.
After the victory celebration, he would drop the dharma hammer. Or at least swing it hard enough to make them believe he had. The Clown guffawed: You can get all sizes of nerf hammers at any Walmart. Kid’s section.
Bubba’s Ballroom Boogie
“If the boots are polished and the story’s straight, check your wallet.” ~ The Clown
“If the boots are polished and the story’s straight, check your wallet.” ~ The Clown
It was election night. The Poet swaggered into the ballroom. He’d crushed that schoolteacher from some godforsaken dot on the map. CNN had called it for him at 11 a.m. on election morning. Heads turned.
The room swung with desperation, like a playground swing with only one chain. Beer bellies undulated to a pirated version of Neil Young’s Keep On Rockin’ In the Free World while fat arms clutched aging trophy wives. Former high school beauty queens flashed smiles that their hips could no longer cash; black cocktail dresses strained to cover age, lack of exercise, and three too many gin and tonics. The sour breath of unhappy marriages polluted the air.
Tonight was but a small reward: enduring oil and gas husbands’ gripes about Texas’s changing demographics. Too many lazy Mexicans—or wherever the hell they came from—threatening a refined way of life, or so the script read. This sorority’s price of admission? Bedding down with minds no deeper than a popsicle stick. No fun, but predictable as crude oil futures.
It had been undeservedly easy—sure sign he’d pissed off the universe somewhere, somehow. But here he was: Texas Commissioner of Culture! He’d make the backsliders pay—from oil barons to preachers—exposing their idiocy, force‑feeding rationality to the herd. He smiled as a voice approached.
“Bubba! Congratulations, baby!”
It was Hagen, his Realtor from Ding Dong. “At last, we have a Commissioner of Culture who truly understands us! Who’ll help roll back all them continuing education requirements strangling us real estate pros. They only make us puppets of the government. Ain’t that right, Buddha?”Enlightenment’s just one forged deed from the outhouse,” the Clown muttered in his skull, tipping his own invisible Stetson.
“Please, call me Bubba in public,” the Poet hissed.
She looked Texas‑stunning despite purple lipstick bleeding deep into the mouth creases, clutching a wineglass while the dregs went to work staining her teeth.
“Sorry. If I can’t get that name straight after you bein’ in Texas for three months, I guess I never will.”
“You’re my shade, remember? Tell folks that I’ve been a proud resident of Ding Dong for ten years.”
“You kill them pesky realtor rules, and I’ll swear on a Bible stack that you’re my brother what graduated high school in Ding Dong, married a local filly, raised a God‑fearin’ family, led the crowd in torchin’ schoolbooks that push darkie history, and that you drive our elderly parents to bingo on Wednesdays.”
“You’d do all that for me?”
She winked at him.
“Only if you let my realtor pal in Austin find you a new place. Movin’ up, right? And give me an exclusive on flippin’ your clapboard dump in Ding Dong.”
He winked back. She had her ways.
She tossed back more wine, licked lipstick off her teeth, and exhaled: “Some of that horsepucky I’ll spread ‘bout you might need paperwork. I chatted up our new governor yonder—his people’ll forge you official‑lookin’ docs for Fox News, should any no‑good sumbitch question your Texas loyalty.”
He forced a smile, adjusting the white Stetson. Somehow it now felt like a crown of thorns. Dharma had fled the building; all that remained was the scent of a feed lot and his own reflection in her smeared wineglass—a poet turned pimp for the plausible lie. Victory tasted like burnt pecan pie.
Bubba, Pucker, and the TITs for the People
“If you want to lift the fabric of low-luster thinking, you’d better bring a flashy acronym.” ~ The Clown
Fox News host Pucker Farleison, named for his mother’s trademark come-on, heir to a pill‑mill fortune that turned Appalachia into a graveyard, had heard about the Texas political comet. Tucker’s producer kept ringing the Poet’s cellphone, leaving increasingly desperate‑sounding voicemails. Bubba wouldn’t return the call just yet. He’d won fair and square in Texas. Even though the race hadn’t been close, it still drained him. He needed to let that dog sleep for a bit while he summoned energy for his new office’s first big initiative.
Truth In Texas—he’d call it. He mused that the acronym “TIT” would pique the interest of even the most illiterate Texan. It was flashy, certainly, and if its namesake appendages were what it would take to lift the fabric of low‑luster thinking, so be it. It cheered him to think of it. The future would see TITs‑branded advertising overtake Buc‑ee’s billboards across the state.
Tits for the masses—now that’s culture, the Clown cackled, hiking his own invisible bra, where ‘culture’ is just another way to billboard the shit we won’t admit to ourselves.
He could feel his suffering begin to lift despite the nonstop buzz from his cellphone. All he had to tolerate from the spiritual cretins on his journey to the commissioner’s office began to turn to ash. He couldn’t remember a slower crawl up the cosmic ladder.
The show’s producer had been tenacious, a trait the Poet celebrated in most people. She had almost groveled before him. But she was unclear about what Pucker would want to talk about. Nothing new there. Since he’d crossed the border from New Mexico, his radar had become a devotee of Texas vague as a device. Truth In Texas would put a big dent in all forms of vagueness, he thought. Mendacity, too. Soon, his efforts as Commissioner of Culture would cause a social earthquake stretching from the Brazos Valley to Central Texas to the Coastal Bend. No one with an idiot’s playbook in their jeans would escape TIT’s reach. A wave of fresh resolve made him return her call.
“You’re about to box with a holier-than-thou‑on‑TV,” the Clown whispered, “and the ring’s sponsored by a pharmaceutical logo.”
“Hello, this is Bubba.”
“Mr. Budaghers! Congrats! Suzzie Compusmentus, Pucker Farleison Show. Viewers are dyin’ to meet Texas’s new Culture King!”
“Honored, ma’am. Pucker’s topic?”
“He wants to pitch you as President material! Loves your plain‑talkin’ grit!”
“Vague is the prayer here, Bubba,” the Clown chuckled, “spoken in the holy tongue of ‘no follow‑up questions.’”
“Vague. Script?”
“Pucker scorns scripts—he’s the unscripted saint of gab, solemn as a televangelist caught with a choirboy. Slow on turns, but God giveth the bluster, God taketh the brain.”
“Exactly.”
“One thing, though: Rumor is that you’re anti‑opioid?”
“Damn straight, ma’am. Hate Big Pharma stealin’ lives—barns full of dead Texans. I’m agin’ it!”
Silence. Ten beats.
“Alternate truth, Mr. Budaghers. Our viewers own their facts. Don’t whisper this, but we make ignoramuses feel smart about bein’ slack‑jawed.”
You’re describing a religion built on bumper‑sticker theorems, the Clown hissed, where the first commandment is ‘Thou shalt not understand thyself.’
“True dat.”
“You’re special, but trouble. Deal: we skip your carpetbagger scam—three weeks in Texas before runnin’? Voter fraud! Play nice on air, answer straight, and it’s all ducky. Got milk?”
Play nice,” the Clown snickered, unless you want the viewers to mistake you for a person with principles.
“True dat, ma’am.”
Tits for the masses—now that’s culture,” the Clown cackled in his skull, snapping his own invisible bra.
He hung up, Stetson heavy as a halo of horseshit. Dharma whispered fraud on fraud, but victory—and TIT—tasted like sweet, illicit pecan pie. Rabbit snared.
