Blogger’s note: I’ve been kicking around a novel in my head that I’m going to start putting down on this blog, but a greater and more urgent project calls—“Apocalypse Dan.”  First there was journalism then “New Journalism” which used aspects of fiction.  

Then there was blogging, which some people, particularly a grumpy old guy in Aberdeen thinks is mostly fiction anyway.  But this is deliberately fictionalized facts that hopefully unveils a greater truth.  Think of it as “New Bloggerism.”

Enjoy my short semi-fictional work inspired in part by fellow lawyer Patrick Duffy entitled, “Apocalypse Dan.”

APOCALYPSE DAN

BY TODD D. EPP

WITH HELP FROM DAN SUTTON, MIKE BUTLER, PATRICK DUFFY, LARRY LONG, JIM MCMAHON, THE S.D. SENATE AND MANY OTHERS 

with apologies to Joseph Conrad and Francis Ford Coppola

Act I

My name is Janklow.  But this isn’t my tale.  My tale is for another day.

I’ve been asked to go up river to a sleepy little hamlet on the Missouri River.  Pierre, a backwater if ever there was one. 

It is the heart of cold Dakota winter.  God, I hate cold.

But my duty calls.

I’ve been told about a rogue legislator—he’s called Dan—that has set up some sort of bacchanal in the backwater.  Parties.  Interns.  Even some of his fellow legislators won’t sit with him.  He’s gone over the line and into the heart of darkness where no man—or at least a legislator should go—or at least into the liver of brown outs.

In some ways, he and I are brothers—same home town, a sleepy little place almost in Minnesota.  We’ve both served under the dome where he now operates.  We’ve both known the public’s scorn for what we’ve done.

But no matter.  We all have our burdens to bear.  And right now, he’s become my burden.  He is to be dispatched with alacrity.  Those are my orders.

Hell, orders?  I’d do this for free.  For the sport of it.  For the fun of it.  For the hell of it. 

My weapons are my wits—and the S.D. Codified Laws.  I’ve brought them with me.  Or should I more accurately say, my driver and I have brought them with me.  They are my ammunition and my comfort.  But one shot—one statute—is all I’ll probably need to dispatch Dan.

We drive across the inky darkness of the South Dakota prairie on Highway 34.  A backwater road to a backwater place.  They say they have pies as big as your head at the Kozy Kitchen in Pierre.  My cholesterol says I don’t want to find out. 

Pierre is dangerous enough place.  I don’t need to add to the danger.

After what seems like days on a lonely, vacant highway, with only my driver, Marc, and a case of Diet Mountain Dews as company, we finally zip past the Cattleman’s Club on the outskirts of Pierre.  The smell of roasting meat penetrates even my speeding automobile.  Ahhhhhhhh.  Meat.  Steak. 

But I have my mission.  I resist the temptation to have Marc turn in and to order a large sirloin.  Remember my mission—dispatch Dan. Or at least take away his seat.

The Cattleman’s Club.  Where the elite eat.  Where they serve you your salad in a small bowl, with the condiments and dressing in Tupperware containers on the side.

God, these people are uncivilized.  They’re capable of anything.

And I’m after the most wily of them—Dan.  Wonder what he likes on his salad?  Me, I kind of like to crunch up the club crackers and slobber on the thousand islands dressing.   A little A-1 and some ‘shrooms on my steak—rare, or course. 

But I digress.  After I’m done with Dan, I promise myself. 

Marc the driver and I pull into the garishly light parking lot of the state capitol complex on the hill in Pierre.  It is like every light in South Dakota is turned on in parking lot.  Who pays the power bill for this?

Day is night.  Though the dead of winter, the nearby pond should be frozen yet it isn’t.  Steam pours off of it.  But God, it smells like rotten eggs.  Geese honk crazily.  Their green excretions are everywhere.  Is there a freakin’ goose convention here.  TELL THE FUCKING GEESE TO SHUT UP!  And my God, there’s goose shit every where I look.

Doesn’t anyone clean this shit up!  I mean the goose poop, but it could apply to the cesspool known as state government as well, I mumble to myself. 

The horror.  The horror.  The horror! 

Damn, a flashback!?

My reverie is broken.  I feel a squish on my foot. 

Goose poop on my shoe.  Shit!  The tricky Dan has laid goose landmines in my path.  I should have remembered!

I tell Marc to give me a stick.  Instead, he just throws bread crusts to the geese.  “Marc, give me a fucking stick to get the goose shit off my shoe or I’m going have you sleep out here with the geese tonight!” 

Marc relents, gets me a stick, and I proceed to scrape green crap off my tasseled loafer.  The geese honk madly when he stops feeding them.  Must be Democrats.

After the geese episode, we continue to the massive Capitol building.  Its draw is powerful yet revolting all at the same time.   

I don’t know whether to take out my camera and take pictures or throw up.  Or both.  Or take pictures of my throw up. 

The Capitol stands before us as erect as a horny legislator’s manhood at a post-session intern party.  When I was a Marine—yet another tale not to be told—they gave us saltpeter.  Maybe that’s what Dan—and the rest of these yahoos who call themselves legislators—really need.  Saltpeter.  And a dose of anti-no-brains to reverse the deleterious effects that gray edifice apparently has on their intellects. 

Hard-ons and stupidity.  Not a good combination. But that’s Pierre. 

Why did I come back to this hell hole?  I was meant for better things. 

“God!,” I scream.  “Why didn’t you give me something tough, like bringing a coal slurry across the state or buying a railroad?  Why this?  Why me!”

God does not answer me.  He only talks to Roger Hunt and Leslee Unruh and Bob Ellis and some guy in Mitchell named Sibby.   

No matter.  I remember my mission.  Get Dan.  Get Dan good.   Take his seat.  He can’t have his seat anymore. 

I return to the hunt.  I recall the intel on Dan. There’s really not that much to know.

But it’s not him I’m really worried about.  I can take Dan.  Hell, Jack Billion could take Dan. 

It’s his lawyers.

They’ll say or do anything. 

Good thing I’ve got a couple of banana clips full of SDCLs and some S.D. Supreme Court decision hand grenades for good measure.  I’ll need them all against them.  And my wits.  Sharp like knives only deadlier.  

I’m ready to do this thing.

Marc and I enter the Capitol.  What we see surprises us—and scare us not a little. 

The horror.  The horror.  The horror.   

Stay tuned for Act II, when Janklow ventures further into the den of inequity known as The Capitol.