This has been a tale from an alternate universe. In that world, Hillary did not win and Donald did not win.

Disaffected liberals distanced themselves from Hillary after the Wiki-leaked emails told what her people did to Bernie. Disaffected Christians stuck to their guns over Trump’s immorality. It was like our universe, with a single difference. Leap’s non-candidacy had caught fire and provided an alternative which vast numbers accepted..

Donald Trump denounced him. He said that if Leap claimed to be sixteen years old, that made him too young to be President. Hillary kept her mouth shut; it was one thing she could do better than Trump

Things got out of hand. On November eighth, after a massive write-in campaign by people who surely didn’t really expect to succeed, Leap Alan Hed was voted in as the forty-fifth president of the United States.

Oh, well. Could he be any worse? The people of his alternate universe may never know.

Leap read the election results at a news stand and his heart all but stopped. Then he ran.

It is said that anyone who wants to be President is automatically disqualified by reason of insanity. Maybe; if so Leap was the sanest man in America, because he really didn’t want it. He considered trying for asylum in another country. He thought about Switzerland, but he gets a nosebleed in an elevator. He thought about Russia, but the last thing he needed was to be caught up in that tug-of-war. He considered Great Britain, but he had once lived in California and the thought of all that rain dissuaded him.

He decided to just disappear, and he did. I don’t know where he went; he didn’t tell me. Geraldo claimed to know, but that turned out to be a bluff. Somebody said they saw him heading north, following a compass, but everybody knows you can’t walk to the North Pole now that the ice caps have melted. He was probably looking for a Fortress of Solitude, and you can’t blame him.

All those people who voted for Leap are now wringing their hands and wondering what is going to happen next. Every one of them thought they were the only one who would write him in. They never thought he would win. They certainly never thought he would run to Canada like a modern day draft dodger. Which, essentially, is what he is — drafted to be President, and scared out of his wits.

Hillary has been very quiet about it all. She hopes to win in the House if they can find Leap and get him to resign. But it’s problematical. There are only fourteen Democrats and eleven Republicans in the new Congressional class. Aside from a few Libs and Greenies, the rest are all newly elected Independents, sent by a disgusted America. Bernie is smiling about that.

Donald claims he will still win, and when he does, he plans to invade Canada to bring back that traitor Leap. I think he just might.

We’ll have to leave their alternate universe now, worried sick and talking to each other about the kind of changes one man can make — even if he doesn’t want to. We have to get back to our own universe. We have problems of our own.

finis

It was late on November seventh. The sun had already set and with its passing, the chill of evening had set in hard. Leap Alan Hed — calling himself Joe and hoping that none of his homeless companions around the fire would recognize him — pulled his coat closer around his shoulders and stretched his hands out to the warmth.

It was a vain hope. The press had hounded him out of his home in Dannebrog, and hounded him half way across America and back again. His picture had been spread across the country in countless newspapers and television broadcasts.

One of his companions said, “Joe,” and his tone made it clear that he knew the real name behind the nom de flight, “tomorrow is the big day. What do you think will happen?”

Leap gave up the masquerade. He said, “I don’t know. They won’t vote for me. They aren’t that stupid, no matter how frustrated they have become. They will vote for Hillary and God knows what that will mean. Or they will vote for Donald, and everybody knows what that will mean.

“In a few days, or maybe a few weeks, I’ll be able to surface again and get back something like a life of my own. I just hope there’s a country for me to go back to.”

His companion shrugged and said, “I don’t have a life to go back to. I haven’t had anything like a life in years. I can’t vote for you, or anybody else. You have to have an address to register to vote and I haven’t had an address in in a long time. But I would vote for you.”

“Why, for God’s sake? Why?”

“Because you aren’t him and you aren’t her, and anybody else is better. Somebody has to do the job. At least you don’t want it, and that means something.”

Leap quoted, “If nominated, I won’t run. If elected, I won’t serve.”

“I don’t think so. I think you would come out of hiding and do your duty.”

Leap shook his head, and just said, “No.”

“Its going to be Donald or Hillary or you,” the other said.

Leap sighed. He said, “No good can come of this.” more tomorrow

Leap Alan Hed was going to Tulsa, to have it out with Billy Joe Barker. It had been eight weeks since he left his home in Dannebrog, running from the media circus that Barker had set in motion by calling on Americans to write in Leap’s name for President. Barker had started it all; Leap figured Barker owed it to him to at least try to stop it.

It was hard for Leap to travel. He could go by bus, slumped down, face covered by the brim of his hat, and take his chances on being recognized. That was how he got to Hays, Kansas. There he picked up a ride with a friend of a friend from Dannebrog who took him as far as northern Oklahoma. He found himself stranded in Ochelata on a Sunday morning.

By now Leap was hungry for normalcy, and on Sunday morning, that meant church. He couldn’t go in, of course. If you are from the city, or the north, you may not know this, but when you go into a small town southern church as a visitor, everyone in the congregation will come up and shake your hand, ask you your name, welcome you to their fellowship, and half of them will invite you for Sunday dinner. Leap would have loved that, but since his face had been in every newspaper in America . . .

The Ochelata Baptist Church was a long, low green roofed building, built around a courtyard. There was a park on the east, so that was the direction Leap used for his approach. He walked in, as bold as if he belonged there, across the park to the blind back of the sanctuary where he settled down hidden by a few trash cans and sat for two hours listening to the service taking place on the other side of the wall. From time to time, his eyes were awash with the moisture of homesickness.

He slept the day out in a wooded ravine, and walked southward on Highway 75 during the night. Morning found him somewhere, but he didn’t know where, hungry, cold, and discouraged. He was in front of a convenience store, on the outskirts of a small town, so he pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt and went in. He kept his eyes floorward as he picked out a couple of donuts and a cup of coffee, and didn’t look up at the checkout where the surveillance cameras are clustered. Outside again, he found a bench at the edge of the light.

He was on his second donut when a pickup rolled to a stop. A man of fifty got out and exchanged a few parting words with his driver before she u-turned and disappeared. Everything about their casual friendliness said man and wife. He was carrying a brown paper bag that said “lunch”. He crossed to Leap’s bench and sat down.

He glanced at Leap, looked away, then his head snapped back again. He studied Leap for about five seconds, then turned his head back toward the road and didn’t look again.

Discovered! This man knew exactly who Leap was, but he made no acknowledgment. With eyes averted, the man talked as casually as if he hadn’t guessed Leap’s identity. Leap had seen that reaction several times in the farm country and small towns where he had been wandering these last weeks. People in rural America have a respect for privacy and a willingness to mind their own business which he found admirable

Leap’s bench mate said was waiting for a bus that would take him west to Sperry where he had a job as a school custodian. And, yes, there was another bus that went south to Tulsa. After twenty years as a skilled lathe operator in a small factory, the man had lost his job after 2008. He had been out of work, except for odd jobs, for seven years, and now he was pushing a broom at age fifty, and glad to get the work.

He had gone from Democrat, to Republican, then further with the rise of the Tea Party. He had no faith in government, no faith in politicians, but he still had faith in free enterprise. Where he had worked all his life, the owner had been just down the hall, working all day behind a second hand desk in a room with plywood walls. They had gone to the same church, and every decision the owner had made had included concern for his employees.

The factory made small parts, that went onto larger parts, that then went onto automobiles. In 2008, the system collapsed and the factory folded. Leap’s temporary friend blamed free trade and Hillary and Obama. He did not blame large corporations and their CEOs. His vision of free enterprise was a hard working owner in a dusty plywood room, with forty hard working employees out on the floor making things. Multi-national corporations were outside his experience and outside his imagination.

The bus rolled up with whoosh of air brakes. As the man got up, he added, shaking his head, “Donald Trump says he’s going to fix all that.”

“Do you believe him?”

“No, not really.”

“Are you going to vote for him?”

“I might. Maybe not, though. It’s hard to vote for a man that full of hate.”

After a pause, he added, “I might just throw my vote away on this guy called Leap. That way I won’t be responsible for what happens later.” more Monday