One Thing is Certain: Don Rumsfeld Doesn’t Call Just to Chat
The telephone rings and the caller I.D. announces: UNKNOWN NAME UNKNOWN NUMBER.
Only one Unknown Unknown ever calls me: Don Rumsfeld. Ringing in from Taos, no doubt. I pick up the call.
“Donnie, Baby! How ya doin? Long time, no hear.”
“How did you know it was me?”
Yes, it’s Rumsfeld and not a telemarketer, or a grasping relative wanting money. Marooned on Neptune, I would recognize that growl. “The only Unknown Unknown that ever pops up on my caller I.D. is you, Don.”
“Worst thing I ever said. Six years in that asylum and Unknown Unknown is what I will be remembered for?”
“With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, isn’t it likely you will be most remembered for, ‘We don’t torture’?”
“But we didn’t! To the best of my knowledge, at that point in time, we did not torture. There were lots of things people hid from me.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s not go there again. Our friendship is stronger than the torture question.”
“I would hope so, Bill. The torture thingie is way overblown, in my humble opinion.”
“So how’s life in Taos?”
“Very quiet, too quiet.”
“How so?”
“I went into Wal-Mart yesterday and not a soul recognized me, not even the ladies manning the ‘Stop the War Criminals’ card table out front.”
“Wal-Mart permits anti-war card tables at their front door?”
“This is Taos, Bill.”
“You must really look like a local if nobody spotted Don Rumsfeld.”
“Joyce dresses me now whenever I go out alone so I’ll look like a local.”
“Dirty blue jeans?”
“Yeah, she gets $19.95 Wal-Mart jeans and then Jose, our gardener, rubs horse manure into them.”
“I can see the headline: ‘Don Rumsfeld, Taos chic fashionista’.”
“Better than that. You should’ve seen the baseball cap Joyce stuck on my head as I went out the door.”
“What did it say?”
“‘Out of Iraq Now’.”
“You’re lucky the card table ladies didn’t jump up and try to kiss you.”
“One did. I dodged past her.”
“And went into Wal-Mart to buy what?”
“A box of carmel popcorn for lunch. But while I was in there I had sort of an epiphany.”
“Don Rumsfeld has Wal-Mart epiphany.”
“I realized I miss being recognized, being famous.”
Ah yes! I had been wondering why Don called.
“So, you want me to… what?”
“Bill, I was wondering if you could write something about me, something bordering on the nasty and mean-spirited.”
“Sure! That’s easy. What if I wrote again linking you to the Taos hum?”
“That was precisely what I was thinking. But let’s go one better. Why don’t you say something like, ‘Rumsfeld reveals secret DOD research program caused Taos hum’?”
“Consider it done, Donnie.”
“Don’t call me Donnie.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Secretary.”
And then he hung up on me. The man never says goodbye. And just as I was going to ask him if Jose the gardener was legal or illegal.