Purchasers Will Enter Raffle for a Hunting Trip with Veep
The Society of Secret Cheney Worshippers has commissioned the famed Italian shotgun maker Ivo Fabbri to manufacture a dozen shotguns with an elaborate engraving on each gun depicting the Vice President in a hunting scene.
The 20-gauge hunting guns cost $200,000 each and all have already been purchased by society members. When the guns are delivered sometime next fall, a lottery among the purchasers will determine which society member will have the privilege of giving his gun to the vice president and going on a hunting trip with him.
“It’s just something we felt we needed to do for the Vice President, to reassure him of his worth as a human being and recognize in a fitting way that he is the finest vice president in the republic’s history,” said a society member, who declined to be identified.
The society member, an elderly man with a mane of white hair and a prominent nose, revealed the shotgun tribute during a 3 a.m. meeting in the underground parking garage of a Cleveland hotel. He had summoned a reporter, saying that he “had something momentous to reveal about the Vice President.”
The member cautioned that the locale of the meeting did not necessarily mean the society was headquartered in Cleveland, though he acknowledged that the Ohio city is considered Ground Zero for devoted supporters of Vice President Cheney.
The society member, who suggested he be called “Bert”, said that the Fabbris, Ivo and Tullio, had retained a lineal decedent of Michelangelo to draw the hunting scene that the Fabbri engravers would etch into each gun.
Asked if the Michelangelo hunting scene would depict the Vice President hunting quail in south Texas, Bert would say only that the setting “would be appropriate to the gift.”
Bert bristled when asked if Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a Cheney hunting buddy, had purchased one of the shotguns. “We never discuss who we are, but I can assure you that we know who we are.”
The Society of Secret Cheney Worshipers is considered one of the vice president’s most clandestine support groups. They are believed to be people who cannot reveal their support of Cheney because of familial relationships, job considerations, the tenuous nature of their trust funds, or their tax status at the Internal Revenue Service.
When Bert was asked how he came to be a society member, he abruptly terminated the interview, saying, “Dig too deep and you will be very, very sorry.”
He exited the parking garage in an old blue Honda Civic. The license plate was artfully splattered with mud so that it could not be read as he accelerated up the parking garage ramp.