16

MR. DIXON EATS THE CHEESE

The demolition crew dug a pit and pushed the mobile home into it and the wreckage of the house and torched the barn and sheds, and then turned their attention to the Hoerschgen meadow, which would become part of the parking lot. A small city of trailers set up overnight in the Bakken pasture. An architect and a battalion of engineers arrived. Designers in linen suits held up the blueprints, surveyors surveyed, stakes were pounded in. A bulldozer went to work on the Hoerschgen meadow, the field of wildflowers, the prayer station established by the Purses, and as the dozer blade hit the stone wall, flames burst up and a gaping hole opened in the earth and the dozer plunged in as the driver leaped out with a shout. The excavating crew probed the hole and found nothing; the earth had swallowed the bulldozer whole. A crowd of suits discussed options and decided to try dynamite. A crate of explosives was lowered into the hole and there was a low rumbling sound and suddenly sticks of dynamite came flying out and the suits scattered in all directions. They tried flamethrowers, they dumped truckloads of boulders, they dumped boiling water, they poked a seismic device on a long arm into the hole and heard ominous rumbling and gurgling that got louder and then they ran for their lives as red-hot lava came bubbling and burgeoning up. The smell was indescribable. Acrid, fetid, pungent, sulfurous, noxious, rank, dank, and what’s more, it spread steadily to cover 50 acres.

Mr. Dixon’s team contacted the U.S. Geological Survey in the Department of the Interior in Washington, and a team of scientists was convened, meetings held, a preliminary study issued, a long list of likelihoods outlined, a work timetable extending into 2022. This was unacceptable and a Dixon man got connected by way of his brother-in-law to an assistant secretary who, like the brother-in-law, was an elder in the Assembly of Apostolic Unity, as was the secretary himself, the A.A.U. having been crucial early supporters of the Trump movement. Believers in the imminence of the Second Coming—“imminence” meaning less than a year—the A.A.U. had brought a stop to climate change research and other long-term studies for the simple reason that Jesus would soon be taking his true believers to heaven and unbelievers would simply have to fend for themselves. The secretary believed that the world is in its Final Dispensation, the Rapture but a month or two away, and so no further scientific research is necessary, only the acceptance of revelation, although he was willing to consider exceptions to the policy if there were tangible evidence of grace. The Dixon man said that geological research was of utmost importance so the motorway and memorial park could be built, and he asked what might constitute tangible evidence of grace and the assistant secretary rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, and two weeks later, Mr. Dixon held a $100,000-per-head Republican fundraiser at the Trump Mirage International Hotel at which very important people were present who could certainly help him solve his lava problem.

He rented the ballroom of the Trump Mirage and engaged a band to play Johnny Rogers’s patriotic numbers, and there was an elaborate buffet, including giant shrimp and squid in an unusual cheese sauce that the French chef thought was a great delicacy, Portuguese cheese, and so as not to seem provincial, people praised it lavishly, though it left them feeling slightly confused.

Then a bell dinged and Mr. Dixon came to the microphone and, as reported by the Fake News and the failing New York Times, he thanked everyone for coming and said, “You, like me, are 150 percent behind our president, and ever shall be as we were in the beginning. Draining the swamp, maintaining our borders, ending Obamacare, cutting taxes, bringing the genius of free enterprise to government, cutting federal aid to the urban shitholes, pulling out of international alliances that have been robbing us blind for years—I am totally in favor. If there are any liberals here, be careful who you stand in front of—there are armed men here and very bad things might happen.” He chuckled and felt faint nausea and took a glass of water and his voice got a little higher. “I say this as a patriotic American, not as a personal friend of our president. In fact, I’m not sure he has any. Let’s be honest here. The man has never told a joke, he can’t bear to be touched, and when was the last time you saw him smile like he meant it? Dogs and cats are averse to him, small children shrink back. The man grew up in a shell. For a business guy, he’s not good with numbers so he made up his own balance sheets. He was born rich so he attracted beautiful girls who played him like a fish on a line. The man couldn’t push a wheelbarrow in a straight line, but he had dough coming out of his pockets—if he dropped a Ben Franklin, he wouldn’t bother to pick it up, so he attracted hangers-on, skinheads and beach bums and biker boys. His fear of physical contact isn’t about germs, it’s because he got poked in the snoot once and had no idea what to do about it. The thought of rassling makes him dizzy, so now he’s got other men to do it for him. He tweets, that’s as rough as he gets. We never had a tweeter for president before. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. As I say, I am a major supporter all the way.

“What I don’t understand is the look, the style. That mod look, the cut of the suit, the long tie, is out of the ’70s. Vintage, but the wrong vineyard. Who is his tailor? Sears Roebuck? And the makeup. My God. A president who wears lip gloss and foundation and eyeliner? This man is commanding our troops? And the Nancy-pansy hairdo with the hairspray to keep the little swoops and swirls in place. Gay liberation is a done deal: you don’t have to declare yourself with your hair, you can just say, ‘I’m gay. Vote for me, sweetheart.’

“Anyway, I’m proud to be on his side. Ignore the makeup, the man is a genius as he himself has said.” And then Mr. Dixon stopped and whispered to his wife, “Where am I? Who are these people?”

Long story, short: there were a dozen men in the crowd who picked up their phones and called the White House and the next day Dixon Trucking came under very close inspection by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which found a couple loose lug nuts on a truck in Nashville and pulled all of Dixon’s thousand trucks off the roads for inspection, which turned up some loose seat cushions and flaking paint and muffler violations and untinted windshields and fines were levied, and there was no telling when the inspections would end, and Mr. Dixon, already millions in debt for the Johnny Rogers project, on the advice of his accountants, put the whole thing up for auction, and a Saudi company found itself owning a couple thousand acres of Minnesota and donated it to the Izaak Walton League for conservation, which was pleased to find 50 acres of wildflowers blooming in the meadow where the dozer had disappeared, including a number of never-before-identified species, one of which, a variety of lily, was named Arvonne. So many colors: you squinted and you could imagine a crowd of a thousand men in crazy sportcoats, the annual meeting of Mormon maritime insurance salesmen, the clothing racks of Montgomery Wards, the money managers of Helena, Montana, or the Maine Men’s Minuet Movement. That summer, Father Powers established a nine-hole pitch-and-putt on the Bakken farm, and sometimes a golfer hooked a shot into the wildflowers and no balls thus hit were ever recovered—it became the Amen Corner.