School Dazed - By Jimmy Petrol

The Palin object was still leaning against the bannister when I got to the top of the palatial staircase. Her mood was dark, her jaw set, but I could see that something held her back; some unseen hand pulled against her like a heavier gravity...where I could tell she would prefer to face me with hands on hips, blustering like a lipsticked pig, she only leaned weakly against the rail.

Ignoring the fact that I was responsible for her current mental unease, I came quite close to her, invading her personal space like an oiled weasel and smiled my best court smile. I oozed the feudal spirit like Jeeves to Wooster.

"My Queen, what ails you? Has the Schoolmaster kept you up to late confusing you with the heady issues of inter-national protocol? Let me help you to your lair." I dropped my small bags on the landing and stepped into her like a Tango dancer. She started to bubble and protest as I dipped in and secured her waist with my arm, but a certain nausea overcame her and she simply fell into me instead, her modest weight bringing an involuntary grunt from my otherwise sealed lips.

If she noticed my unintentional complaint at all, it was to simply let more of her considerable bulk fall on my ready frame. I fairly carried her through the nearest open doorway and into her suite, where she came to rest on the foot of her bed like a tanker on a corral reef. She was asleep in seconds. There were several empty champagne bottles scattered about the room. My guess was that the Palin object had been having an early celebration.

During the night the real Eunuch arrived. I set "him" up in the small room and moved myself down the hall and bunked up with the cooks. It was easy to pass of myself as the "head eunuch" to Twinkie, who was used to having "people" who did things for her already.

Interestingly, Twinkie was quiet during all of the tutoring sessions. I hovered around to fetch refreshments and whatnot as required by my charge, who saw me as a fixture so much as to never challenge me in any way. Her attention was all on the tutors, who made great show of providing her with sheaves of papers, maps, spreadsheets and even satellite pictures while explaining what they all meant in clipped, intelligent fashion. Twinkie just sat there, goggling. At lunchtime, she would plop the papers into a pile on a table in her room and plop herself into a pile on the bed. At first she tried to read a large, ornate Bible she had brought along but she soon gave that up. The information the tutors were trying to get into her was not really biblical. For the rest of the time I saw her, she just sat in a comfy chair and tried to look like she was taking it all in. Every day, housekeeping straightened up the paper pile Palin brought from class. Every night I put it in the trash. Every night the Secret Service went through the trash and read every word of it, checking for ciphers and codes.

The day before the televised debates the Secret Service went through the building with electronics, checking for all the spy stuff like transmitters and bombs. Coming up empty seemed to worry them, and they clucked around trying to see if there was something wrong with the equipment and checked again.

I figured we were about to get a visit from the Presidential candidate himself. Presumably, he would want to talk to his running mate for a couple minutes before they let her out again. I could tell, as could the tutors, that she had absorbed exactly zip. Her regal manner, however, was unabated and she had begun to complain privately that she didn't think the tutors were very good teachers. What McCain could do with her, I could not imagine but I presumed she would be relegated to the Bible-Belt speaking tour and kept off the airwaves whenever possible.

The cooks were all abuzz with their own preparations. Knowing my luck could only hold so long, I volunteered to go with the chef to the market. Once outside the grounds, it was an easy thing to slip away and get back to Guantanamo. Once again, being able to produce American identification and associating myself with the Palin Educational Group, I was passed through without comment. I hopped onto a rather large and costly American Yacht docked there, extending my credentials as having just left the service of the Vice Presidential candidate to a happy and faithful Republican voter. We sailed some days later, leaving Havana, its cigars and its secrets behind.