King Arnold by Doug Hawley

King Arnold by Doug Hawley

Our local Harbortown newspaper ran a strange item last week “I have two bowls stuck together. I’ve tried to pry them apart for a week. Next Tuesday at noon, anyone who wants to separate them without breaking them, will be anointed King of Harbortown. $5 entry fee. See you at noon 5280 Simpson Street.

I was intrigued. My college tuition was paid by money won arm wrestling, and I have Popeye arms. At the appointed time I joined the queue as the fifth entry. The first had sharpened his fingernails and tried to squeeze them between the bowls. No luck. The second was burlesque performer who brought along a photographer for publicity shots. Number three was a humongous college football player who had no technique but brute force. The last person before me gave up in five seconds. My performance was controversial, but successful. I started indirectly by knocking the side of one of the bowls with the palm of my hand. I could feel the bowl vibrating which seemed to loosen it up. I was dubbed King Arnold and given a Burger King Crown with sequins and ribbons.

Amazing things followed that quickly. My triumph made the local press and then jumped to social media and went viral. The national press interviewed me and showed off my knowledge of government and history. The election was coming up and the Unity party had no frontrunner candidate. The party had been shut out for three consecutive contests. The Progress party candidate was discovered to have worked through college as a prostitute. Merle Jones, a Unity representative offered to make me the Unity candidate. I won in a landslide.

For a while, I had a honeymoon period with Congress. We had a majority in both houses and I was able to get through some popular programs. No more military grade rifles for the public, body autonomy for women, and better healthcare. To balance the budget, various cuts had to be made. Tax loopholes were eliminated and many grants were cut. The military did not get everything it wanted, but then we avoided getting into costly battles which were not our business. A lot of bases were eliminated.

Everything was great – for a while. Merle was still advising me. He implied that all would go wrong if I didn’t follow his instruction to join some secret societies that practiced black magic. My ex-wife Mograna, a want-to-be witch who had tried to burn my bed with me in it before we divorced took to television talk shows to claim I was the one who did all of the evil things she did, including her – I don’t even want to talk about it, but it involved animals. While much of the public was turning against me, I started getting threats from our son Morbred who worshipped Mograna. The relationship may have gone beyond mother – son. The FBI tried to find him, but they never did.

To take a break I flew back to my home state Oregon and visited Short Sand Beach which was a childhood vacation spot. It was the offseason and no one was there. I gloried in the memories of a happy time in my life. While looking out to sea, I heard running footsteps behind me. I turned to see Morbred rushing to stab me with a knife. For some reason known only to him, he put me in a small boat and pushed it out to sea after I was stabbed.

Good luck followed horrible luck. Morbred was a poor killer. His stabbings hit my collar bone and sternum, causing copious bloodshed, but little damage. My next good fortune was being picked up by a Mexican fishing boat. They couldn’t go to an American port because they were breaking a few laws. We kept going until we got to the small isolated town of Villamosa on the Mexican coast. Here I got even luckier – I’m a Catholic whose mother was mostly native American and my father was Portuguese and I spoke Spanish. Not going to lie, my ethnicity both helped and hurt in the election, but I looked a lot like the locals. It took me a while to pick up on the local dialect, but in a few weeks I fit right in. I was an extra hand on the fishing boats, which was appreciated. Everyone agreed not to rat me out.

I don’t want to try your patience. I married a local widow Gloria, so I got a readymade family with three grown children. I was able to correspond with a trusted friend Bill Toop in Washington D.C. who also kept my secret. This story will be kept up to date and released when I die. Bill has told me the following as it has occurred: Morbred claimed he killed me, and his ravings got him sent to the funny farm, Lars Ericson wrote “The Truth About Arnold” which is to truth as a reality show is to reality, Mograna now hosts a horror show on television, appropriately named “Witching Hour”, and my first love Glinda, who left me for my best friend at the time Lester, left him for starving poet.

I’m the healthiest and happiest I’ve ever been.

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Copyright Doug Hawley 2024