Note: I'm a huge fan of Senator Bernie Sanders. I admire him; few legislators stand up as strongly for working and middle class Americans as he does. Let this entirely fictional story stand as a tribute to the man.
I'm sitting in downtown Burlington, about 4 pm or so on a Tuesday. I'd always heard it had a certain New England charm, with a mom and pop downtown housed in storefronts of three story buildings with slanted roofs. The stuff you see on commemorative plates. Now I'm here, and I'll confirm the myth, though a few frayed edges, one or two paint chips beyond rustic, can't hide themselves.
It's twilight and I'm by myself. Snow tubing gets old fast. I came up here with a group of my buddies, skiers all, but I've never been one for rolling dice down an icy slope. If I'm gonna die, it's gonna be naked, not in four layers of fleece. Tubing's more my style, but there's only so long a guy can slide down snow in a rubber boat.
I'm hungry, and I can't go to the lodge right now - there's a private party taking up the space. America. I'm told there's a great diner right in town, and I'm a sucker for greasy grub. I grab a bus and head down.
So I'm sitting in a booth, finishing off a pressed sandwich that's more flat cheesesteak grasping at relevance than panini, when I see the tuft of white hair popping over a held up newspaper toward the back. I've got good eyes, and I like to test them, so I try to read the headlines. The transit workers are striking.
Suddenly, the paper comes down, and I can't avert my stare quickly enough. An old man, crinkled as his periodical, beckons me over with a head nod. Then he gets up, slaps some crumpled bills down, and leaves through the back. I drop a ten on the table and, don't ask me why, follow him out.
The man, wrapped in a winter jacket screaming 1985, calls me over to a station wagon. I get closer, and it hits me: I'm standing face to face with US Senator Bernie Sanders.
"Sometimes I think this city is dying. You're the youngest, strongest guy I found, but don't get a big head, that's an asterisked observation," he says, sizing me up.
"Well, I'm Jewish," I tell him.
"I know. Your nose told me."
Somehow, his gruff bark is endearing, like a wise village elder. He's a man with big things on his mind. But what does he want with me?
The good Senator abides, launching into a proposal.
"I need a kid of some sturdiness to help me. Bit of a gruesome job but the revolution doesn't come without wounds. You look a little stringy but maybe you've got the fortitude."
"Okay." I hope he's not asking me to kill someone.
Bernie nods and turns to open his land boat's trunk. A gigantic pink bird is crumpled and stuffed inside. It's a relief.
"It's tough times these days for Americans, you know that. Unless you're pushing want or funny money down at the fat farm on Wall Street, it's a lean winter." The man's a socialist in parking lot conversation. Dedicated to the cause. I smile. You don't find too many people you can call comrade down in Manhattan.
"I know. See it every day. And these tax cuts for the rich, what a fold job by Democrats. Tone deaf. I thought your big filibuster speech was amazing."
"Forget the tax cuts. Let's talk trade deficit. Let's talk military spending. Let's talk kowtowing to the corporate pirates, shiny teeth and shinier shoes with coal for hearts, the bastards," he says, breathing fog and getting steamed. "But listen. I've got these winged beasts and my car trunk ain't a burial ground."
"You want me to bury these--"
"Ostriches. And for fuck's sake, no, not bury. You know the nutritional content of an ostrich?" He's a little bit worked up, like I asked the dumbest question in the world. "The flesh is like a miracle. Packed to the feathers with nutrients. Strong in iron, protein. You'd have ostrich on your Thanksgiving table if they weren't such crazy bastards."
"It looks very lean," I said, lying through my teeth. I had no idea how lean it was, but Bernie doesn't seem to be a man you want to contradict.
"Packs a punch, packs a punch. Now listen, I got these birds and I'm gonna carve 'em up and distribute to a neighborhood of my constituents. Tough times, tough times we've got, people freezing their asses off up here, except they don't know it in Washington, keeping warm in their townhouses, burning money for heat."
This was the Bernie Sanders I knew from the Senate floor, breathing fire into the cold Vermont sky.
"Wouldn't know the value of a pound of ostrich meat if it was in their foie gras. But listen, up here, sturdy people got a little withering in their bones, and ol Bernie here's gonna make a nice dinner, lighten the load for a few of 'em."
"That's really great of you," I said, meaning it.
"I'm not good with flattery, least I can do. They put me in this job, gotta pay it back. And I know an ostrich guy, so it's little skin off my ass. But I need some help. Gotta carry these winged beasts and hack 'em up. Core strength ain't what it used to be. Was wiry strong, but all good things fade."
"So you need me to help you carry and chop these ostriches for meat?"
"Bingo my boy, bingo. How about it? Ready to serve the people?"
I smile and nod. Never considered myself much of a butcher, but the cause is just. And besides, this frumpled US Senator wasn't taking no for an answer.
"Fantastic. A true citizen," Bernie shouts, slamming the trunk closed and motioning to the front of the car. We each get in, and he starts off to the slaughter house.
"So where you from?" he asks. "You don't have a New England face."
"Neither do you," I tell him with a very un-New England eyebrow raised.
"You don't think I've heard that every campaign? Anti-semitism ain't dead, boy, I'll tell you that. Brooklyn."
"I live in the city now. Came up here to ski."
"Much obliged for your patronage," he says, turning a corner. "Ah, New York. Those were the days, boy, I tell you. With respect to the Mets," he says, somehow knowing my baseball loyalty, "we didn't have the Mets back then. It was the Dodgers. Ebbets Field. A real atmosphere, that park. We'd sneak in, but they didn't care, not the money hungry merchants you got today in baseball."
Something about that speech stirs my memory.
"You sound like Dustin Hoffman in 'Kramer vs. Kramer,' that scene where he's talking with his kid about the old days," I tell him.
"Damn well should. I gave him that line. Hoffman and I go way back to our days as brimming in the old red underground in the city."
"Was that tough? Being a socialist in the '50s and '60s?"
"Yes and no. Yes if you wanted a job. No if you were looking to score some tail. Ladies love a revolutionary. Remember that."
Noted. "Didn't Chuck Schumer go to your high school?" I ask, straining to remember something or other I read in The Times.
"Yeah, and the bastard doesn't let me forget it when it comes time to vote. He thinks it's a bond. I hated people in my high school. Chuck, he's got a tether to Wall Street so thick he can dance across it. But he's got charm, I'll say that, and there ain't much of it on the good side of the aisle. I've known turtle corpses with more flair than Harry Reid."
Given our cargo, I don't think that's metaphor.
Suddenly, Bernie pulls over. We're further into a wooded area, a real rocky side road, and there's mostly just trees in sight. "This should be good," he says. I guess we're doing the dirty work in a natural environment.
The Senator pops the trunk, and we walk around to the back. "These guys weigh a ton, loosen up," Bernie says, stretching his back. It just occurs to me that I have no idea where he got the ostriches, let alone how they got into his trunk. Best not to ask, though.
He's right about the heft; the birds are massive. We both groan from effort as we hoist the first one up into the air, sliding it out of the trunk. We toss it off to the side, into the snow, and with similar strain, we toss the second, too. I suddenly understand the theory en vogue in the world of paleontology; I can definitely see the familial relation between this bird and some of the smaller winged dinosaurs.
The trunk cleared of ostrich, Bernie pulls out a hatchet and a giant tarp, setting the latter on the ground. Then he takes a knee, pulled out a knife from his jacket, and began skinning the beast.
"There's an art to this," Bernie says as he cut long slices into the back, "but I'm no artist. Besides, something beautiful in the barbarism of it all. You ever let your animal side out?"
I think hard about it. "I've been eating a lot of soy protein lately, actually."
"Something to be said for that. The savage evolves. Boxer keeps pushing for it in the Senate cafeteria, but Inhofe said he'd go nuclear. Already hates that we have curry every other Tuesday."
He motions for me to bend down, and hands me another knife. Man is loaded. I start mirroring his movement, peeling back the skin as I cut into the pink flesh. Steam flutters, carrying a musk scent from the moist muscle. I wonder how ostrich is prepared. I know they put it in burgers. Do they grill the breasts? Fry it? It's in jerky, I know that.
The Senator continues at a steady clip, tossing off the feathered skin into the snow.
"It's only going to get worse, though, right? With Inhofe and all them getting power, losing all those Democrats."
A guffaw. "Please. Nothing will change. It's rigged. You know that."
"Nothing? I'm not huge fan of our Congress, but, it's at least the lesser of two evils that lost?"
"Fine, the scraps they throw will be leaner. We'll get some crap about family values from people that rob those families. But it's all the same."
He's confirming my worst fears. I wonder what he thinks about his fallen comrades. "Will you miss any of 'em?"
"What, you think I'll be pining for Evan Bayh? Please. Guy was a snake. Looks like the husband next door working the grill, but he's selling the farm to the big money boys. And boy, not much of a conversation. Never met blander vanilla, and I don't mean to discredit ice cream, the pride of the Vermont, those Ben and Jerry boys."
"To be honest, I was never much a fan, either. All that centrism, unity talk. Moving the goal posts, it seemed to me. Like Clinton."
"You've got your wits about you, I'll say that, kid," he says, sinking the hatchet into the hind quarter of his ostrich. "Got some perception."
"Okay, so how about Feingold? That's gotta hurt, right?"
A sigh. "Hollywood? Yeah, ugh, I guess, a little bit. Made some good votes. But he was a stubborn bastard. Couldn't hold a meeting in his office. The man had a bust of himself commissioned, sat in the corner of the room. It's a daunting task, looking into the cold eyes of a shrine to a man with delusions of grandeur."
How to respond? So many things I didn't know. I keep sawing at the ostrich, peeling off meat from the bone, feeling the cold flesh in my palm. My jacket is covered with blood. We nod at each other, burning our muscles to tear the nutrients from the birds', feeling our cause just. Time passes, mostly with stories about Bernie's hound dog, Robert La Follette.
He changes topics after some time. "I wanted to be a butcher as a kid. Saw it noble, furnishing family homes with their night's sustenence. Then I see a rabbit in the park. Looks at me with that blue stare. Thought I saw it tear up. Son of a bitch bunny turned me soft. Couldn't do it. Tried veganism, but when you fly by night, you don't spit on a plate."
"I saw you eating pastrami," I laugh.
"We've all got our weak spots. Mine? Salted meat. Reminds me of grandma."
I don't know what brings it up, but I have the urge to ask. "Who's your hero?"
"You," he says, winking.
Bernie stands up, dusts himself off, flecks of snow and blood dripping in a steady pour from his person. The tarp is full, the bodies picked through.
"It's not a king's feast, but it's something," he says, rolling the tarp up. I bend over to help him. We sling it over my shoulder, and I dump it in the trunk. Bernie pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and takes a drag.
"You really earn your salt as a man when you tame a beast like that," he says, blowing smoke and breath into the night sky. "But don't think you've conquered. Arrogance is what's doing us in."
He offers me a smoke. I hesitate, then take the cigarette and drag its exhaust in. I can't help but cough - I have vices, but tobacco doesn't make the cut.
"There's hope for this generation yet," he says, flicking out the cigarette into the snow. We both get back into the car.
He drives off, back up the road we came through, taking a turn on a main street. We pull up to a shabby looking two story victorian, or so I think it is, but maybe it's a colonial. Either way, the sign says food shelter.
"You mind unloading it?" Bernie asks. "Just outside the door. They know what to do."
I get out of the car, open the trunk and stagger with the tarp to the door, hoisting it off my shoulder and onto the porch with a thud. Forty pounds of nutrient-packed ostrich meat, a token of sweat and empathy, a cut above the rest. The cold air bites but I don't mind.
I turn around. The car's tail lights are dim, the station wagon rumbling down the road, away from the building, leaving me in its wake. Bernie Sanders, grumbles away, the anonymous donor, blood stained and conscience clean.
The author can be reached by email: Jordan at HuffingtonPost dot com.