American ISIS

By Kevin Feingold

Gulp! In this political satire, Col. Alvin Dorfburger (U.S. Army, Retired) joins his Danish friend Olle on the latter's dairy farm on bucolic Hospitality Island off the Chesapeake Bay. Busy writing his epic galactic movie screenplay— in Spanglish— Alvin gets his first taste of redneck romance from the enticing Carrie Ann Braddock. Until the day the U.S. Government, in a backlash to anti-Muslim rhetoric, plunks 280 Syrian refugees on the island. Surprise! They ain't all Syrians. When the newbies declare a caliphate, Arabic-speaking Alvin finds himself caught in the middle of the Islamic State of America! As-salamu-alaykum.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Feingold
• Release date: Jan 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310511523

Book preview

Who says you can't have fun in Hell? Alvin Dorfburger says! Set on bucolic Hospitality Island just off the Chesapeake Bay, we follow the adventures of retired Col. Alvin Dorfburger and his friend Olle living the rural life on the latter's dairy farm. Busy writing his epic galactic movie screenplay— in Spanglish— Alvin gets his first taste of redneck sex from the enticing Carrie Ann Braddock. Until the day the U.S. Government, in a gesture of goodwill, accepts 160,000 Syrian refugees— some of whom aren't even Syrian! With 280 of them now parked on Hospitality Island, it doesn't take long for Islamic radicals to take over the island, enslaving white folks and Syrian refugees alike. Insha'Allah, God willing, they proclaim a caliphate, the Islamic State of America!

The Shahada declares, There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. Okay, fine. Now what?!

Speaking Arabic, Alvin finds himself sucked into a friendship with island strongman the Sunni Sheik Ali Baba from Tunisia. True Believer squads, torture and beheadings turn this island paradise into a cold and holy Hell. Meanwhile, the federal government considers alternatives, holds hearings and finally decides to... to... to...

Is there no end to the chicanery?

This book may not have all the answers. It may have only some of the answers. I'm sorry, what was the question?

After years of study (some even related to Islam), inveterate blogger Kevin Feingold speaks truth to power in this epic tale (yada, yada, yada) of paradise lost and found. Nice work if you can get it!

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American ISIS

a satire

by Kevin Feingold

Copyright 2015 Mycket skit

Smashwords Edition

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Smashwords License Statement

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Table of Contents

Novel

Footnotes

Glossary of Military Slang

About the Author

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< 1 >

Retired from the military, I entertained high hopes that my film noir situation comedy about indoor plumbing would sell. After all, movie ticket sales are booming! Thanks to Star Wars, U.S. box office receipts in 2015 totaled over $11 billion, a new record. I wanna git me some of that! Hey, woulda, coulda, shoulda. Enclosing S.A.S.E.'s, I received refusals from agents and production companies both great and small. Truth be told, I never even made it to first base. Still envisioning a life as a screenwriter with a house in Topanga Canyon, I've decided to rewrite my epic as a sci-fi fantasy. In Spanish. El espiritu aventurero de hombre estupendo. After all, even though Clark Kent's alter ego is Superman, it is as a mild-mannered newspaper reporter that Clark hopes to leave his mark on world history. Woodward, Bernstein and Kent. Your basic human, the Superman side of his personality is outer space stuff.

Meanwhile, my mom is complaining that while I write stretch comedy (If you think that's comedy, that's a stretch!), the world is falling apart. A bridge star, I cannot take her anywhere in Maryland without someone accosting us to ask about her game.

Having parked her in an assisted living facility, I feel I can finally fulfill my promise to Olle Larsen and join him on his dairy farm. (Good place to write.) I rent out our family house in Oxburg, Maryland to a clan of Mormons. Since they do not drink or smoke, I fervently hope they will only do minimal damage to the house.

Olle Larsen and I are schoolmates from my junior year abroad in Uppsala, Sweden. Since we're both Buddhists, it doesn't surprise either of us that his karma has brought him to an island on the Honga River in Maryland, just off the Chesapeake Bay. Our paths are hopelessly intertwined: We share vivid memories of herding yaks together in the army of Genghis Khan. In a later incarnation, we served together as common foot soldiers in the Czarist Army in World War One. So my position in this life as a Colonel in the U.S. Army can be considered another rung up the transcendental ladder. I still have a long way to go to reach nirvana, but I am progressing forward, not sliding backwards. This is good. Progress is good.

Since the island named Hospitality has a dwindling population, Olle has been able to buy a farmstead dirt cheap. Until the white man came, the island belonged to the Nanticoke Indians and had the Algonquin name Ningwàkìwin-minitig, meaning burial island. The English settlers heard that and rechristened it Cemetery Island. Eventually, the watermen moved in. Oyster fishing in the Chesapeake Bay became the dominant industry. A superstitious lot— you would be, too, if your livelihood was subject to the weather gods— they renamed the island, in a hopeful frame of mind, Hospitality. The nearest village on the mainland is named Crapo.

The island is only a stone's throw from shore, half a mile. It's such a clear day, I can see every detail. The ferryboat moored at the dock is named The Johnson. I start to laugh. Somethin' funny? a grizzled, bearded man in a smock asks me. Turns out he's the captain.

Do you know what a Johnson is? I snicker.

It's our family, he replies evenly. He must have heard my joke a thousand times. We're the Johnsons. You probably know us as the Johnson Towing Company. Family owned and operated out of Dorchester County. In addition to towing, we've been running a ferryboat to and from Hospitality Island for near on 80 years. Used to be a steamer. We use diesel now.

Thoroughly chastised, I hand him my money and quietly creep on board. I'm the last. There are three cars and a handful of pedestrians. I watch the boatswain unhook and stow the ropes. With a belch and a roar, we're underway, leaving a plume of black smoke hanging over the water. The only jarring moment comes when a tinny rendition of Gerry & the Pacemakers singing Ferry Cross the Mersey croaks from the PA system.

Why don't they build a bridge? I ask the young boatswain absentmindedly. Distracted by the view, I'm not really paying attention, just thinking out loud.

Y'all tryin' t' put us outta business? he asks, spitting a viscous brown dollop of tobacco juice over the rail.

Ouch! I hadn't thought of it that way. I shut up and watch the herons soaring through the air on magnificent wings. When we land ten minutes later, I let everyone else disembark ahead of me. I breathe in the air, a mixture of milkweed and marsh gas, my first experience of the island.

We only makes the one stop, the bear of a captain announces, coming out to chase me ashore. Ain't no other anchorage.

Yeah, okay, I'm going ashore.

I can take you back.

Pardon?

I thought you might have second thoughts. I'll take you back t' the mainland. You already paid. We don't charge you extra.

No, really, I'm okay! I insist, shouldering my knapsack and hastening onto terra firma. The cap'n and the boatswain both laugh. They busy themselves loading fresh produce onto their boat.

It's a verdant island, twenty shades of green. The powerful smell of rotting foliage follows me everywhere. Still, it's a beautiful place, succulent enough to take a bite out of. The bird life is overwhelming. Booby eggs for breakfast.

There's only one path up the hill. The first homestead I pass is labeled The Herons. Very rustic. Some child's blue toy car stands on the retaining wall. A dude in a Cardinal's T-shirt is out front, throwing a baseball to a young kid. Hey, stranger! he calls.

Hi! I shout, giving him a friendly wave. The sun bathes everything in a golden yellow light. Birds are tweeting. Life is good.

Where ya headed?

Oh, you know... I shrug and trudge another few feet.

No, I don't know, he replies loudly, coming down the lawn to head me off. That's when I notice the gun in a holster at his hip.

You the sheriff? I grin.

You might say that. Randy Wade, he exclaims, extending a hand over the low wall. We shake. Don't wanna seem nosy, but we islanders like to keep tabs on the trogs.

Trogs?

Troglodytes. Mainlanders.

Oh, yeah, right. Slow and dumb, I chuckle in appreciation. Jokes on me. I'm a guest of Olle Larsen.

The Dane?

Yes, the Dane.

I was wonderin' when he was gonna have guests. Didn't quite catch your name...?

Dorfburger. Alvin Dorfburger.

You Danish?

Swedish-American.

Well, he drawls, I guess, like the rest of the country, demographics require us to allow for a certain percentage of Scandinavians. He makes it sound like the plague.

Pleased to meet you, sheriff, I mumble, distracted by the poor mutt hobbling toward us.

That's our famous three-legged dog, Randy relates, a little sorrowfully. Wasn't always that way. Ran into a territorial nutria. I was standing right on the back porch when it happened. One minute Skip is on the grass at my feet, next he's tearing down the yard toward the creek, barking his fool head off. Once I saw what that varmint did to him, why, I got my varmint pistol and shot that nutria dead. Randy illustrates this story by pulling his Glock 21 from his holster. He kind of waves it around, his finger on the trigger, Wild West cowboy style.

Uh, Randy, I got it! Park the hardware, I quietly plead.

< 2 >

Although college-educated, Olle Larsen grew up on a dairy farm in Denmark. Unlike his siblings— who couldn't wait to leave the farm behind— Olle missed it. He did, however, find Denmark to be too small and provincial. If he couldn't be a Texas cattle rancher like something out of the movie Giant, Olle felt that a dairy farm in The New World would be preferable to half the acreage in the Old. Settled in, Olle has let his enthusiasm spill over onto me. It never hurts to know how to run a farm, you know, he lectures me. If nothing else, a farmer never goes hungry! He's named it Oceania, definitely a dairy farm. I haven't even strolled up the path before cows come waddling toward me, wagging their tails, licking snot out of their nostrils with enormous pink tongues and mooing contentedly. Am I learning how to run a place like this? I wonder.

"Mooo," replies a cow.

We're not children. Olle never proposes, You'll get a farm next to mine and we'll be neighbors. That would be too bromancy. He does envision trading livestock, however, from my putative farm in Wisconsin. Semen samples, if nothing else. When I climb three steps onto the veranda, there's a note taped to the screen door. Shoveling silage in the barn. O.

My buddy O. Not Obama. Not— God forbid— Oprah. (Just look at what happened to Tom Cruise when he befriended The Dragon Lady. She ate him for breakfast.) I find Olle wearing a floppy bush hat, denim overalls and brown rubber boots. Wielding a pitchfork, he shovels hay so pungent, my eyes are watering. Leaning on his implement, he laughs boisterously and exclaims, How was your trip?

The fairy boat was quaint.

He studies me intently, not sure if he misunderstood. A proclivity for puns is a thing we share. He chuckles.

Why don't they build a bridge? I ask.

Who would pay for it? We have a Farmers and Residents Association, but when we apply for state financing... He grimaces. Well, you should know, Alvin. It's Maryland. You grew up here.

Yeah, the urban centers suck up all the money and rural Maryland is left a backwater.

I'm glad to see you! I exclaim, and what starts as a handshake becomes a bear hug. This is great, Olle! You'll keep us all in clover until retirement time, after which we'll go to seed.

We'll have fun! he assures me. Oh, boy!

That afternoon, we go to visit Farmer Brown. We are all transplants, only farmer Aloysius Brown is a true son of the island. His grandfather was a famous politician: The Right Honorable Theodor Brown. As a young rapscallion, Theodor got his feet into the U.S. Senate in 1920 and self-righteously demanded, Who promoted Sergeant York?!

In Aloysius' dining room, Olle does the introductions and then retires to the backyard to inspect a new drainage ditch. It's a pleasure to meet Aloysius. He can trace his lineage back to the original settlers of The New World. Gnarled as a tree, with skin like bark, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, the man wields a powerful grip. When I shake his hand, I feel my bones cracking. Hath thou a thirst? he asks