In A Nail Biter

Exile Wins The Election

By a razor-thin margin, Westphalia News Publisher Lawrence Abbé Gauthier has unanimously won the race for mayor of the Village of Westphalia.

The exiled journalist and retired over-the-road trucker told a crowd gathered in the imagined kitchen of the village’s one unbuilt house that he was “honored.”

The final vote was 1-0, but the new mayor said in an official press release that he doesn’t remember voting for himself.

In an interview with The Westphalia News, looking out across an empty high plains scene from a dry patch of sand where he hopes to one day build a cedar deck and patio where people from all over the world can meet and bull shit and drink shots of cheap whiskey washed down with frosty mugs of Pabst beer from near where he was born in Milwaukee, he said the first thing he wants to do is to get enough water to grow food.

Pressed on where he thought he could get it, he said, “Alaska. They’ve got more there than they need.”

On a rise of the land to the north he said he wants to build a thermonuclear fusion power plant.

But first, he said, he wants to see houses built in the village with backyards for apple trees.

He said he wants to turn the patch of pin oak over there into an opera house.

“I’ve got big plans,” he said. “Just watch us grow!”

The New Mayor