DRAFT May 2026 DRAFT

 

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Draft

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher!

Created AI-free

by Leonard Earl Johnson 

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

Color contrast best on black screen

 www.LEJ.world ✍

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Amtrak's northern wall
courtesy of Amtrak

    

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LEJ's 

Louisiana

a monthly e-column at 

www.LEJ.world

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Your Comments and corrections are welcome
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Yours Truly in a Swamp

May 2026

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Trains Make Good Walls 

~  Dream #2  ~

BY  Leonard Earl Johnson

© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

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In my seat, dozing the last hour before reaching  Lafayette, Hub City of Acadia.  

I dreamed photographers raised their cameras.  Art directors composed men shouldering oversized silver and

gold 

Gandy Dancers

sledge hammers.

The men were

 'Gandy Dancers' ~ those gangs of mostly black men who, with muscle alone, wiggled and danced heavy iron rails into an alignment that joined the nation by a new iron road ~ an umbilical cord linking West Coast gold to East Coast greed. 

"Why not!" The Donald tweeted.

 "Why not a wall of railroads stretching from West Coast to the Eastern Seaboard.  

"Multiple rail lines strung with multiple trains running thick as Vietnam bamboo lies?"  

Recalling the Vietnam not-war, the Donald offered to show his bone spurs to the assembled reporters.  They turned away. 

"See, folks, fake news!" He twitted. 

"If Elizabeth Warren showed her tomahawk, press rats would be on it like editors on cheese.

"But my war wounds?  Nothing!" 

The Wall of Trains could follow Canada's boarder, and the route of America's first coast-to-coaster ~ the first train in the World to carry a personified name, the Sunset Limited, Amtrak's train #1, with a cross-country route dating back to the Old Spanish Trail.  

The Donald sweated and twittered, "Move over, infiltrators.  

"Pay up and say, 

'Here we come no more.' "

courtesy of Amtrak

He twittered, as daughter 

Ivanka brushed His hair and stroked His wallet bloated with Russian Rubbles.  

Son-in-law Jared Kushner unspooled 

communication lines to the Kremlin. 

He was shielded behind the back of genetically pure, highly self-esteemed, and supremely self-proclaimed uber-patriotic Klan of The Donald-Go-Round.

"A supremely legal back channel," explained Stephen Miller, head gargoyle to The Donald.

Behind them a righteous chorus of Evangelical Preachers sang,

 Heaven's Just a Sin Away 🕪

The Family Klan rode in a manner befitting American nostalgia.  They moved effortlessly along gold plated escalators and moving-sidewalks running from the White House up The Mall to the big domed Capitol on the Hill.

"Streets paved with gold," The Donald-go-round called out.

Steven Miller responded, "Immigrants done been told."

Out in front of them, bent-backed and whisking away obstacles in their path were Republican regulars led by grim-faced Moscow Mitch McConnell of Tennessee.

Toe-and-heel men followed. Then, spokes-critter lawyers for powerful U. S. Chambers of yes-men clearing a way growing darker with each step of their boot and sweep of their broom. 

"For smaller decentralized government," Moscow Mitch laughed uproariously, slapping the United 

states Attorney General across her departing back.  Attorney General Pam Bondi shook her long hair and wrinkled jowls while hooting puffs of laughter like an old steam engine.  

The two chortled, "After us who cares what floods."

They swept, giggled and farted off down the gold-plated road.

Kushner's 'backchannel cable' spooled on, then off again. Fully out of any one's oversight.

Roseate Spoonbill

A mustachioed face once briefly claiming National Security portfolio to the President of the United States, opened an electric notebook.  A Google map glowed into focus.  It showed Roseate Spoonbill migration routes.

"With no fear of blow back," he said.  His mustache twitched as he talked tickling the President's earlobe sending a not unpleasant tingle all the way down to his spur.

"We can lace migratory feeding sites with chemical-castration drugs that will threaten a perfect final solution to their endangered numbers!"

"What this will do," he told the President, leaning very close to his ear, "is convince the last doubters that America means business.  

"Mad business, of course, but business that will bend them to Your will!"

"A plausible crazy threat wins the game!" The Donald twittered, "Ask my New York bankers."  

Ivanka brushed and spoke not.  The Son-in-law spooled and spoke not.  The escalator escalated speaking tons.  

We awoke with the real Conductor calling, 

"Lafayette next stop."

 

 

We stretched our arms overhead and stepped off the train ~ and to the side ~ away from the foot traffic pouring out behind us.  

Lafayette is the train's only smoke-stop between New Orleans and Houston.  

Sunset Limited, Amtrak #1 
New Orleans to Los Angeles 
Smoke Stop, Lafayette Louisiana

We continued a conversation 

about walls we had started earlier in the Cafe Car, with a young couple bound for Tucson, Arizona.  

"Take Hadrian's, China's, Berlin's.  Walls have not long kept anything out.  Not ideas, not people, not things!"

The young man from Tucson nodded, "Just The Donald's spur-studded political football." 

"Sometimes with headline interference," his Wife added, "the shell hiding the pea."  She flicked cigarette ashes to the grass, and smiled.  In its moment, that falling cigarette ash burned brightly ~ though it be in descent ~ then went dark landing atop a purple clover. 

The engineer onboard blew his whistle calling smokers back to their smoke-free train to the Golden West.  

"Manifest Destiny all over again," she said, from inside her toxic plume of Camel Cigarette smoke.

A growing mushroom cloud of toxic fumes embraced all the World.  Our new friends ran back to the train shouting, "Red-herrings distract." 

Automobiles waiting at the crossing gates revved their engines to show their toxic commitment.  

The train snaked off down the tracks.  Its last car rocked and wobbled back at us.  The automobiles drove away ~ each trailing a lingering chemical bouquet. Five elderly white women standing on the platform scowled in our direction.  They each wore a big red church-lady hat, red sweaters, red dresses, and red gloves.  They each lifted red-hemmed skirts showing red soled shoes, and choo-choo-ed into the depot, with its comfortingly stable toilets.

Train toilets and politics are not stable, one of the red women said. "And there are good people on both ends of a lynch mob's rope."

                     

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 Copyright, 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections are welcome:

Comments 🖋😷

You may post after publication on the 

First of the month

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 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp

is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world

and historically at

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans,

publication of the

Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson

 of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

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© 2026 Leonard Earl Johnson, 

All Rights Reserved 

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Lagniappe du jour

Gandy Dancers / You Tube

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Heaven's Just A Sin Away
by The Kindalls / You Tube

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This Land is Your Land 

written by Woody Guthrie
Sung by Pete Seeger and the multitudes,
including Seeger's Grandson / also Bruce Springsteen, Barack Obama, and more

ON THE MALL AT THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL

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 LEJ Down by the Station Early in the Morning

Facebook Video

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© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, 

All Rights Reserved.

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Go here For  T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.org icebox magnets

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          www.LEJ.org

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First of the month

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Go here for T-shirts, Koozies, Icebox Magnets and such falderal ...

If  you wish to read any month's story go to the archives at www.LEJ.world (stories are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years.) 

Hope you do, I love talking with you,

Leonard Earl Johnson,

Columnist to the elderly and early weary. 

© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved.

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Lagniappe du Jour

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Next Month's Column

⭐Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series⭐

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Old Man on The River, New Orleans

© Leonard Earl Johnson 

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T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ icebox magnets and such falderal ...

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 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp

is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world,

Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
and historically at

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

publication of the

Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world

 

  

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Your Comments and corrections are welcome
click here

You may post after publication on the 

First of the month

🗣😷

© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved