The night before the comet hit, Richard Milhous Nixon awoke restless and well before dawn. He slipped carefully out of bed—Pat needed her rest, ever since the second stroke—and walked in slipper-feet down to the den. He thought he might see what the news was saying—Pat didn’t like it when he watched the news; it always made him angry; ever since the whole mess—but there was nothing but test-patterns and an old episode of Hee-Haw that he’d already seen.

He decided to go back to bed, but when he got into the room—he looked down at Pat, remembering his red-haired Irish princess, remembering how once upon a time he had rescued her from a dark and cursed tower. She was so old now, so reduced. He felt a pain in his chest, like there was some creature trapped inside his ribs, clawing to get out. He looked down at his own hand, at his papery skin stretched across his old veins. Somehow, the thought of sleep disgusted him, so he went out to the porch.

The night was quiet and the comet was brighter than a full moon. Richard Nixon walked out to the driveway and sat down in the Oldsmobile. He felt like going for a drive to no place in particular, so he started the engine and backed slowly out of the drive, past the dark suburban streets. No one else was out—he’d expected riots or prayers or something, but the streets were empty. Even when he got to the turnpike, the road was empty. There wasn’t even anyone at the toll booth.

What the hell was happening to this country? It used to be that men showed up for work, rain or shine. He didn’t leave any cash at the booth.

The Oldsmobile’s headlights were making his night-blindness worse, so he killed them. The comet was bright enough to see the road, anyway. He turned on the radio, hoping that there was some decent music, but all he got was a pre-recorded emergency broadcast telling him to “remain calm.” At least it was Reagan, not that dipshit Carter. He turned it off anyway.

Just off the turnpike, there was a diner with its lights on, so he turned off. He wasn’t really hungry, but the empty highway was getting on his nerves. It would be good to see someone else, even if it was just a waitress.

The diner was an old-fashioned joint: just a cook behind a counter and a couple of booths. The cook was cleaning the griddle when he came in. Richard Nixon could tell that he was a good man, a good American. Not afraid of work. A Reagan voter, no doubt about it. Most of the customers were birds, though. He and the cook were the only humans in the place.

Nixon ordered a coffee and a number one breakfast special with white toast, ham, and eggs over-easy. He took a seat in a brown vinyl corner booth and sipped politely at his coffee while a murder of crows watched him from the back of the next booth.

The cook brought over his breakfast. Nixon took it and began to gently poke the eggs.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Richard Nixon?”

Nixon stared up at the cook, who had an expression of earnest credulity. What an idiot! “All the time.”

“Sorry, man,” said the cook. Nixon shrugged, and broke eye contact. Damn hippies.

Richard Nixon set ham on toast, and then the egg on top of that, and was about to bite into his sandwich when there was a loud “caw caw” behind him. He turned around, only to feel the fluttering of wings and the crow who had been eyeing him. Without even turning around, he shot out his other hand and grabbed the second crow around the throat.

“Oh ho!” he shouted. “The old tail-feather trick? Really? Do none of you little shits know who the fuck I am? I may be old, but I’m not out yet. There isn’t a bird alive who can get the better of Tricky Dick Nixon!”

“Mercy!” squawked the crow. “Mercy!”

“Pah!” Nixon tossed it to the formica floor. He lifted up his sandwich to take a bite.

“But if you really are Tricky Dick, sir, then you would be just the one we’re looking for.”

Nixon scowled at them. “Shoo!” he said, and waved at them, but they only backed off to just outside his reach. Crows!

“But sir, our beloved princess has been—”

“SHOO!” Nixon said again, and threw his spoon at one who was talking. It dodged out of the way, but settled right back after the spoon spun across the floor.

“It is just that, even with our every trick and every trap, no crow is tricky or trappy enough to rescue her. But, you, sir, Tricky Dick himself. You turned the South; you went to China. Surely, you—”

“I am too old for this fairy tale shit,” muttered Nixon. He listlessly stabbed his hash-browns before leaving his breakfast unfinished and making his way back out to the parking lot. He sat on the hood of the Oldsmobile and looked up at the moon, pale and half-ghostly in the comet’s light. What if the men were still up there? He knew they weren’t, but still—even more than the news, looking at the moon made him so angry he felt like crying. He looked over at the comet, as bright as twilight in the sky. If those men were still up there, somehow—well, lucky them.

The sun still wasn’t up. Pat would still be asleep. He didn’t feel like heading home regardless. “All right,” he said, without facing the crow that had followed him. “Tell me about your damn princess.”

While the crow prattled on about missing kings and regencies and curses, Nixon opened the door of the Oldsmobile and found half a pack of Pat’s Lucky Strikes in the glove compartment. He tapped one out of the pack and lit it. He had always hated it when she smoked, it had killed him, even more than it was killing her. But that didn’t seem to matter anymore. He smoked and looked at the moon and when he was finished with his cigarette he flicked it out the window.

“All right,” he said to the crow. “Let’s go.”

• • • •

The crow took them deeper and deeper into the pine barrens, until at last, near dawn, they came to the end of the road. Richard Nixon parked the Oldsmobile off to the side of the road and stepped out. The comet hung vast in the sky now, lighting the whole forest blue-white beneath it. “Can you walk?” asked the crow. Nixon scoffed.

It was easy to make his way through the forest. He had never been much of a hiker, but the path just seemed to unfold effortlessly before him, even as the crow flew ahead from tree to tree. By the time the sun had fully risen, they had arrived at an enormous pine grove, with every branch covered in chattering crows. And right in the middle of the clearing was a elegant woman, wearing a dress of black feathers, her white-streaked hair gathered up beneath a diamond tiara. The Princess of the Crows.

The sun was up. Pat would be awake now, and wondering where he was. He suddenly wanted to get home, to see her, to get to hold her one more time before they died. But he stood still on the spot.

“Mr. President,” said the Princess of the Crows. “Thank you for coming.”

“I don’t see what you need my help for,” said Nixon. “You look fine. I’m leaving.”

“It is not for me, Mr. President! I am only a regent. It is for my grandfather, the King of All Crows, these many years entrapped. If his curse cannot be lifted,” the diamonds on her tiara twinkled as she looked up towards the comet, “then by tomorrow he shall be lost to us forever.”

“By tomorrow.” Nixon laughed. “By tomorrow we’ll all be dead.”

The Princess of the Crows regarded him. He felt, suddenly, like a ragged old man in the middle of a forest in New Jersey.

The Princess of the Crows lit her cigarette and blew a puff of smoke. “We have endured a comet before, once. In ancient times. We took to the sky, as men too must, if they will live.”

“Those NASA boys say it doesn’t matter,” said Nixon. “They say this one is a lot bigger.”

The Princess of the Crows bowed her head. “Nonetheless.”

“And there’s no home for men up there, in the sky,” said Richard Nixon, tears forming at the edge of his voice. “Of all men, I should know that. When those men—” he still couldn’t bring himself to name them—“on the moon—” he still couldn’t bring himself to say they died—“After Apollo. It was me. I was the one who read that damn eulogy.”

The Princess of the Crows came up and stood face to face with Nixon. She reached up and cradled the back of his head, bringing him closer until their noses touched. “If men will die, then men will die,” she whispered. “But you—”

Nixon jumped back in alarm. A chorus of crows began to cry out in squawkish laughter. “I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t be here.”

“Yes,” said the Princess of the Crows, although he had not asked the question. “You know it in your heart to be true. You are not like them, all those foolish men and their proud and foolish squabbles. You are Dick Nixon, the greatest trickster of your age. The blood you have shed is only bested by the scandals of your name! Who else could you be but my grandfather, our beloved King of all Crows, cavorting yourself into the world of men? Who else could you be but a crow, disguised so well that you have your self forgotten?”

“No!” screamed Richard Nixon, his hands shaking. “I need to go! I need to find Pat! I need to tell her—” but the crows were already on him, scrapping and pulling at his loosely hanging skin, until all that remained was his bones, until all that remained was his organs, until all that remained was his withered little soul, an old and piebald crow that they all bowed before at once.

“Grandfather,” said the Princess of the Crows, regent no more. She had also shed her human disguise. Now once more a piebald crow, she approached her grandfather, bowed, and set upon his head an onyx crown.

“I remember,” croaked the King of All Crows, then looked up towards the comet, now the size of half the sky.

“Let us fly together,” said the Princess of the Crows, and touched her wing to his.

With a flutter of wings, the crows took to the sky, the King and his granddaughter together, and all the crows of all the world behind them, up into the sky, up past the comet, up past the moon, up into the stars, so far from the earth and so distant that their black feathers were faded into the void of space and their white feathers glimmered clean and indistinguishable amidst the night and all its stars.