DON FAUN
Veni vidi visa
RANGE All points of entry on the American border: airports, docks, bus stations, highways, byways, and goat paths, secret tunnels, unpatrolled deserts, and small holes in fences known only to himself.
HABITS Don Faun provides counsel and inspiration to such members of the tired, poor, and huddled masses as persist in yearning to breathe free, even though the quota has been filled. He whispers nautical bearings in the ear of a Haitian tillerman and helps him steer his overloaded dinghy to a safe landing on the Florida strand. He assists Iranians in pronouncing those difficult English words, “Iyama stewdant.” He guides uncarded farmhands across the Rio Grande and into the employ of leather-skinned but tenderhearted lettuce ranch ramrods. In return for smuggling an immigrant into America (and getting him established in the small filthy headshop business), Don Faun insists only that his clients show him respect and remain faithful to the folkways of their homelands—that is, that they continue to eat with paddles, wear grotesque hats, or, in some cases, linger in ignorance of most fundamental rules of hygiene. Many newcomers to these shores further honor their patron, the Don, by becoming, once safely settled in the new country, fiercely demonstrative patriots of the land they left.
HISTORY For centuries, Don Faun capered merrily in the woods around the walls of Rome, assisting waves of Goths and Vandals in obtaining looting permits. He himself stowed away with the fleet of Corsican Folletti, when those earth spirits of old Italy were forced to flee their police-ridden homeland. He is a friendly, godfatherly type, who has helped generations of immigrants find their way to his adopted country. A creature of great power and resourcefulness, one of his greatest triumphs came when, rather than smuggle every native of Texas into the U.S.A., he simply arranged for the annexation of the territory. He acted similarly in the case of Alaska, personally lobbying William Seward to purchase that frozen wasteland and thereby earned the undying gratitude of the Eskimos, all of whom were eager for citizenship. Don Faun currently has his eye on Puerto Rico. SPOTTER’S
TIPS If you are reading this in the United States, you don’t need to find Don Faun. Across our borders, Don Faun helps fill up the Melting Pot.
