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352 pages, Hardcover
First published July 30, 2024
Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word.
If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire,
Or — save your reverence — love, wherein thou stickest
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!
Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet
Hidy there, everybody. Good afternoon. Or evening. Sorry to be tardy, but we’ve had ourselves a dustup at the ranch. As you’ve heard by now, people have taken to calling me the Lamb, which is sure nicer than other names I’ve been called. Anyway we’ve had these pork choppers flying at us. I don’t mean to tease. I appreciate y’all tuning in, I do. Well so, okay, it’s the eighteenth day of February 1993, the year of our Lord, and I’m talking at you, through your radios, in your homes and cars and places of commerce, about the revelation of Jesus Christ. That’s the big to-do.
And still more noise — the walls absorbing what they could, the helicopters and yelling and sobbing and coughing, my breathing coming too fast and the awful high-pitched gurgling of our chickens as they were being shot and people pleading with God and barking orders and information: Get down ! Over here now! They’re still coming! I can see them and they’re still coming! Then a single shot and the sickening muffled thunk of its impact, a sledgehammer into a sandbag. Then an enormous gasp — like someone breaching the surface of water after too long below. The gasping continued and turned wet, and a man cried out, “No! No no no no!” Then, as if all the agents were ordered to aim at the same thing and hold down their triggers at the same time: The dinner bell tolled tolled tolled tolled until it dropped to the frozen earth and silenced.
What happened was tragic, no question, but there’s also no doubt about who bears responsibility: Cullen. We can debate tactics and strategies, tanks and tear gas, but if Cullen hadn’t abused those kids, we wouldn’t have been there.
But even the attorney general testified there was no evidence of child abuse.
The responsibility is Cullen’s. He did this. The tanks went in because he wouldn’t come out.
Didn’t they run out of ammo? Isn’t that what being outgunned means?
I think it means we had some help.
God, you’re saying.
What’s the alternative? Some Bible thumpers defeated Uncle Sam? That so much planning and training and equipment was no match for little old us? Sounds fishy, but what do I know? Either way, it sounds like something I can shake hands with.
We aren’t built to matter. That’s the surprise here. That’s the big finale. Tell the story a million times, a million different ways, but the ones who were punished and the ones who were pardoned ain’t switching places.
Did we win or lose? Are we damned or saved? We occupy a liminal, leftover world, and we live off scraps. We build our religion, our very existences, with salvaged and stolen parts, waiting for the next fire. To survive is to know what no one else does: Nothing is forever. Not an alibi or shelter, not bloodline or prayer, not nation or sacrifice or any glad-hearted dream of God.