In times of turmoil some people turn to magic, others to math. As death closes in, the line between life and what comes after begins to break down, like a black hole threatening to swallow everything vibrant, everything bright. On the Greyhound route the ghost of Alexander Hamilton begins screaming, hands over his eyes, always at 3:13 a.m. The dead are rising, it seems, clamoring to be recognized.
In the 1980s professional wrestling coined a term—kayfabe—which was defined this way: that thing we all know is fake we agree to call real. The fights, the rivalries. The chair hits and cage matches. It was never sport. It was always artifice. But people wanted to believe, and the more the audience signed on, the more exaggerated the story lines became, until millions of Americans had trained themselves to accept fantasy as fact.
It’s all kayfabe now.
To describe the details of the current American conflict would be impossible. It is both urban and rural. Gun-wielding, country-club wives blasting their way out of the Panera parking lot, determined to protect their sons and daughters from demons that exist only in their minds. Demons with the faces of their neighbors. And yet aren’t our neighbors also the product of generations of humanity? Mothers and fathers meeting and consummating back through the ages, as Generation Z becomes Y becomes X becomes Baby Boomers and on and on, the ships sailing in reverse back to England and Spain, Europe and Africa, as the Renaissance becomes the Middle Ages, nomads recross the Siberian land bridge, and Homo sapiens retrace their steps to the African savanna, and on and on to the birthplace of the human race.
One hundred billion people have lived and died on this planet since the dawn of human history, five hundred and eighty-five million of them Americans, living or dead. One-fifth of us are Muslims. Eighteen point two percent are Chinese. Twelve million are stateless. More than one hundred million live in countries where they hold no citizenship. These numbers can be added or subtracted, divided or multiplied to create the statistics of our existence, numbers that will soon be consumed by other numbers: annual rainfall totals, desertification sprawl, sea-level rise, heat indexes, storm surges, hurricanes per year, tornadoes per month, as we realize that the story of Planet Earth is not the story of the human animal and its victories and defeats, but a story told in geological time, a story without heroes or villains, without progress. A story, simply, of what happened.
On August 26, the FBI raided the homes and offices of sixteen other members of government: congressmen, attorneys general, mayors. Two days later, the deputy director of the FBI himself was questioned. Pundits called it the reverse Deep State, or the Deeper State, or the Counter State. One could be forgiven for wondering if there was anyone working in government today who was actually governing, if half of each department were so-called liberal operatives and the other half were self-proclaimed conservative operatives, all engaged in a hidden battle for control.
People were beginning to forget where their grievances began, only that they hated everything their opponent stood for, like that old Dr. Seuss story about the Sneetches, those with stars on their bellies and those without. As if a star could make you worthy, as if a star could make you whole.
By August 27, the daily suicide rate had risen to 81,622.
DeWitt
Four weeks after Avon walks out of prison, Girlie’s sister calls and says she needs to be rescued. That’s the word she uses, rescued, like a soldier radioing in from behind enemy lines. Avon has been using his now unstructured days to take care of things around the house, repairing the generator and refilling the propane. At night, after the whiskey has kicked in, he reads internet printouts from the library. This is how he stays connected to the digital world—anonymously and on paper.
His buddy Arnaud taught him the Google Doc trick: free thinkers from around the country sharing ideas by contributing to the draft of an endless document on Google. Invite only, hidden from prying government eyes. Avon hasn’t been on since before his recent prison stretch, and to be clear, he never contributes, only lurks. It’s important to stay informed, but you have to find sources of information you trust. The internet is filled with propaganda merchants. Facebook, forget it. It’s amateur hour for desperate housewives and backyard BBQ conspiracy rubes.
It is the day before the Senate bombing and the so-called boogaloo. After the sun goes down, Avon sits at his desk, going through a stack of newsletters. He lets Girlie handle the bills. Seeing those form envelopes with their slim plastic windows enrages him. If it were up to Avon, they’d live in a cabin without electricity, drinking well water. But Girlie, though sympathetic to the sovereign movement, is not a full convert. She has too much to lose, being only a green card citizen and subject to censure and deportation. So, she runs her business primarily aboveboard, paying token taxes, depositing funds in an FDIC-insured bank account. When he’s not in the joint, he’ll often find her seated at the kitchen table, calculator out, running the numbers. In Avon’s mind numbers are a problem. If there’s one thing he can’t abide, it’s math—the way all those so-called experts always roll out their data to prove a point, to say they know things to a certainty, where right-minded Americans, like Avon, are only talking their opinion. Statistics. This was the downfall of human civilization.