Dear Mom and Dad: Sorry about this tyrannosize Facebook message, courtesy of Uncle Oliver’s account and password (unlike some members of this family, he trusts me), but it seemed like the best way. Yes, it’s really me, your estranged firstborn (I’d be your prodigal son if I had the resources), the college dropout (sorry to break the news so abruptly), the professional loser, the perpetual loner, the mikado of incommunicado, living in a North Broad Street dump (though obviously that’s about to change), delivering pizzas because he slept through most of his classes at Villanova.
You can understand why I hesitated to get in touch these past ten years, but now that I’m famous and a bona fide national hero—have the media started pestering you for interviews yet?—I like to think we’ll stop disowning each other. Family dynamics aside, what I did last week will probably prove controversial, so I wanted to tell you my version of the Rosewood incident inmediatamente, and you can judge for yourselves just how proud of me you want to be.
It all began when I got an email from Brick Quillin of the Nihilistic Rifle Aficionados saying he wanted to talk to me about “that amazing six-minute video” I’d posted on YouTube. He was referring to “Dark Alley Allegory” (check it out), which I made eight years ago starring my former girlfriend Monica Cartwright as a snacky but naïve Buddhist who gets chased through wet nocturnal urban streets by her wannabe rapist, then bursts into a gun shop just before closing time, at which juncture the proprietor laterals her a Glock and she blows the wannabe’s you-know-what off (I heard Monica moved to the suburbs and married a proctologist, and I think I’ll look her up now that I’m a celebrity). The gist of Mr. Quillin’s communiqué was that he wanted to tête-à-tête me, so we arranged to have a beer at O’Leary’s on Cottman Avenue the following evening.
Somebody’s ringing the buzzer. I’ll start a new bubble in a minute.
Whoever it was, they disappeared. No sooner had Mr. Quillin and I ordered our Pabst Blue Ribbons than he revealed that he reports directly to Dwayne LaRue—yes, the Dwayne LaRue, the NRA president whose photograph sits next to Jesus on Aunt Sally’s big doily in your living room.
“Here’s the deal,” Brick began (he insisted I use his first name). “Every time one of these school shooting things occurs, there’s a great hue and cry throughout the land, and some Demoncrat or other—we call them Demoncrats—the fucker sets out to gut the Second Amendment. Last month Mr. LaRue decided we should ‘settle the question in one fell swoop’ and ‘solve the problem once and for all,’ mostly because he’s sick of the nasty mail he gets every time somebody’s third-grader goes down. God, that was a beautiful video you did, Joshua.”
“Glad you liked it.”
“Mr. LaRue believes we need what he calls ‘the definitive event.’ I was there when he closed his eyes and fired his antique Colt .45 at his map of the Delaware Valley, where he grew up, and the bullet hit the Philly suburb of Rosewood. ‘Once the definitive event has become part of our national dialogue on guns,’ he told me, ‘the country will find itself on a brand new calendar keyed to A.R. versus P.R.’”
“Ante-Rosewood versus Post-Rosewood?” I suggested.
“Bull’s-eye, trooper. If we can bring it off the definitive event, then whenever some socialist Congressman from Connecticut gets out his Constitution gelding kit, all we need do is spit in his eye and say, ‘Sorry, Clyde, you’re making an A.R. argument, and this is a P.R. world, so go home to your fucking “Kumbaya” garage band and leave politics to the adults.’”
“Mr. LaRue is obviously some kind of genius.”
“You’ll be part of a team—the Four Musketeers, we’re gonna call you, which is more appropriate in this case than when Mr. LaRue’s favorite novelist, Victor Hugo, used it, because Athos and company mostly wielded rapiers, whereas the definitive event will turn on actual firearms.”
“Alexandre Dumas,” I said.
“Each of you will become a living, breathing embodiment of what’s wrong with every damn hypothetical statute designed to prevent so-called gun tragedies. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”
“This republic would be in the crapper,” I said, nodding, “if the NRA wasn’t out there protecting our God-given freedoms from the God-given freedom takers,” after which Brick give me the biggest wink in history.
“Musketeer Number One, Duke Heston from Exton, he’ll be using a brace of handguns instead of his customary AK-47,” said Brick, “thus giving the lie to the notion that banning assault rifles would accomplish anything. Musketeer Two, Whitley Sprague from Warminster, has absolutely zero history of depression, drug abuse, or antisocial behavior—he’s never even gotten a speeding ticket—so that ipso facto ruins the argument for mental-health background checks. As for Musketeer Three, Julius Eliot from Ardmore, he imported his Beretta ARX 160 under the strictest conditions imaginable, with paperwork stretching from here to the moon, and so—phffft!—there goes the case for making it super difficult to put together a legal private arsenal.”
“You people have really thought this through.”
“Finally, there’s you, Joshua, Musketeer Number Four.” Brick passed me a one-page script. “You’ll be making the case for arming classroom teachers. Mr. LaRue wrote your lines himself. May I assume you have a rifle?”
“A Galil ACE and a FX-05 Xiuhcoatl.”
“Forget the Mexican. Use the Jewish.”
“Listen, Brick, I’m certainly willing to play my part, but I’m probably not the ideal casting choice.”
“Oh?”
“To tell you the truth, I’ve had schizophrenia issues.”
I was about to given him a full disclosure, including the two years I spent at Cedarbrook after burning down the Tuckermans’ house, but Brick pooh-poohed my concern, saying, “That doesn’t matter, son. You’re the point man for our Packin’ Pedagogues initiative, period, full stop, which means your psychiatric history is irrelevant. Do you follow my reasoning?”
“I think so.”
“Hell, Duke Heston, he also has a spotty record in the sanity department, but he’s our answer to the assault-rifle sophists, not the background-check fetishists, so his mental condition will prove massively beside the point once the whining starts. And just because Julius Eliot pops two different kinds of antipsychotics every day, that doesn’t mean he’s not the perfect symbol for the futility of regulations, given how the People’s Republic of Massachusetts made him jump through a thousand hoops before his Beretta came in the mail.”
“At least Whitley Sprague has all his marbles.”
“Now you’re catching on, Joshua. He’s our sanity icon. Normalcy on stilts. Okay, sure, he got his Remington GPC as a door prize at the Keswick Fire Department barbecue, no questions asked, and somebody’s bound to bring that up—but in the context of the definitive event, it wouldn’t matter if he got the thing out of a Cracker Jack box.”
“It all sounds very logical, Brick, but I’m afraid I could never articulate those arguments myself. Will there be a press conference afterward?”
“Leave the spin doctoring to Mr. LaRue and me. Your job is to show up at the event site with your Galil and your John Deere minicam cap and your script completely memorized.”
It’s the buzzer again. Next bubble coming soon.
Visitor ran away again. Anyway, the big day dawned under a bank of thunderheads, and by the time my Galil and I got to Rosewood Elementary it was raining ferociously. Mr. Quillin introduced me to Julius Eliot, whose hard-to-get Italian beauty was a wonder to behold, then Whitley Sprague, armed with his door prize, then Duke Heston, who was indeed packing two single-action, magazine-fed pistols instead of a rifle.
We all proceeded directly to our assigned classrooms. I was in charge of Ms. Peterson’s second-graders at the far end of the hall. After hiding the Galil under my jacket, I burst into the room.
“Here’s how the game is played,” I explained. “If somebody here can produce a firearm, thereby demonstrating that this school takes self-defense seriously, I’ll turn around and go home. So, boys and girls, imagine I were to visit the coat closet. Would I find a pocket pistol in any of your galoshes? Raise your hands. Nobody? Too bad.”
The storm reached a pitch of fury, rain battering the window-panes, thunder booming, lighting flashing. Naturally I thought maybe the meteorological commotion would screw up the recording of my conversation with the youngsters, but I needn’t have worried. The John Deere minicam has a great noise-reduction filter.
“I don’t suppose there’s a Dan Wesson in the gerbil litter?” I persisted. “No? I was afraid of that.” Then I turned to Ms. Peterson and asked, “Do you by any chance keep a Kel-Tec in your desk?”
“What?” she mumbled. I don’t think she was processing my question very well.
“You should look into the NRA’s Packin’ Pedagogues initiative,” I explained.
Now came the ratta-tat-tat of Julius, Whitley, and Duke getting the job done. Ms. Peterson’s kids started chattering excitedly. She herself turned white as a ghost.
“I’m disappointed in all of you,” I told the teacher and her class, then pulled out my Galil and opened fire.
Brick had warned us we’d probably get arrested, but of course President Orloff paid our bail (a cool ten million per musketeer, but that’s his idea of cab fare), so here I am back in my Broad Street dump, trying to set things right between you and me while waiting for Mr. Nesbit at Doubleday to call back (he mentioned a $100,000 advance).
If you’ve been following the story, you know that most of our lawmakers acquitted themselves beautifully. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the grieving families this night,” noted Senator Paul Armitage (R-Alabama). Thoughts and prayers: an inspiring sentiment, don’t you agree? “Speaking on behalf of the entire US Congress,” said Representative Portia Mitchell (R-West Virginia), “let me express our profound appreciation to everyone who lost a child, especially if you loved that tyke to itty-bitty pieces, because there comes a time when we must put the Constitution first, and you all rose patriotically to the occasion.”
I’m not sure I can corroborate President Orloff’s account of the parents’ behavior that morning. As far as I know, they didn’t really cheer Julius on. None of them actually helped Whitley reload. The President insists he heard a recording of a mother talking to Duke. Supposedly she said, “I won’t do any special pleading for my freckle-faced Brucie over there, and that’s his twin sister Megan with the pigtails, because we can’t let our American way of life fall into the wrong hands,” but I must admit I’m skeptical. All four of us musketeers were in police custody well before the moms and dads arrived on the scene, so I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any parental kibitzing.
When it comes to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, I’m pretty sure Mr. Orloff isn’t exaggerating. It’s a white enamel star surrounded by gold eagles, and you get one for making “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States.” Next week they’re flying Julius, Whitley, Duke, and me to Washington, all expenses paid, and Mr. Orloff will personally hang the medals around our necks.
Back in a minute. The damn buzzer again.
finishing this will be hard fuck / leaking all over keyboard fuck / monica cartwright got up her nerve this time / she had kept glock from dark alley allegory fuck fuck / said i did her 2nd grader that day / welcome to p.r. world mom and dad fuck fuck fuck / wish i could enjoy it with you / life not fair fuck fuck fuck fuck / all i can do is press return / love josh