OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

A Tale of Justice and Justifications

Written by Alice Jacob

with a little help from
Lewis Carroll and the Tribunal Révolutionnaire!

SOUNDTRACK: “I Fought the Law”
by The Clash - on REPEAT!

How We Got Here

We’ve all read so many of these by now that I don’t even know where to start. I suppose the beginning, though, is as good a place as any…

I can still recall how shocked I was when the first one happened. Shocked and disgusted, just like everyone else. Never in my life had I seen a photo like that before. I remember seeing it on my phone first thing in the morning. Still curled up under the covers like a little girl. Barely even awake. And then there it was…that dividing line severing the past so definitively from the future. It was everywhere. That photograph.

The head of Jimmy Bozo impaled on a pike.

It didn’t feel real—like there’s no way this was actually happening. Jimmy Bozo, the second wealthiest person on the whole planet. And he didn’t have a body anymore! That’s a heck of a thing to wake up to.

It’s also a heck of a thing to have to try to explain to a bunch of 13-year-olds. Not even two weeks into the school year yet. I didn’t know the State Board of Education’s official line at that point, or what I was even allowed to say about it. But I could tell there was no way we were getting back into the impeccable heroics of Christopher Columbus until I said something.

“Ms. Jacob!” “Ms. Jacob!” “Ms. Jacob!”

“Ms. Jacob, why do you think they did that to Jimmy Bozo?”

“Did ya see the picture, Ms. Jacob?”

“Ms. Jacob, why would someone cut off Jimmy Bozo’s head?”

“Did ya see it, Ms. Jacob, did ya see it?”

“Ms. Jacob, why was Jimmy Bozo at Burning Man?”

Now, I didn’t know what to say to these kids. I certainly didn’t know why anyone would do that to Jimmy Bozo, the founder and CEO of Amazin!—the largest e-commerce platform in the world and arguably one of the most valuable corporations in the long and harrowing history of valuable corporations.

With a room full of wide-eyed students staring at me, though, I knew I had to say something.

“Sometimes scary things happen in the world,” I told them, “and there’s not always a good reason why.”

Of course, as we all know, by the end of the week we had more answers than we knew what to do with. And quite a few more questions, too.

Why had Jimmy Bozo gone to Burning Man? It was assumed for the same reason most billionaires went to Burning Man—the drugs…the orgies…the bragging rights…the chance to slum it up with a bunch of radical freaks and free-spirited deviants.

What Mr. Bozo evidently failed to account for, though, was just how radical and deviant some of those free-spirited freaks turned out to be.

The Pirate Pamphlet, as it came to be known, provided a precise explanation for the gruesome act.

It turned out it was no coincidence this had all happened on Labor Day weekend.

It was right there on the cover. That crude sketch of a head on a pike beneath the bold declaration: WORKERS OF THE WORLD, REVENGE! What really drove it home, though, was the list of transgressions it claimed had been perpetrated on the workers of Amazin! by the one and only Mr. Jimmy Bozo.

None of the claims were too controversial, or really even disputed. We’d all been hearing about these standard practices for years. The low wages and long hours. The union busting. The horrible working conditions and egregious jobsite safety concerns.

It was the type of corporate exploitation that should have had us folks up in arms long ago.

But life is hard, and it’s busy and messy and so often so tiring. And there are only so many times you can read about delivery drivers having to pee in bottles or warehouse workers passing out from heat exhaustion before the words start losing all meaning in that stressed-out, beaten-down head of yours, especially when the prices Amazin! was offering were so low and the delivery times so quick.

The Pirate Pamphlet got its nickname from the skull and crossbones printed on the back, above the Latin phrase: MEMENTO MORI.

Some saw it as a reminder. Others a warning. And still others a threat.

Remember that you will die.

For the people at Burning Man, though, during the first few days that those pamphlets were getting passed around they apparently saw it as a joke. It was right in line with the anticapitalistic spirit of the event. And when they eventually found Jimmy Bozo’s head on that pike out there in the middle of the desert that’s what they thought it was too—a joke. It took a while for those drugged-up folks to realize what they were laughing at wasn’t some gory art-installation…it was a crime scene.

But who had done it?

How had they done it?

And what in God’s name did this mean for the world going forward?

These were the types of questions we were left with—and are still, in a sense, struggling with to this day.

The next one was just as big of a shock. To be sure, in no way was I expecting the untimely decapitation of Jimmy Bozo. But even after it happened, I certainly never expected to see that type of thing happen again.

Unfortunately, I was one of the 16 million Americans who happened to be watching the game that fateful October night. The Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Colorado Broncos at Mile High Stadium. Week 6—their first meeting of the year…set to play out under the bright lights on Monday Night Football!

My father, you see, is a diehard Chiefs fan. The old man hasn’t missed a game since he swore off church back when I was in high school. And recently watching Chiefs’ games together had become a way for my family to try to reclaim a sense of normalcy in what for us had already been a pretty screwed up world for quite some time.

This particular Monday night was no different. I was sitting on the couch, sandwiched between my young niece and nephew, my father hunched forward in what had become his usual chair, my mother sitting on the arm of the chair, my brother-in-law off preparing something in the kitchen—all of us doing our best to ignore my big sister’s conspicuous absence.

I watched as the Chiefs intercepted the ball on their own 15 yard line with 5:17 left in the game, down by 3. I was on the edge of my seat as they made that drive down the field, 78 yards in under three minutes. I was holding my breath on third and goal as that pass went up, and you better believe I didn’t breathe again until the ball was pulled in for a completion at the back of the end zone.

“Touchdown!”

I was looking right at the TV, focused intently on one replay angle after another, everyone else in the room going wild all around me, only 1:23 left in the game, up by 3, when they cut to the owner’s box for a customary shot of the bigwigs celebrating.

I heard one of the announcers laughing: “Oh, looks like someone’s ready for Halloween early this year.” Then the other announcer distinctly not laughing: “Wait, what…” Then straight to commercial.

It was only a few seconds. But in that brief time I was able to see what the announcer was referring to—a couple of ghoulish figures sitting side by side in the seats at the front of that luxury box, their severed heads propped up on the ledge in front of them. It looked like any number of the decorated porches that would be going up throughout the country in the coming weeks.

Of course, as we all learned the next day, those two decapitated figures had very recently been a pair of living, breathing human beings.

The white-haired one on the left was Robert Wanton, the eldest scion of the wealthiest family in the world, himself the seventh wealthiest person in the country and one of the new co-owners of the Colorado Broncos. The gray-haired one on the right was Wanton’s son-in-law, Craig Peener, fellow Bronco’s co-owner and the chairman of Want-Mart—the biggest retailer in the world and the largest private-sector employer in the country. It was a position Peener had recently taken over from his father-in-law, who himself had taken over from his own father, Sam Wanton, some two decades before. Now, ol’ Sammy had founded Want-Mart back in the ’60s and was known for his cutthroat business practices and the personal motto: You can’t have low prices without low wages. That ingenious idea had continued on as a company ethos into the present day, to the point where Want-Mart consistently ranked as one of the top employers of full-time workers qualifying for food stamps and Medicaid.

All of this, of course, was detailed in the pamphlet the spectators at Mile High Stadium that night found tucked under their windshield wipers as they funneled into the parking lot after the game—what the media took to calling The Queen’s Screed from the drawing of the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland printed on its cover. The drawing had been augmented to include a Knave wearing the standard Want-Mart employee vest, his pockets overflowing with tarts, with the Queen pointing at him and delivering her famous line in a dialogue bubble above: “OFF WITH HIS HEAD!”

Inside the pamphlet was a list of familiar criticisms leveled at Want-Mart, which in addition to poverty wages and “welfare theft” also included such classics as tax avoidance, wage theft, anti-union activities, predatory pricing, and foreign sweatshops.

Again, none of it was new information. We’d been reading about this stuff for decades. But—just like with Amazin!—it sure is hard to get folks to care about this sort of malfeasance when the corporations in question are offering rock-bottom prices, especially when you’re already pinching pennies just to make ends meet.

I knew a thing or two about this myself. It turns out you’re not going to make a killing teaching U.S. history to a bunch of eighth graders.

“Ms. Jacob!” “Ms. Jacob!” “Ms. Jacob!”

“Do you think it was the same people as did it to Jimmy Bozo, Ms. Jacob?”

“Did ya see it on TV, Ms. Jacob, did ya see it?”

“Ms. Jacob, do you think they’re gonna do it again?”

“I don’t know,” I said, knowing officially I wasn’t allowed to comment on the situation. “I don’t know any more about this than you kids do.”

When the third one happened, I can’t say I was too surprised. I was still horrified but by that point a lot of us kind of saw it coming. It was the day after Halloween. We Lutherans call it All Saints’ Day, but it seems our neighbors to the south were a little more dead-on with their Dia de los Muertos.

At first nothing seemed too out of the ordinary. Old people die all the time. And no amount of money hoarded up can prevent the inevitable. I found out about it during lunch, sitting in the teachers’ lounge, picking at a cold meatball sub. One article after another popping up as I scrolled on my phone … WARNER BUCKET DIES AT 94 … WARNER BUCKET FOUND DEAD IN HIS WICHITA HOME … WARNER KICKS THE BUCKET.

None of the articles provided much information about the old guy’s death. They were basically eulogies recounting his major accomplishments.

How he was known as the Wizard of Wichita for his market acumen that had led him to become one of the most successful investors to ever walk the face of the earth. How for over half a century he’d been Chairman, CEO, and largest shareholder of Jerkshire Fuckaway—a multinational conglomerate holding company consistently ranking as one of the most valuable companies in the world. How through the years they’d not only acquired countless businesses, in almost every field imaginable, but also bought up billions of dollars’ worth of shares of some of the most well-known corporations in the world.

It wasn’t until the next day that we even learned that Warner Bucket, the fifth wealthiest person in the world, had been found with his head lopped off.

And it was still another week before we found out about the pamphlet—what most of us simply referred to as The French One seeing as it was chock-full of references to the French Revolution and was signed by a group calling themselves the Sans-culottes. Their criticism of Bucket and his famous “hands off” approach to ownership wasn’t something I’d ever given much thought to before. But with it spelled out in front of me, I have to admit it was a hard position to argue with. It said it right there on the front of the pamphlet surrounding an image of a bloodied guillotine: It’s immoral to make money off a business that’s engaged in immoral business practices. Unlike a head from its body…you CANNOT separate the two.

What really struck me, though, was the pamphlet’s extensive list of businesses Bucket had apparently been making money off of and all the shady moves those businesses had been making: Moody’s Investment Services (giving toxic securities top ratings in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis), Hells Fargo (selling those toxic securities, issuing falsified mortgages, and opening millions of fraudulent accounts for unsuspecting clients), Teva Drugs (price-fixing life-saving medications and lying about the addictiveness of their opioids), Clayton Mobile Homes (using every dirty trick in the book to scam working-class folks out of their meager share of the American Dream), and on and on.

But it was what was written on the back of the pamphlet that made you realize why the authorities were so tight-lipped this time around and why you got the feeling they were trying to sweep this one under the rug. It was a famous phrase pulled straight from the French Revolution: Plaçons la Terreur à l'ordre du jour.

But even more than that, it was the English translation of that phrase found on the walls of Bucket’s home office in two-foot-tall letters written in the Wizard of Wichita’s own blood: LET’S MAKE TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY!

“Ms. Jacob!” “Ms. Jacob!” “Ms. Jacob!”

“All I can say,” I said, trying to recall the mandatory script the State Board had sent out, “is that it’s…it’s a…it’s a heinous crime, and I’m sure the perpetrators will be brought to justice.”

It was The French One that really set it off. It was that invitation to violence that got the ball rolling. Within a week we were off to the races!

Off went the head of the 42nd wealthiest person in the country (founder/president of Menutts Hardware), two days later it was the 133rd (chairman of Chick-Bidet), and the day after that it was the 332nd (longtime CEO of Starbunk Coffee). It turns out unions and living wages weren’t the worst things that could happen to an employer.

By the end of November we’d also lost the CEO of McDongle’s, one of the founders of Home Despot, two board members from Krueger Foods, and the fellow who’d been running Hells Fargo in its heyday of subprime mortgages and fake accounts.

It was around that time we also saw the first attempt at the CEO of Midgley Motors, Lonnie Muck, the wealthiest person on God’s green earth, who had reportedly escaped a kidnapping by the skin of his teeth. “Lucky number thirteen!” as he so tactfully put it. (Although there were some who thought his story didn’t quite add up.)

With the end of the year approaching, these attacks bulldozed their way through Wall Street, upsetting markets that were already reeling amid the growing fear and widespread panic, as they began targeting some of the top bankers and traders in the country—the very geniuses who had tanked the economy in 2008. It spilled over into healthcare and pharmaceuticals, oil companies and the environment. Folks were fed up watching their futures get polluted and plundered. Now, I’m not saying what these maniacs were doing was right. But at the same time neither was what these captains of industry had been getting away with either.

I was surprised then when some of them were able to see the writing on the wall. Costco, In-N-Out, Trader Joe’s—they all bumped their starting pay up to $25/hour. The former CEO of Whole Foods came out and publicly condemned his decision a few years back to sell his company to Amazin! Heck, the CEO of Cigna just up and quit, apparently hoping it would spare him from any comeuppance he might have coming for him.

Not everyone, though, was quite so willing to acknowledging the error of their ways.

After a second failed attempt at Lonnie Muck (which many, again, were taking with a grain of salt), he started doing the rounds on cable news, spouting off about how important he was to the economy and the hundreds of thousands of jobs he was personally responsible for creating. And after another foiled attempt at him a few weeks later (the details of which were so outrageous they spawned a whole class of memes mocking his uncanny knack for “creative” escapes), Muck finally showed his hand and announced a “retaliatory” wage-freeze across the board. He wanted it made known he wasn’t going to let no punks tell him how to run his business, and he was only too eager to institute the punitive measures to prove it.

By then the pamphlets were getting longer and more creative, and were starting to come off more as manifestos or parables. They had titles like Eat the Rich and Reign of Terror and Heads Will Roll!

Like many others, I initially thought the attacks might all be the work of a coordinated group. But as more evidence trickled in, this seemed increasingly unlikely. Still, there were a few recurring themes I noticed kept popping up. The most popular had to be the danse macabre, with depictions of skulls, skeletons, reapers, etc. The idea, I guess, was that death was coming for these people, and there was no escaping it.

The French Revolution was also a common source to pull from. You had pamphlets signed by the Jacobins…The Jacobin Club…The Mountain…the Montagnards. It was the Cordeliers that got Dick Suckler of Puredoom Pharma—the family-owned multibillion-dollar company that had spearheaded the opioid crisis (for which they received a fine, but no jail time). It was The Cordelier Club that got his cousin Cate. And the Club des Cordeliers that got the former-FDA-official/recent-Puredoom-executive many believed had made the whole crisis possible.

The Alice books were another favorite inspiration. It was a pamphlet with the Cheshire Cat on the cover that accompanied the decapitation of Chevrong Oil CEO Mitchell Wirthless, citing the company’s egregious history of pollution during his 40-year tenure. You had the White Rabbit, the Hatter, the Jabberwocky, even Bill the Lizard. I remember waking up Christmas morning to see that a mock confession signed by the Mock Turtle had accompanied the “long-awaited retirement” of the now former Senate Majority Leader, with “admissions” of cronyism, rent-seeking, and personal enrichment on the public dime. And it was only a few days later that The Duchess claimed responsibility for retiring the Speaker of the House on charges of insider trading.

It was an unprecedented display of bipartisanship—they were picking them off left and right. U.S. Senators and Representatives, state senators, governors, mayors, even a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Even after months of this chaos and confusion, though, it still didn’t feel real to me. Not really. It wasn’t until a couple local fellows went missing. Jack Cordrey, the CEO of Homes4America—which had been buying up single-family houses and turning them into rental properties across the Midwest. And Louis Rottman, our state Governor—whose list of accomplishments in office included vetoing a voter-approved bill limiting the number of residential rental properties an owner could operate in the state, hamstringing the ballot-initiative process moving forward, empowering the State Board of Education to standardize public school curriculums to bring them more in line with the “God-fearing, America-loving ideals this nation was founded on,” and enacting some of the most innovative and draconian abortion restrictions in the country.

“Ms. Jacob!” “Ms. Jacob!” “Ms. Jacob!”

“Do you think they’re gonna cut their heads off, Ms. Jacob?”

Now, with this one I kind of forgot myself. I said the first six words that came to mind, the six words that would get me put on administrative leave before the end of the week. They just slipped out.

“Oh, I sure fucking hope so.”

Now It’s Personal

I wish you all could know my big sister. I wish you could see her the way I see her. I think then you’d understand.

My sister could do anything. Even when we were little. She was only 15 months older than me, but it might as well have been 15 years. This girl was selling handmade sculptures at the age of 12, for God’s sake. She was kind and charming and effortlessly popular. Voted both homecoming queen and most likely to succeed. So even though we were as working-class as it came, when she got it in her head her senior year that she was going to be a doctor, no one doubted her. I certainly didn’t. And the day she left for college, I cried my eyes out. So did she. Of course, once I graduated too, we couldn’t wait for me to join her. There we were, two young women making our way in the world!

We shared a large studio apartment for the first few years, and by the time she started med school we’d upgraded to a small two-bedroom. And when I got my degree and landed myself a teaching position, along with my first real salary, I was pushing for us to move into a house, something with a yard and no shared walls. This was the beginning of our grown-up lives after all. But my sister, always the responsible one, convinced me I should focus on paying off my student loans. I was fortunate enough to only be in the hole $25,000 when it was all said and done. My sister, when she began her residency a year later, owed over $250,000.

By then I had already set her up with Max, one of the other history teachers at my school. Max had only been teaching for a few years when I started, but to this day he’s still the best teacher I’ve ever worked with. The kids loved him. Taking a page from A People’s History of the United States and another from A Patriot’s History, he found a captivating way to humanize the story of our nation. These weren’t the infallible heroes or indefensible villains of legend. No, in Max’s classroom they were normal people just like you and me, dimples and warts and all.

Now, I didn’t know back then that Max would go on to set the school record for the most Teacher of the Year awards. All I knew was that he was a kind and passionate man, who was tall, broad-shouldered, and boyishly handsome—and just a tad too clean-cut for my tastes. But oh boy, I couldn’t wait to introduce him to my sister! To say she was smitten from the start would be an understatement, and it wasn’t long before the two lovebirds were talking about moving in together. And when my sister showed me those two little pink lines on that home pregnancy test, I knew it was time I thought about moving out.

I was head over heels in my own relationship at that point anyways. My high school sweetheart had returned from Iraq the year before. He’d joined the Army right out of high school, riding that patriotic wave of deceit that had swept us all up in the aftermath of 9/11. After five long years, though, his term of active-duty was finally over. And thanks to the GI Bill, a dirt-poor kid’s dream of becoming an English teacher looked like it might actually be feasible. We found a swanky one-bedroom apartment nearby, leaving the two-bedroom for my sister and Max and what in seven short months would be my brand-new baby niece.

Of course, well before that was a quick courthouse wedding, since childbirth in this country is such an opulent affair. Lucky for them, the health insurance Max was getting from our school district was a step up from the God-awful plan my sister had through her residency program—which she found grueling while pregnant, and even harder with a baby…and then damn near impossible with two. But after four years and a whole lot of work, I’m proud to say my big sister was finally an M.D.

For the first few years she only worked part-time since she didn’t want to miss the entirety of their children’s childhood. But when those two kids started getting too big to be sharing that tiny old bedroom of mine, my sister and Max couldn’t put it off any longer—it was time to buy a house! Sure, they were still bogged down by over $200,000 in student loans between the two of them, but over the last five years they’d managed to put away enough to hopefully cover a down payment. It wasn’t as much as they would have liked—part-time doctoring doesn’t pay as well as full-time doctoring, and our teacher salaries had long since given up in their race with inflation. Fortunately, now that the children were both in school, my sister would finally be able to spend more time at work.

They burst onto the house-hunting scene like kids in a candy store. And once they eventually lowered their expectations—bringing them more in line with the reality of their financial situation—they were finally able to find a fixer-upper in a seedy part of town that checked all the bare-minimum boxes they could afford to ask for. It was two stories with a bedroom for each of the kids, an office for Max, and a basement my sister could turn into an art studio.

I still remember how excited she was for me to see the house, and how she couldn’t wait to show me the room in the basement that still had an old rock-tumbler in it from the previous owners, the walls and ceiling soundproofed to keep the racket contained. You see, I’ve always been a rock collector. Ever since we were little girls romping along the Mississippi River. I’d come inside from playing and have every pocket jam-packed with my haul for the day. “You’ll be able to polish your rocks whenever you want,” my sister said as the tour continued up the stairs into the backyard, where there was a detached garage I could see had been converted into a back house. “Whenever you want,” she told me, “if you’re living right here.”

My sister knew all too well how that storybook ending had played out between me and that high school sweetheart of mine. It was no secret his go at the university hadn’t gone so well, neither had a try at a trade school, and most of the time even holding down a job proved more than he could handle. Old war wounds die hard and that PTSD is a real son-of-a-bitch. I watched it consume the man I loved—the flashbacks and nightmares, the mood swings, the anger, the depression. On top of which were the flare-ups of an old back injury the VA was only too eager to brush off with what seemed like an unlimited supply of OxyContin. It’s non-addictive, they assured us, as I watched the love of my life turn into a junkie. And when his crying turned to lying and his screaming turned to smacking me around, my sister begged me to leave him. But I loved the guy. And I gave in to his pleading and promising more times than I’m proud to admit. It wasn’t until he arranged a three-day stay in the hospital for me that I finally said enough is enough.

My sister showed me that back house and I started weeping.

I knew I’d never be able to buy a house of my own. My credit was abysmal (another perk of an addict boyfriend) and after 10 years of putting in 60-hour weeks I was still somehow living paycheck to paycheck. It’s safe to say homeownership wasn’t in the cards for me. But if I was going to be creating equity for someone, it might as well be someone I loved. A back house 20 yards from my best friend and my little niece and nephew…now that’s something I could get behind.

Their offer on the house had been accepted and they were just waiting on the inspection and appraisal, when they learned that Home4America—with its heartwarming slogan Bringing single-family living to the American Heartland—had come in with a cash offer and was willing to scoop up the property sight unseen.

My sister was devastated.

Max was livid.

And me…well, if I’m being honest, I was about ready to murder someone. Especially once they told me Homes4America had graciously offered to let them rent the place if they still wanted it.

The fucking nerve!

Having just found out how friendly the housing market was, though, my sister—always one to make the best of a shitty situation—convinced us to take the offer. It was only a two-year lease, she pointed out, during which time they could regroup and keep saving and God willing find another house to buy. Sure, we’d be paying more than their mortgage would have been. But at least we were guaranteed a fixed rent.

Of course, that was the first thing to go once Homes4America was brought under the umbrella of Blackheart—a rising star among multinational conglomerate holding companies. And when our two years was almost up, we found ourselves hard-pressed to choose between two equally enticing options: either move out at the end of the month or sign a new five-year lease with a guaranteed 5% increase in rent each year.

Again, I wanted nothing more than to tell those bastards to go to hell.

But any thought of my sister and Max buying a house in the foreseeable future had already been put on pause when Max’s mother got sick and they watched their savings drain away in medical bills. They looked into moving, perhaps even trying a new city. But the thing was…this was happening all over the country. And it turned out a 5% yearly increase was cause for celebration compared to what a lot of folks were getting hit with.

Another provision of the new lease was the installation of security cameras on the property, which to me felt like a major invasion of privacy. Homes4America/Blackheart claimed it was for our protection, but I suspected it had more to do with protecting their investment and limiting liability. Still, given the recent rise in property crime in the neighborhood, we figured the added security couldn’t hurt.

Boy, were we wrong!

Looking back, it’s easy to see that what was left of our go at the American Dream started its spectacular nosedive on the day the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade—which in turn triggered an immediate ban on abortions statewide except in cases of medical emergency.

Over the next few months my sister and the other doctors at her hospital—along with countless doctors throughout the state and the nation—would stumble their way through the dark trying to work out just how close to death a pregnant woman needed to be before her case could “legally” be considered an emergency. And fearing the financial repercussions, her hospital administration was persistently fighting with them to err on the side of caution, pain, and inhumanity.

Cancerous pregnancies, uterine infections, severe preeclampsia—not good enough. They needed these women to be knocking on death’s door. Hemorrhaging so bad they were bleeding out. Full-blown sepsis to the point of organ failure. Blood pressure so high a heart attack was guaranteed.

I watched my sister’s buoyant energy wither away as she was forced to perform more emergency hysterectomies in those first six months than she had in her entire career beforehand.

I saw her hopeful spirit drain out of her as she kept writing prescriptions for abortion-inducing medications that were now illegal in our state and practically impossible to procure…until she was told that if she got one more write-up she’d be fired.

I heard the defeat creeping into her voice as she continued to counsel patients on abortions and out-of-state travel…until even mentioning the word “abortion” on hospital premises without prior approval became grounds for termination—although in her case they settled for a two-week suspension.

But when a 15-year-old girl was brought in with an ectopic pregnancy she’d hidden for so long that her fallopian tube was now at risk of rupturing, it hit a little too close to home. And when the hospital administration, on the advice of their lawyers, turned the girl away because her pain wasn’t bad enough yet and her bleeding wasn’t severe enough yet, my sister knew exactly what she needed to do. She’d been dreading this day for months—but planning for it all the same, just in case.

Within an hour of finishing her shift that evening, my sister had that 15-year-old down in the rock-tumbler room of her basement, which had recently been outfitted as an operating room. It was a simple enough procedure, something she’d performed dozens of times without complication. She just hadn’t expected the hospital administrators to be so quick in reporting the girl’s pregnancy to the state’s Right to Life taskforce, or for Homes4America/Blackrock to be so forthcoming in providing surveillance footage without a warrant. And she certainly wasn’t expecting a dozen police officers to come barging through the door mid-procedure, guns drawn.

I heard it all from upstairs in their kitchen. “Put your hands up and step away from the suspect!” I remember the poise in my sister’s voice as she calmly explained to the officers that this new gushing of blood meant the girl’s fallopian tube had ruptured and they needed to get her to a hospital immediately—and how that poise then turned to panic when my sister realized they didn’t care. I could hear her pleading with them, yelling and screaming and begging them to please do something or this girl was going to die. And I watched in horror as those police officers walked my sister out in handcuffs that night…and then carried that poor girl out in a body bag.

My sister was charged with criminal abortion and involuntary manslaughter—and as I write this, 15 months later now, she’s still locked up awaiting trial, facing 25 years behind bars.

My parents were devastated when they found out. It’s only the second time in my life I’ve ever seen my father cry. Naturally, they insisted on getting her the best lawyer money could buy. And once they ran through their savings they refinanced their house. And after my father’s pension got wiped out by private-equity investments that proved a little too daring, they lost their home of nearly 40 years and moved in with Max. We all said it was so they could help him with the kids—but really, we knew they had nowhere else to go.

Of course, it was Max who was hit the hardest. After my sister was arrested, I watched that man get angrier and angrier.

He tried to throw himself into his work, but that was already getting difficult to do. The State Board of Education had been clamping down on us over the last few years. It had started with suggested curriculums and teaching materials. And before long they were requiring us to submit our lesson plans for approval. But it was when their suggested plans/materials stopped being recommendations and became mandatory/exclusionary, with school funding tied to compliance, that teachers like Max and me found ourselves on the front lines of an uphill battle. It didn’t matter that Max was one of the most decorated teachers in the state. He soon became one of the most reprimanded, as he refused to teach the type of whitewashed bigotry the Board wanted us to spew: The genocide of indigenous peoples was bad…but it was pretty much inevitable. Slavery was wrong…but it wasn’t always that bad. The civil rights movement was good…but it might have gone too far.

Max held out as long as he could. But once the district had the good sense to revoke his tenure and threaten his job, he had no choice but to fall in line. After all, he had those two kids at home to think about, and at this point he was the only parent they had. Not to mention he was already working a second job just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

I didn’t believe it at first.

And it wasn’t just that he’d been working with my ex-boyfriend of all people—who apparently was clean and sober and had gotten in good with a private-security firm (a booming industry given all the recent attacks). But it was more so that they were two of the last people I ever expected to be putting their lives on the line for the rich and powerful, Max especially.

Sure, he’d been shocked like me when Jimmy Bozo was killed. But as the attacks kept happening, it was like he started delighting in them. And by the time the “Muckraker” memes began popping up, his enthusiasm was getting worrisome. He’d come and show me the latest cartoon or video and would be laughing his ass off at what new scenario Lonnie Muck had found himself in this time. The increasingly outlandish attempts on his life, the miraculous Mr. Magoo-type escapes—he thought it was hilarious.

I didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. This wasn’t the same Max I’d been so proud to introduce to my big sister. This was a broken man, and I got the feeling things were going to get worse for him before they got better—and that scared the hell out of me.

When I saw the reports of the wave of May Day attacks across the country I can’t say I was too surprised. And when I read that the Governor and the CEO of Homes4America had both been kidnapped after a closed-door meeting that same day I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t tickled a little pink. It was when I learned that one of their security personnel had been shot and was in critical condition, though, that I felt the first hint of worry start creeping in. And it was when my principal called me into his office and asked for the second day in a row if I knew where Max was that I felt my stomach drop.

I was barely listening as he went on about the real reason he’d called me in and all the parent complaints they’d been getting since yesterday. All I could think about was how Max’s phone had been going straight to voicemail for the last two days. And as my principal droned on about how sorry he was but there was nothing he could do, “Unfortunately, my hands are tied,” and he was going to have to place me on administrative leave, I was hardly even paying attention.

I was too busy thinking about the headlights I’d seen coming up our driveway and pulling around back two nights ago, well past midnight.

“You just can’t say that kind of stuff in front of the kids these days,” he told me, but it didn’t even really register. I couldn’t get past that sinking feeling in my gut and the sense of panic I had that I needed to get down into my sister’s basement as soon as humanly possible.

Down the Rabbit-Hole

It’s hard to describe how terrified I was when I finally went into that basement. You have to understand, I wasn’t sure what was down there. And if I’m being honest, I didn’t really want to find out. I just wanted to pretend like none of this was happening.

Of course, I knew I could only hide from the truth for so long—and I got the feeling time wasn’t on my side.

It was a slow, determined walk down those stairs and across the darkened basement, each step offering me another moment to build up a little more courage. I was bracing myself for what I might find. And I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t drop damn near through the floor when I saw the door to the “rock-tumbler room” was now padlocked.

That was new.

But I knew Max, and I knew my sister’s birthday. And oh how I prayed I was wrong.

Spin…spin…spin…click.

I opened that door—HOLY FUCK!—and felt my head go woozy as my legs turned to jelly.

There were two men inside. Tied to chairs. Blindfolded. Gagged. One’s head was slumped forward, a pool of blood on the floor beneath him. The other one perked up immediately and began mumbling through a mouthful of what looked to be rags and duct tape. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. And God knows how long I stood there guessing at it before I got up the nerve to walk in and take the gag out.

“Water,” he whispered. “Water…please.”

When I turned on the lights I recognized him instantly. Jack Cordrey, the bastard who had bought the very house we were in right out from under us. And next to him, still motionless, Louis Rottman, the son-of-a-bitch who had put my sister in jail.

“Water?” I said, and Cordrey nodded with what little energy he could muster. “Yes, of course,” I said, “of course I can get you some water.”

But as I stood out at the shop sink filling up a jug, not sure whether I was going to throw up or pass out, I couldn’t help but think of all the things I had imagined saying to these two men—these two particular men!—all the things I’d wanted to scream at them for years now.

“Fuck you!” “I hate you!” “I hope you fucking die!”

The jug was overflowing by the time I’d finally shut the faucet off. And it was with a surreal feeling I couldn’t shake that I’d quickly come back into the room and quietly shut the door behind me. I’d let the two men drink their fill, holding the mouth of the jug up to the lips of one, then the other, back and forth, as the reality of the situation slowly sunk in—holy fuck…

Now I’m just standing there, looking at these two men. And I can see the optimism growing in them. This two-day ordeal of theirs is finally over. They’re finally free. Hallelujah! Of course, eventually they have to ask themselves one simple question: If that’s true…then why haven’t I untied them yet?

To be fair, I’m as baffled by it as they are.

And when Governor Rottman finally says something—“Untie me,” he says—all I can say is, “Yes, of course.”

But I don’t. I just stand there, looking at these two particular men, bound and blindfolded in front of me.

“I’ve been shot,” the Governor says. “You have to untie me. Please.”

“He’s been shot,” Cordrey says. “Please, let us go.”

I look down at the pool of blood under the Governor’s chair…and then at his belly and what I’m now recognizing is the sheen of blood on his black shirt.

“Please, please,” he begs.

“Please! We need to get him to a hospital,” Cordrey says, frantically.

The two men keep begging—but my head is a jumble now. All I can think about is Max…and my ex-boyfriend…and that unnamed security guard in critical condition.

“One of your security guys was shot too,” I finally say, “right?”

“Oh God, it hurts, it hurts so bad!”

“Do you know who he was? The security guy,” I ask, “what his name was?”

“I don’t know,” Cordrey says—while the Governor is moaning away in pain. “They send different guys every time.”

“Okay, but what did he look like?”

“You’re sure it was security?” Cordrey asks, “And not the kidnapper?”

“Yes, yes, it’s all over the news,” I say, trying not to let them hear the panic in my voice. “Tell me what he looked like…please.”

“I don’t know,” Cordrey says, “It all happened so quick.”

“Untie me,” the Governor pleads, “Please. I’m dying here.”

But none of this makes any sense to me. “You can’t even tell me what he looked like?” I ask Cordrey, “What color hair? Was he tall? Short? Nothing?”

“Like I said, it all happened so quick.”

“You have to untie me.”

“I get not knowing the man’s name…”

“Untie me already.”

“I can understand that.”

“Just untie me.”

“But how do you not even know what he looked like?”

“Fucking untie me!” the Governor finally screams. He’s trying to thrash around in his chair but the rope and the duct tape are making that difficult—and I watch as he winces in pain.

“Look, I don’t know who you are,” Cordrey says to me, “But as far as we know, you haven’t done anything yet, okay? Nothing illegal—if you just let us go.”

But now I’m angry.

“Those guards were there to protect you and it’s like you don’t even see them as people,” I say. “You can’t tell me a single thing about them.”

“They’re cowards or they’re in on it,” the Governor mutters, “I can tell you that much.”

“That’s crazy!” I say. “That you’d really expect them to put their lives on the line for nineteen dollars an hour.”

“They knew the job when they took it,” the Governor snaps. “We didn’t force them to do anything.”

“Okay, but don’t tell me you thought that was enough to buy someone’s loyalty.”

“Look, you haven’t done anything wrong yet,” Cordrey says to me, “Just please let us go.”

“Nothing wrong?” the Governor scoffs. “I need a doctor and this bitch won’t untie me!”

“Oh, you need a doctor do you? Okay, well, maybe there’d be a doctor here, right now, in this very room,” I tell him, and I’m trying not to let my anger get the best of me, “if someone hadn’t started arresting doctors for just doing their jobs.”

“Oh what the fuck!” the Governor explodes. “Is this some abortion bullshit? Get over it!” And I can see him wincing in pain again.

“Stop,” Cordrey tells him, “Just stop!”

“I represent the will of the people, you crazy bitch. I just give them what they want.”

“You represent the will of whoever’s willing to pay you off,” I fire back. “There’s no point in lying now. Everyone knows that most people in this state don’t want abortion to be illegal. But you don’t care what the people want. You think you’re better than the rest of us. Both of you do. Guys like you…you think you can do whatever you want. But your actions don’t happen in a vacuum—they have consequences. Do you know how many lives you’ve ruined?”

But neither responds.

“Arresting doctors,” I say, “Firing teachers. Stealing homes from hardworking Americans like me and my family.”

“You call yourself an American,” the Governor scoffs, “That’s rich.”

“I grew up on the Mississippi,” I tell him. “I’m as American as Mark Fucking Twain.”

“You’re a disgrace to this country, that’s what you are.”

And now I can feel myself losing it. “I didn’t disgrace my country.” And I don’t care who knows anymore. “My country disgraced me!” I scream, and I’m almost in tears now, “Time and time again.”

“Look, I’m not a bad guy,” Cordrey says. “I haven’t done anything illegal.”

“Of course you haven’t,” I say, and I’m laughing now in disbelief I’m so angry, “This guy makes the laws and you have him in your back pocket.”

“Oh fuck off!”

“It’s not like that,” Cordrey says. “Everything I’ve done is above-board.”

“How much did you donate to his last campaign?”

“That’s not fair,” he says. “That’s not fair. I’m allowed to do that.”

“I know for a fact you were his biggest donor. How much was it? How much did you give him? And if I were you, I wouldn’t lie right now.”

When he still refuses to answer, Governor Rottman is only too willing to chime in. “He gave me almost half a million.”

“Nearly half a million dollars, that’s correct. And how much have you made because of your backdoor deal with this piece of work?” I ask Cordrey. “Off just the houses in this state—how much has your company made since Mr. Magnanimous here used his office to overturn the will of the people?”

But Cordrey still isn’t talking.

“Any given month,” I say, “how much?”

Even the Governor is quiet now.

“I know it’s in the millions,” I say.

“But it was all legal,” Cordrey finally stammers out.

“You’re still missing the point,” I tell him. “I’m not saying what you did was illegal. I’m just saying look where it’s led. See where we’re at now. This is what happens when you fuck people over for too long.”

“But I didn’t break the law,” he insists.

“So many people these days seem to have so much trouble understanding that just because you can do something,” I tell him, “doesn’t mean you should. That just because something’s legal doesn’t make it moral. And the opposite too. Just because you pass a law that says doctors can’t give women the medical attention they need doesn’t mean following that bullshit law is the moral thing to do.”

“Jesus fucking Christ with your goddamn abortions!” the Governor shouts. “You people want to be getting them whenever you want, don’t you? Like it’s a fucking haircut!”

“Maybe so. Maybe I do think it’s up to each of us to decide what happens to our own bodies. What a concept, right? But that doesn’t mean your overzealous fake-religious bullshit isn’t putting real women’s lives at risk. Things don’t always go as planned—I can attest to that. And punishing a woman for that is just barbaric.”

“Well, if she doesn’t want to get pregnant,” the Governor says, “maybe the slut should keep her legs closed. At some point people have to be held responsible for their actions.”

“And what if that slut,” I ask, and I’m absolutely fuming now, “is a 15-year-old kid who’s only pregnant because her youth minister, of all people, raped her? And what if that slut, as you so compassionately put it, is so ashamed of what happened that she doesn’t tell anyone? Not her parents, or even her big sister. She doesn’t tell them about the pain. She doesn’t tell them about the bleeding. And she doesn’t find out there’s an unviable embryo growing in her tubes until paramedics bring her to the hospital after she passes out in the middle of geometry class. And what if the only thing that’s going to save this girl from needing to have her reproductive organs ripped out of her, and God forbid maybe even dying,” and I can feel the tears streaming down my cheeks now, “is an abortion? What then, huh? What then? What is this slut supposed to do, asshole!”

“You’re not going to get away with this!” the Governor yells—which triggers another wince of pain. “Help! Help!”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“They keep catching more of you psychos every day! Help!”

“It’s never been about getting away with it,” I tell him. “But at the same time, it’s not my future I’d be worrying about. Scream all you want…no one’s going to hear you.”

“I fucked up. I did,” Cordrey says. “I didn’t mean to, but I did.” And I can tell he’s crying under his blindfold. “I was so busy thinking about making money—always thinking about making more and more money. I didn’t care about the people I was hurting, the families just trying to live. I just looked the other way. Deep down I knew, I did, I did, but I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to admit it. I ruined so many people’s lives and I just looked the other way. Jesus Christ, what have I done!” he cries. “I don’t want to die.”

“I don’t think the bitch has it in her,” the Governor tells him.

“Shut up!” Cordrey yells at him. “Will you just shut up!”

“I don’t think you do,” he says to me, so smugly. “You don’t have the guts to kill us.”

“I don’t have to,” I tell him—and that quiets him up real quick. “You see, even if I give you the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say you’re not evil. Let’s say you weren’t doing all these horrible things to be mean on purpose, you’re just self-centered, and short-sighted, and only thinking of yourself. I get it. There’s nothing that says you have to care about the rest of us. There’s nothing that says you have to go out of your way to help others…or make sure anyone else is even surviving.”

And I watch as his face drops.

“But guess what,” I tell him, “neither do I.”

“You can’t do this,” he pleads, “I need a doctor! I’m dying here!”

“Yes, you probably are,” I say. “At some point people have to be held responsible for their actions and all. But if you want, I’ll give you a choice. Not all of us are monsters here. Your body, your choice, right? I know you’re in pain. I can give you enough Oxy to make it all go away. You’ll just…fade out.”

The room is dead silent—not even a snivel from Governor Rottman.

“But I suppose that’s not the choice you were hoping for, is it?”

Nothing but a fearful little sneer.

“I could always cut your head off.”

But he’s not talking anymore, now that he’s realized there’s no talking his way out of this.

And with that, I’d put the gag back in his mouth, Cordrey’s too. I’d hit the lights on the way out—au revoir et adieu!—and I’d shut the door behind me, giving Lady Justice just a few more days to work her magic.

Now, obviously I never actually got the chance to tell Governor Rottman any of the things I’d wanted to say to him, any of those things I’d wanted to scream. There was no Fuck you! or I hate you! or even a quick I hope you fucking die!

As has been widely reported, by the time I went down there Governor Rottman was already dead. He’d bled out from a gunshot wound to the gut. A horrible way to die, I’m told.

But as Jack Cordrey will attest, there was nothing I could have done to save the man. By the time I found them, Louis Rottman was already a lost cause. He’ll tell you how Rottman was shot in a skirmish with a rogue security guard who then left them for dead in my sister’s basement. And he’ll identify the lone shooter/kidnapper as the same security guard who later died in the hospital…as the Army veteran with a well-documented history of PTSD and opioid addiction…my ex-boyfriend.

Mr. Cordrey will tell you how he himself would have died down in that basement too if it wasn’t for me. He’ll tell you how I saved his life in more ways than one. Why, I believe he’s even called me a hero.

And in wrapping this little tale up, I’ll tell all you folks out there what I told Jack Cordrey that fateful morning:

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO DO THE RIGHT THING

Of course, it’s also worth remembering…it’s never too early either.

To quote Maximilien Robespierre, France’s great patron of terror right up until it got away from him and took his head along with it: To change is not just a right but a duty for any human will that has faltered.

Or as the great Mark Twain put it (for those of you still on the fence): Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do.

Now, that’s not to say it’s always going to be easy. Some days, in fact, might be downright torturous. Still, those are some wise words I think we can all live by. I know I can. Heck, I believe I already have.

Thank you and Godspeed,

Alice Jacob, Friend of the People

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