Sunshine on an Open Tomb. Tim Kinsella

that’s always housed it; muscles slackened, the pupils float into relaxed asymmetry.

      Face meat gets wormy.

      That animating meat-force that’d been held within has spilled out all over its own lap.

      Lips recede to reveal teeth, and skin hardens.

      Beggar, respectable Barbarian, Good Man: it doesn’t matter.

      All food to all the birds of the sky and beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away.

      Having had no say in its final posture, folded in ways that no dimly sentient blob could ever bend, gravel smashed into its skin, it felt rude to even glance at a corpse.

      I know it’s shocking, Loyal Reader, but it’s true: I never even saw a real corpse before moving out among The Barbarians.

      I was 30 years old!

      I didn’t know about the singular and ultimate weight with which each one sprawls, face down, clinging to the pavement in its own unique way.

      I didn’t know about the hard edges cut into where, previously, there’d always been skin continuity.

      And how pieces shred.

      Or the dumb meat of any single face stopped.

      No photograph holds a single element motionless like that while the background continues to bustle about its business.

      I didn’t know about how sunburn cooks blood into skin.

      How little toes, after a lifetime ticklish and tender, get all at once stripped of reflexes, exposed to nibbling critters.

      How neatly parts detach and get set aside: heads, hands.

      Or depending on the weapon used, how mealy dermis can grind.

      And other times, you could never guess how that dimly sentient blob became a corpse: business casual, with his button-down baby blue still tucked into pleated khakis, no evident sign of distress, leaned against a tree, eyes wide open and rolled back to show only the whites like eggs, mouth agape, tongue between teeth: he died making a silly face at a passing toddler?

      I didn’t know about purple blood pooling in an ear, how it quiets you for good.

      A hacked up, sturdy torso, as independent as a holiday ham, its skin peeled back at the joints to reveal fat and bone: that’s humiliating, but no more humiliating than the humble man who died intact losing the kind smile that had always squared his waistline.Both get hoisted the same into the small dump truck.

      The lucky ones: it’s a whole life’s blessing to die face down.

      To be charred, ankles and wrists tied, and left a stump on the curb; to be stripped and tied behind a motorcycle to be skinned alive against the rush of pavement; to be hit with pipes and feel each blow shatter bone and watch the witnesses stand around smiling; to be buried alive face down to suffocate, your legs kicking aboveground; to’ve gone thru medical school and all the hours; to’ve practiced and refined your eloquent sense of civics; to’ve been so pretty that everyone yielded to you; to’ve never even imagined that you could be stopped, in tune with the ancient forces propelling you, but to then be smeared hard against pavement, the path of your last dragging apparent to anyone that passes.

      All these are natural causes.

      All these are natural effects.

      And I’d never seen a corpse before cuz I’d even closed the door and walked away from My Little Brother.

       CHAPTER 11 Re: Oil

      Ruckafella’s Standard Oil brought The Homelan into codependence with The Kingdom after WWII, and that ultimately enabled The Family’s lock on Power.

      But as early as May ’11, The Supreme Court said: “Seven men and a corporate machine have conspired against their fellow citizens. For the safety of the Republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15th.”

      This dissolution created 33 new companies, greatly increasing The Ruckafellas’ wealth.

      Thirty-three.

      As part of The Revenue Act of ’13, The Oil Depletion Allowance slashed taxes on any income derived from oil production by 5%.

      And oil fortunes ballooned.

      Regardless of actual costs, automatic deductions were given to compensate for waning assets in the ground.

      And by ’26 this deduction had risen to 27.5%.

      And The New Republic reported that Capital City was “wading shoulder deep in oil. In the hotels, on the streets, at the dinner tables, the sole subject of discussion is oil. Congress has abandoned all other business.”

      As far back as ’22 the mayor of NY, John F. Hylan, felt compelled to say: “The real menace of our republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over our city, state and nation . . . At the head of this octopus are the Ruckafella-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers [who] virtually run the Homelan government for their own selfish purposes.”

      And by the early ’60s scrappy TX had essentially defected from The Homelan.

      Far-flung oil empires had long depended on corporate covert operations.

      But East Coast Upper Crust privilege + oil fortunes + intel = an unprecedented sense of entitlement to other countries’ resources.

      And by ’64 The NYT claimed that Dallas had formed an “invisible government . . . [that ran] Dallas without an electoral mandate.”

      An example of this invisible “Government” in TX is GaDoyla, founder of TX Instruments.

      Tight with European oil men and Arab leaders, his career spanned eight presidential administrations.

      Chummy with most of these Prezs, all of them answered to him.

      His son-in-law worked with GDM on The Council of World Affairs.

      GaDoyla’s son-in-law once sat at Iran’s Mossadegh’s bedside for 80 hours working to negotiate ownership of The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

      The talks turned out unsuccessful.

      And two years later a CIA coup overthrew Mossadegh.

      This invisible “Government” did not like King Arthur at all.

      His greatest offense, along with his reticence toward Vietnam: his stance against The Oil Depletion Allowance.

       CHAPTER 12 My Dawning Sex Life Protected by Thugs

      I find it hypocritical, and decisively not auto-, if your Man helps tighten your noose when you fix your alligator.

      My Help and my security detail dwindled until only Aaron remained.

      I was a cushy assignment, and no one dared cut any budget that’d strip Aaron of this light retirement.

      So I get financed to guarantee his job security, thanks to one line in a dense packet of single-spaced five-point font in the budget of some subcommittee that no one’s secretary’s assistant has ever glanced at before stamping.

      Yes, Stately Reader, The Family has come to possess security so abundant that this security detail itself—with resplendent circular logic—supports the bountiful lifestyle of The Family’s most inutile offspring, moi.

      Suited men in dark glasses with ear pieces just always loitered at the perimeter of any playground we brothers toppled around.

      I was eight the first time I ever spoke to Secret Service and accepted that I had always known that they did linger for our sake.

      This