Now he raises the blinds in his library. He can hear Girlie in the kitchen washing dishes. For a moment he relishes the simple value of other rooms, of not being locked in a box twenty-three hours a day. To walk from one room to another, to shit in private with the door closed, these are no small things. They are the simple glories of the free man. Adjusting the thermostat—Avon likes it cold—he sits behind his desk. On the corner, under the lamp, is a framed photo of his kids, Samson and Bathsheba, both born to his first wife—his government legal wife, Jamie, in 2003 and 2005. Both had been home births, delivered without witness, no birth certificate filed, no social security number request filed. In other words, born free. It was the greatest gift Avon could give them, this erasure from the iron eye of the USC.
They were home schooled, of course, taught the real history of America, never brainwashed by the great liberal delusion. Fat Eddy had been their godfather, present for Samson’s baptism, but reincarcerated for Bathsheba’s. Not a day went by that Avon DeWitt didn’t spare a kind thought for old Fat Eddy, RIP, executed by the pigs in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on the side of the road before he could even get his weapon out. They’d spent two and a half years together in the federal pen, like a master’s program in liberation theory. It was Fat Eddy who helped Avon draft his Declaration of Sovereignty, Fat Eddy who’d taught Avon the intricacies of small-case letters, semicolons, and commas. Fat Eddy helped him design his own seals and stamps, taught him to write only in certain colors—he himself communicated mostly in red crayon. All these codes and triggers were employed to baffle and bamboozle the corporate stooges, all in the service of breathing God’s air and walking on his Earth once more in complete and total sovereignty.
Uncovering the secret history of America was an awakening for Avon DeWitt, who had never been a good student, had always felt somehow tricked by the teachers at school, judged. Who do they think they are to call me stupid? But sitting there in prison, Avon felt the very idea of knowledge was freed from tyranny. A man, a free man, could—upon his own endeavoring, his own initiative—decode the great American trick.
And so it was he sat down, with burning fire and a giddy spirit, to draft his own emancipation.
Margot
The hearings start on a Tuesday. The first day is just speeches from the committee, political statements of party fealty or the airing of grievances. Margot sits calmly, her hands folded on the table, and tries to seem unreadable. She is quick with a smile or a joke when the opportunity arises, quick to offer a humble personal insight or to affirm how her role on the court will be a sacred duty. Margot has always been good with people and comfortable with the spotlight. She knows deep down in her toes that this is a calling, not a career. She was born to be a justice of the Supreme Court. God has granted her wisdom and clarity of thought so that she might stand in judgment over the laws and mores of this complicated and polarized nation.
Her first hard questions come on day two, when Senator Morbach asks her why she is sitting here today and not out searching for her daughter. He tries to paint her as ambitious. A climber with no moral code. But Margot doesn’t take the bait.
“Senator,” she says, “I am in constant contact with the Austin police and the FBI. My husband and I have put together an international network of friends and family, and we are making calls, sorting through emails, walking the streets, doing everything we can to track her down. Sometimes when I am at my lowest in the middle of the night, I call the hospital—”
Her voice breaks here, but she doesn’t cry, just pauses to collect herself and continues.
“I call emergency rooms and morgues across Texas, in New York, anywhere I can think of.”
She pulls herself up to her full seated height.
“Now, if you can tell me one other thing I can do to find and protect my daughter—other than working tirelessly to better our judicial system in this country so that if, God forbid, some harm comes to the sons and daughters of Americans everywhere, they have a remedy and a resource—well, if you can tell me that, I will stand up right now and walk out of here.”
She leaves it out there as a challenge, and in the silence that follows, she wonders if he will call her bluff, but he knows he has lost the room and anyone watching at home. That he has only made her more sympathetic, more noble, so he about-faces to a discussion of precedent.
It is on the third day that Senator Albright asks about her path.
“Judge Burr-Nadir,” he says. “Can you tell me how you got here?”