Page 3 of So Far Gone

“Two thousand eight? The New York Giants? Beat the New England Patriots? Think about it for just a second, Rhys. ThePatriots? As in the real Americans? Losing to theGiants? Of New York? Giants as in the beast that rises out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns? As in the ten media companies and the seven boroughs of New York City? Come on, Rhys, you’re a smart man. You think this is all a coincidence?”

“There are five boroughs in New York, Shane. And thousands of media companies.”

“Then it’s seven million people. I get the numbers mixed up.”

“There are eight million people, and I seriously doubt that many lived in New York when Revelations was written.”

“I told you: that’s not how the Bible works, Rhys. It’s a living document.”

“It’s not, Shane.”

“Believe what you want.” Shane was getting red-faced. “But I saw a thing on-line that explained the whole deal.” He was always seeing things on-line that explained the whole deal. Or deals on-line that explained the whole thing.

“Wait a second,” Kinnick said, convincing himself that logic might still matter with Shane. “But the Patriots won the Super Bowllast year!”

This, somehow, excited Shane even more, and he leaned in toward Kinnick and confided in him. “I know! That wasawesome, a sign of the coming triumph, a clarion call for patriots to rise up and prepare for the final fight. See, New England wasn’tsupposedto win. The secular globalists picked Seattle to repeat as champions. But Brady and the Patriots wouldn’t allow it. See? They broke the script. Stole that game at the goal line! Said, ‘We will fight rather than surrender to the NewWorld Order!’ That’s why the NFL had to start the whole deflate-gate controversy. To go after New England. As a warning.”

This was the danger of winding up a toy like Shane. He could go on for hours like this, weaving every loose strand into a blanket of conspiratorial idiocy as he explained how, at the beginning of every season, NFL officials and team owners got together with TV execs, who handed out scripts for the season. But in the 2015 Super Bowl, Brady, Belichick, and the brave Patriots refused to go along with the globalist-satanist-liberalist-trafficker agenda, and they struck a blow for the original America! New England! Patriots! Thirteen original colonies!

It was the sort of logic hash that Kinnick had encountered when dealing with conspiracy theorists in his old job as a newspaper reporter, like the logger who once explained to him that some of the forest had been replaced with fake trees that were in fact surveillance devices. Gibberenglish, Rhys used to call it.

“New England’s victory was a sign to all patriots,” Shane said. “We’ve been waiting for a king to arise, and now, he was on his way. This election would be our Valley Forge.”

“I’m pretty sure at Valley Forge, they were fightingagainsthaving a king, Shane.”

“I’m just saying the call went out,” the undaunted Shane said, “and true patriots have answered, and our time is nigh.”

“You know what? I got a thing at nigh.” Rhys pretended to look at his watch. “Can we do it at nigh thirty? Maybe quarter to rapture?” Rhys glanced over at Celia’s husband, a retired high school math teacher—Are you hearing this?—but Cortland was snoring away.

It was quiet for a few more minutes, Shane pouting at being teased, Kinnick doing his best to let it go. He would eventually tell Bethany that:I tried to let it go.

You egged him on, Bethany would say.

I tried to steer us back to football!Rhys would insist.

“So, they script every play?” he asked Shane. “Or just the final score?”

“I mean, they leave room for ad-libbing, but yeah, everyone basically knows who will win before the game starts. It’s been scripted since 2008.” Shane leaned across the arm of his recliner. “Think about it for a second, Rhys. There’s literally billions of dollars at stake. You think they’re just gonna leave that to chance?”

“Right,” Kinnick said. “So, the owners get together and decide before the season who’s going to blow a knee, who’s going to fire a coach, who’s going to win the Super Bowl?”

“Owners?” Shane scoffed. “You think theownersrun the league? Owners are patsies, Rhys! Wake up! You gotta follow the money on a deal like this.”

After getting a degree in natural sciences Kinnick had been an environmental journalist for thirty years, at a paper in Oregon, at a Portland magazine that went under, and finally, in Spokane, where the foundering newspaper “offered” him a buyout in 2015. And now, what could be more depressing than his carpet-laying, truck-driving, recovering-addict son-in-law lecturinghimtofollow the money?

“This”—Shane held up the remote—“is where the money is.”

“Remote controls? Sure.” Kinnick leaned in. “So, who’s behind it all? Best Buy? RadioShack?”

“Think for a minute, Rhys!” Shane tapped his own head with the remote. “I’m talking about... themedia.” Orme-juh, as Shane pronounced it, that word being one of the four—elites,liberals, andsocialistswere the others—that found its way into every Shane Collins conspiracy theory. “And I don’t need to tell you who controls the media.”

“No, you don’t.”

“The so-called—” Shane said.

“Please don’t say it.” Rhys pointed with his beer bottle. And, for a moment, Rhys thought maybe the worst was over, that they’d make it to dinner after all without a problem.

But then Shane added, “I mean, they don’t call itJewYork for nothing.”

---