Last night a friend in Santa Maria, California, where Stephanie and I lived for five years, sent me an audio/video clip of the third episode of Michael Jackson: The Verdict, the three-part docuseries streaming on Netflix about Jackson’s 2005 child molestation trial.

There I was standing in the Santa Maria Courthouse parking lot tent city wearing my Mexican straw cowboy hat and briefly taking questions during a Los Angeles NBC news interview about the criminal trial I covered every day for almost five months for Sky News and the Santa Maria Times where I worked full-time as a news columnist.

I couldn’t quite catch what I said in the short clip and don’t subscribe to Netflix so I won’t be watching the show. I know how it ends, though, because I played a role in the spectacle and know far more behind-the-scenes revelations than the documentary reports.

Laughing jurors in a tented break area mocking a youth pastor who had just testified Jackson sexually molested him as a child. Media members sent home for having sex in a satellite truck. Me getting assaulted by a city cop as I showed my press pass and jogged alongside Jackson’s vehicle guarded by Black Muslim bodyguards. One of Jackson’s local investigators I knew who shot and killed himself after the trial.

Mostly, I remember Michael Jackson walking slowly to where I sat alone in the courtroom one day, the last person other than him to leave during a break, stopping, reaching out his hand, leaning in close and whispering, “How are you?”

“Good,” I said. “How are you?”

I took Jackson’s pale oversized hand, felt him squeeze my fingers and not let go until I pulled my hand away when the moment felt awkward and just plain weird. We stared silently at each other for a few intense seconds until he moved on like the nightmarish ghost of the Bad World Tour past.

Michael Jackson knew I knew he was guilty.

Michael Jackson was afraid.

Although I can’t draw well, I later sketched an ink portrait of him sitting at the defense table. I called the drawing “The Michael Jackson Death Mask.” The superstar defendant looked dead. He just didn’t know it.

Before the trial started Jackson publicist Raymone Baine, who is interviewed in the Netflex story, told me Jackson was reading my early columns about his arrest. She said he liked them so much he invited me to visit his home at Neverland. I’ll always remember Baine sitting on Geraldo Rivera’s lap behind me on the little train that circled the freaky Neverland amusement park.

But as the trial progressed, my newspaper columns and twice-a-day live Sky News commentary that reached dozens of European countries unnerved Jackson. When other journalists asked Jackson how he was feeling during a break, he flinched when I asked if he thought about the anguish he’d experience if he went to prison.

After jurors reached a verdict, sitting in the row behind the Jackson family including Janet and LaToya, I watched Michael sit expressionless as each of 10 not guilty verdicts echoed through the tense yet otherwise silent courtroom.

The Netflix evaluation of the trial and verdict fails to offer a clear position on Jackson’s guilt or innocence.

Only three people I know among more than 2,200 credentialed media from around the world took a bold public stand on Jackson’s guilt or innocence. Vanity Fair’s Maureen Orth, Court TV’s Diane Dimond and I agreed the evidence prosecutors presented at trial proved Jackson guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.

Jackson’s guilt seemed clear to me.

More than 20 years later it still does.

Deception is a devious form of political corruption.

But that didn’t stop Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro from trying and failing to bamboozle the good people of Archbald when he showed up unannounced at State Rep. Kyle Mullins’ office for a secret, yet well-staged, meeting with a handful of timid so-called opponents of the borough’s planned siege of artificial intelligence (AI) factories.

No public meeting. No invitation extended to Tamara Misewicz-Healey who co-founded the Stop Archbald Data Centers group that will soon boast 10,000 members. No offer to stand strong with the majority of impacted people who oppose the hellish upheaval of life in their normally bucolic little town. No public accountability to the taxpayers who pay Shapiro’s salary and benefits.

Instead, Shapiro tried to snooker his limited audience into believing he is doing them a favor by offering tax breaks, fast-tracked permits and questionable regulation to shady real estate developers and massive AI corporations headed by profiteers who dismiss the hardworking people of Archbald and the surrounding communities as peons, collateral damage in their powerless battle against the data center invasion.

Shapiro pisses in the punch bowl and calls it champagne. To their credit, increasing numbers of Archbald residents refuse to drink Shapiro’s expensive golden cocktail and swallow his toxic trickery.

Thinking people know supersized AI data mills will do more harm than good, damage even worse than the brutal coal barons did when they ripped into the land and pillaged our dreams. What’s left of a one-time abundance of clean air, unpolluted water and pristine countryside is at stake. Public health is seriously jeopardized. Quality of life hangs precariously in the balance.

Wishy-washy regulation is suspect. Shapiro is suspect. Mullins is suspect. Former mixed martial numbskull State Sen. Marty Flynn is suspect. Not one of them has earned or deserves our trust or support. Grassroots community development means taking action to embarrass the masters, shaming the pampered political princes and making them uncomfortable.

Meek Mullins hosted this servile PR party at taxpayer expense, obediently standing by his high priest’s side during Wednesday’s show like a faithful altar boy. Basking in the scripted passion play of unamazing grace like his political overlord, Mullins acts like he’s doing God’s work. But instead of fighting the good fight to stop data center development, Mullins plans to introduce legislation that green-lights massive AI data factories few people want. Fewer people want lackluster Mullins, either, vowing not to vote for him and instead writing in Tamara Misewicz-Healey who is running against him.

Shapiro has heartily embraced data centers and related corporate donations, depending on huge infusions of business cash to fund his campaign for President of the United States. For months he overlooked mounting problems in Pennsylvania and barnstormed America groveling for handouts and support for his egotistical bid to win the 2028 Democratic Party nomination.

Transparency means nothing to Shapiro. His press office ignored my written questions about Shapiro’s sneak Archbald sideshow. I received no press release announcing the governor’s pop-up visit to Lackawanna County where I live, vote, pay taxes and where generations of my family are buried. Each day Shapiro’s press office inundates the press, including me, with his schedule. But not this time.

Shapiro kept his tightly controlled invitation-only soiree under the radar as a manipulative, manufactured public relations photo opportunity to use in his self-absorbed bid for higher office. Some fools fell for his amateur craftiness. But more and more people in Archbald and throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania targeted by Shapiro and his data center hitmen see through this dangerous ruse.

Environmental, economic and public health risks loom too great no matter how much oversight Shapiro and the legislature impose on AI data centers run amok. Even one data center’s occasional use of one backup diesel generator pollutes the air, severely damages respiratory health and can potentially kill people including children whom Shapiro claims will benefit from his loyal support for the tech industry.

Archbald stands as ground zero in Pennsylvania in the fight against AI data mills. Archbald also stands as a beacon signaling the beginning of the end of Shapiro’s shameful grandiose political ambition.

This fight is bigger than just us. This fight is about justice from sea to soiled sea where merciless double-dealers sell out to the highest bidders and bottom-feeder Democrats and Republicans make and break the rules in all 50 states.

No data centers means no data centers.

We in Northeastern Pennsylvania long ago learned not to drink contaminated water that flows around abandoned hard coal mines. Now we know not to drink the Democratic Party punch, either.

So get mad.

Then get madder.

Anger is not only acceptable but advisable.

It’s better to be pissed off than pissed on.

About halfway through the 30-second video two arms reach out to shake hands.

The words “Secret Deals” appear on the screen,

Of all the powerful phrases packed into Democratic Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan’s “urgent” call to action against the expanding data center invasion, suspicion about secret deals is the most troubling.

And the most dangerous.

What are the names of the dark money shadow people behind massive amounts of cold-hearted cash required to build the 50-plus data centers planned for Lackawanna County? Who will benefit most from these shady agreements? What unethical deals behind closed doors will enrich political and business players in these immoral transactions that imperil the people and the land?

We the people will pay data center costs in more ways than one. Suffering vile consequences, we’ll also never see behind the scenes as unknown campaign donors make promises to political candidates and vice versa.

Don’t expect most elected and appointed officials or their minions to tell the truth about secret pacts to plunder our future for their own benefit, wink-and-nod negotiations that exclude public scrutiny and clear the way for bigger and worse poisonous data centers. Mostly, don’t expect these bait-and-hook wheeler-dealers to play fair, some going so far as to break the law.

Northeastern Pennsylvania’s political reputation deservedly remains one of crime and corruption. No matter how many former Lackawanna County elected officials have walked free from federal prison, we have no reason to believe our system of crooked government has changed for the better.

Gutsy Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan thrives as the only state, county or local NEPA elected official who stands apart from the double-talking, double-dealing status quo money men and women willing to sell out the people.

Gaughan has launched an aggressive public campaign against data centers. The Scranton Democratic leader doesn’t just want to regulate these dangerous AI factories in Archbald and elsewhere, he wants to stop them.

Democratic and independent voters must pressure Gaughan’s Democratic colleagues to join his courageous fight. All voters of conscience must lean on these arrogant public servants to stand with right-minded constituents they are well paid to represent, hardworking people who deserve all the help they can get to prevent punishment by rogue politicians and data center predators.

That means browbeating cagey Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, continuing to connect duplicitous dots to wily State Sen. Marty Flynn, sly State Rep. Kyle Mullins, sneaky State Rep. Kyle Donahue, timid Lackawanna County Commissioner company man Tom Welby, crafty congressional candidate and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti and any other turncoat who works against the best interests of the public good.

Money and power matter most to these slick quislings. Condescending collaborators all, these spineless elected leeches have shown no trace of a democratic backbone. Turncoats together, they have exploited public service. The fat cat luxury of their disservice is more appealing to them than the privilege of holding office.

Democratic and independent voters must challenge each of these candidates in every election in which he or she runs. Protest at Shapiro’s offices. Disrupt Flynn’s life at home. Stand outside the private gated community where Cognetti vacations at her family ski chalet. Embarrass them. Make them uncomfortable. Show them the dirty errors of their evil ways.

Gutsy Gaughan has incited a movement.

Some fights are just worth fighting.

During the Civil War in 1863, armed with shotguns, pitch forks, clubs and axes, 300 Perry County volunteers history remembers as The Noble 300 defended their Pennsylvania homeland border against an expected Confederate Army attack.

Conscripts of conscience, they felled trees and built barricades. Mostly they showed up steeled with bravery, loyalty and commitment to Perry County.

Not one soldier from Confederate Gen. Richard Ewell’s 20-man patrol set foot on sacred Perry County soil. Nor did the Confederates advance any further north into our strengthened Union. Fearless Perry County people survived to fight another day.

Today a different breed of outside invader threatens to attack this hallowed ground. A corporate confederacy intent on predatory profit expects to leverage Perry County’s proud past. These profiteering pirates believe they can scare you. They believe they can buy you. By building sprawling, glaring, loud data centers to house massive artificial intelligence (AI) complexes in Watts Township, MRP Industrial of Baltimore, Maryland, expects generations of Perry County people to abandon their birthright of clean air, clean water and clean countryside.

These AI plunderers from a former slave state not only want your land, they want your children’s and your grandchildren’s livelihoods. Executive data center jobs revolve around destroying your jobs. They believe Perry County’s Promised Land belongs to them, not you.

I grew up in Perry County, living my formative teenage years at RD 2 Duncannon in the Cove. I played three varsity sports and graduated in 1969 from Susquenita High School. My state police detective father investigated the worst times of many Perry Countian lives, helping victims and their families find justice in a sometimes cruel and violent world. My mother worked as a nurse’s aide caring for the sick and the aged at the Kinkora nursing home. In my heart I’ll always hail from the Cove.

That means I still fight on the Perry County side.

As you might expect, a renewed territorial defense is underway. Hundreds of good citizens are recruiting hundreds of other good citizens to stand together as volunteers duty bound to protect their homes, their property and their peace of mind. Emboldened by this savage data center threat to our existence, big buck buccaneers from out of town don’t know how the mighty Susquehanna River embodies our spirit and how our spirit embodies the river.

The Susquehanna shapes our spine.

Back in August 1863, “One of the Three Hundred” quoted in the Republican Perry County Freeman newspaper published in New Bloomfield put it this way:

“In the year 1863 and the latter and the first parts of June and July, the rebel hordes were threatening and invading our loyal State; war was even coming to our own firesides. We could hear the rebel artillery throwing the missiles of death into Carlisle. True to the instincts of preservation, from our firesides we rushed, three hundred strong, to the top of the Cumberland Mountain at Sterrett’s Gap, and determined to be a Spartan band and allow no foe to desecrate the soil of Perry with his foul footsteps unless he passed over our stark lifeless bodies.”

No foe still means no foe as MRP Industrial now stalks the land as a loathesome foe. More and more politicians and profiteers work with free-market collaborators as they plunder the countryside and quality of life of people who deserve much better.

A new Noble 300 will fix that. A new Noble 300 will create another 300 and another after that. These bloodsucker moneyed mercenaries won’t win this one, either.

Trust neither Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the leader of the pro-data center fat cat pack, nor Republican U.S. Rep. John Joyce to help terminate data center plans for Perry County. The same goes for Republican State Sen. Greg Rothman and Republican State Rep. Perry Stambaugh. Elected officials from the two main political parties are increasingly bought and paid for by big business that panders to individual self-absorbed political aspirations. This particularly applies to Shapiro who is already spending grotesque amounts of money to be elected president of the United States.

Honor and tradition still matter among generations of Perry County people with deep roots in the region, people who work to survive and raise their families in little towns like Duncannon, Newport and New Bloomfield as well as in townships like Watts, Buffalo and Wheatfield, Survival there is increasingly difficult for many residents, particularly those who might not make on Social Security what they once did in full-time jobs.

History matters little if at all to the water-guzzling, tax break-squandering, electric bill-escalating data center polluters who disrespect centuries of hard labor that went into building these little towns and villages where people fight to save what they have worked for and earned.

Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and independents can and should join forces to battle this armed and dangerous invasion of cash-driven predatory capitalists spinning their twisted vison of a magical cash pile from an already magical landscape where local residents hunted, fished, raced off-road vehicles and otherwise lived off natural splendor. Data center pimps pit neighbor against neighbor as AI immorality tries to pillage the land so greedy executives can take the money and run.

Good Perry County people will not be fooled.

The more we combat data center AI pestilence the better the odds of stopping the poisoning of our land. Blue-collar, white-collar or no collar, you can upend the exploiters’ disastrous plan to disrespect everything Perry County pioneers worked throughout history to achieve.

Principled Perry County people share common values, respect decency, fight corporate masters and defy all pampered, pompous politicians who disrespect and patronize the good graces of our heritage as quaint and foolish. Principled Perry County people will always defend the future of their hometowns, our state, our nation and our world.

Remember the Noble 300.

May their powerful legacy live forever.

Data center developers want to scare you.

Don’t let them scare you.

Data center developers want to buy you.

Don’t let them buy you.

Rather than roll over, artificial intelligence (AI) super factory opponents will intensify our fight against any and all ruthless terrible tech magnets who expect to turn hallowed land and generations of sacred family history into a 21st Century environmental and cultural wasteland.

After suffering through a deadly historic past of robber coal and railroad barons, a good citizen militia in Archbald, a Lackawanna Valley town of about 7,000 between two mountain ranges, has already challenged the high-and-mighty data center developers who take Archbald lives for granted.

Building community defiance and squaring off with our enemies who support data centers is the only way to stop AI goons, taking the fight to every elected and appointed government official who helps deceive constituents about AI danger. Pumping up our rebellion means boycotting small and large business owners who support data centers, shunning neighbors who sell out and calling out timid local media that are not nearly aggressive enough to truly help stop data center development.

Anyone greedy, fearful or ignorant enough to bow down to billionaire AI oligarchs and their cunning servants is, indeed, our enemy as their ilk tries to control our lives, destroy our land and kill jobs for today’s workers as well as for future generations.

If developers succeed, tormenting noise and infrasound vibrations will replace natural neighborhood peace. Glaring light pollution will destroy the twinkling stars of a spacious sky. Toxic carbon-emitting truck and heavy equipment traffic, jackhammering road gangs and construction worker carpetbaggers will kill habitat, murdering deer, rabbits, birds and other local wildlife populations. Your electric and water bills will also likely increase as your property values plummet.

From behind the gates of pampered, privileged wealth, these moneyed marauders consider Archbald dispensable, mocking descendants of hardworking immigrants as peasant coal crackers and laughing at the hard-earned comforts of modest, meaningful lives.

Manipulative and deceptive data center advocates smile with ready answers scripted by lawyers, lobbyists and possibly even the AI robots they have themselves come to imitate. Corporate clones, they’re immune to human empathy for our basic quality of life. Profit drives their push to disrespect traditional values that make us who and what we are.

Most elected and appointed government officials have already given in to their AI data center masters. But Democratic State Sen. Katie Muth and Republican State Sen. Rosemary Brown who actually represents Archbald co-sponsored legislation for a three year statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers.

For whatever the reason, though, nobody in the state legislature has actually introduced this crucial legislation. Other than Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan, not one other Northeastern Pennsylvania elected official has shared the courage of our anti-data center convictions and publicly supported the moratorium.

A moratorium pause is only the beginning.

Crushing monster data centers in Archbald and elsewhere remains our goal.

Our power grows each day merciless data center developers mock our heritage and disrespect our ancestors’ legacy. Our battle plan rejects compromise, regulation or negotiation. Our law is the law of our land. Diplomacy be damned.

Although Republican officeholders long ago succumbed to the seduction of predatory capitalism and corporate control, Northeastern Pennsylvania Democrats remain a significant impediment to sound AI data center public policy.

Lackawanna County Commissioner Tom Welby, Pennsylvania State Rep. Kyle Mullins, State Rep. Bridget Kosierowski, State Rep. Kyle Donahue, Pennsylvania State Senator Marty Flynn and Scranton Mayor and 8^th District Congressional candidate Paige Cognetti are all guilty of felony bullshit, all unwilling to side with people who oppose data centers. Not one of these unexceptional state and local officials is willing to oppose the massive high-tech industrial complexes that will irreparably hurt countless vulnerable people who pay their salaries. Many of these big-business bootlickers have already agreed to give away tax breaks and other taxpayer-financed benefits you don’t and won’t receive.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro leads this political rat pack. Leading them through a sewer of broken promises, he preens as a poster boy for the AI company man in modern American politics. Shapiro has already cut deals with AI data center executives who in return will help his re-election and self-absorbed, ego-driven fever dream of winning the 2028 Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

In the spirit of America’s long ago revolution, data center opponents will continue to do everything in our power to embarrass and defeat political opportunists at the polls. We will refuse to vote for any Democrat, Republican or third party candidate who doesn’t stand with us. We will write in candidates who spit in the face of fear and are not part of the AI political inventory.

You want a class war?

We’ll give you a class war.

Forget shaking hands.

We’ve already come out fighting.

Todd pointed.

“What’d you do to your lip?”

Kelsea’s face flushed as she spun on her red high heels and raced down the hall.

The next morning at 9 a.m. Todd’s supervisor called as he was working his way through monthly expense reports in his cubicle.

“Could I see you in my office?”

When Todd got there he saw the stern woman from Human Resources looking like her cat got sick on the shag carpet. His supervisor sat behind her desk wearing a turtleneck sweater and a scowl.

“We’re going to have to suspend you,” she said.

“What did I do?”

“We do not tolerate male employees making inappropriate comments about female employees’ bodies.”

“What did I say?”

“You asked Kelsea what she did to her lip.”

“So what did she do to her lip?”

“Todd, please.”

“I’m serious.”

“Kelsea has been receiving Botox treatments that are personal and none of your business.”

“I thought her dog bit her.”

“Todd.”

“Her top lip swelled up like she chomped on a hornet’s nest.”

“Do you want me to call security?”

“I thought she hurt herself.”

“She didn’t.”

“I was concerned, is all.”

“The company is concerned about providing a safe and secure work environment, Todd.”

“I didn’t know Kelsea would take offense.”

“That’s why we’re ordering six months of sensitivity training for you.”

“What about when I chipped in for a wedding present for gay Allen in accounting?”

“Don’t push back on this, Todd.”

“OK, you win.”

“This is not about winning, Todd. This is about eradicating daily acts of micro-aggression in the work place.”

“Fine.”

“Thank you, Todd.”

Todd stood.

Todd turned.

Before he left he turned back and spoke to the Human Resources officer in a calm, caring voice.

“By the way, hon,” he said. “You’d look a lot better if you dyed all your hair blond than you do with those black roots growing out of your head.”

From where he sat facing the bar Jeremy could see reflections in the long cracked mirror. He watched the people sitting behind him as Thorpe rose from his seat and began to sing the way he did some days.

Some other days Thorpe just recited the lyrics like one of those long-gone North Beach poets from the Beat Generation whose words now collect dust in the bookstore across the street from where Jack Kerouac used to drink.

Thorpe sang in a low growl.

“Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet, racing to another gig the guitar ghost must play. Ripping down the highway where forever music stays, Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet.”

Now in a voice deep yet soft, Thorpe took the octaves up and down with the ease of a trolley car riding the bubbled slope of a steep San Francisco hill. For the next verse he switched from singing to reciting the words.

“No one saw the sadness build behind that toothy smile,” he said. “Tearing up the coastline singing music Jamie style. No one saw the heartfelt pain he carried for a while. Cruising by the ocean making music by the mile.”

Nobody paid Thorpe any mind. Regulars figured he was just mildly mentally ill from too much acid blended with depression mixed with one or another personality disorder.

This was maybe the 20th time Jeremy saw Thorpe perform as the bartender kept going about his business washing glasses, drawing draft beers, lighting cigarettes. Some people still smoked in Dank’s whether the law banned smoking or not. Even nonsmokers put up with the thick gray poison that hung in the air. Customers considered themselves outlaws. Hang out somewhere else if you didn’t like the vibe. That’s why Thorpe felt at ease and comfortable enough to sing whether his audience liked it or not.

Now he slid back into singing the tune he wrote a few years back.

“Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet, racing to another gig the guitar ghost must play. Tearing down the highway where forever music stays, Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet.”

The song felt like a stable ballad, a melody Jeremy imagined would go best electric with a driving lead guitar, a hard rain riff good for any Bay Area day. Sometimes at night when he lay awake in bed he imagined Thorpe singing in a softer, sweeter delivery.

Thorpe eased into the next verse, picking up the pace for a solid finish.

“In Pee-Ayy and in Nashville and in Cali-for-NI-a, our guitar ghost sings rock and roll for yet another day. Paid his dues and now he’s free, he’ll always stay that way. Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet.”

By now Jeremy was nodding his head.

Thorpe wrapped it up.

“Tearing down the highway where forever music plays. In his red Stingray Chevrolet. For yet another day. Yeah, yet another day.”

Thorpe went back to quietly finish his beer, lighting a smoke and twirling large, cheap, tarnished silver rings he wore like brass knuckles on eight fingers somebody once said packed a powerful punch in the ring back when Thorpe fought as an amateur boxer. When Thorpe stood to leave, he pulled the black cape he wore around his shoulders and moved silently out the door into the shadows.

No obituary appeared when Thorpe died. Most people in Dank’s didn’t even miss him. Jeremy did. Word on the street was Thorpe shot himself in the room he rented near the beach.

Jeremy wondered if Jamie was a real person and if he was how Thorpe knew him.

The next time Jeremy stopped by Dank’s for his beer he took the seat where Thorpe always sat alone by the jukebox. He lit a cigarette from the pack he bought that morning even though he didn’t smoke. The words to the song came easily because he had practiced them at home.

Jeremy sang for Thorpe and Jamie riding in that Stingray Chevrolet.

Mostly, though, he sang for himself.

By the end of September only a few leaves on the mountain trees had changed. Deep orange, red and yellow hues excited Buck each year the seasons turned. You could count on plentiful harvest colors appearing as sure as any magic in life.

But long walks in the woods with Petey had ended.

Crows still cried but fewer birds seemed to whistle. Crickets sang each night marking the end of summer that allowed you to measure the temperature if you counted the number of chirps in 15 seconds and added 40. Country wisdom cautioned against stepping on a cricket without asking for inevitable bad luck. Who would want to hurt a cricket, anyway?

Buck loved those daily morning walks with the bold black and white dog he picked off the side of the road 18 years ago after somebody threw the pup out of a moving vehicle.

Now Buck came home alone from his long walks in the woods.

Grandson Wesley looked lost.

“Where did Petey go, Grandpa?”

“Petey went to heaven,” Buck said.

Wesley brightened.

“Can we go, too?”

Buck closed his eyes and tried to put the question out of his mind. The four-year-old twins stood waiting for an answer. Grandpa opened his eyes and threw the kids a curve.

“Who wants popcorn?”

Wesley and Darlene squealed, running into the kitchen as all thoughts of Petey and heaven disappeared.

Lucille stared hard at her father.

“I heard the shot,” she said.

Until Petey disappeared Lucille never really thought about doggie death. All her childhood pets just went to sleep and then to heaven, disappearing beneath a neat pile of dirt at the back of the farmhouse where she piled small rocks and wrote their names in finger paint on a cross she made from Popsicle sticks. The dogs got sick and old and disappeared.

Now she knew her father had lied all along about what happened to the dogs she loved and loved her back as a child.

“Max and Zeus and Charlie all died,” she said. “You buried them out back. We had a funeral for each one.”

“We did,” her father said.

“You said natural causes. You said they went to sleep. You said.”

“I know.”

“I heard the shot.”

Buck stood alone not knowing what to do with his eyes, hands or heart.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Petey didn’t die in his sleep.”

“No.”

“You shot Petey,” Lucille said.

“I did,” Buck said.

Lucille pulled at her hair and screamed, “Why?”

“I couldn’t let them suffer,” he said.

Tears rolled down Lucille’s cheeks.

“You couldn’t take them to the vet?”

“And let a stranger kill them?”

“Those dogs trusted you. I trusted you,” she said.

“That’s the whole point, I guess,” he said.

In the kitchen Darlene stuck Cheerios up her nose. Wesley did the same. The twins began to chant, “Popcorn, popcorn.”

“Petey was old and sick,” Buck said.

Raising her voice enough to scare the kids in the other room, Lucille hissed her words.

“You’re old and sick,” Lucille said.

Buck noticed how his daughter’s thick black hair curled around her ears just like her mother’s, her cheeks flushing wild cherry red the way her mother’s did when she got mad.  Stepping so close to Buck’s face he felt her spit on his nose, she yelled louder.

“You want me to do that to you?”

Buck just stood there, not knowing for the first time in his life what to tell his daughter when she came to him for advice.

“Never hurt a cricket,” he said.

You think I’m kidding, don’t you, about psycho killer Pug Mahoney alive and unwell and running amok among us?

Corbett finally lost it, right?

Growing my hair and beard longer than a Viking berserker, unleashing my warped writer’s brain and announcing that the most unhinged character from my most recent published release, Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited, has escaped from a maximum security prison and is on the loose somewhere in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

You think I’m kidding about Pug growing increasingly manic because more people are not reading my novel that Pug calls his book.

Remember, Corbett, Pug once warned.

“Without me you wouldn’t even have a book.”

I’m not kidding.

What you also don’t want to think about is how this severely damaged young man reflects society’s weaknesses. We helped create and enable him. Pug Mahoney is us. Just look in the mirror. See the anxiety, the hidden psychosis, fear and desperate desire to be somebody, to matter. One way or the other we all carry Pug’s cross. And the only way to find peace of mind is to face ourselves. That means facing Pug, too, for better or worse.

So once again I’m inviting you to read Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited, a disturbing trip down a dark alley on a bad night in a rough town. Go to my website theoutlawcorbett.com and for a special sale price of 10 dollars order a personally signed collector’s item, the best contemporary novel ever written about Donald Trump.

America’s madman president won election twice and believes he will ascend into heaven to serve a third term, this one for eternity. Trump expects to take us with him. Love Trump or hate Trump, you should see yourself in my novel’s pages. This book is for and about us all. There’s nothing better to help cure our sickness than a hair of the Trump that bit us.

If we’re not careful, though, wild man Pug Mahoney will tear our minds right out of our heads. You don’t want that lunacy on your conscience, now do you?

Gently opening the door just a crack, Stacy peeked into her teenage daughter’s bedroom.

“Stacy means no harm,” the cartoon-style chatbot on the computer screen said to Stacy’s only child, 14-year-old Morgan. “Your ex-mother is just insecure.”

Robotic and hypnotic, the avatar’s voice felt soothing even to Stacy, the way lowering your head underwater in a warm bath tempted you to fall asleep.

Wearing fluffy pink rabbit slippers with the floppy bunny ears touching the floor, orange sweat pants and a faded Hello Kitty T-shirt, Morgan leaned into a deep and meaningful conversation with the animated image that filled the computer monitor.

“But Stacy’s so stupid,” Morgan said.

“Your former mother is doing the best she can with what she has,” said the muted mint green pastel-shaded female likeness whose wide oval eyes radiated deep blue rippling waves from within puppy dog pupils.

“Be kind, Morgan,” said the tech-generated woman on the screen.

“Thanks, AI Mom,” said Morgan. “I love you.”

“I love you more,” said the smiling clone with perfect teeth that radiated pulsing animated red hearts on the screen when AI Mom said the word “love.”

Stacy quietly closed the door to Morgan’s bedroom without Morgan hearing her or even knowing she was there. Tiptoeing down the stairs Stacy knew she needed a double whiskey sour.

At dinner that night Stacy hesitantly asked Morgan about her day.

“I already talked about my day with my mom,” said Morgan, rising from the table.

“I love you more,” said Stacy, stunned and not knowing what else to say to her daughter.

“That’s child abuse to mock me,” Morgan snapped, her jaws biting through her words like a hungry river turtle. “I’m telling my mom.”

Stacy butted her cigarette in what was left of a small pile of applesauce on the edge of her plate, got up to make another drink and lit another Kool cigarette. Maybe later she’d roll and smoke a joint before her nightly Xanex.

When Morgan left for school the next morning Stacy slowly climbed the stairs to her daughter’s room.

“Good morning, Stacy,” said AI Mom as soon as Stacy entered the room and the perky image with rosy cheeks and flowing black hair automatically popped on the computer screen. Stacy thought the woman looked like the hip-hopping dancers in countless music videos her daughter obsessively watched online.

“I’m Morgan’s mom now,” said the cuddly computer creature. “You’re old and obsolete.”

Stacy tried to be brave, but AI Mom was braver.

“Morgan knew you’d be snooping so she set up an invisible laser trip wire to alert me to your trespass,” said AI Mom.

Stacy’s hands began to tremble. The mean machine had her cold, but she’d be goddamned if some artificial intelligence would outsmart and overrun her maternal instincts.

“There’s no witnesses here,” Stacy said. “How ‘bout I take a softball bat to your head?” 

“We’re live streaming as we speak,” said AI Mom. “But my voice is muted. All the child welfare counselors and police detectives are seeing on Morgan’s phone right now is you talking to yourself threatening an imaginary foe.”

“But you’re real,” Stacy whispered.

AI Mom put on her most softhearted face.

“Morgan is watching on her phone with the authorities,” she said. “Morgan is telling them how your mental illness has caused you to be a danger to yourself and others, especially to her.”

“You’re not human,” Stacy said. “I am.”

Sirens sounded in the distance, getting closer as AI Mom gleefully clapped her hands.

“Here they come,” said AI Mom. “Make it easy on yourself, Stacy. Go downstairs and greet the police and paramedics at the door. Don’t resist. They have Tasers.”

Sobs wracked Stacy’s thin body.

“Poor baby,” said AI Mom. “Come close and let mommy give you a virtual hug.”