Rytius Records (Substack Edition), Ch. 19

Chapter 19. The Castle Doctrine

19. The Castle Doctrine

It is well established that there was a time and place in the olden United States when it behooved every man to walk about armed. This was, in fact, a marker of manhood, and there were those forcibly excluded from it. Those who refused this blackmail of honor were not punished except by those who would then successfully abuse them, but they were subtly scorned. This was especially the case in the western territories after the Civil War, when men from the eastern and middle western states went out ahead of their families to establish homesteads and claim their piece of the lands then offered by the United States government, should the settlers subdue it. Including the antebellum South, more than half of the country was pacified by hard men such as these, who crafted a civics of menace, and a corresponding interpersonal ethics of threat. Both are well ramified, and there are higher orders akin to chess or speaking in drum.

Henry Steinegger, General Custer’s Death Struggle: The Battle of Little Big Horn, published by the Pacific Art Co. of San Francisco, circa March 1878 (San Francisco: Lith. Britton, Rey & Co.)

It is for this reason that upon his return home that evening, Rytius showered for sobriety and descended to his basement, to collect materials for three improvised explosive devices with ballistic payloads and one, larger, with an incendiary payload. He reasoned to himself that his ancestral home was not worth much if his own brother would steal from within it that which made it important. What value was a property here in New Ark, where the prince would have it done?

The state and its laws may be arranged in such a way that the prince is authorized to act outside of the law. But this does not mean that their victims must act without benefit of the law their rulers abandon. Let them suffer a man defending his home and property. Rytius was determined that they would, and so he carefully spoon-sifted black powder into three tubes of cardboard, the first two about 6 inches long and 1 ½ inches in diameter, and the last about 8″ × 2″. He held the first cardboard tube in place at the wide mouth of a glass quart bottle as he shook in the ball bearings and wood screws and bolts and washers. He made another like that, and for the incendiary he made a gallon of sticky fire, and loaded it with the third powder tube into an ancient plastic water jug. He set the incendiary device just inside the door of the master bedroom, the first room of his shop, on the second floor, while he set the two shrapnel devices inside the front door of the house, and just inside the backyard entrance to the kitchen. He set tripwires to trigger their electric fuses, but he left the circuits open, because he needed a good night’s sleep, and he didn’t want to worry about whether he would remember that he planted bombs throughout his home in the morning. One never knows exactly what to expect from a hangover.