Tucked into the hills of the Great Smoky Mountains, there is—or was—a man slowly dying in a jail cell. He undergoes intermittent “interviews”—or interrogations—with a man who poses as a representative of Honey Wagon, the journal beneath whose auspices I now write this foreword. This prisoner, who is himself a writer, was once a student-ethnographer who trekked to the town of Freedom to conduct field research for his dissertation about self-segregating political communities. Adjacent to the town of Freedom is a separate borough called New Baggtown in which, before he was arrested, the student-ethnographer also worked. Somewhere in the hills above these twin municipalities trundles a movable city called Fool’s Gold, which is full of a people known colloquially as the “Gold Bones.” The student-ethnographer suspects that his college lover, who may or may not be the so-called townhall protester, joined the Gold Bones in Fool’s Gold after disappearing from her post in front of the townhall following a series of biblical plagues. The mayor of Freedom believes that the student-ethnographer has information about this protester, which is, presumably, why he had him arrested in the first place. The mayor wishes to exact vengeance upon the protester for some alleged wrongdoing involving supposed election fraud. He commands his son to extract information from the prisoner, and his son complies, thus demonstrating his familial loyalty. The mayor has long been publicizing a “big announcement,” and his son anticipates that he himself will soon be named successor to the shadowy family business. Ultimately, however, the announcement has nothing to do with the nepotistic transfer of capital and power. It refers, instead, to the mayor’s launching of his own national election campaign. These are a few of the so-called facts of the manuscript that Honey Wagon received in the mail, by way of one Shibboleth Scratch, a little more than one year ago.