How It All Goes Down
- It's October 12, 1990, and our narrator's twin brother Thomas enters the library in Three Rivers, Connecticut, and makes a "sacrifice." Is he finally paying the fee for all his overdue books?
- It's a Monday. Yesterday, our narrator checked Thomas out of the state hospital, where he seems to live, and took him out to eat at Friendly's; their waitress, Kristin, seems to live up to the restaurant's name.
- A month later (no, we still don't know what happened yet) the librarian who called 9-1-1 (those must have been really high late fees) comes to our narrator's house to make sure he doesn't hold her responsible for what happened.
- He doesn't.
- She has him put it in writing so she doesn't get sued later.
- Finally, our narrator tells us what happened: Thomas went into the library, took out a knife, and sliced his hand off. We've heard of charging an arm and a leg, but that's extreme.
- Dominick, our narrator, goes to the hospital, where Thomas refuses to have his hand sewn back on. "I'll just rip it off again" (1.31), he says.
- He says that it wasn't a suicide attempt—he wanted to make a public statement to wake up America, as though chopping off his own hand will put an end to Desert Shield.