Capturing the Crumbleys

How it went down

Twitter.

[The basement of the Beltline Building in Detroit, a renovated industrial space suitable for a gallery or a coffee bar, but presently disused and empty. Sitting on crates are JAMES CRUMBLEY and JENNIFER CRUMBLEY, parents of the latest school shooter. JENNIFER wears a sweatshirt and jeans, JAMES a plaid button-down, thermal undershirt and jeans. Their only illumination is from the iPad into which they are gazing and face-timing with TUCKER CARLSON.]

JENNIFER: We’re as good as over the border. You want me to hold the iPad up to the window? You can see the Detroit River from here.

JAMES: No! We gotta keep the windows covered!

JENNIFER: It’ll take weeks for them to extradite us and you’ll have a full exclusive. Total exclusive.

CARLSON: I’ll admit it’s got news value but I gotta say, folks, unless there’s something in your story our viewers can relate to, this is just a crime story and you’re just criminals.

JENNIFER: Tucker, this is maybe the biggest Second Amendment case in history. We’re being railroaded because we defended our Second Amendment rights!

JAMES: It’s a travesty. We haven’t done anything.  

JENNIFER: Tucker, listen, Ethan’s our son and we love him, but whatever he did or didn’t do —

JAMES: And it could be a false flag, you never know —

JENNIFER: — whatever happened, Tucker, we just did what any good American Constitutional parents would do: We raised our boy to respect free speech and we raised him to respect the right to bear arms.

JAMES: And that’s what they’re after us for! That’s really all it is!

CARLSON: OK. Well, but from what I understand your son Ethan took the gun that you gave him and shot and killed four of —

JAMES: From what you understand, Tucker! From what you understand! But what really happened?

JENNIFER: Who knows what really happened? We don’t know what really happened.

JAMES: No! No one — did we see dead bodies? No!

JENNIFER: Have you seen the dead bodies, Tucker? Have you? Tell the truth now!

JAMES: Tucker! You’re not the Deep State, you’re not fake news, you know better than to just take their word. Don’t let us down!

JENNIFER: And again, I have to stress this, whatever happened, we simply raised our boy to express his First Amendment rights, like those drawings he did —

JAMES: Concept drawings for a video game. It’s his dream, really.

JENNIFER: Not only free expression of his First Amendment free speech but commercial speech! I.P., intellectual property!

JAMES: What this country’s all about.

JENNIFER: That’s how we raised him. To be a thinker. An independent thinker.

JAMES: A designer, a creator.

JENNIFER: Hence his interest in the Sig Sauer. Tucker, you’re a hunter, you know what a beautifully engineered piece of ordnance that is.

CARLSON: I mainly use long guns myself, but yes, I do get the idea.

JENNIFER: And Tucker, Tucker, you have no idea how our child was taunted and bullied in that school!

JAMES: Yes.

JENNIFER: And you know what it was about, don’t you?

JAMES: What it’s always about.

JENNIFER: Critical race theory,

JAMES: Right? Twenty percent of that school is African American.

JENNIFER: They pander.

JAMES: You should see the books they have.

JENNIFER: The gays, the trans, the blacks, it’s all for them now.

JAMES: We have been replaced.

JENNIFER: Imagine our boy, practically the only white boy in his class, how he felt every day he in was there.

JAMES: I’m not saying he did it, but if he did, is it any wonder?

CARLSON: I agree it’s a problem.

JENNIFER: OK! So now Tucker, let’s add it up. The authorities say our boy did this thing.

JAMES: Which we don’t know.

JENNIFER: No proof.

JAMES: Haven’t seen him or talked to him.

JENNIFER: No.

JAMES: Where are the bodies? Where’s the proof?

JENNIFER: They arrest him, then they try to arrest us.

JAMES: For what?

JENNIFER: For what?

JAMES: For raising him the way your viewers would.

JENNIFER: For raising him the way you would!

JAMES: It’s so obvious what they’re doing. It’s a plot.

JENNIFER: Deep State.

JAMES: False flag. Critical race theory.

JENNIFER: Tucker, you know your viewers will understand. They understood Kyle Rittenhouse. They understood the Deep State fake Capitol Riot. Or they did once you explained it. They’ll understand this!

[Clattering, footsteps in the hall. JENNIFER gasps, tries to shade the iPad to make the light less obvious.]

JAMES: [Urgent whisper] Tucker, you rat! You rat! You ratted us out!

CARLSON: Never leave money on the table, kids.

[CARLSON ends the FaceTime. There’s a blow on the door and it flies open, revealing U.S. Marshalls, backlit, with guns drawn. BLACKOUT.]