In my new novel, The Insurrectionist, a plucky FBI frogman drowns in a rural pond during a raid on a family who protested (peacefully) during the Capitol Hill riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Read about the national day of mourning that follows.
The media frenzy peaked with the funeral of Frogman Jones. A blond female-presenting announcer with CBS’ Inside Edition began her coverage, “A sendoff for a hero, as FBI Frogman Jericho Jones was honored today at the citadel of democracy he died defending.” The viewing in the Capitol Rotunda drew a milelong line of mourners snaking through the streets. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, and President Biden knelt before a sarcophagus modeled after Lorenzo de Medici’s in Florence (draped in reclining marble nudes representing Twilight and Dawn, with Jones, wearing a Roman helmet with the visor up, gazing down on them).
An FBI honor guard, stepping solemnly in their shiny black shoes, laid out Jones’ scuba mask and flippers on the coffin. The memorial service in National Cathedral, carried live worldwide, featured eulogies by Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and the president, who introduced Harris as his boss in a speech the press hailed as the greatest oration since Washington’s Farewell Address. Plucky newsman Anderson Cooper, who had survived January 6—barely—wept for the nation on live TV.
[Get The Insurrectionist novel here]
A vote in Congress to entomb Jones under the Capitol dome failed due to Republican racism and intransigence, a stance that was denounced on op-ed pages throughout the homeland, including the Chicago Bullet’s. In the end, Arlington Cemetery was chosen as the final resting place for the martyred hero.
Afterward, Jones’ colleagues mounted his FBI-issue kayak on an armored carrier and paraded it around Washington. Unfortunately, young thugs took advantage of an ill-timed red light to carjack the vehicle, and the kayak was never recovered. Congress appropriated funds to erect a bronze of Jones on the Capitol grounds, “at a height no less than that of Michelangelo’s David in Florence (seventeen feet or 5.17 meters),” the bill stated. It would be paired with a bronze January 6 monument: a tableau of Capitol Police personnel—hero-victims of the most violent day in human history since Nebuchadnezzar’s sack of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.—who were to be falling back and sobbing into their hands before a mob of portly grandmothers and veterans in baseball caps waving bottles of bear spray and metal flags engraved with the word TRUMP. In his bronze wetsuit and flippers, Jones resembled a Rodin-inspired JeanClaude the Frog. He stood on one leg, his severed left foot lying separately on the plinth. A plaque memorialized the diver:
JERICHO BALAAM JONES
he/him
1990-2021
Frogman. G-Man. Man for All Seasons.
Fallen in the Line of Duty
for his Country.
Ride the orcas, wrestle the sea lions.
Just weeks after the monument went up, thieves stole the brass rifle the bronze frogman hefted, leaving his empty hands forming twin OK signs. At the request of the Senate Majority Leader, Jones’ offending gestures were cut off with a welding torch, leaving wrists that looked like twin cannons on a military robot. Passersby stuffed trash in the hollows.
The Elephant Box 