With just one chapter left in this race, Jonas is mere miles behind the horse. Will he keep his legs?
Well, yeah. It’s a story, and stories often have predictably happy endings. But the end of the race won’t be the end of the story as a whole; I think Alphonse needs a reckoning.
So here’s the plan: Alphonse’s media scrutiny will prompt a criminal trial and we’ll learn more about the Bronson-family’s finances. Alphonse will flee prosecution by holing up in his estate, attending his own trial by video-conference. Jonas, Whitney, Kevin, Hermes, and Sandra will have to combat Alphonse’s silver tongue before he manages to go the way of his grandfather and brush his dirty deeds under the rug.
Craig will initiate the end of his plan: he’s got Alphonse’s ten-thousand-dollar toothpick with a complete audio-recording of the race up to mile 75-ish, demonstrating the depth of Alphonse’s depravity. Alphonse is at Craig’s mercy and doesn’t even know it yet. We’ll see what Craig demands from him.
Man VS Horse doesn’t just relate to Jonas VS Champ. Superiority and social-structure are integral to this story. Is Alphonse a ‘man,’ who decides his own destiny, or is he a ‘horse,’ slave to impulse? Craig flies Alphonse’s helicopter—chauffeuring him, like a horse—but if Craig makes off with the Bronson fortune, then he was actually pretending to be a horse on his way to greatness, and Alphonse was a horse pretending to be a man.
Alphonse oversimplifies society, dividing people into ‘men,’ like him, and ‘horses,’ like Jonas, who are means to an end for men. But truthfully, there is no such division, and Alphonse’s delusions only harm himself and everyone around him.
Father Bronson was evil. I mean, he ground horses into glue and shot Georgie Masawa! But he was a subtler evil. He didn’t have a hundredth of the media-attention Alphonse will attract. I won’t say “a certain amount of evil is okay,” but at least Father Bronson controlled his evil, instead of being controlled by it. Maybe this fictional world would be better-off if bad-guys were all like Father Bronson, not Alphonse or his grand-dad.
Or maybe their world is better off with obvious evil, like Alphonse? At least now they know where to look.
Next time, let’s watch Jonas win his legs.
Last 10 Miles
Table of Contents
Ted Writes 