Search Results: 'DeWayne Estes'

The Estes Codex

Words: 2910 · Source Novel:: Blood Tithe

DeWayne Estes, a third-generation corrections officer turned warlord, dictates the new order: theft is punished by amputation, disrespect by public flogging, and betrayal by burning. He claims this code is "old American"—a perversion of frontier justice. Mitchell, forced to serve as Estes’ scribe, transcribes the rules on torn Bible pages. He discovers Estes’ grandmother was the matron who sterilized "undesirables" in the 1930s, and his father ran a chain gang that never released a single man. The family’s cruelty is a documented disease, and Mitchell realizes he is writing his own species of damnation.