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unequivocally assigned to taking prayer out of public schools. But for her part, Violet feared the problem might be more complicated.
    Violet had thought a lot about the national erosion of morals and the difficulty of assessing it. First, she could admit that she and others often regretted getting old. Mourning the passing of their youth made them jealous of young people and resentful of all the things young people do. Consequently, she and other old people inclined to remember themselves in childhood not as children but as miniature adults and their parents as patron saints of irreproachable stature. They did not recollect ever stepping outside the margins and viewed willfulness in modern children as a sign of emerging pathology.
    Even when the tendency to edit memories was taken into consideration, however there still remained firm differences between the present and past. And from a moral point of view those differences could only be seen as skydiving from grace. The family, for instance, had been nearly torn apart, and as the nation was nothing but a large number of families, the nation had itself fractured. Despite rising incomes and larger homes, old people were routinely discarded into nursing homes to die from institutional cleanliness. Professionalism had replaced real compassion, and nothing made Violet angrier than families that did not act like families. Selfishness was something she could not abide.
    At sixty-six, Violet was well acquainted with duty. She had outlived two husbands, caring for both through their last gasping minutes. Later, because of the nursing skills she had acquired, it seemed appropriate for her grandmother, and then her mother, to move in with her. Still later, at the request of her father, she had moved back to Words to care for Olivia.
    That was eleven years ago, and during those years she had had plenty of opportunity to witness the nation’s calamitous decline.
    Since she had no children of her own, other people’s children remained the focus of Violet’s historical assessment. Children were the meter of change, and an indication of cultural decline could be found in the prodigious resources and effort now required to raise them. It was apparently impossible that families had ever lived in drafty houses filled to the rafters with unplanned offspring. Now, radio and television programs routinely featured experts guiding parents through the minefields of having children. Books, brochures, and videos apprised grandparents of their august responsibilities. Elementary and secondary schools, which in Violet’s youth were rickety wooden buildings in vacant fields, had mushroomed into hospital-sized compounds with squadrons of specialists skilled in interacting with another squadron of state and federal departments, lawyers, accountants, psychologists, medical consultants, testing agencies, welfare workers, and law enforcement officers. Clearly, mere living had become so complicated that these intervening bureaus were actually needed to prepare children for getting older. And to argue, as some did, that as a result of this deathless regimentation young people were now better prepared, well, it simply wasn’t true. The size of the current prison population was one of many facts militating against this wishful notion.
    The wrong people were winning. Those who were completely without morals were now in control. Decent homes were under siege and every ounce of vigilance was required to protect them.

SCHEDULED VIOLENCE
    G RAHM SHOTWELL WAS MAKING A BOMB IN THE SHED BESIDE THE barn while his wife and two children slept in the farmhouse. His dog, Gladys—curled up yet wide awake—lay on the floor next to the kerosene heater, and Boxer the family cat sat on the sill staring out of the smudged window into a barnyard lit by the blue-green light from a gibbous moon. An old tube radio crackled and spit in the corner, occasionally emitting music from The Gospel Hour. A single hooded bulb cast a cone