the Wild Conceits essay: Faire un Bernard Wayne — the one who could not jump

The cult's one taboo, named after its only violator: in le Jeu's "extensive oral history," exactly one miner's son "lost his heart and frozen, remaining on his jut as the round's train passed" — and "to perdre son coeur," to fail to jump at all, is "known also as 'Faire un Bernard Wayne,'" the name "a figure of ridicule and disgust." Not-jumping is "outside le Jeu's limit... unthinkable"; even the first to quail has at least jumped. The cult's honor-code makes cowardice the sole unforgivable act — the same all-or-nothing logic the A.F.R. carry into their politics (total return or nothing). (The surname "Wayne" for the disgrace-figure, against John Wayne of Montcerf, is a notable in-theme recurrence.)