Inner ring, second rung: the DMZ periphery and the duBois ritual

texture · 4-7 Nov YDAU + standing ritual

• When: The DMZ triage is 4-5 Nov; the dumpster-clearing ritual is a standing annual practice, instanced on I-Day-Eve (7 Nov).
• What: Boone's precise position in the circle is trusted-but-not-core. When Pemulis's incredibly potent DMZ needs triaging, she is a downstream customer, not a test pilot: "there's no real reason to involve Boone or Stice or Struck or Troeltsch," the sampling being reserved to Pemulis, Axford, and Hal "before unleashing it on Boone or Troeltsch or any unwitting civilians." But she is a sometime celebrant of the group's most cherished observance: for two years "Hal and Pemulis and Struck and Troeltsch and sometimes B. Boone have made a little ritual of nipping out to the little hidden clearing behind West House's parking lot's dumpsters and sharing an obscene cigar-sized duBois before the I.-Day-Eve expedition" — the only girl named in the ritual.