The Dunlaps had history in town. Colonel Dunlap had been mayor for ten years, after all, and mustered the militia for another five. But nobody cared to remember that anymore, not since the nouveau-riche Belles and Barnetts had moved in and taken over. Jasper Dunlap was particularly bitter about their lack of history in the area; the Belles had arrived in 1904 and the Bennetts in 1921, while there had been a Dunlap in the area since 1827. The others in Jasper’s extended family seemed resigned to their lot as middling cogs in the system, but not Jasper. Even as he worked his day job as an insurance clerk, Jasper was consumed by bile and always laying schemes to bring his family kicking and screaming to the top of the heap once more. His daydreams sometimes had the Belles and Bennetts dragged down, sometimes only had the Dunlaps lifted up, but they were all magical thinking. Deep down, perhaps, Jasper knew that–but if daydreams of former and future glory were all he had to set himself apart from the nobodies he worked with, he’d take it, happily.

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