Called to Arms Again: A Tribute to the Greatest Generation

by J. L. Salter

  “Hey, you cops gotta get us out of here. I demand police protection.” Dante watched too much television. “These old buzzards tried to kill us!”

  “Maybe we ought to turn ‘em loose on you.” The officer winked to a colleague. “Teach you a good lesson.”

  Ellie walked by at that moment. “Yeah. Don’t mess with no seniors.”

  In the meantime a huge wrecker had arrived and already cleared the trailer of the ditched eighteen-wheeler so other vehicles could get by. Trooper Means drove his cruiser back to Placid Lane and parked not far from the bulldozer and Herb’s goat truck.

  Somewhat out of breath, Means again reached the barricade and Herve tried to get his attention. “Hey, big guy cop. Listen a second, man. We was just… it was self-defense. We was just walking up this road here and they started shooting at us!”

  “Uh huh. Well, which one of those desperados took the first shot?” Means pictured Bernie leaning on his walker with the enormous ancient shotgun, Chet with the rusty bayonet on his M-1, plus Kelly and others with garden tools. “So who did the first shooting?”

  Herve pointed to Earl, who was crouched at his big Cadillac already trying to count all the bullet holes. The sprayer-wand was on the ground beside him, still linked to the garden hose.

  “That grandpa didn’t even have a gun, punk.”

  “But he shot me, man. Right in the face!” Herve pointed as though someone might not understand his reference.

  “You want a paramedic? I don’t see any wounds.”

  “He sprayed me, man!”

  Means chuckled slightly. “You’re squalling about an old man with a garden sprayer?”

  “But it was pee, man!”

  Means called over the Somerset police sergeant who was ranking officer on scene. “Say, Rodney, y’all got any ordinance about peeing on a perpetrator inside the city limits?”

  “Huh?” Sergeant Rodney looked where Fred Lee pointed — at Earl and his sprayer. “If all he did was spray urine on you, consider yourself lucky. One of the other defenders just told me when they ran out of live ammo they would’ve started shootin’ ten penny nails.”

  Herve momentarily forgot about his dousing. “Nails? Hey, man, who are these people?”

  “Shooting nails?” Means shook his head. “I think that’s just an urban myth.”

  Rodney replied, “No, Fred Lee. He swore that his neighbor swore that he knew somebody in ‘Nam who shot nails from a military rifle.”

  “Well, I’ve heard of stranger things. But it’d ruin the bore.” Means turned again to Herve. “Okay, punk, you hear that? You could’ve gotten a face full of nails. So shut up and wait ‘til an arresting officer Mirandizes you.”

  “Hey, man, I don’t want no Mirandizing. I’m still sore from the last time they checked me.”

  Foss was in handcuffs, but he kicked Herve angrily. “He ain’t talking about body cavities, you moron. He’s gonna read your rights.”

  “Yeah, I got rights, man.”

  “Just shut your blitzin’ mouth. Don’t say nothin’. All this baloney is just circumspectile.” Foss considered that he possessed some circumstantial legal knowledge.

  Means raised his eyebrows as he looked at the three loaded trucks, a variety of semiautomatic firearms, and scores of shell casings all over the street.

  “Hey, man, I don’t even have a gun.” Herve tried a new tack.

  “What about that one over there on the grass?” Means pointed to a pistol he had evidently missed before.

  “Never seen it, man.”

  “Well, the GPR test will settle that question.”

  “Don’t want no test, man. I just want my rights!”

  “Like I said.” Means sighed heavily. “Right now, you got a right to shut up.”

  For reasons not clear to anyone but themselves, two other policemen had segregated seven of the eight men in the flanking task forces and kept them away from the sixteen defenders stationed at the barricade. Wade somehow slipped through their net after relinquishing Pete’s army pistol rig and doing some very fast talking to the officer he knew. Mitch, Roger, Gary, and Steve were all relieved of their weapons by the other policeman standing quite near Wade’s golf cart. Both officers had lots of questions and needed time to sort out who was who.

  Joe didn’t have a weapon. Neither did the look-alike brothers, after Elmer flung away the tire iron when the sirens got closer. Or was that Ralph? The elderly siblings were released to rejoin the people at the barricade, but Joe was held with the other task force members for further questioning. No explanation why.

  After the nearby officer moved away slightly, Wade returned to his buggy and arrayed several shop towels over some of the more provocative-looking tools, equipment, inventions, and explosives.

  Means spoke with officers in both groups and managed to convince them that he would safely take all the defenders’ firearms into his personal custody. The policemen were quite reluctant at first, but when Means explained the rigid federal inventory requirements for vintage Garands assigned to American Legion posts, the officers murmured, nodded, and let the big trooper sign for everything taken from the defenders. Sergeant Rodney, who was busy diagramming the barricade for his report, gave his okay.

  The Somerset police kept the gangsters’ weapons, of course. It was a nice haul and would make an eye-catching photo for the paper: three AK-47s, one Uzi knock-off made in Taiwan, and several 9 mm pistols. Missing from that inventory were the 10 mm and .380 liberated by Gary and Steve respectively. Since those two had ended up in the pile of defenders’ weapons, they went along with Trooper Means.

  Elmer and Ralph helped Means load all the defenders’ firearms, plus Ellie’s bat and Wade’s air horn, into the trunk of his cruiser farther up the hill. It took two trips. Then they collected the garden tools and Earl’s sprayer and left them at Pete’s garage.

  Bernie’s watch never resurfaced.

  The newly arrived emergency medical team checked, cleaned, and re-bandaged Melvin’s toe and gave him a tetanus shot. They cleaned the ricochet gouge below Kelly’s collar bone and applied an over-sized Band-Aid. EMT technicians also treated the minor injuries sustained by the gangsters. An ambulance arrived shortly and parked beside the EMT vehicle. Both felons with gunshot wounds were stabilized and rushed over to the hospital’s ER at light seven. They were also under arrest, of course.

  Nobody else was going anywhere for a good while; everyone had to be questioned on the scene. As the city police began to comprehend the rather fantastic events which had actually happened, they stopped looking so harshly at the defenders. Once the complete picture emerged, law enforcement finally focused their efforts solely on the perpetrators. Immediately, Irene brought out sandwiches and iced tea for the officers while Ashley set up a card table and folding chairs in the shade between two of the duplexes.

  None of the Community residents who’d taken refuge at the central complex had returned yet. After all, the big drill was still on and everybody had to be accounted for.

  Chet saw Fred Lee walking back down the hill from his cruiser, where all the friendly firearms were now secured in his trunk. He approached to find out when and how they’d get their guns back.

  Fred Lee spoke as quietly as possible while still allowing Chet to hear. “Just wait ‘til the city police haul off the rest of those perps. I’ll record all the serial numbers and let everybody sign for theirs.”

  “You going to let Pete have all seven Garands? He’s the official custodian.”

  “I understand the process. None of these weapons can leave the armory without being properly signed out.” The trooper nodded. “No problem, Pop. You’ll get your Legion rifles. Everybody here gets their own firearms back.”

  That’s just what Chet wanted to hear, but he was puzzled. “You going to be in trouble letting us have our guns?”

  “I put them all in my name. If the investigation needs them, which I doubt, I’ll contact you.”

  The big trooper went back to
his cruiser for some paperwork.

  ****

  In the hullabaloo of disarming criminals and defenders, and trying to sort out the scarcely believable conflagration in this formerly quiet retirement neighborhood, there were still two enemy casualties who’d been practically forgotten.

  Fairly early in the conflict, runner H9 was hit by one of Wade’s Vegge-zilla oranges and had been unconscious on the ground in front of Frank’s condo. For reasons nobody could satisfactorily explain, no officer had cuffed the Hispanic runner yet. Maybe he was overlooked because he’d been dragged into the shade beneath a small tree. Or perhaps the officers saw ambulance technicians dealing with the two gunshot wounds and assumed the other prone man also went to ER. Or maybe H9 was simply forgotten, pure and simple.

  Loader H5 had been struck by numerous falling boxes — some presumably quite heavy — in the corner of Art’s garage. That white thug had also been unconscious, or so everyone thought. The police had never even seen him and none of the defenders remembered to mention him. Out of sight, out of mind.

  But H9 and H5 were apparently wilier than they appeared, for both had regained consciousness a few minutes previously and each just lay low, waiting on an opportunity to escape. Separately, they assessed the developing situation and, within a few moments of each other, got up and started running for their lives. The purple bandanas in their back pockets flapped as they scampered between the duplexes — loader H5 to the west of Art’s condo and runner H9 to the east of Frank’s.

  Shortly after settling the firearms access issue, Chet happened to be near Herb’s truck. It took the old man merely three seconds to release the rear gate’s catch, be certain he wasn’t wearing purple, and then nonchalantly step to the side. What goat?

  Billie had been waiting all afternoon for this moment.

  The two escaping thugs immediately realized their getaway was each man for himself and began to stumble across the uneven terrain of the construction area behind the north row of Placid’s duplexes.

  Anyone who’s ever flushed rabbits knows that they almost always go separate directions even if they sometimes later cross paths briefly in their attempt to scamper for safety. However, stupid gangsters with bandanas in their rear pockets tend to run in pairs once they get around the two duplexes which initially separated them. Such proximity makes it much easier for an irate goat with a perverse purple fetish to chase them down.

  Had the intense and incredibly fast goat not been in hot pursuit, perhaps Gary or Steve would have given chase. But no Marauders were needed for this patrol.

  H5’s churning legs got tangled by his extremely low-riding britches; he tripped and fell to the cratered ground where his chin hit a large rock. He must have had a glass jaw, because he was out again, though not for very long.

  The goat passed him by and went for the man still running. H9 either heard or saw the horned animal right behind him and possibly figured he could outmaneuver this barnyard banzai by zigzagging. Well, it turns out goats practically invented the zigzag. A furious, agile Billie lowered his horns and butted H9 about seven feet forward into a pile of dirt.

  There are divided opinions on whether to play dead when pursued by grizzly bears, hoop snakes, or other dangerous wildlife. But few experts have bothered to study whether frustrated, violent goats prefer their victims moving or limp. With his face in the dirt mound, H9 certainly didn’t know.

  For his part, Billie didn’t seem to hesitate — he saw purple and went after it. He reared back and butted H9’s rear end like NFL linemen smashing into a tackling dummy. If that gangster’s posterior had contained any bones, the sound of them breaking could have been heard a hundred yards away.

  The screams were pitiful, but how does one intercede with a seething goat and a stupid criminal? Negotiate? Herb, who’d been summoned in the meantime, provided minor commentary. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Billie quite that peeved before.”

  The only thing that saved the thug on the dirt mound was that H5, who’d hit the big rock, finally came to again. Then he got up to run. Due to his fogginess, however, H5 actually only staggered a bit. One could almost read the expression on the goat’s hairy face: Aw, this is way too easy. But that didn’t prevent Billie from putting forth maximum effort. He turned from H9 on the mound and speared H5, staggering a short distance away. With both felons prone and some distance apart, the irate animal seemed finally to have reached a quandary. Who gets butted next?

  Now, if goats were deep thinkers, one could imagine he was trying to figure out which direction to attack. But goats have a dull, glassy look to their eyes and it’s likely Billie just went for the gangster who was nearest. Or the first one who flinched.

  For a while Billie went back and forth, butting one, then trotting the other direction and butting the other. For their part, both gangsters had either decided to play dead, or their terror had frozen them where they were.

  The goat finally seemed to lose a bit of his enthusiasm and simply stood guard, approximately midway between the criminals.

  The city police took that opportunity to mount an effort to corral Billie. A few set out with their batons for defense and ropes for capture. Most men like a little bit of rodeo. But Billie was considerably less than cooperative.

  Sergeant Rodney asked Herb for assistance. “Can’t you call him or something?”

  “Call him? That ain’t no dadgum house pet! Barnyard goats only come when they’re hungry or want to butt you.”

  “So when’s his supper time?”

  “Goats eat all day long, but I usually put out his regular feed around sundown.”

  Rodney signaled his colleagues to come back. “Hold up, guys. This ain’t no good. Animal Control’s on the way — they can put a couple darts in him. No need one of us getting hurt trying to keep a few more bruises off these perps.”

  The three officers looked greatly relieved, because two of them had gotten close enough to see the look in Billie’s eyes. At this point it seemed the old goat didn’t much like the color of police uniforms either.

  Part Five

  Chapter Forty

  Wednesday at 2:50 p.m.

  Though fast-talking Wade had already been released and the look-alike elderly brothers were practically ignored, Pete’s creation of two task forces must have confused the SPD interrogators. One officer still questioned Mitch, Roger, and Joe, though no one understood why and nobody had explained. Gary and Steve were isolated by another officer who just watched them without any questions beyond their initial identifications. No reason provided for that ploy either, but Steve blamed Gary for running the four-way stop and borrowing his sister’s prescription pain pills.

  ****

  Standing beneath his wafting flag, Pete spotted Stanley as he walked slowly north along the barricade line, looking east toward the territory formerly occupied by enemy. The heavy bags below Stanley’s eyes looked even droopier with the dust or soot which was streaked among the liver spots on his face. Stanley was fussing with a damp section of his right trouser leg.

  “What happened down there?” Pete wondered if it was blood. “Were you hit?”

  “No. Considerably less dramatic.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “Whizzed on my own leg trying to keep my rifle trained on your hedges. My medicine keeps me close to a bathroom.”

  Pete stifled a chuckle. “So, how did it go on the south end?”

  Stanley reached into his pockets for his remaining live cartridges and held them out — three in his left hand and two in the right. “Five left, Pete. Didn’t have to fire but twice.” He shook his head. “Just shot high to brush them back from your hedges.”

  “That’s what you hope for when defending a weak position.” Pete thrust his chin out slightly. “Chase them away ‘til reinforcements arrive.”

  Stanley looked down at his ammo and shifted all the cartridges to one hand. “I was scared I’d have to take down one of those hoodlums.” His eyes got moist.

  “But y
ou didn’t.” Pete paused. “You held up your end of our line. You did good.”

  Stanley nodded and moved toward the Henley condo, holding all five rounds in his right hand like they were valuable jewels.

  ****

  Kelly watched as Wade moved Old Betsey near his trailer on the re-quieted barricade line. After she greeted her large friend and quickly checked him for missing limbs, Kelly pointed toward the distant smoldering hay bales where his homemade bombs had exploded. “Think you ought to put that out?”

  “Yikes!” He turned to Irene who was hugging her granddaughter. “How can I get water to there?” He pointed toward the smoke.

  “I saw Earl hooking some hoses to his fancy TV spray gun.” Irene probably looked down on television purchases — no senior discounts. “Would those be long enough?”

  Ellie calculated. “You’d need at least ten of them hoses.”

  Kelly tapped his fleshy shoulder. “There’s a big plastic barrel right here. I was crouched right next to it.”

  Wade examined it quickly. “No good. Got a big hole right down at the bottom.”

  “Well, before the wind starts a fire back there,” Kelly pointed toward the smoke, “I guess you need to patch this barrel.”

  “With what?” Wade patted his pockets from the outside.

  “Look, you got everything you need right there in yer buggy.” Ellie nudged him that direction. “Get yerself a shop towel and dry it off real good. Then grab a roll of duck tape.”

  Though apparently dubious, Wade collected those items from his golf cart, ambled back, and started drying the area around the hole. “Duck tape ain’t going to hold back no fifty-five gallons of water, Ellie.”

  Ellie looked around. “What you chewing? Tobacca?”