Free State Of Dodge

by Javan Bonds

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  When Jackson’s eyes opened, he really wasn’t sure what time it was, but he knew he could not have slept for more than a couple of hours because of the position of the sun. After a quick glance at his bedside alarm clock on the nightstand, he noticed with pride that his guess was not far from the actual time, and he rolled onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, letting his eyes adjust and mentally rehearsing what he would say to his mother. He knew that what had happened wasn’t a dream and was surprised that shooting two people and seeing a man’s brains leaking out had not really bothered him. He saw it as necessary to save his best friend, so he would shed no tears for a few gangsters and would do the same thing over again if he had to. He rolled out of bed and walked to the bathroom, then to the door to walk to his parents’ house.

  As he suspected, his mother was already sitting on his porch in a plastic lawn chair, so he strode over to sit in a duplicate chair across from her. Before he could open his mouth to speak, she had already started with, “Oh my God! Are you all right? Is everyone else all right?” And so the motherly barrage of questions went on.

  When he was satisfied that she would take a breath and let him speak, he assured her, “I’m fine, Mama, and all the good guys made it out too.” He began his story of the morning at the point where he had been stopped by the incredibly long red light, mentioned his stop at the pawnshop and his journey to the gas station, and paused for her inevitable question.

  He could feel a hint of a smile cross his face as she asked, “What happened next?” He figured it would be best to leave out that he had shot and possibly killed two men and simply left it at “stopped them from getting to Redstone.” Seeing that this explanation would suffice and quell her queries on the definition of “stopped,” he continued. It took him a lot longer to explain it than he had planned, and he knew he would have to repeat the entire story to his father and a dozen more times to other people, so he would be able to work the bugs out with each telling. Jackson had not expected her to know Lacey or her parents, but she mentioned she would call Lacey’s mother when she got back to the house and promised to make a casserole for the Rices. He ended his story with a slightly humorous “and now I’m sitting here, talking to you.”

  Without preamble his mother excitedly said, “I talked to Janet, and she said Hollis is okay—he is talking to the police, and they will probably send him home.” Jackson knew she would have been on the phone with his aunt Janet all morning and was glad to hear his cousin was safe. As he looked to her to ask why he was coming home, she answered his unspoken question: “Because they shot Senator Jefferson.” Jackson knew it was the senator from Alabama whom Hollis had been assisting.

  He asked his mother with genuine curiosity, “How many people died?” He knew from the footage on the news that the gunmen had not been in the chamber very long and had not had enough time to get many shots off. But there had been a lot of people in that room, and he almost cringed at the thought of how many people they could’ve taken out.

  He worried the numbers had jumped, as his mother seemed to count silently and quietly mouthed the word “six.”

  Jackson dropped his head at this fact. There was no reason for this loss of life; these people should have been stopped. The government should have known about this—or maybe they did know and let it happen. He almost cursed as he realized that, as usual, his father’s rants made sense and were starting to seep into his brain. He knew it was possible; he just didn’t want to believe it. Coming out of his thoughts, he shifted in his chair to get his mother’s attention before she could speak again, and he questioned, as if waking from a bad dream, “Did you talk to Daddy?”

  As if he had not just told her he had gotten shot at, she nonchalantly said, “Yeah, he’s got all kinds of crazy ideas about it already.” Over the years she had learned to take some of Jackson’s father’s conspiracy theories with a grain of salt, and, as though just remembering Jackson’s earlier story, she shouted, “Oh! I told him a little about what happened with you, and he said he would be home early today.”

  She didn’t mention that Jeff had heard any of the shots, so Jackson figured if anything had been heard at the pawnshop, his father wanted to ask him about it personally. Jackson stood and nodded, obviously signaling he had nothing else to contribute to this conversation, and his mother understood and rose to hug him. As she took the few steps down to the grass, she mentioned a few more people she would call and told Jackson to “call if you need anything.” As Denise passed the corner of the house, making her way to her own, Jackson opened the screen door and was hit with the chilled air from inside his air-conditioned house.

  When the doors shut behind him, he decided to catch up on the news and walked over to fall into his recliner. He lifted the remote from the adjacent coffee table, turned the TV on, and scanned through the news channels, waiting to see something interesting. “White supremacist grou—”; “several automatic firearms discove—”; and “members of the Missouri Free Militia and—” were a few of the clips he caught as he flipped through the channels. As he came to and was ready to pass CNN, his thumb floated above the button on the remote as an “expert” babbled about “these fallen heroes,” and the screen produced a list of all six of the victims who died that day and were defenders of the Second Amendment. But Jackson began thinking, after reading “Senator William Jefferson, AL” (the senator Hollis had worked with), that it sure was convenient that all of these guys were defenders of the Second Amendment; his father’s theory of the government having prior knowledge of the attack was getting easier to believe every time he turned around.

  Maybe it was just a coincidence that most of them were conservatives and even more of a coincidence that they were all well-known and outspoken defenders of gun rights. The way things are going with the economy and everything else, it ain’t gonna make a damn bit of difference, Jackson thought.

  “The stock market is rising while the country falls down around it,” went a line from one of Old Ben’s speeches, and Jackson could see from the ticker on CNBC that even this strategy wasn’t making too much of an impact today. Things seemed to be going in a downward spiral.

  While he was arguing with himself, he could hear a faint ringing he instantly recognized as his phone, which was still charging on his nightstand. He cursed himself for always forgetting it and sincerely planned to keep it on himself after everything that had happened today. He sprinted across the house and picked his phone up just as it reached the halfway point of the ringtone. His eyes scanned the caller ID, and he recognized the number as the Dodge police station. He flipped his phone open and answered with, “Yeah, man?”

  A familiar voice answered with a question: “Who’s this?”

  “Redstone, you called me.”

  Redstone tried to make a joke out of everything, and even though Jackson knew where this would lead, he just wanted to get the day over with.

  “You ain’t Redstone. I’m Redstone.”

  Before he could get another word in, Jackson interrupted with a pleading “what do you want, man? I’m tired.”

  There was a long pause and an audible sound of inhaling and exhaling. Redstone, acting as if this phone call was the most stressful part of his day, then said with a frustrated edge to his voice, “You should always identify yourself on the phone.” Seemingly hearing Jackson’s eyebrows raise, he finished the sentence: “Regardless of whether you’re answering or calling. Anyway, I’m calling to inform you that your presence is required at the Dodge Town Hall at four p.m.”

  Smiling in spite of himself, Jackson saw the opportunity to be a smartass and said, on the brink of laughter, “You should come pick me up. I don’t want to drive.”

  Redstone grinned but tried to maintain a stern voice. “If I have to come get you, you will be riding handcuffed, so it’s your decision.”

  Jackson’s smile began to fade, as he knew his friend would not arrest him. But he frowned as he visualized the option and sa
id more seriously, “OK, man, I’ll be up there shortly.”

  As always, Redstone could not keep in character long and ended the call with a casual “all right, then. We’ll see ya in a little bit.”

  Jackson had always heard that survivors of a battle suffered from post-traumatic stress. Lacey obviously did, but he didn’t think he was suffering from it, and that attempted robbery hadn’t been much of a battle. Maybe if he was positive he had actually killed a man, he would be in the same boat as her, but he really hoped he would be able to handle it if he had to do it to save himself or his family.

  He realized he was still standing beside his bed, holding his open phone, and he made sure to unplug it and drop it in his shirt pocket. Four o’clock would be there sooner than he wanted, so he might as well start getting ready. Placing his camouflage cap as straight as possible on his lopsided head, he turned to leave his room to lock the front door, flipped off all of the lights, and made his way down to the garage. When his boots hit the cold cement floor, he remembered the small .38 on his ankle, decided it would be best left in the vault, and made his way over to the opposite wall. After leaving his holstered pistol on the workbench in the room and before exiting, he debated with himself on whether to leave his new carbine in his truck, where it rested, or to place it in his vault and figured it would be best to take it with him to the police station. He felt he would rather have the gun on hand if they wanted to confiscate it than have them come to his house later and possibly discover his war room.

  He locked the door, placed all the camouflage over it, and then walked to his truck to empty the magazine of the carbine. Not seeing a problem with being a few minutes early, he placed the nine-millimeter shells in an empty drawer in the tool cabinet on the wall and flipped the switch to open the heavy garage door. Deciding everything was in order, he hefted himself into his truck to make his second trip of the day to Dodge.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, and before his truck had even made it out of the garage, he remembered he had forgotten to call Mama and let her know he was leaving. He pulled his remembered cell phone out of his pocket, opened it, and speed-dialed her. “Hey, I gotta go up to Dodge and talk to the cops about what happened at the Texaco…Yeah, it shouldn’t take long, and I’ll call you on the way back…No, don’t worry about it…Love you too.”

  Jackson smiled as he closed the phone and replaced it in his pocket. That had probably been one of the shortest conversations he had ever had with his mother. He had a few minutes to psych himself up now, trying not to visualize being strapped into a chair in an interrogation room illuminated by only one heat lamp in his eyes. He was wondering if leaving his pistol at home was such a good idea, but he didn’t plan on having a shootout with the ABI or ATF today. That would be next week’s episode.

  CHAPTER 5

  July 5

  JACKSON MADE HIS way to the road and opened and closed the gate. He was so accustomed to locking up that he had not even realized it was done until he was once again in his truck. He checked the time as his tires bumped onto the baking asphalt and noticed he had twenty minutes before his appointment—plenty of time.

  Looking ahead he could recall his childhood and how he had always found it entertaining to watch an oncoming car through the haze covering the road during almost every day of summer. The haze dissipated as he crossed over the concrete bridge, again bringing his thoughts to his father and the map on the wall of the bunker and how the town of Dodge was basically surrounded by bridges. Every one of them could be blocked to prevent vehicles from entering the area. Jeff always spoke as if this plan would be needed in the near future, and Jackson understood that this strategy might be useful when everything finally went to shit. The police force, military, emergency services—no government entity would be able to keep order after everything fell apart; they kept order now only because they were paid. It would be kept by people trying to protect their families, their community, their property, their livelihoods. There would not be as much pillaging and plundering in small, close-knit towns, such as Dodge, as there would be in larger cities, such as Birmingham and Huntsville. Jeff was going to make sure that “people from there don’t come here to ransack Dodge.” In the past few years, Jeff had changed it from “if” it’s going to happen to “when,” and Jackson knew his father would be ready for what was coming. It was good luck that they were mostly surrounded by bridges, and the Pikes were prepared to defend their home. If the need arose, there was a bridge on every road coming to the Pike property that could be blocked if an even smaller perimeter needed to be created.

  While he was mulling all of this over, he mechanically took all of the twists and turns to be halted by the inevitably red traffic light. But this time he was in no hurry, so he relaxed and cut the engine off, saving fuel instead of wasting the valuable commodity. As he sat in perfect peace, the only sounds were birds chirping; distant dogs barking; the occasional door opening and shutting; and, even rarer, unintelligible conversations by unseen people. He realized that these noises could be miles away because of the way sound carried, and the fact that he could not hear a single vehicle was eerie. Though he was trying to push thoughts of the events of the gas station out of his mind, he could not help but think there would be people who could not afford to travel and would not feel bad about taking someone else’s vehicle or fuel. He was glad he could easily keep his own vehicle out of sight and that he and his father had placed their fuel tanks underground.

  He was so deep in thought, he didn’t even notice Redstone standing in the middle of the highway until he cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Hey, dumbass!”

  This brought Jackson crashing back to reality, where he leveled his head to gaze at the man in the road.

  Before he could swing his head out of the already-open window to reply, Redstone shouted, “Just run the fuckin’ thing. I ain’t gonna arrest you!”

  Jackson cranked his truck as commanded and slowly crept across the highway, feeling like a child stealing candy in plain sight of adults, staring at his friend with a look of curiosity and terror until he had turned to park in the miniscule parking lot of town hall. Redstone smiled and turned to walk casually back to the sidewalk that connected the parking lot to the front door, whistling an old Tom Petty song as he waited for his friend.

  Redstone placed his hands in his pockets, gently swayed back and forth, and finished “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” as Jackson slammed his truck door shut and accepted that his friend had allowed him to break the law. He approached the law enforcement officer with respect. They both automatically extended their hands to shake. Jackson opened his mouth to speak but closed it when he realized how stupid it would be to ask if Redstone had gotten any sleep, which would go without saying. When they had both dropped their hands, and before Jackson could think of anything to say, Redstone took a step to the door, looked over his shoulder, and said, “Come on in here. I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

  They walked single file through the door, through Bobbi Jo’s office, and toward Redstone’s office, which wasn’t much more than a large walk-in closet with a small aluminum desk with a rusty folding chair on each side.

  “Where’s she at?” Jackson asked, jamming a thumb in the direction of the clerk’s office.

  Redstone replied as he spun to sit in his chair, “Bobbi Jo? She claimed seeing that shit that went down at the gas station was stressful for her, so she went home. But come to think of it, she was probably just hungry.” Redstone snickered as Jackson sat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk, forcing himself not to grin at another one of Redstone’s fat jokes.

  Recalling no strange cars in the parking lot and realizing there was no one else in the building, Jackson asked, “Why ain’t there nobody here? I figured there ought to be government people here to question me or something.”

  Redstone pushed his chair back onto two legs, crossed his fingers across his stomach, raised his chin, and spoke with a sly laugh. “You remember Jim Carlisle, tha
t fat lineman who graduated the year after us?” Jackson nodded and was about to speak as Redstone continued. “He works for the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and was the first one on the scene earlier.” He let that sink in, and then, seeing the light bulb turn on over Jackson’s head, he continued. “You were gone before they got there, and the paramedics didn’t get your name or your tag number, so they have no proof you were actually there without doing fingerprinting and all that CSI shit. He was telling me the ABI is coming up short on their federal funding and shit, so I asked him, ‘What if there was somebody else there?’ And once he figured out I was talking about you, he said since they didn’t have proof you were there, it would just take the money they didn’t have to have you fill out papers and investigate and shit, so he ain’t saying nothing about you in his report.” Redstone remained in his position, keeping a mad-scientist smirk on his face.

  Jackson slowly asked, “So what do we do about my truck? It has holes in it, man!” Since he and Redstone were alive and he would not have to worry about going to prison, Jackson’s vehicle quickly became the most important issue.

  Redstone should have known this. He let his chair fall back to all four legs, and with remorse he said, “That’s the only catch: since you were not there, you cannot press charges on the guy who shot your truck.” He paused before adding, “Besides, he’s kinda dead anyway.” This was one of those rare moments when Jackson played the ungrateful child screaming, “That’s not fair,” and Redstone played the reasonable, realistic adult.

  “What? That ain’t right, man. I’ll have to pay for it myself now!”

  They both stood, Redstone trying not to laugh and to reassure his friend. “You’re a welder, dumbass. Fix it yourself, or you can call Montgomery.”