The Returned

by Jason Mott

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “But you’re going to have to put the gun down before we can talk about whatever it is you came here to talk about.” The other night guards were all there now, guns drawn—though something in them, perhaps some old lesson of upbringing, kept them from pointing their guns directly at Lucille.

  “What the hell’s going on, Junior?” one of the soldiers whispered.

  “Fuck if I know,” he whispered back. “She just showed up here with them—a whole group of Returned—and that damned pistol. Started out there was just her and this truck full of them, but…”

  As they all could plainly see, there were others. Many others. Even if the handful of soldiers couldn’t tell exactly how many there were, they knew they were outnumbered. That much they were sure of.

  “I’m here to see about the liberation of everybody locked up in there,” Lucille shouted. “I don’t have anything in particular against you boys. I suppose you’re just doing what you been ordered to do. And that’s what you’re trained to do. So, because of that, I don’t feel any kind of way toward you. But I will say that you should remember you’ve got a moral responsibility to do right, to be just and fair individuals, even if you are supposed to be following orders.”

  She wanted to pace back and forth, the way the pastor sometimes did when he needed to get his thoughts together. She’d had it all planned out in her head on the drive over, but now, standing here, actually doing this thing that she was doing—all these guns—she was scared.

  But this wasn’t a time to be scared.

  “I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” Lucille yelled. “You’re not the cause, none of you are. You’re just mostly the symptom. I gotta get to the cause. I want to see Colonel Willis.”

  “Ma’am,” Junior said. “Please put the weapon down. If you want to see the colonel, we’ll let you see the colonel. But you’re going to have to put down that weapon.” The soldier next to him whispered something. “Put down the weapon and surrender those Returned individuals for processing.”

  “I will do no such thing,” she barked, and her grip tightened on the pistol. “Processing,” she growled. The soldiers still hesitated to point their guns at her so they aimed their guns at those that had come with her. The Returned that were gathered behind and around Lucille made no sudden movements. They only stood and let Lucille and her pistol act on their behalf. “I want to see the colonel,” she repeated.

  In spite of feeling suddenly guilty about what she was doing, she wasn’t about to be talked out of anything. Satan was a subtle tempter, she knew, and he worked his evil works by convincing us to make those small concessions that, eventually, lead to great sins. And she was tired of standing idly by.

  “Colonel Willis!” Lucille said, calling the man’s name like shouting for a tax auditor. “I want to see Colonel Willis!”

  Junior wasn’t cut out for this level of tension. “Get somebody,” he said in a low voice to the soldier next to him.

  “What? She’s just an old woman. She’s not going to do anything.”

  Lucille heard them and, to prove that they’d judged the situation all wrong, she raised her gun and fired a shot into the air. Everyone jumped. “I’ll see him now,” she said, her ears ringing just a little.

  “Get somebody!” Junior said.

  “Get somebody,” the soldier next to him said.

  “Get somebody,” that soldier said.

  And on down the line it went.

  * * *

  Somebody finally came and, as Lucille had expected, it was not Colonel Willis but Agent Martin Bellamy. He came through the gate in something that was partly a run and partly a walk. As always, he was wearing his suit, but his tie was missing. A sure sign, Lucille thought, that the whole situation was doomed.

  “Nice night for a drive,” Bellamy said, coming out past the soldiers—partly to keep her attention focused on him and partly to step in front of as many gun barrels that might be aimed at the old woman as possible. “What’s going on, Ms. Lucille?”

  “I didn’t send for you, Agent Martin Bellamy.”

  “No, ma’am, you most certainly didn’t. But they came and got me and here I am nonetheless. Now what’s all this about?”

  “You know what this is all about. You know as well as anyone.” Her gun hand trembled. “I’m angry,” she said flatly. “And I won’t stand for the way things are anymore.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bellamy said. “You’ve got a right to be angry. If anybody does, it’s you.”

  “Don’t you do that, Agent Martin Bellamy. Don’t you try to make this all about me, because it ain’t. I just want to talk to Colonel Willis. Now go get him for me. Or send somebody else to get him. I don’t particularly care which.”

  “I’ve got no doubt in my mind that he’s on his way here right now,” Bellamy said. “And, frankly, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Well, I’m not afraid,” Lucille said.

  “That gun only makes things worse.”

  “Gun? You think I’m not afraid because I got a gun?” Lucille sighed. “This ain’t got nothing at all to do with the gun. I’m not afraid because I’m resolved to my path.” She stood erect, like a hard flower dug into hard soil. “Too many people in this world are afraid of things—myself included. And I’m still afraid of a lot of things. Terrified of some of the stuff I see on the television. Even before all this began, and even after it all ends, I’ll be afraid of things.

  “But I’m not afraid of this. I’m not afraid of what’s happening here right now or what might soon happen here. I’m okay with it, because it’s the right thing. Good people have got to stop being afraid of doing the right thing.”

  “But there will be consequences,” Bellamy said, trying not to make it sound like a threat. “That’s just the way the world works. For everything, there’s a consequence, and it’s not always the consequence we can see. Sometimes it’s things we can’t even imagine. However things end tonight—and I’m hoping, more than you could know, that it ends peacefully—there are going to be real consequences.”

  He took a small step toward Lucille. Up above him, as if there was nothing amiss in the world, the stars shone and clouds moved in their silent, complex patterns.

  Bellamy planted his feet and continued.

  “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to make a point. You don’t like the way things have played out, and I can relate to that. I’m not fond of the current state of things, either. You think I’d have taken over a whole town and packed it full of people like objects or cargo if I had anything at all to say about it?”

  “That’s why I don’t want to talk to you, Agent Martin Bellamy. You’re not in charge of anything anymore. This ain’t about you. It’s about that Colonel Willis.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bellamy said. “But Colonel Willis isn’t in charge of anything, either. He’s just doing what he’s been ordered to do. He works under somebody else, just like these young soldiers here.”

  “Stop that,” Lucille said.

  “You’ve got to go above him if you want any satisfaction, Ms. Lucille. You’ve got to go on up the chain.”

  “Don’t treat me like a fool, Agent Martin Bellamy.”

  “After the colonel there’s a general or some such that’s above him. I’m not a hundred percent sure of the chain of command. I’ve never served in the military, so a lot of what I know comes from what I see on TV. But I do know that no soldier does anything that they’re not either ordered to do or held responsible for. It’s all just a great chain that, eventually, leads up to the president and, Ms. Lucille, I know that you know very well that the president doesn’t run anything. It’s the voters, the private industry lobbyists and on and on. There’s no end to it.”

  He took another step forward. He was almost close enough to reach her. Just a few yards away.

  “Stop right there,” Lucille said.

  “Is Colonel Willis the man I would have put in charge of all this?” Bel
lamy asked, turning a little at “all this” to aim his words toward the sleepy, dark town that was no longer a town, but a great, bloated gulag. “No, ma’am. I would never have put him in charge of anything this important, anything this sensitive. Because this is most definitely a sensitive situation.”

  Another step forward.

  “Martin Bellamy.”

  “But here we are—you, me, Colonel Willis, Harold, Jacob.”

  A gunshot rang out.

  Then another shot, into the air from the dark, heavy pistol in Lucille’s hand. Then she lowered the weapon and leveled it at Bellamy. “I got nothing against you, Agent Martin Bellamy,” she said. “You know that. But I won’t be led astray. I want my son.”

  “No, ma’am,” a voice said from behind Agent Bellamy, who was retreating, step by step. It was the colonel. Next to him were Harold and Jacob. “You won’t be led astray at all,” Colonel Willis said. “We’re going to see about getting things on the path, I’d be willing to say.”

  The sight of Harold and Jacob next to the colonel caught Lucille flat-footed—though, now that she saw it, she knew it was the very thing she should have expected. She immediately turned the gun on the colonel. The soldiers bristled, but the colonel motioned for them to stay calm.

  Jacob’s eyes were wide. He’d never seen his mother with a gun before.

  “Lucille,” Harold called.

  “Don’t give me that tone, Harold Hargrave.”

  “What the hell are you doing, woman?”

  “I’m doing what needs to be done. That’s all.”

  “Lucille!”

  “Hush up! I’m doing what you would have done if things were switched around. Tell me that ain’t true.”

  Harold looked at Lucille’s gun. “Maybe,” he said, “but that just means that now I gotta do what you would have done, if things was switched around like you said. Here you are with a goddamn pistol!”

  “Don’t blaspheme!”

  “Listen to your husband, Mrs. Hargrave,” Colonel Willis said, looking very distinguished and relaxed, even with Lucille’s gun aimed at him. “This won’t end well if it ends in anything other than you and these things giving up peacefully.”

  “You hush up,” Lucille barked.

  “Listen to the man, Lucille,” Harold said. “Look at all these boys with guns.”

  There were at least twenty of them—somehow both more and less than she expected. All of them looked unsettled—guns and soldiers, opportunities for it all to end so horribly. And here she was: just an old woman in an old dress standing in the street trying not to be afraid.

  Then she remembered that she was not alone. She turned her head and looked behind her. What she saw was a heaving mass of them, the Returned, all standing side by side, watching her, waiting for her to decide their fate.

  She hadn’t planned this. None of it. She’d only intended to drive to the gates and make her case to the colonel and, somehow, he would release everyone.

  But then she was driving in and she saw them here and there along the outskirts of the town. Sometimes half-hidden, looking sullen and afraid. Other times, standing clustered together, only watching her. Perhaps they had no more fear of the Bureau. Perhaps they had resigned themselves to being taken prisoner. Or, perhaps they had been sent by God.

  She stopped and asked them to come help her. And they got into the truck, one by one. But there hadn’t been as many then—only a truckload. Now, there seemed to be dozens of them, as if some great call had gone up, sent from one to another in some secret, quiet way, and they had all responded.

  They must have all been hiding, she thought. Or maybe it really was a miracle.

  “Lucille.”

  It was Harold.

  She came back from her musing on miracles and looked at her husband.

  “You remember that time back in…well, back in ’66, the day before Jacob’s birthday, the day before he went away, when we were driving back from Charlotte? It was nighttime and raining, coming down so hard we talked about pulling over and sitting until it passed. You remember that?”

  “Yes,” Lucille said, “I remember it.”

  “Damn dog come shooting out there in front of the truck,” Harold continued. “You remember that? Didn’t even have time to swerve. Just whump! The sound of all that metal smacking into that damned dog.”

  “That don’t have anything to do with this,” Lucille said.

  “You were crying as soon as it happened, before I’d even put two and two together and come up with any clue as to what the hell it was. You just sat there, weeping like it was a child I’d hit, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, Lord,’ again and again. Scared the hell out of me. I thought I actually might have hit somebody’s child, even though it didn’t make a lick of sense for any child to be out there in weather like that, at that time of night. But all I could think about was Jacob lying out there, dead and run over.”

  “Hush,” Lucille said, her voice wavering.

  “But there it was—that damned dog. Somebody’s coon dog. Probably on the scent of something and all confused by the rain. I got out in all that damned rain and found him, all busted up like he was. I put him up in the truck and we brought him home.”

  “Harold.”

  “We took him home and brought him in the house and, well, there it was—everything we couldn’t fix. Already dead. Body just hadn’t figured it out yet. So I went into the room there and got that gun, that same damned gun you’re holding right now. Told you to stay in the house, but you wouldn’t, Lord only knows why.” Harold paused and cleared something that had become lumped in his throat. “Last time I used that gun,” he said. “You remember what it looked like when I used it, Lucille, I know you do.” Harold looked around the soldiers, the soldiers and their guns.

  He lifted Jacob and stood there holding him. The gun took on a new weight in her hand then. A trembling began at her shoulder and walked down past her elbow, down to her wrist and hand and, having no other choice, she lowered the weapon.

  “That’s very good,” Colonel Willis said. “Very, very good.”

  “We need to talk about the way things are,” Lucille said, feeling very tired all of a sudden.

  “We can have all manner of talks.”

  “Things have got to change,” she said. “They just can’t go on the way they’ve been going on. They just can’t.” Even though the gun was lowered, it was still clutched in her hand.

  “You might be right,” Colonel Willis said. He looked over at a group of soldiers—among which was the boy from Topeka—and nodded toward Lucille. Then he turned back to her. “I’m not going to stand here and pretend as if everything is the way it should be. Things are out of accord, to say the least.”

  “Out of accord,” Lucille echoed. She’d always liked that word: accord. She looked over her shoulder. They were all still there, the wide, sweeping body of Returned. They still looked to her: the only thing standing between the soldiers and themselves.

  “What’ll become of them?” Lucille asked, turning back just in time to see Junior almost close enough to reach out and take her pistol. The boy froze—his own pistol still in its holster. He loathed violence, that boy. All he really wanted was to get home safely, just like everyone else.

  “What was that, Mrs. Hargrave?” Colonel Willis asked, the glare of the floodlights along the southern gate still shining behind him.

  “I asked what’ll become of them.” Lucille’s fingers flexed around the pistol. “Assuming abdication…”

  “Oh, hell,” Harold said. He lowered Jacob to the ground and took him by the hand.

  Lucille’s voice was hard and controlled. “What will become of them?” She motioned to indicate the Returned.

  Junior had never heard the word abdication before. But he had a feeling it was a precursor to something not very good, so he took a step back from the gun-wielding old woman. “Don’t you move!” Colonel Willis barked.

  Junior did as he was told.

  “You h
ave not answered,” Lucille said, each word perfectly enunciated. She took a small step to her left, only to clearly look past the young soldier that had been sent to take her gun away.

  “They’ll be processed,” Colonel Willis said. He straightened his posture and placed his hands behind his back in a very military fashion.

  “Unacceptable,” Lucille said, her voice harder than it had been.

  “Hell,” Harold cursed under his breath. Jacob looked up at him with fear in his eyes. He understood what his father understood. Harold looked over at Bellamy, trying to get some manner of eye contact. Bellamy needed to know that Lucille was past the point of being calmed.

  But Agent Bellamy was as engaged in what was happening as everyone else.

  “Abominable,” Lucille said. “Irresolvable.”

  Harold trembled. The worst argument he and Lucille had ever had came not long after the word irresolvable. It was her war cry. He stepped back toward the open gate, away from where the bullets might fly if everything went south—which he was pretty damned sure it was about to.

  “We’re leaving,” Lucille said, her voice deadly and steady. “My family and the Wilsons are coming with us.”

  Colonel Willis’s face was unchanged. He looked stern and hard. “I don’t believe that’s going to happen,” he said.

  “I’ll have the Wilsons,” Lucille said. “I’ll have them back.”

  “Mrs. Hargrave.”

  “I understand that you’ve got appearances to maintain. Your men need to respect you as their leader and having a seventy-three-year-old woman come here with one little gun and her group of rabble and walk out of here with all those locked within the walls of that entire town, well, I don’t need to be a military strategist to know that’s not the light you want to be seen in.”

  “Mrs. Hargrave,” Colonel Willis repeated.

  “I won’t demand nothing less than what’s owed, nothing less than what’s mine—my family and those under my protection. I’ve got God’s work to do.”

  “God’s work?”

  Harold pulled Jacob closer. It seemed like every prisoner in the town of Arcadia had assembled at the fence. He searched the crowd, hoping to catch sight of the Wilsons. It would be his job to take care of them once things went the way they were obviously going to go.