by Trent Reedy
JoBell and Cal arrived next. JoBell shut the front door. “Damn it, Eric, why don’t you shout that a little louder? I don’t think the reporters or the cops heard you. Or do you want me to just call them and ask them to bust us?”
Believe it or not, a grumpy JoBell yelling at Sweeney actually made me feel better, closer to normal after the awkwardness from last night. She followed me into the kitchen, where we were alone, and kissed me on the mouth. When she pulled back, her face was still close to mine and her fingertips slipped down my cheek for a moment, sending tingles through me.
“You okay?” she whispered.
I took a step back from her. Somehow her concern bothered me. I’m not gonna lie, having my marriage proposal rejected last night hurt, but being treated like a wounded little puppy didn’t make me feel any better. “Yeah. I’m fine,” I said. “You know, forget about last night. I was an idiot.”
“No.” She put her hands on my upper arms. “Danny, it was beautiful, it’s —”
“Yeah, I know. It’s cool. I get it.” I broke free from her grip and went to join the others in the dining room.
As I came into the room, I heard the welcome crack-hiss of a beer being opened. “So my parents are gone,” Sweeney said. “Becca’s parents are gone, conveniently to the same Florida resort. And maybe this will influence your decision about tomorrow, buddy.” He tossed me a beer — a good, expensive one, Wild Moose, brewed in Montana. “I’m thinking I’m going to have to have a party at my house on Friday. A big party. Epic. An off-the-hook stupid party.”
“Hell yeah!” said Cal. He chugged half his beer. “Samantha’s kind of been giving me the eye in government class. I think this weekend could be it.”
“Down, boy,” Becca said. “Sorry, but Sam is so not into you. I happen to know that her and Chase Draper were —”
“Wait. Hold on. Quiet,” JoBell said, turning the volume up on the living room screen. President Rodriguez was giving a speech, sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office.
“Oh, will you shut that off?” said Sweeney. “Better yet, put on some music.”
JoBell stared at the screen and held up her hand. “Shhh.”
President Rodriguez spoke sternly, looking directly at the camera. “… have every hope for a peaceful resolution to this crisis. However, Governor Montaine has produced an intolerable situation by posting Idaho National Guard soldiers along all the borders of Idaho in an illegal effort to block the entry of federal military and law enforcement personnel. I cannot wait any longer to take action in reply. That is why, effective immediately, all federal financial aid to the state of Idaho has been cut off. Furthermore, I have given orders to the United States Army to create a blockade that will allow anyone to leave Idaho, but will not allow any people or materials to enter. All flights into the state have been canceled.”
“He can’t do that! That’s totally illegal!” JoBell shouted.
“Shhh,” Sweeney said. He wasn’t messing around either, but really listening.
“I appreciate the cooperation of the governments and people of Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah. I’ve been in touch with the governors of Montana and Wyoming. They have met in emergency session with their legislatures and agreed that they don’t want the dangerous situation that Governor Montaine has created spilling into their states. They have also asked that besides normal business at existing federal military outposts within their states, no additional federal troops be assigned for blockade operations. Instead, the Idaho borders with Montana and Wyoming will be closed and patrolled by state police and National Guard personnel from those two states. The end result will be the same. As of this moment, the Idaho border is closed.”
“Bastard’s gonna try to starve us out,” Cal said.
“If Governor Montaine and the members of the Idaho state legislature who voted for nullification truly support the people they claim to represent, they will stand down their soldiers and surrender themselves to federal authorities.”
“Now Idaho representatives are arrested for voting like morons?” JoBell said.
“If they start arresting every elected idiot, there won’t be anyone left,” said Sweeney.
“In the meantime, I fully expect all members of the Idaho National Guard to report for federal duty by zero eight hundred hours tomorrow as ordered. Any member of the Idaho National Guard who does not report at that time will be deemed as guilty as Governor Montaine and those select members of the Idaho legislature.
“The Idaho Crisis has gone on for far too long, and now, unfortunately, unprecedented measures must be taken to restore order and the rule of those laws duly passed by the legal representatives in the United States Congress. Further announcements will follow. May God bless the United States of America.”
The screen went black for a second and then went back to the CNN newsroom. A gray-bearded man sat motionless for a moment before snapping alert. “Welcome back to the CNN Idaho Crisis situation room. I’m Al Hudson. We’ve been monitoring large-scale troop movements in the northwestern part of the United States all afternoon, and there’s been much speculation about what those movements could mean, but it seems now we have our answer. For any of you joining us now, and for those of you who saw the president’s announcement and are as shocked as I am, let’s review what the president of the United States just told us.”
The screen went dark. Becca was holding the remote control. The look on her face made it clear that she wasn’t listening to any arguments about turning it back on. A tear ran down her face, but she quickly wiped it away. She looked to Sweeney and me. “Our parents are trapped out of state. We need to talk.”
Becca’s comm rang.
“JoBell, a call labeled urgent is coming in from your father,” said Digi-Eleanor.
“Breaker one nine! Hey Cal, Daddy Big Bear is squawkin’ for you. Come back now, ten four,” said Cal’s Digi-Trucker John.
“Mmmm, Eric, baby. You got a call coming in, you big hot stud.” The voice from Sweeney’s comm was breathy and hot. “Come get it, big boy.” Sweeney picked up his comm. I saw the naked brunette in the bottom right corner pop-up video. “Yes! Eric, I want your fingers on me. Touch me all over! Tap in to that call. Tap me hard, Eric.”
“Hey partner, your mama’s calling. You gonna take this?” said Digi-Hank.
Everybody knew their worried parents were calling, but nobody tapped in yet.
“Ooooh, Eric, tap me! I can’t wait any longer!”
“Okay, Trixie,” said Sweeney. “Calm down, baby.” He seemed to notice us staring. “What?”
“Really, Eric?” JoBell asked. “What if someone calls while you’re at school?”
“No problem,” said Sweeney. “As soon as Trixie gets near school, she puts her clothes and glasses back on and becomes Hot Librarian Trixie. She’s the best digi-assistant ever programmed.”
“We don’t have time for this,” I said. I ran upstairs for privacy. If Mom was having an attack, I didn’t want to parade it around in front of the others.
“Mom?” I said when I tapped in to the call.
“Danny? Oh my gosh, Danny, are you okay? I saw on the news …” Her breathing came in a wheeze. “They said … they said the border was closed. They’re not going to let me go home, Danny. They’re not going to let me come home. What are we gonna do?”
“Mom?” I tried.
“How are you gonna get by all alone? I’m all alone. When this conference is over, I can’t afford to keep paying for a hotel.”
“Mom.”
“Can’t afford an apartment.” She coughed. “They say you’ve all been ordered to federal duty. But if you go, they’ll arrest you, Danny. You can’t go. What if they don’t arrest you, but send you to war? They could stick you in Iran, Danny, and all those Idaho boys were killed there the other day.”
“Mom!”
“Oh, Danny!” There was a sound almost like retching.
“Mom, listen to me!”
“Oh. Oh, don’t
yell at me, Danny. I don’t know what to do!”
“Shhhh. Mom, it’s okay. You’re okay. Breathe. Force the air in.” I heard her breathe, shaky, but deep. “Now exhale.” I could hear her breathing. There were little sobs, but we’d get this ironed out. “And breathe in, deep as you can. And let it fall out. Have a seat in the chair if you’ve got one there.”
We sat there like that on the phone, breathing, for about five minutes. I was out of time for debating my options. I had to make some decisions and I had to make them now.
“Danny.” She seemed calmer now. “What are we going to do?”
“Okay, I’m not going to report for federal service,” I said. That was the first decision I made.
“But then they’ll call you a criminal like the governor and —”
“They’re already calling me a criminal, but they can’t get in here to arrest me. So relax about that.”
“Oh, Danny.” She sounded like she was going to cry again. “Maybe I should rush home right now. Maybe I can make it across the border before the soldiers can really stop anyone from —”
“No, Mom. You know, stay in Washington for now. Carry on with your conference for the rest of the week. Anyway, this is probably going to blow over soon.” I squeezed my eyes closed, praying I wasn’t talking a lot of false-hope gibberish. “The government will get this mess straightened out in no time, and the president will at least have to let normal Idaho people come back home.”
“But what if —”
“If it drags on longer, I’ll look online for a place for you to stay. I’ll take out a loan and buy you an RV. Something.”
“You’re only seventeen, Danny. They’re not going to loan you —”
“Then I’ll have Schmidty take out the loan for me. I’ll take care of you, Mom. I promise. Whatever it takes, I’ll make sure you’re okay.” There was silence on the line for a long time. “Mom?”
“You’re a good boy, Danny,” she said sadly. “Well, a man really. I don’t know when you stopped being a boy, but I’m proud of the man you’ve become.”
I talked to Mom a little longer, trying to get her mind off the fact that she couldn’t come home, trying to keep her calm. Eventually, after we agreed to check in every day, I tapped out of the call.
Downstairs, the earlier party mood had vanished. JoBell’s dad had insisted she come home right away, but she had argued that she needed to have one last dinner with her friends. Her dad gave in, but he got in touch with everyone else’s folks, and he promised to check up on the rest of us from time to time. Sweeney’s folks didn’t seem as worried as he thought they should be. They seemed to think it was like a longer vacation. His dad let him know how to tap certain emergency funds he had set aside. Becca’s parents worried about their farm and wanted to make sure she’d be able to continue to take care of the cattle, but they seemed reassured when we all promised to help her.
Cal surprised me. He wiped his eyes, turning away from us so we couldn’t see.
“What is it, Cal?” JoBell asked, sitting down beside him and putting her hand on his shoulder.
“My old man,” he said quietly. “He’s out on the road. On the way back from a lumber haul to Minneapolis.” The last part of his sentence sounded a little choked.
“I’m sorry,” JoBell said.
“Even if he can’t get back home,” I said, “his rig has a big sleeper. He can keep trucking. He can still make money. When this is all over, he can —”
Cal faced us. His eyes were red and watery, but he was smiling. “He was calling from the parking lot of the Lookout Pass resort, right inside the state line. He said the Montana Highway Patrol closed the border about two minutes after he crossed into Idaho.” He held up a fist in front of his chest. “Good old Dad. Always brings the rig home right on time.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “Oh hell, give me another beer.”
I laughed as I handed him another round. Cal was so big and tough that I sometimes forgot there was more to the guy than partying and busting heads in football. His old man was a real a-man-needs-to-take-care-of-himself type guy, and he left Cal on his own a lot while on trucking runs, so I was happy he’d be able to make it home now.
Later we gathered at the table to enjoy Becca’s lasagna and the Wild Moose beer. Becca served us each a big square, and then sat down with her own. Cal grabbed his fork, stabbed right into it, and was about to take a huge bite when Becca held up a hand.
“Wait a second,” she said. “How ’bout we say grace first?”
“What?” Cal said with the steaming mass of cheese and pasta in front of his open mouth. “Oh yeah.”
We all bowed our heads. Becca led the prayer. “Lord, thank you for this food we are about to eat. Please help us and help our parents as we go through this difficult time. Thank you, Lord, for letting the five of us be together tonight. Thank you for this friendship. Amen.”
“Amen,” we all said.
I reached out for JoBell’s hand and she squeezed mine. I looked at Sweeney, who took a drink. Cal had stuffed down that huge bite of very hot lasagna and was holding his mouth open, breathing heavy, trying to avoid burning his mouth. Becca laughed at him, and then her eyes met mine, and she flashed the warmest, kindest smile I’d seen in a long time.
Becca was right. We should be grateful to all be together. Silently, I thanked God for my friends. That night, though, they felt like more than that. Closer than that. More like family.
“I love you guys,” I said.
“Oh, Danny.” Sweeney spoke in a high-pitched voice and dabbed a napkin to the corner of his eyes in big, exaggerated movements. “That’s sooooo sweet!”
JoBell laughed until her face was red. “That’s what you get for trying to get mushy around these lunkheads.”
“Hey,” Cal mumbled with his mouth full. “Ahm na a lunhea.”
I pointed my fork at Sweeney. “Nobody likes you very much.”
He held his beer up to me in a mock toast.
Glass shattered in the living room. We heard a thud on the floor and squealing tires and a horn honking from outside. My fork clattered to my plate and I was up and sprinting toward the front of the house.
“Danny, wait!” JoBell yelled. “It could be dangerous.”
I was glad I had my shoes on, because the living room floor was covered in glass. I ran out the front door, jumped off the porch, and bolted to the street as fast as I could, but I only caught a glimpse of the taillights of a car as it whipped around the corner down the block.
I stood in the middle of the street, marveling in the quiet. Most of the media circus was gone. There were only three news vans and maybe about a dozen reporters or camera people. They’d finally found a bigger story to go after.
I heard a camera click, and I spun around to face one of the last reporters in America who was not covering the blockade right now. He started snapping photos of me in front of my busted front window.
“Thanks for warning me,” I shouted at him. “You get a picture of that guy for the news?”
The prick gave me the thumbs-up and then went back to taking pictures of me. Others joined in, rolling video and shooting photos.
“I know this is a stressful time,” said a woman, “but could I ask you a few questions? Getting your side of the story out might help people understand you better. It might prevent stuff like this from happening in the future.”
Cal and Sweeney were right behind me. “You see the license plates?” Sweeney asked.
“Nope,” I said. The girls were looking out through the spiderweb of cracks in the front window with a two-inch hole in the middle. “Nice job the governor’s extra security is doing, huh?”
Cal stepped up to the first photographer to shoot pictures that night, a skinny guy maybe in his early thirties. Cal’s upper arm looked about as big as the reporter’s waist. “Cool comm,” Cal said. The reporter took a few steps back, but Cal grabbed the comm out of his hands. “Where’s the pics? They go up to your cloud? Pull ’em up!
”
“Take it easy,” said the reporter.
“Cal, knock it off,” I said.
Cal held the comm out in his left hand and cocked his big right fist back. “Pull up the photos!”
Other cameras were rolling, getting video of the whole thing. The footage would make Cal look like a monster, and the press would have a field day with that.
With shaking hands, the man did what he said.
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve done.” Cal tapped the screen a couple times. “Dumb bastard has no pics of the car or the rock throwers or anything.” He fiddled with the screen more. “There. All the pictures of me and my friends deleted. And in case this is one of those weird old-fashioned comms with a hard drive and you have any more copies saved to it —”
“Cal, no!” Sweeney shouted as he and I ran to stop Cal from spiking the comm on the street.
“What?” Cal said. “We can’t keep letting them —”
“This isn’t helping me.” I took the reporter’s comm from Cal and handed it back to its owner. “They’re just going to make some terrible distorted story out of all this.”
“Let’s go,” Sweeney said.
We all went back inside, where Becca had started sweeping up the glass. JoBell handed me the rock. It was wrapped in paper tied with string. I ripped off the string, unfolded the paper, and dropped the rock to the floor. “Let’s see what these bastards have to say.”
We know who you are. We know what you did. The governor might have pardoned you but we don’t. Your responsable for this whole mess. We are going to make you pay. Like the people you killed in Boise. Sleep careful. We’ll be back.
“What?” JoBell asked.
I gave her the note, then went up to my room. I had thought Schmidty was kind of crazy with his guns and survival bunker, but now he was starting to make sense. From under my bed I pulled out Dad’s nine-millimeter handgun — my gun now. I picked up its empty magazine and the box of shells, wishing I’d taken Schmidty more seriously and gone to buy more mags already. I went back to the others, put the gun and ammunition on the coffee table, and grabbed my comm.
