Divided We Fall

by Trent Reedy

  —• Thank you for joining us on NPR’s Weekend. I’m Renae Matthews. It’s been twenty-six days since President Rodriguez announced the federal blockade of Idaho, and while there have been several incidents of violence between federal troops and civilians trying to run the border to return home or to smuggle goods, yesterday was the first time that an open firefight has broken out between Idaho and federal forces. With us this morning is one of NPR’s top Idaho Crisis correspondents, Richard Arwell. Richard, the White House seems to be downplaying the recent border skirmish. What is the real significance of these events?”

  “I’m afraid this could be fairly serious, Renae. First, word of this firefight is bound to increase anxiety in both federal and Idaho troops, and that’s going to lead to trouble. Second, I can’t imagine that this incident will help the negotiations, which were finally beginning to show some progress toward arriving at a conclusion to this crisis. If Idaho and the federal government are going to come to any sort of an agreement, it simply won’t work for either side to be negotiating under the threat of violence. •—

  By the time I got home, I had been awake for the better part of a day. I was fried, and even though I had to fight to avoid thinking about this morning’s firefight or Mom’s trouble, I fell asleep almost as soon as I flopped down on my bed.

  The next morning, dressed in regular jeans and a sweatshirt, I drove down to the shop. The news was playing on the radio. Word of the “border skirmish” was already out. Schmidty looked up from the engine of the little Honda he’d been working on. “Danny. It’s good to see you.”

  That wasn’t the greeting I’d expected. Coming from him, that was downright cheerful. He lit up a cigarette from a pack on his desk, squinting a little as the smoke wafted up in his eyes. “You just can’t seem to stay out of trouble, can you?”

  “I … almost killed a guy yesterday, Schmidty. I wasn’t aiming at him. Suppressive fire, but …”

  Schmidty blew out smoke. “You did what you had to do. Like I did one day in Gulf War One. Wish I could say it gets easier.”

  “Maybe I need to find a way to make it easier. Or … not easier, but so I can deal with it better. I went down to help the guy I’d wounded, and after I saved his life, a Fed medic tried to arrest me. I guess I should have —”

  “Known you can’t trust the Fed.” He flicked some ash to the floor. “Not anymore. They’re talking on the news about working this all out real peaceful-like. But this situation is a lot like Vietnam or the second Iraq war. Once blood is spilled, we’re stuck in the fight for the long haul, because if we quit early, if we work out a compromise, then what was the point of those casualties?” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “We’re all too deep in this now. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better. Ain’t no running away from this.”

  “I’m not running away,” I said. “I only wish there was something I could do to make things right.”

  “Nothing you can do to fix this mess.” He put his hand on my shoulder and led me out to the driveway. He pointed at the faded old American flag fluttering in the breeze. “See, way I reckon, this country is like its flag. When troubles hit the country like the weather on that flag, people got different ideas about how to fix that trouble. They start arguing about it. Folks getting madder and madder at one another, pulling apart in different directions, until, like that flag, there are little threadbare spots, small tears. Finally, something comes along that’s too much, and those little worn spots rip open, leaving the flag, like this country, in tatters.”

  Schmidty was making a lot of sense, but it felt weird hearing him all serious like this. “That’s real poetic of you,” I said.

  “W’d’ya shut the hell up?” He led me back into the shop.

  “Sorry,” I said with a smile so he’d know I didn’t mean it. “Anyway, I’m here because I’m going to go bring my mother home from Spokane.”

  I heard footsteps on the pavement behind me, and I reached under my belt for my gun.

  “Hey, babe.”

  It was JoBell. I turned to face her. She ran to me, throwing her arms around me and pulling me close for a hungry kiss.

  “I missed you,” I said. “I’m sorry —”

  “I’m sorry about what happened at Cal’s. Let’s not fight anymore?” she whispered.

  Behind us, Schmidty hacked and then spat on the floor. I stepped back from JoBell. She brushed a strand of that golden hair out of her eyes. “Saw your truck out front. I couldn’t believe it at first, but here you are. I thought you had to go back on duty.”

  “You really gonna do it?” Schmidty asked loudly, as if to make a point to JoBell. “Jump the border?”

  JoBell’s eyes went wide. “What?” She pressed her palms to my cheek and made me look at her. “Danny, what is he talking about?”

  “I got to,” I said. “You know my mom. She can’t handle being trapped over there much longer. Says she’s going to try to sneak back into Idaho. After what went down yesterday morning, I can’t let her do that on her own.”

  JoBell took a couple steps away from me and looked down at her comm. She tapped away.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Texting the others. Telling them to get over here.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” I made a halfhearted grab for her comm to stop her, but she twisted away from me. “I mean, I can see them when I get back.”

  JoBell shook her comm up above her head. “Maybe they’ll talk some sense into you.”

  * * *

  “You’re high if you think you’re going alone,” Sweeney said after he arrived with Becca and Cal.

  “I am going alone.” I paced to the other end of the shop, squeezing my hands tight into fists. “I mean it. I’m not putting you guys in danger again. It’s not your problem. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Nobody has to do this,” said JoBell. “Nobody’s jumping the border.”

  Cal put his arm around JoBell’s shoulders. “Oh, come on, JoJo, Danny’s mom is totally cool. We can’t leave her trapped over there.”

  She was too upset to even bother complaining about the nickname. “I know she’s great.” She pulled away from Cal. “I love that woman …” She paused a moment, then smiled and added, “and her son. Which is why we shouldn’t encourage either of them to take the risk of trying to run the blockade.”

  I was both happy to hear what she said about love, and sad that I would have to disagree with her again. “I’m sorry, JoBell,” I said. “But I am doing this no matter what you say. I’m going alone. None of you are coming with me.”

  “Yes, we are, Danny,” said Becca. “We’re your friends. Besides, it will be great to have the whole group back together.”

  “No, it won’t!” Schmidty was coming up the stairs out of the basement, blinking against the cigarette smoke in his eyes, carrying the AR15 in his hands and its spare loaded magazines under his arms. Gross, I thought. The magazines would be funkified by Schmidty’s nasty, sweaty armpits. “It won’t be great. This ain’t the damned senior prom. If you try to travel on paved roads into Washington, the Feds will stop you all and arrest Danny on sight. So first you’ll have to find some way to hide him, or else try to cross in the woods somewhere. The way back will be even harder. You have spooked-out, pissed-off soldiers on both sides of the state line. Be real easy for y’all to end up in the crossfire.” He held out the rifle to me. “Here. It’s what you came for, right?”

  I cleared the rifle, slung it over my shoulder, took the ammo, and then held up the magazines to show them what my life had become. “Schmidty’s right, Becca. That’s why I’m going alone.”

  “You won’t make it by yourself,” Becca said. “Anyway, if you try, we’ll just follow you in one of our cars. You won’t be able to stop us. So we’re with you — or I’m with you — no matter what.”

  The argument dragged on for an hour. Eventually I had to give in and agree to let them come. I believed th
em when they said they would follow me in their own vehicles whether I wanted them to or not. Even JoBell changed her mind, figuring she got along real good with my mom, and she might need JoBell’s help.

  We thought getting out of Idaho would be the easiest part, provided the Feds didn’t find me. I’d ride on the floor behind the backseat until we approached the border, when I’d wedge myself into the storage space under the false bottom that Schmidty had installed. Sweeney already had a fake ID, but he made new ones for everyone else so the Fed couldn’t recognize their names and link them to me. For the return trip, Cal said he knew a tiny dirt logging road near the Canadian border. If the Fed had that blocked, we’d off-road up into Canada and come back down into Idaho on one of the smugglers’ routes.

  “Cal,” I said, “you think you can drive? If the Feds find out I’m hiding back there, you’ll have to whip the Beast around and get us back into Idaho fast.”

  Cal folded his big muscled arms over his chest. “You kidding? I’m the son of a long-haul trucker. Driving’s in my blood.”

  “The problem is gas,” I said. “I finally got one of those ration cards, but I don’t have enough money, really, to fill up the tank.”

  Schmidty blew smoke in my face. “See? While everyone else was playing grab-ass and wondering, Oh, is the governor going to play nice? Will the president let this go? I was getting ready. Buying ammo, buying a dozen cartons of cigarettes.”

  “Twelve cartons?” Sweeney said. “That had to cost you …” He poked around in the air like he was doing calculations.

  “Cost way too much! What’s it to you?” Schmidty growled. “They cost about twice as much now, and you can’t find any.”

  “Yeah. Smart,” Sweeney said.

  “Anyway, my point is I also have two hundred gallons of gas in four barrels down in the basement.”

  “Geez, Schmidty,” I said. “You’ve been smoking down there.”

  He shrugged and flicked ash on the floor. “You guys will have to use the hand-crank pump to fill the gas cans and then make a million trips to carry it all up.”

  He was right, but about an hour later we were packed up and fueled. We even changed out the plates on the Beast to make it harder to identify.

  “Thanks for all your help,” I said to Schmidty.

  “Just bring my rifle back.” He coughed. “Oh, and buy me some cigarettes while you’re over there in the land of plenty.”

  I nodded and climbed into the back of the Beast, cradling the AR and keeping my nine mil handy. With Cal behind the wheel, JoBell rode shotgun. Sweeney and Becca sat in the back. Becca leaned over the seat and winked at me, then covered me with a blanket. It was time to go.

  * * *

  “I don’t care what Schmidty says,” said Becca after we’d been on the road for a while. “It is great with all of us together again.”

  “Yeah, buddy. It hasn’t been the same without you,” said Cal.

  They filled me in on everything as I rode along under the blanket in the dim light and the heat from my own breath. It felt weird hearing my friends’ voices when I couldn’t see them.

  Football, volleyball, and cross-country were basically all canceled after the blockade. Schools couldn’t afford the gas to travel to other schools for competitions. Instead, Coach divided the football squad into two teams that would play each other.

  “It’s not nearly as fun. Took all the suspense and competition out of the games,” Sweeney said.

  “I don’t know,” JoBell said. “With everything else that’s happening, sports don’t seem to matter as much as they used to. We’re lucky they’re keeping the school open at all. Some districts have a bunch of the newer buses that run on natural gas, so they’re doing okay, but Freedom Lake only has two.”

  “Yeah,” said Becca. “Buses are only running on limited routes and hard-surface roads. Some kids have to travel pretty far to their bus stops.”

  “It hasn’t all been bad,” Cal said. “I finally got a date with Samantha Monohan. She agreed to go with me on my motorcycle. Takes less gas. We were going to go Saturday night, but the movie theater closed down on Thursday, so we stayed in and watched movies online. It was a good time.”

  “What movie did you watch?” I asked.

  “I can’t remember,” said Cal. “Didn’t see much of it.”

  “Yeah, dude,” Sweeney said. “That’s the way it’s done. She’s a cool girl. Don’t screw this up.”

  “I won’t,” Cal said. “She’s really great. I’ve never had a girlfriend this awesome.”

  I smiled under the blanket. Cal had never had any girlfriend. It was great to hear him so happy.

  “Hey, Becca,” said Cal, “who was it that said Sam’d never go out with me?”

  “I’ve never been so pleased to be wrong,” Becca said.

  I was grateful that my friends knew me well enough to know I didn’t want to talk about the Guard or the shoot-out on the border. Instead, we talked like normal — well, normal except that I was hiding under a blanket in the back of a truck — for a long time. Next to what we were about to try to do, maybe that seemed crazy, but it felt right. I needed a dose of school, and sports, and regular life.

  Cal flipped on the radio. He tuned it to the country station, and a song I hadn’t heard before came on.

  “Hank McGrew put this song out a couple days after the blockade started,” JoBell said. She hated country music, but for once she was cool about it. I listened to the words.

  Last night I watched the news

  ’Bout trouble out in Idaho

  We gotta find a stop to this

  People are dead, you know

  Now a dark fright’nin’ shadow

  A divisive creation

  Has turned brother against brother

  And threatens our whole nation

  When the times get tough

  Put your faith in God above

  You gotta stand for something

  Trust the ones you love

  No matter where you are

  Or what you believe

  We’re all still Americans

  As long as we’re free

  The song went on like that for another couple verses, and I don’t know if it was the song or if it was me, but something had changed.

  “You know, I really used to love Hank McGrew’s music,” I said. “But now that ‘we’re all Americans’ line sounds too easy. I want McGrew to be right, and I pray every night that we can all just be Americans again, but nothing can be that simple —”

  “Yes!” JoBell said. “Finally he gets it!”

  Becca giggled. “Digi-Hank will be sorry to hear that.”

  “You need to get Digi-Trixie,” said Sweeney. “She’s so hot.”

  “Gross, Eric!” JoBell said.

  We talked and laughed most of the way south, but after we reached Interstate 90, things got quiet. We’d be at the border in no time.

  “You awake back there, Danny?” Cal said after a while.

  “Yeah.” I stretched the best I could in the cramped space. I could feel the Beast slowing down. “Bit of a crimp in my neck. What’s up? We at the border?”

  “Last rest stop before Washington. We get any closer to the border, they’ll see you. You better make the switch to that compartment now,” said Cal.

  I climbed out the back, dropped the tailgate, and slipped into the tiny dark space under the false bottom. Cal shut the tailgate behind me, closing me into darkness. We drove on.

  “We’re getting close now,” JoBell finally said. I was glad I could still hear her. “It looks like a total war zone out there. Coils of razor wire and concrete barriers all over. Traffic’s been funneled into one lane, but there are only two cars ahead of us.”

  “I see some tanks out here. And some serious machine guns,” said Sweeney. “All pointed across the border at each other. I wouldn’t want to be around if everybody here decided to start shooting.”

  “Okay, everybody shut the hell up,” said Cal. “A
ct natural.” I could hear the sound of the driver’s-side window going down.

  “I need to see your IDs,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. There was a long pause. I hoped Sweeney’s fakes were good. “Okay, here you go. I’m required by federal law to inform you that pursuant to the Unity Act, no one leaving the state of Idaho will be allowed to return under any circumstances until such time as the blockade has been lifted. If you wish to turn around and remain in Idaho, our soldiers will guide you through the turnaround route. If you understand these instructions and still wish to leave the state of Idaho, and if you are at least seventeen years of age and are leaving of your own free will, I need a verbal confirmation from each of you. Do you wish to leave the state of Idaho?”

  “Yes,” Cal said.

  There was a little pause. “No, I said verbal!” said the stranger. “A nod of the head won’t cut it.”

  “Yes!” JoBell shouted.

  “Yes,” said Sweeney and Becca.

  “All right. Pull ahead slowly to the next station so they can search your vehicle for contraband. Thank you, and have a nice day.”

  I heard the window going back up.

  “Asshole power-tripping Army prick,” JoBell said quietly.

  “Well, let’s hope that false bottom works,” Sweeney said. “If they find you, we’re screwed, Danny. They have us totally boxed in with concrete barriers on either side of us. Armed soldiers everywhere. There’s a huge machine gun at the guard shack ahead.”

  “Yeah, Danny, I think we might have really messed up here. I didn’t know they would be searching like this going out — I thought they just wouldn’t let us back in. Damn it!” Cal slapped the steering wheel.

  “Just chill,” said JoBell. “Be cool. They might not figure out there’s any space under there.”

  It sucked being helpless, stuck in this smelly little hatch in the back like this, walking into another Fed trap, this time with all my friends in trouble too. The driver’s-side window went down again.

  “How you doing?” said a different voice.

  “Fine,” said Cal. “Sick of being stuck in Idaho. There’s no food, barely any gas. We’re tired of it.”