by Jf Perkins
The assembled group laughed knowingly at Terry’s remark.
The man’s face turned red with fury, but he didn’t reply. He grabbed the pillow with his teeth and went back to chewing.
Sue flushed the debrided wound and started stitching. The man switching from moaning to merely hissing and wincing each time the needle passed through flesh. Kirk continued to taunt the man until Bill gave him a pointed look. Bill preferred to get some cooperation when the questions started, the taunting would not help. The other option for interrogation was something Bill would avoid at great cost. One of the prisoners that Terry and John Hall had taken at the Jenkins farm was not cooperative, and Bill had chosen to leave him imprisoned on a platform in the woods rather than resort to physical torture, although one could argue that the platforms amounted to the same thing after prisoners were exposed to the elements for a few days. The other, a mid-level officer in the Dragon’s organization, had broken under a steak dinner and spilled the beans on what he knew, which was better than nothing, but not incredibly detailed.
As far as Bill could tell from those earlier interrogations, the actual family members would resist any questions strongly, since it was their own flesh and blood at stake. The employees, however, were not always treated well and lived with the jealousy of being considered lesser men than the family members themselves. They would generally spill the beans if treated decently. Bill seriously hoped they were looking at a lackey on the emergency room bed. They could really use some information.
Sue finished her work and left the man with a fully bandaged leg. He looked around the room, probably trying to guess what would happen next. He rattled the cuffs against the bed rails in reflex. He couldn’t reach his head to wipe away the sweat trickling into his eyes.
Bill turned to the room. “Everyone, come take a close look at this man on your way out. If you see this man limping around within a mile of here without an escort, you will shoot him.”
The milling crowd formed into a line and filed past the bed. He was forced to endure a long series of hateful expressions and a smattering of hostile comments as the room slowly emptied. Terry, Kirk, and Aggie remained with Bill at the bedside. Sally sat quietly in one of the row of plastic chairs by the wall. Terry wanted to go to her, but there was still work to be done.
“Well... I guess you know where we stand on people who try to burn our town,” Bill said. “Let’s start with your name.”
“Fuck you.”
“Ok, Mr. You. Let me introduce you to my brother, Kirk. Personally, I’d prefer to have a polite conversation to learn what I want to know. Kirk here is not so interested in polite. He’s keenly interested in knowing what he wants to know, and I can tell you from past experience, he really has no limits to what he will do to get that information. You’re looking a simple choice, really. You can answer the questions, or you can suffer more pain than you ever knew existed.” Bill said it very calmly, as if he were simply explaining how to plant a seed. “Do we understand each other?”
The man nodded in a rapid, jerking motion.
“Good, now what’s your name?”
“Cooper. Jared Cooper.”
“That’s better, Mr. Cooper. Maybe your day won’t be so bad after all,” Bill said. “Who are you working for?”
“Wyatt Jenkins.”
“And?”
“That’s it. I swear. He came by the feed docks and offered good money for an easy job. All I had to do was follow those men and carry the gas can.”
“Well, since Mr. Jenkins is short on men these days, I need to know who the other men were.”
“I don’t know. A couple of guys I knew, but they were like me. Hired off the docks,” Jared Cooper said.
Terry nudged Bill’s arm to get his attention, then whispered the name of the man he had recognized in Bill’s ear.
Bill leaned forward and said, “I’m not sure I believe you, Mr. Cooper. Why would you come out into the country in the middle of the night with people you don’t know? Dig deeper.”
“Ok... There were some Talley boys... And some Coxes in the bunch.”
“What was the plan?”
“Wyatt Jenkins said you burned down his place, that you deserved the same. We were supposed to set fire to as many places as we could. When we got tangled up at the gate, somebody sent me and the other boys down the hill while they kept your people busy.”
“Did Mr. Jenkins tell you that the reason we burned his place down was because he kidnapped Dusty Baer, tortured him nearly to death, and then dumped him out of the back of a moving truck. You know Dusty?”
“Sure. Everybody knows Dusty. Good man.” Jared replied with a wince.
“Well, Dusty didn’t make it. He died right in the bed you’re occupying, covered in Jenkins branding iron burns.”
“I didn’t know. I’m... Sorry, sir.” Jared had turned a ghastly shade of white.
“All right, Mr. Cooper. I’m about to make a decision about your fate. Do you have anything to say that will make me think you deserve to live after you attacked my people and my town.”
“No, sir. Now that I know the whole story, I made a big mistake. I reckon I don’t deserve any special consideration. No money is worth what I did.” Jared’s chin dropped to his chest. Bill watched silently as tears began to mingle with the sweat on Jared’s face.
Bill looked at his wife, then his brother. Some kind of silent accord was reached. “Ok, Mr. Cooper. I’ve made my decision.”
Jared looked up and tried to wipe his tears on the shoulder of his shirt.
“I think you’ve learned your lesson. I’m letting you go. There’s two conditions...” Bill said.
Jared nodded and watched expectantly.
“One. You are not welcome here. If you come within a mile, my order still stands. Maybe someday we’ll invite you back, but until then, stay away.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Two. If you tell this story, you tell the whole story. I don’t need people thinking that we go around burning places for no good reason. I’ll need your word on it,” Bill said.
“You have my word, sir,” Jared replied.
“Fine. Somebody will give you a ride back at sunup. Until then, you may as well relax. I don’t want you out where someone might take a shot at you.”
Jared was still nodding gratefully as Bill hobbled away.
The small group followed Bill out the double doors of the clinic. Terry stopped along the way to lend his arm to Sally. She got to her feet, picked up her rifle, and leaned heavily on his shoulder as they walked out. Only the faintest hint of light broke the eastern horizon as they gathered in the gravel lane.
“You two all right?” Bill asked Terry and his daughter.
“I’m fine, Bill. Not so sure about Sally,” Terry said.
“Sally?” Bill asked the implicit question once again.
“I’m ok, Daddy. It’s just... Well, it’s different than I thought it would be,” Sally said with a sigh.
“It always is, sweetheart. It’s always hard and it never gets easier. If you think about it, that’s a good thing,” Bill said with a sad expression. He was thinking how nice it would be if his precious little girl never had to kill another human being, and how unlikely that had always been.
Aggie leaned over and hugged her daughter hard enough to squeeze air from Sally’s lungs. “I love you, Miss Sally.”
“I love you too, Mama.”
“Sally, why don’t you head home and get some sleep. It’ll help,” Bill said.
She brightened a bit and said, “Can I take Terry with me?”
Bill looked shocked for a second and replied, “Uh, no...”
Even Kirk laughed at his uncomfortable reply. Terry gave Sally a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek under the watchful eyes of her parents. Then Sally and Aggie walked slowly towards their home.
Bill returned to business. “Kirk, set John up for another raid. The Talleys and the Coxes need a visit. It occurs to me that I went off half-c
ocked on the Jenkins. We’ll do it differently this time...” Bill filled him in on the details, and Kirk went off to find John.
“Terry, if you’re up to it, I’d like you and Seth to take Mr. Cooper home. Be friendly. I’m hoping that letting him go is a good idea. Anyone who knows what he was doing will see us bringing him home, and maybe with a little luck, Dusty can still help us out from the great beyond.”
Chapter 9 - 3
Twenty minutes later, Terry was caught in the state between post-adrenalin exhaustion and brain-humming wakefulness. Most of the townspeople had wandered back to their beds as the guard organized a cleanup detail for the sad remains of the late night defense action. Terry considered trying to grab an hour of sleep for about the fifteenth time when he wandered into the town square and saw Bill sitting on the front steps of the church. Bill’s wooden crutches were leaning against the wall behind him. Terry angled in that direction.
Bill appeared to be deep in thought, but he looked up as Terry approached and patted the step beside him. Terry stepped up, spun around and sat in one smooth motion. It seemed to be a quiet time for Bill and Terry refrained from speaking to respect the moment.
After a couple of minutes, Bill finally said, “You know, I’ve been expecting something like this for a long time, but now that it’s here, I think I’d almost rather pack up my family and leave someone else to make all the hard decisions.”
“Yeah, I understand that feeling, and I’ve only had to think about it for a couple of months. You’d think it would be easy for me. All I have to worry about is myself,” Terry said.
“That’s not true. I can tell that you worry about everyone and everything already,” Bill said.
“Well, let’s just say that it’s just as true as the idea that you would leave anyone else to handle things,” Terry replied.
“Ah, ya’ got me. I couldn’t do that. There’s a reason that the hard decisions are so damn hard. People get hurt. Not many people want to decide to hurt people. I sure don’t.”
“Way back at the beginning of your story, you were telling me that one of the reasons the old country failed is that no one was willing to make the hard decisions. You said that our leadership stood around pointing fingers at each other while the whole world spun out of control. That idea stuck with you all this time. Must be an important one,” Terry said.
“It is an important one, but it’s like the difference between simple and easy. I can recognize all the important things that my parents taught me with my mind, but my heart is the one that sits on top, trying to make sure that my brain doesn’t do something I can’t live with. It’s simple to put the facts in order, but it sure isn’t easy to make the call.” Bill dug around in his pocket for a pipe, and slowly packed it with tobacco.
“Like the Jenkins place?”
“Yeah, just like that. I’m sorry you had to be there, but I’m sure glad you were there, if that makes any sense at all.”
“It does. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the sick feeling I had after I watched all those men blown to bits,” Terry said. “But, I still understand the reasons, and I agree with them. It’s like you said, heart and head.”
“Heart and head. I guess I go on a rule that sounds like this... Sometimes you have to use your head so that later, it’s safe for your heart, and all those others hearts around you,” Bill replied with a rapid puff on his pipe.
“You know all those hearts are with you, right?”
“Yeah, I know and I’m grateful. Lots of good people around this place,” Bill said. “I hope I don’t kill too many of them.”
“Nobody expects you to be perfect, Bill.”
“Nobody except me...” Bill said with a faraway sound in his voice. “But speaking of hearts, I’d say you’re not all that far away from having a family of your own.”
“I think you have a tad too much interest in that subject, Grandpa. Instead, let’s hear a little more about little Miss Aggie.”
Bill laughed, busted at his own game. “All right, Mr. Shelton. Where were we?”
Chapter 9 – 4
Sprouts were growing in our homemade greenhouses. Sally was explaining everything in great detail to whoever would sit still long enough to listen. For the most part, that meant Lucy, followed by Mom and two of her traumatized women from Eugene Curfman’s prison shed. I never heard the details, but word got around that Eugene was not the worst of the men in his camp. In fact, he seemed to be using the poor women to keep his gun-toting followers happy.
In late August, it still was nothing like a typical Tennessee summer. The wind was cold when it blew. It rained more often than it had in years past, and except for three days of highs in the 70’s, the daytime temperatures were hovering in the 50’s and 60’s. The good news was that, unlike the previous year, we were approaching September without a freezing night in sight. Dad often wondered out loud about how bad the winter would be with mumbles about the rate of atmospheric clearing and other terms that meant nothing to me.
What I could see for myself was that a few adventurous plants finally decided to venture forth in early August. We saw buttercups and cable briar and even some poison oak popping out on tree trunks, but the trees themselves stayed locked up in sleep. We only had Sally Bean’s word on that. For all I knew, the trees were dead. A few crops sprang up in the open garden beds, but they were volunteers left over from the previous year. Sally had not bothered to do any real planting in a year with no summer. She watched them carefully for her own education, and occasionally talked to them when she thought no one was around. As a kid in a shattered world, I took it at face value even though I knew my folks thought talking to plants was weird. I spent idle moments wondering what Sally Bean was learning from those brave plants.
All I knew for sure was that we, the males in our group, were allowed back into the house at night. With the nervous chattering and ranting of one of the rescued women named Jackie, I was tempted to head right back out to the hayloft every evening after dinner. Kirk was even less tolerant. His habit was to rise from the dinner table and declare himself on watch. He would lace his boots and carry his rifle out the front door before anyone could think of an argument. In any case, if he was on watch, that meant no one else had to stay out in the chilly night air.
The other two grown women, Margaret and Jones, seemed to have adjusted just fine. They had developed an uncomfortable gratitude to all of us, but poured most of their daily thanks on my mother, who was beginning to tire of the role of heroine. Aggie became my best friend after that first introduction on the swing. We spent as much time together as our farm chores would allow and made a point to ride the rusty swing every afternoon in the rare down time between endless tasks and dinner time. It was nice, and for some reason, we never ran out of new things to say. Of course, she did most of the talking. I was just smart enough to know that the less I said, the smarter I would look.
We didn’t see much of each other during August. Dad, Arturo, Kirk and I were still on hay collection. We finished gathering the hay up at the Carroll’s farm and moved our work down to Joe Miller’s place. Joes farm, more of a ranch really, was within easy walking distance of our new home at Sally Bean’s farm. We had met him when he was in the throes of a tough case of pneumonia. He had come to Sally’s house to warn her of the men who were threatening local survivors in the effort to find us. Sally had given him some concoction of tea to help with his sickness, but I remember Sally telling Mom that he had no better than a 50-50 shot at recovering.
By the time we were gathering hay at his place, Joe had already beaten the odds. He was still coughing and resting every five minutes, but he was up and around and helping us with the job, teaching us a lifetime of tricks as we began the long process of rounding up his animals and hay. On a lunch break, we had the opportunity to listen to him talk about himself.
“So, Joe... You’re giving us all your livestock, and all your hay. What are you going to do with your time now?” Dad asked in the middle of t
he conversation.
“Well now, David. I know it seems a little crazy to give away the farm, but you gotta understand. I’m 72 years old. I’ve been working this land since my daddy left it to me in 1960. I know the world has gone all nuts, but I don’t care. I’m tired of farming. I’m ready to retire.”
“I’m not arguing, Joe, but money is gone. Land is the only currency we have for the foreseeable future, unless I’m wrong and the government is still up and running.”
“Never did count on the government for anything. About the time I got smart enough to tie my shoes so they wouldn’t come undone, we were in the middle of Viet Nam, and that’s when I figured the government was about as useful as spilled whiskey.”
“Still no argument, but I’m serious. If you’re not working your land, how will you survive? You need something to trade, again assuming people start trading again,” Dad said.
“Oh, I’ve been giving it some thought, and I have something to trade,” Joe replied, tapping his skull with a long bony finger. “I know pretty much everything there is to know about farming, one way or another. I’ve tried it all. There have to be lots of people who need to know that stuff these days. Ain’t no more running to Kroger for the groceries...”
Dad’s eyes grew wide as he understood what Joe was saying. “I never thought of that, Joe. You’re right. I spent my whole life before the Breakdown selling my knowledge, but I never once thought about selling knowledge after the fact. We’re your customers. We know we need this hay, but we don’t know the first thing about what to do with it, or how to get more when it runs out.”
“Exactly. You’re in good hands, by the way. If anybody knows more about charming food out of the ground than Sally, I never met ‘em,” Joe said. “My daddy died suddenly, accident here on the farm, and stupid kid that I was, I never paid enough attention to what he was telling me. I was planning to be a reporter when he died. Sally and her husband got me right up to speed. I’m still learning from her, come to think of it.”
