Renewal 9 - Delay Tactics

by Jf Perkins

  Kirk stood the young man in front of his father and waited a minute for the psychological pressure to build. The elder Talley, a man named George, had wriggled around to watch. His son, who was already facing the potential torture, was staring in wide-eyed fear, probably verging on shock. As far as he knew, he was next.

  When Kirk judged he was at the point of maximum strain, he pulled his knife, and began to brandish it in the harsh glare of the headlights. He watched the light bounce off the razor edge, and without appearing to aim, he bounced the blinding reflections in Garrett Cox’s eyes. He knew from the old days that this was often enough to do the trick, but old Garrett was holding firm. The knife accelerated to a blur that only Kirk could achieve. He sliced up the inside of one of Derek’s legs and down the other, splitting the entire inseam of the young man’s pants, barely even scratching the skin. From Kirk’s view, he sheathed the knife and folded the legs of Derek’s pants over the rope around his wrists. To everyone else, it looked like Derek’s pants simply exploded, leaving the poor man dangling in the breeze.

  Kirk slipped back into his dangerous tone and said, “My daddy always said to leave the balls for last, but I reckon, why waste time? Let’s just start with the balls.” The way he said it, “balls” was a very long word.

  Kirk’s knife appeared in his hand again, and he leaned in towards Derek’s exposed manhood, seemingly testing the angles for the perfect cut. George Talley saved Derek from a fate worse than death.

  “Ok, ok, stop! I’ll tell you everything,” George practically screamed it out in a single burst and then immediately shifted into deep sobbing.

  Having a crying peer bouncing against his back turned out to be too much for the leader of the Cox family. He started blubbering too. Terry marveled at how fast everything had changed. Kirk dropped his sinister expression and went back to his normal inscrutable one. He gave one of his men a nod, and the man disappeared into the shadows, returning a minute later with a pair of pants for the younger Cox.

  “All right. Stop crying and start talking, so we don’t have to do this shit all over again,” Bill barked at the two older men.

  George Talley talked, and within a couple of minutes, so did Garrett Cox. They ended up helping each other to relay the most complete version of events they could recall, and it was quite complete, matching up well with what Bill already knew. At some point in the spilling of the guts, Kirk signaled his man to help Derek with his pants problem, and by the end almost every tension was resolved. In the course of the tale, it became clear that Wyatt Jenkins had handled his peers the same way he had dealt with Jared Cooper, only telling the parts of the story that would help his cause. As Bill filled them in on the missing parts, the two family leaders felt something they rarely bothered to feel. Shame.

  “All right, Kirk. I think we’re about finished here. Cut ‘em loose and put any weapons they had over in the bushes.” Bill waved to the scrubby growth on the north end of the parking lot.

  “Gentlemen, I thank you for your cooperation, and I apologize for going about it the hard way. Fact of the matter is, I can’t trust you, but you can trust in the fact that I didn’t do to you what I did to the Jenkins.” Bill caught each man’s eye in turn and they looked back like spiritually defeated men. “The other fact of the matter is that things have got to change in this county. You’ve been taking advantage of people for too long, and that’s over now.”

  “All of you get to go home to your families tonight, unharmed other than a pair of britches. But there’s a catch. You, and your entire families, are confined to your farms for a year. Any Cox or Talley caught outside the fence will be turned over to the state for collusion in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Dusty Baer. I can assure you that the state prosecutor will not care whether you knew what was happening or not. If you need something from town, hire someone to get it. In addition, you will refuse to participate in any attacks on our land. I don’t care if the ghost of Jerry Doan Jenkins appears to you in the middle of the night and tells you to join the fight, you will not do it. If I get the slightest hint that you or anyone you hire is in our territory, then the deal is off and your farms will burn. Do we understand each other, gentlemen?”

  Bill waited until each of the four men had given his word. In Garrett Cox’s case, it took longer than Bill wanted. He added a final comment while staring the elder Cox right in the face. “Oh, and in case you are wondering, we will be watching.” Bill turned to Kirk and said, “Ok, let’s pull your men back from the farms and leave a watch in place. Let’s go.”

  In thirty seconds, the four men were alone. They looked at each other dumbly, their minds trying to catch up with events. Eventually, when none them could think of a better idea, they began to walk home. It was no surprise when Derek Cox made the extra effort to walk away from his father.

  Chapter 9 – 11

  After finishing their business with Kirk, Bill and Terry were riding through the dark back roads of Coffee County, circling north of Tullahoma to meet up with the highway near the Bedford County line. The naked bed of Normandy Lake revealed old road beds that had been drowned in the early 1970’s when the lake was first brought up to its summer pool level. Bill was familiar with those roads, but wouldn’t trust himself to find them in the dark. He had no way of knowing the progress the Dragon army was making through Bedford County, but knowing Tam Rogers, he expected the white-robers were having a very bad day.

  The circuitous route gave Bill and Terry plenty of time to talk about the events of the day. Terry was still nervous about Tullahoma, though Bill assured him that they were nowhere near the dangerous heart of town. Not completely convinced, Terry kept his eyes moving, looking for any signs of trouble on the overgrown lanes they traveled.

  “Would Kirk have gone through with it?” Terry asked.

  “No. Kirk has never actually had to go through with it. He’s more of a pitt bull dog than a cat. Cats like to toy with their prey, for some reason. Dogs try to stay out of the fight until they’re in it, and then they are one hundred percent in. And like a fighting dog, once Kirk decides to move, us normal folks can’t see anything but a blur. But I know he’s not interested in hurting people. He only interested in winning.” Bill sounded like he was convincing himself for at least some of his answer.

  “Did you tell him what to do?”

  “I told him to try to take some family members alive. I didn’t expect him to get the exact family members we needed. I trust him to handle the details, and he usually does it better than I would,” Bill replied in a flat tone, like a military report.

  “So, you specifically decided to do the hard thing to avoid doing what we did at the Jenkins farm?”

  “I felt bad about destroying it, and I also realized that it’s too easy to turn into what we’re fighting. We’ve never been out to take anything from anyone else. Our entire fighting system is designed for defense. I realized that I had overstepped the lines of defense by striking out in revenge, half way across the county,” Bill said, pausing for a few beats. “Then there are the politics, which is a crappy topic up against life and death, but if we just set out to eliminate the families altogether, then we would end up doing what they have always done, holding onto control through fear and intimidation. We made our point with the Jenkins men, who we know for a fact were involved with Dusty’s death, and we used that one action as leverage against the rest. I hope that’s enough. I half-expect Garrett Cox to show up in a white robe on Sunday.”

  “So, no matter what we do about the Dragons, it’s always more about making friends than winning fights,” Terry said, trying to sum it up in his own mind.

  “Yeah. That’s a good way to put it. If you have enough to live, and can protect what’s yours in this world, then helping someone else is almost always a good idea. Sometimes people can disappoint you, but not too often to stop trying.” Bill dug in his pocket for a pouch of tobacco, and held it out to Terry.

  Terry glanced at it and shook his head.


  “Good. Terrible habit,” Bill said.

  “Why Sunday? Is that when you think they will attack?” Terry was full of questions.

  “I think it will be soon. Remember what we found in Nashville? Those Dragons had about three days’ worth of food on hand. They probably don’t think about the long haul. They cover two counties and they have plenty of working vehicles, so they probably think in terms of quick raids, out and back. I’m fairly sure they don’t have any concept of supply lines, or even any home base to keep the supplies coming, so no matter what they’ve come to do, they’ll have to do it quickly. Of course, they may be counting on the families to keep them fed while they work out a plan. I’m hoping they will be disappointed.”

  “I hope so, too. Do the other two families have enough to feed an army?”

  “The Cantners do fairly well with their big farm, and they don’t seem to waste as much on bullshit as the Jenkins and the Coxes. The MacMillans are small potatoes compared to the other families. Dusty used to tell me that they would be paying Jerry Doan Jenkins back for three generations, they had borrowed so much. The big thing we don’t know is whether Wyatt Jenkins has enough money stashed to finance the whole deal. He sure can’t feed an army off his own land anymore.”

  “So you think the Coxes may be in the fight. What about the Talleys?” Terry asked.

  “I think we won’t have to worry about the Talleys anymore. George was never a bad guy. He just happened to have a bunch of jerks in his class of people, and you know how it is. You do what it takes to get along.” Bill rolled down his window to spit, and left it open for the breeze.

  “We may be facing three families worth of fighters and who knows how much Jenkins money. Do we know what that means in numbers?”

  “Pretty much. The money doesn’t matter unless a whole lot of Coffee County folks are greedy enough to sign up for the fight in exchange for a few bucks. It’ll be over before they can do anything really dangerous with the money. In terms of manpower, we outnumber the families since the Jenkins raid so that’s not a worry. The worry is what the Junior Dragon brings. He may show up with ten times what the families can field, or he may not show up at all.”

  “You think Bedford County can do that much damage?”

  “I’ll say one thing. I’ll bend over backwards to keep Tam Rogers as a friend.” Bill said.

  Terry looked at the blank clock display on his dashboard and asked, “How far do we have to go?”

  Bill watched the cones of the headlights until he recognized the gutted and blackened machine shop ahead. “Fifteen... Twenty minutes, and after that it depends on what Tam’s people tell us.”

  “So, plenty of time to tell me what happened next, then.” Terry said, leading Bill to his favorite subject.

  Bill laughed, rearranged the chaw in his mouth and started talking.

  Chapter 9 – 12

  Every day that went by without the bottom dropping out of the thermometer was a more hopeful day. August came and went with nothing worse than a New England summer to show for it. The weather was still wetter than Tennessee is supposed to be in late summer, but Dad kept saying that was a good thing. The more rain, the more the dirt fell out of the sky and the faster we could get back to normal. That didn’t stop us from another frantic firewood effort to prepare for the cold. “Better safe than sorry” was almost a mantra every morning as we stretched sore muscles and prepared for another round of daily chores. There was always plenty to do before we could even begin to cut wood.

  Joe Miller was our constant companion, now that he had literally given away the farm. He figured it was our problem, and he was free to spend his time doing whatever he wanted. After his solitary battle with nuclear winter, what he wanted most was the company of other people, Not just any people. Men. At least once a day, he would say, “Spend too much time around women, and they start expecting you to keep spending time. Right, men?” Kirk and I agreed, and then went back to what we were doing, since we actually had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, ninety-nine percent of our lives consisted of Mom and Lucy, and they were both happy to get rid of us.

  Aside from speaking wisdom over my head, Joe was a good guy to have around. He even taught Dad hundreds of methods for getting the most out of green timber. How to cut it, how to split it, dry it, cure it for lumber, and even carve it with an old pocket knife that never left old Joe’s side. We used George Carroll’s tractor and fuel to haul the wood in from way out behind the creek. Dad hadn’t decided what to do closer to the house yet, and deliberately left that timber alone. Joe’s... Well, our farm across the road looked like it had enough trees on the hillside to burn for a thousand years, but Joe told us, “Only if you treat it right,” and proceeded to give us a masters course in Tennessee forestry for the next five days.

  By the end of September, the weather was turning cold. The wind felt like November as I remembered it, and the sky was laden with unending overcast. Still, it was a different flavor of clouds than the previous year. Instead of the turbulent black mass of the previous fall, this was medium gray to silver, and didn’t give me the feeling of living under the shadow of an angry fist. That’s not to say we were off the hook. By my birthday at the beginning of December, we were all huddled around Sally’s big woodstove. Most of the livestock were sheltered in several barns with the heat of the stoves we had brought with us to keep them alive. The best part about my birthday was that no one mentioned a word about Juannie, even though I was sure I could feel her memory hanging over all of us like the heavy quilts hanging on the walls.

  Well, that’s not entirely true. The best part was presents. Mom and Dad gave me a knife. It was a Buck folding knife with an antler handle and a pristine stainless blade. It came in its own special wooden box, which it promptly vacated to move into my pocket. I tossed out the cheap Chinese knife I had been carrying since the Breakdown to fend for itself in a dresser drawer. Lucy, Tommy, and Kirk joined forces to make me a gift. They rolled it out of the hallway with obvious pride. The wooden contraption was meant to be a scooter, I think. It was an unnatural marriage of boards and metal wheels from old roller skates, hammered together with many large, bent nails. I set my foot on it and was about to give it a kick across the kitchen floor when Mom said, “Outside. Only outside.”

  Kirk’s comment was, “We tried to make you a skateboard, but that thing was dangerous!” Everyone laughed at the idea that something could be more dangerous than what we were seeing in front of us.

  Arturo’s gift was a promise to give me driving lessons in the spring. “Parents can’t teach their own kids to drive,” He said. “That’s just asking for headaches and hair loss.”

  Jimmy’s gift was a special birthday performance of a song he made, “Especially for Bill.” It was a very good song, but the dance that went with it, even better.

  Margaret and Jackie, who had become inseparable, gave me a knitted thing. Don’t ask me what it was because I tried to find out on the sly, and everyone I asked gave me a different answer. I was afraid to wear it on the wrong part of my body, and afraid not to wear it and give offense to the ladies who made it. I compromised and gave it a visible place of honor in the room I shared with three other boys. That seemed to do the trick.

  Jones gave me a hug, which I have to admit was pretty thrilling. She backed away before it became even more embarrassing than the stupid look on my face, but the damage was done. Aggie walked up to me with her red face glowing, and kissed me right on the lips, thus staking her claim in front of God and everyone. I was too stunned to notice the array of smiles aimed in my direction when she pulled away with a distinct smack. All those faces are burned into my memory and I still blush when I think about my first real kiss, even to this day.

  Sally Bean stole the show, to my relief, when she showed up with her present, a giant carrot cake made with her own greenhouse carrots and many treasures from her enormous basement food supply. The thirteen candles were full-sized dinner tapers, but on the monstr
ous cake, they looked just about right. Jimmy led the singing of Happy Birthday and helped me blow out the candles.

  That’s the day I became a teenager, even though I had been counting myself a man for quite some time.

  Chapter 9 – 13

  The horseman was standing by his mount on the shoulder of the highway. In the darkness, the black horse looked huge like a dangerous hole in the night, waiting for someone to get too close and fall in. He held up a hand as we made the final turn onto 41A from Magnolia Lane. The last mile had been a roller coaster ride up from the Normandy Road. Aside from the original sharp hills, Terry had contended with giant holes, pavement that was more like heavy black gravel, and vegetation that grew out into the lane like it was on the last phase of a world domination plan. He heaved a sigh of relief when the road ended, and pulled the breath back in when he was startled by the horse.

  Bill’s window was still open. Terry pulled up even with the rider, and Bill recognized the man in the yellow glow of Big Bertha’s running lights. “Evening, Jeff. How are things?”

  “Howdy, Mr. Carter. Everything is fine. We’ve been making some sport of your friends from Columbia.”

  “Jeff, I’d like you to meet Terry Shelton. He’s one of our new boys. Terry, this is Jeff Rogers. His mother is the one I was telling you about,” Bill said.

  The two young men greeted each other through the truck window. Once the pleasantries were exchanged, Bill said, “Where’s your mama?”

  “She’s about three-quarters of a mile ahead, a stub of road on the left with a little white house on the corner. If you start down a steep hill, you missed it,” Jeff said.