“Just consider making an early summer vacation. Because if there’s any kind of travel issue, you guys have a long walk.”
I stressed the word issue, meaning a travel ban, then I’d likely never see my brother, his wife or their kids ever again in this lifetime. They’d be forced to either shelter in place, surviving on their preps and fighting the neighbors for the produce from their small garden, or attempt a risky approach on foot.
“You thinking it’s time to invite some additional campers this summer?” Mike asked, trying to take some of the tension out of our conversation. I suddenly wondered just where the resistance was coming from on their relocation.
“Yeah, I should see if Charlie and Mary want to hook up their travel trailer and come visit for a few weeks. You know how Charlie likes to fish, and having Mary around would give me some company while I’m making the potato salad for the fish fry,” I improvised, not even aware if Charles Brewer owned a fishing rod. He usually came out to shoot at our range, or to go dove hunting. “Since you guys are just too busy to come visit your poor old brother again.”
Charlie worked as an engineer at one of the chemical plants in Beaumont, and his wife taught high school English and coached the girls’ basketball team. She was the only daughter of my aunt Melissa, or Aunt Mel as we all called her, and Aunt Mel was our father’s little sister.
I liked Charlie well enough, but Mary was a sweetheart, and I’d been wrestling with the idea of inviting them out ever since I’d met with Nancy and I outed Mary for having big feet. Not her fault, since she was almost my height. Charlie, on the other hand, topped out at nearly six feet, eight inches. We joked that when they decided to have kids, they would be breeding a race of giants.
“Yeah, we could definitely use Charlie’s help with the fishing,” I continued, “since you aren’t around to mix up your famous cornmeal batter.”
“Cornmeal batter?” Mike asked, obviously confused by my nonsense reference.
“You know, the one you mix up in the metal mixing bowl in the garage when the house is crowded. Your wife might think it’s messy, but I think of it as progressive. Plus, I know he likes walnut while you’re stuck with corn. Just a matter of taste.”
I heard Mike’s growl as he realized what I meant. I was threatening to put Charlie to work on Mike’s reloading system. I was trying for subtle, but people in-the-know would get my references. For example, some reloaders used corn cobs and others preferred walnut hulls as cleaning media for the tumbler. I didn’t know what Charlie preferred, and I didn’t care. That wasn’t the point.
“I’ll talk to Marta again,” Mike threatened, and I had to fight not to laugh. We do love our toys, I admitted to myself. If it took the idea of somebody else playing with his Dillon progressive press, then so be it. I never said I would play fair. Not when the lives of my family hung in the balance.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I followed Wade’s advice and Monday morning, I stopped by the sheriff’s office to make an official report. I called it an attempted burglary as I filled out the form for the waiting deputy, but I left out any supposition on my part as to the perpetrator or the distinctive appearance of the getaway car. Deputy Haines, a pale-faced man in his twenties with vivid acne scars around his neck like a choker, took the report and promised to look into it right away. We both knew he was lying, but I thanked him anyway.
From there, I proceeded to my office and met with an elderly couple, the Cowarts, who wanted to talk about life planning. Someone in their bridge club had suggested setting up a trust, but after we discussed the matter for over half an hour, we ended up agreeing that given the size of their anticipated estate, they would probably do better with a will. The idea of a surviving spouse having to go through probate can be daunting, and I didn’t say anything about the trust I’d set up for my own family, but I finally got them squared away. Sure, the fees for setting up a trust would have netted me more than doing two wills for these people, but I was trying to establish roots in this community and being ‘that greedy bloodsucker’ wouldn’t help my public image.
After that, my secretary Barbara announced my schedule was free until after lunch, when I had a one-thirty meeting booked with Missy Laudner. I quickly reviewed my file for the widow Laudner and stepped out for a quick bite to eat at the Stonehouse Diner across the street. With the sun struggling to peek out from behind a layer of angry-looking clouds, I elected to wear my jacket and carry an umbrella.
Turned out that was a good call, since the fat raindrops started smacking the asphalt before I finished making the block and striding across the crosswalk. Traffic was light to non-existent, but I still looked both ways as a precaution.
Inside, I found Debbie Stone, proprietor and chief bottle washer, seating guests and I asked for a table by the windows and waved off the menu.
“Rueben, please, and a sweet tea,” I said, ordering my usual lunch fare.
“Come on, Bryan,” Debbie chided, teasing me with her saucy grin. “I know that sandwich is good, but you should try some of our other features on the menu.”
“But I really like your Rueben, Debbie,” I replied with a little smile. I wasn’t blind to the restaurant owner’s frequent flirting, but this was just part of our ongoing banter. “What if I tried something else and didn’t like it as much? Or even worse, what if I found something I liked better?”
“And how would that be a problem?”
“Because that would be something new I’d have to memorize. I might forget, or confuse myself and order the wrong side dish to go with it. No, the risk is too great.” I then gave a theatrical sigh. “I’ll stick with my usual and spare us the embarrassment of this old dog trying to learn new tricks.”
The diner seated to my left overheard the exchange and couldn’t suppress a low chortle of laughter. Looking over, I noticed our very own police chief, Buddy Cromwell. Buddy Cromwell was a bit older than me, probably in his late forties. He was a big man, though only a little over six feet tall, and while Buddy was beginning to get that middle-age spread at the waist, his shoulders still looked like he routinely wrestled bulls and won. He wore his salt and pepper hair cut short, framing a broad, expressive face. He’d laughed good naturedly at my interplay with Debbie, but his expression quickly reverted to a pensive frown.
“Hey, Buddy, what you know good?”
The question was a throw-away; a social nicety. In Texas, polite conversation involves a bit of interplay with variations on that question, which could involve ‘How ya’ doing?’ or “Hot enough for you?’ or any of half a dozen other inquiries. Surprisingly, Buddy took the question at face value and shook his head ruefully.
“Not a thing, Mr. Hardin. Not a thing. First time I’ve laughed all day, in fact.”
Right about then, Debbie popped her head out of the kitchen to inform me she was out of Thousand Island dressing.
“That’s fine, Debbie. Just use mustard,” I replied, then turned back to Buddy and lowered my voice as soon as Debbie disappeared again.
“I got a visit yesterday from one of the Sherwood boys. Wade thought it was Matt by my description. He was trying to disable my front gate.”
“Is the gate on your property?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, confident in my answer. The entry was offset, so the gate and the last ten feet of the drive was on my land. I also had the appropriate Posted and Private Property signs up for hunters on both sides of the front gate and on all for corners of the property.
“Bryan,” Buddy began, his voice low to match my own. “Times is about to get bad. Really bad, I think. This whole thing with China, and the West Coast, is going to snowball. I know you’ve worked hard to get that place out there fixed up and producing some crops. You need to be ready to take care of what you have. You get me?”
“Yes, sir,” I said again, more to prompt Buddy to continue speaking than anything else. He cleared his throat, glancing around to see who was seated close. Fortunately, we seemed to be isolated at our ta
bles by the window.
“A little birdie told me the sheriff went to a briefing on Friday with some Emergency Management people in Beaumont. I heard he was acting funny when he came back. Scared, I reckon. I don’t know what all they told him, but Landshire was sweating like a whore in church when I saw him that afternoon. Thing is, whatever they told him, he hasn’t bothered to share with the rest of us. Or with most of his deputies.”
Well, that just told me Buddy’s informant was one of the sheriff’s deputies. I was shocked with his candor, but I figured I should reward him with some news, no matter how depressing. Nikki had gotten in at almost five am this morning and she’d had a few scary moments on her trip. I decided to omit that part, since I’m pretty sure she’d left bodies on the ground at least once.
“Not sure what they said, but my sister is going to be staying out at my place for a while. She lives over in San Marcos, and she works at one of the banks there. The rioting in San Antonio has spread to the neighboring towns, and she didn’t feel safe. Her husband works for as a first responder there in Travis County, and he’s been conscripted into his job for the duration.”
“Holy…uh, didn’t know…I knew some cities were having trouble, but I hadn’t heard about San Antonio. Maybe that’s what got Bernie all in a lather,” Buddy stuttered at first, but quickly got his words under control. I decided to feed him the rumor about the Mexican troop movements and the supposed border closing, stressing that none of it was substantiated. Buddy, experienced lawman that he was, understood how even wrong information could drive people to make poor decisions based on what they took to be gospel truth.
“I see keeping the reporters from sensationalizing the violence, keeping a lid on the panic,” Buddy grumbled, “but you’d think they would at least give law enforcement a heads-up. We don’t have a huge undocumented Hispanic population in town, but there’s enough to cause trouble if they have a mind to. Best case is if they load up and roll south.”
“Worst case?”
“They loot the town for supplies, burn the rest, and then head south.”
“That’s pretty darned grim, Chief,” I observed, and Buddy shook his head.
“I told you, things are going to get worse,” Buddy replied. “Everybody got all worked up over the quakes, and the loss of services. Yeah, no Netflix, or internet porn. But we adapt and continue along, but think about what Debbie just told you. She’s out of your Thousand Island dressing today. What will it be tomorrow? And a week from now? This country just lost more than a supply chain when the West Coast shook itself apart. We just suffered an economic injury that might bring down the whole country, so that’s got me a little down today.”
Working really hard to keep my poker face, I thought about the chief’s words. Not just what he’d said, but how he said it. As W.B. Yeats wrote, ‘Things fall apart; the centre will not hold’. Buddy was warning me the economic collapse was simply racing from the societal breakdown to a final showdown. How much he knew of the coming environmental Armageddon, I dared not ask. Sensing his dark train of thought, I decided to see if I could aggravate him into a better mood.
“Really? I thought you were suffering from PTSD from watching that memorial ceremony for Kanye last night,” I teased, trying for just the right level of unctuous concern. “You might need a safe space for a while to avoid being triggered by the idea of the passing of the great man.”
“You are a funny fucking guy, Bryan,” Buddy muttered, sipping at his coffee and dropping his voice as he saw Debbie approach with my plated sandwich. “I don’t think he’s dead, though. You just can’t kill that kind of genius.”
I saw Buddy’s smirk, since he apparently shared my opinion of a musical genius who couldn’t sing, play a musical instrument, or read a note of sheet music.
“Tell it to Tupac,” I fired back, and I got to watch the New Albany chief of police shoot coffee out his nose as he choked.
After he finally caught his breath, thanks in part to Debbie’s whack on his back and her admonitions for Buddy not to die in her restaurant, I stood back, feeling a tinge of guilt for my poor timing. One of the other patrons, a nurse from the Urgent Care clinic next to my office, hustled over and gave the chief a quick once over, casting a suspicious glance my way as I tried to act innocent in the whole matter.
Afterwards, I kept my mouth occupied with eating my sandwich, but as Buddy rose from his seat, he pointed a finger at me and warned, “I got my eye on you, Mr. Hardin. Now I know you are an experienced shit-stirrer, and you won’t get away with it again.”
I had to laugh at Chief Cromwell’s ham-handed, overdone acting. He had the skills of a B-grade villain.
“What? Me? I’m a simple will scribbler,” I protested, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “I’m strictly a law-and-order kind of guy.”
Looking around quickly, Buddy lowered his voice to previous levels, so only I could hear his next words.
“You’ll need to up your game, Mr. Hardin, if you plan to live through these next days. Watch out for the sheriff, and you watch out for anyone who wants to tell you how to run your farm. You might be well-liked, but many still see you as an outsider, you know. And I’ve got no jurisdiction out your way.”
“I’ll make sure and keep my eyes open, Chief.”
Damn, I thought on my way back to the office. Buddy as much as said Sheriff Landshire would get around to taking over the farm at some point. Or die trying.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Hey, the internet is back up,” Nikki announced as soon as I hit the back door. She was in the kitchen, working over a large pot of something simmering on the stove.
“Great, I was wanting to check my Facebook account,” I shot back, giving my sister a stupid, cross-eyed grin.
“Okay, not all of it is back up,” she corrected, setting aside the large stainless-steel ladle in her hand. “I guess I should say some sites are back up. No Facebook, or Twitter, though. YouTube is back, and so are some of the subscription entertainment sites. Amazon is up, but only delivering electronic media at this time.”
“Huh,” I grunted, thinking on what Nikki said as I approached the stove. “Entertainment sites, you said. What are you using to navigate?”
“That’s kind of weird, too,” Nikki continued. “If you go to Google, or Bing, or any of the others, you get redirected to something called Netfeed. Not as user-friendly, but it gets the job done.”
“That’s interesting, and scary, too. Dollars to donuts, that Netfeed is a government-sponsored search engine of some sort. Brought online when the others failed to bounce back. Uh, I would suggest being very circumspect in what you search for, Nikki.”
“Duh,” Nikki replied, sounding like her eight-year-old son, Hunter, when she said it. “You don’t have to tell me Big Brother is watching. Hell, I had CNN on all day, and not a peep about the fighting in San Antonio. Or anywhere else, except in passing.” Nikki glanced around the kitchen and lowered her voice before she continued.
“I think the president is working himself up to declare Martial Law over the entire country, Bryan.”
“Don’t you mean Marshall law,” I quipped, then saw Nikki’s confused expression and apologized.
“Sorry, I just see it misspelled so often I want to pull my hair out sometimes.”
“Looks like you’ve been doing it for a while,” Nikki shot back and I laughed. I wasn’t the least bit sensitive about my thinning hair. I was just proud I could still wear the same size jeans I did in high school.
“So what’s for dinner? And where are the littles?”
“I decided we could all use a little chicken soup, and you gotta quite calling them that. Gonna give Hunter a complex.”
I laughed again. Hunter was probably going to be taller than me by the time he was grown, and Rachel was already over five feet tall at only eleven.
“They okay? About what happened on the way?”
Nikki stepped back from the stove and gave me a hesitant smile. She wa
s the youngest of the three of us, and I always thought she was the toughest. Today, she looked uncharacteristically fragile, and I resisted the urge to give her a hug.
“I don’t know,” she settled for saying, and the way her shoulders slumped told me she wasn’t okay either.
“Want to talk about it? Remember, I am your attorney, so anything we discuss will be privileged.” That wasn’t exactly how it worked, but close enough.
Nikki turned back to the stove, turned off the heat and led me over to the kitchen table.
“The kids are outside, looking at the new barn kittens,” Nikki explained as she picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. I think it was more to do something with her hands than it was any desire for more caffeine.
“I’m pretty sure I killed a man last night. Maybe more than one.”
Nikki made the announcement like she’d run over a squirrel darting into the road, and then she gave a little shrug after she stopped talking.
“Were they threatening you or the kids? Did they make you feel like your life was in danger?”
No hesitation this time when she spoke.
“Oh, yeah. I had to stop for gas just this side of Luling, and I saw three guys hanging out around the gas pumps. They had a beat-to-shit old Chevy pickup at one of the pumps, but the other two guys were just roaming around, looking in the trash and going into the attached store.”
“Sounds like meth heads,” I said, waiting for her to continue her story.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. So, I waited until they left, or so I thought. I thought they were gone, but the bastards just drove around to the other side of the car wash bay and waited for me to get out to operate the gas pump.”
Nikki closed her eyes, reliving the moment in her head. I waited patiently, my brotherly senses telling me she would tell the story at her own pace. Eventually, she began speaking again, but her voice had a dull, monotone quality to it that frankly left me a bit scared for my sister’s mental health.
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