American Blackout (Book 3): Gangster Town

by Tribuzzo, Fred

  Cricket studied him, cringed at his last sentence.

  “That’s one of the names they call enslaved, along with ‘herd,’” Fritz continued.

  “I need to go flying with you.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “They’re finishing Beth’s trial.”

  “They couldn’t possibly find her guilty?”

  Cricket sat up and faced her husband.

  “Do I have to rescue you from some ’60s sitcom? I mean, I wish there was decency, basic manners, all life is sacred, but there’s an infection and it’s spreading.”

  “I’ve taken note. And slavery’s at the top of the list.”

  “Everything’s at the top of the list.”

  61

  Idiots with Machine Guns

  Elaine showed the flask to Cricket, who declined, looking at the buildings and people they passed, hoping to catch a glimpse of Boots from the back seat of their ’52 Buick sedan. Cricket did question whether a slug of liquid courage might be needed for court, especially in a long skirt, ugly sweater and boots, Sister Marie’s idea for making a good impression and excitedly endorsed by the girls still taking their mullein tea, pampered daily by all the adults, dreaming to be as beautiful as Cricket someday.

  Becca was in the front seat, mum like the driver, still pissed about the previous night, though at breakfast she had promised to take Cricket and Elaine to the hospital to straighten out all the gossip.

  An hour later Cricket sat with Elaine and watched in shock as Beth’s attorney finished his closing argument, which depicted Beth as a theoretical scientist who didn’t live in the everyday world with everyday concerns like global warming and the world’s becoming uninhabitable. Forgive my client for her sins and bring her to everlasting groupthink. “Good grief,” Cricket muttered to herself. The man avoided Cricket’s glare and gave his client a lame thumbs-up.

  Ralph the attorney was on his feet parading before the jury box. He wore a brown duster that nearly scraped the wood floor, jeans, and a dirty, open-collar white shirt. He looked like he was auditioning for The Long Riders, one of Cricket’s favorite Westerns. She loved the music and had worn out the CD. However, his foolish talk soon cut him from the cast with Carradine and the Quaid brothers.

  “The earth has a fever!” Ralph announced, and Cricket made a gagging gesture that made Becca roll her eyes and her mom smile.

  An anonymous spectator jumped to his feet and yelled, “The earth has a beaver!”

  The man pulled a stocking cap over his face and ran for the exit, where the cops nailed him.

  Judge Maxine yelled from the bench, “There’ll be no swearing in my courtroom.” Which was answered by a few laughs, with Cricket and Elaine laughing the loudest.

  “You two think it’s funny to swear in my courtroom?”

  The room became quiet except for Cricket and Elaine hitting each other in mock battle. Cricket had cried a lot since the EMP attack, but rarely had she laughed since the world went dark.

  “Bailiff, get their asses out of my court,” was the command from the bench. This only incited the women to further hysterics, and the contagion touched a few others, who howled like dogs.

  Becca stood up, halting the befuddled bailiff, and turned to the inconsolable girls, who continued to bare their atomic humor. Lowering her voice, keeping the intensity, she said, “Mother, she’ll throw you in jail. Cricket, stop this. The damn Patriarchs are everywhere.”

  “Patriarchs?” Elaine hiccupped and laughed simultaneously. “So, they’re the only ones who believe that the earth has a beaver?” Elaine kept giggling, and Cricket was worried that the woman would be unable to catch her breath. She begged her to talk, to ensure Elaine wasn’t going to die in the courtroom laughing and choking.

  Elaine finally said, “Who the hell cares who it was? We should celebrate anyone these days with a sense of humor.”

  The two women stood and leaned on each other, trembling with breakthrough joy. Someone walking in might have mistaken the women’s tear-stained faces as being in the throes of grief.

  Turning off the happy switch, Ralph made a beeline for the slapstick duo. “You’ve got five seconds to shut up, or I’ll make sure dipshit the defendant never again sees the light of day.”

  The women caught their breath. Cricket’s insides ached, but the outlandish timeout was over. In his anger Ralph exposed a bottom row of crooked yellow teeth, like the fake Halloween teeth kids often wore.

  Becca walked up to the bench and quietly talked to the judge, who listened and nodded.

  Becca left the bench, and Judge Maxine announced: “No further outbursts will be tolerated.” She smiled at the two women and waved the bailiff back to his seat. “You know what I’ll do?” she baited the two women, and Cricket knew what was coming: the judge’s signature one-liner. Elaine, who was finally taking the affair seriously, had no idea what was coming in the humor department. Cricket slowly shook her head and heard the judge belt out: “Today is Take-Your-Ass-Apart Wednesday! Oh yeah!”

  “Oh yeah,” Elaine muttered, and Cricket started coughing loudly. Elaine stopped her outburst and went for a water glass.

  Judge Maxine aimed her gavel at the comic duo. “You two all done choking and laughing and making fools of yourselves?”

  Cricket swallowed her pride and held back the next belly laugh with a simple nod. Elaine went for the flask, and Cricket stopped her.

  Returning to the jury box, Ralph passed in front of the jurors looking more mature, aggrieved, not just for the outburst but for the terrible fate that awaited Mother Earth and all her creatures. And that’s where he started.

  “Destroy Mother Earth and we destroy our home—forever!”

  Cricket let a glaze of nonemotion wash over her face. She knew the prosecutor would be rattling off ideas that would start them laughing again, and she really needed to see this day through and get Beth off the hook.

  As if reading Cricket’s mind, Ralph raised his chin, nose in the air, sniffing out his detractors. “A famous writer once said that giving cheap fuel to the masses was like giving an idiot a machine gun.”

  “Well we don’t have to worry about that scenario for a while.” Elaine hiccupped, leaning close to Cricket. Becca looked straight ahead, deeming her mom’s action unworthy of comment.

  Ralph made eye contact with each juror before continuing. “That idiot had the machine gun for many years, “shooting up” the land and skies with pollution. And yet the defendant never worried about informing her students of the idiot, of the monsters of industry, greedy rapists, who destroy the land, flora and fauna…”

  “Fauna? You wanna?” Elaine’s slurred speech was louder this time, and Becca turned and stared.

  “…She’s suffered unimaginable abuses, and all her creatures pay the price.” Ralph let ‘pay the price’ ring in the jury’s ears. “We pay the price, we get ours, don’t get off the hook. That makes me smile.”

  “Pervert,” Cricket mumbled.

  “The defendant is on trial because she would not warn her own students of human beings’ responsibility in raising the earth’s temperature. Wouldn’t parents be negligent if they were to send their children off into the world and never warn them of all the harm that could befall them?”

  “My head’s going to explode.” Elaine bumped into Cricket and nearly fell out of her seat. Cricket helped to stabilize her with an arm around her shoulder. Judge Maxine was staring at the two when she wasn’t nodding her head in approval of the prosecutor’s argument.

  “Wasn’t this the world that the defendant should have been preparing her students for? A world of beauty, silence—unless a generator is ripping the air. Night skies where the stars can now be seen, even here, in the city.”

  Elaine closed her eyes and dropped her head on Cricket’s shoulder. “Right after they kiss their ass goodbye, they can go out and study the stars one last time.”

  Ralph shifted to face the room. He liked the stage. His arms opened wide like he was we
lcoming the spectators onto the stage with him. “Did the defendant point to the expense of millions of lights in a single city spraying the heavens with obscenity, destroying the heavenly light, leaving only a man-made black hole?”

  “Doesn’t miss a trick,” Elaine snorted, and Cricket answered her charge with a buried laugh that she further disguised with a cough. Some other troublemaker responded with a cough that sounded like “bullshit” yelled into the crook of his arm.

  Cricket watched Beth’s round shoulders slump further. She was being crushed by an idiot with a big mouth and a judge who grinned maliciously at the high-sounding words, a fire-and-brimstone eco-sermon.

  Cricket wished she could support Beth, whose pantywaist attorney was defending her with a badminton racket against a courtroom of coyotes biting their way through life.

  62

  Verdict

  Cricket leaned against the wall, head down, praying for Beth to be released from this nightmare. She tried talking to Becca, pointing to the damage being done to a decent, ordinary person. Becca responded coldly with, “Ordinary people commit crimes all the time. Even in their sleep.”

  “I should have you spend a few hours with Lee Ann and Lily. With Sister’s guidance they’re reading Emily Dickinson, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Declaration of Independence, and asking a lot of questions. The Declaration is our country’s Holy Grail.”

  Becca stared at Cricket, mouth open, like she had heard the most preposterous idea ever brought into the light of day. “Right, and who’s reminding the girls that a slave owner wrote the Declaration of Independence?”

  Cricket ignored the attack on Jefferson. “The girls plan on taking turns reading it this July Fourth. It was a tradition my uncle Tommy kept to forever. My uncle once told me that he understood the lines about pledging your life, fortune, and sacred honor. He and the men he fought with had made that pledge to each other during the war, not by their words, by their actions.”

  “Cricket, you’re so dramatic, you should have gone into acting. Probably watched Hallmark when we still had TVs.”

  “A lot with my uncle. He enjoyed them.”

  “Hallmark and the Declaration go well together, a marriage of dead fantasies and teary-eyed slave owners. There is no God delivering absolute laws. We’re the ones who make and break this world with our laws. The sooner more people realize that, the sooner we’ll find the beauty and safety in life.”

  “Now you sound like a Hallmark movie.”

  “Please, you’re not much of a debater.” Becca got in Cricket’s face. “What Hallmark movie warned of a solar storm and an EMP attack? So removed from reality.”

  “Last Hallmark movie we watched dealt with a zombie infestation.”

  “That’s not funny.” Anger enlivened Becca’s eyes. Cricket might not be a great debater, but she knew how to spar. Becca spat out, “Actually, I’m glad we were hit with the storm and the bomb.”

  Something deflated in Becca. Cricket felt it, saw it. The mayor backed up and looked around for some weapon, some thought to pulverize Cricket with, but all she could produce was a painful exhalation as if she were blowing out a poison to snuff out her enemies.

  “What I mean is I’m realistic. The outward events can’t be changed. So I’m taking the best course of action to save this city. And my goal is to have less greed, prejudice, and intolerance when the lights come back on. This planet isn’t run by us. We occupy a place alongside the animals and the trees. People once again are going to learn the simple truths.”

  “Or what? You’re going to kill them?”

  Becca turned away in a huff and flew past her mom. Cricket knew that the only connection between herself and the mayor came from sharing a similar history with their fathers and protecting Becca during the gun battle. Cricket also knew that “the idiots with machine guns,” like herself, would always be in danger from the Beccas of the world, along with Sister Marie, the girls, Predator, Fritz, the two Bobs, the Patriarchs, and more than half the population of Cincinnati.

  With booze breath, weaving but still classy, like a 1940s actress unable to shed her animal mystique even after a serious face-plant into the realm of alcohol, Elaine kissed Cricket on the cheek and held the wall up with her.

  “I’ve been holding walls my entire life,” Elaine said without slurring. “The wall of decency, even the wall of hypocrisy.”

  Cricket smiled and the two women held hands.

  “You’re an unusual woman, Mrs. Givens.” Cricket looked at her warmly. “We really laughed our asses off in there.”

  “Yes, we did. You’re the sister I wished my Rebecca had grown up with. You’re not a deadly serious person.”

  “My husband might disagree.”

  “Okay, serious, yes, of course. Not deadly. Doing your duty, just like your dad would have. My husband knew about duty. He was a very modern man connected to all the right causes of the moment, and we often clashed. But he had a big heart and love for his country, and respected the law. Beth’s heart, like the Grinch’s, is a few sizes too small.”

  “The Grinch gets back his big heart.”

  “Yeah, if there were more time”—Elaine looked at Becca talking to one of the bodyguards/drivers—“you might still make the difference. It’s her only hope. She knows it too, on some level.”

  “What about this hypocrisy thing, holding up a wall—why would you want to hold up hypocrisy?”

  “It’s human. Necessary. You’ll find out as a parent when you don’t flinch telling your kid not to do something even though you did it a thousand times when you were a kid. Be a good hypocrite. Don’t let in the mumbo jumbo about being friends with your kids and owning up to everything you did and then expecting less from them. Stick out that pretty chest of yours and be a hypocrite when it matters. Even when they call you on it. Tell them to shut up and listen.”

  The bailiff came into the hallway and said the jury had reached a verdict.

  63

  Timing

  “I hope you brought that big pistol with you today,” Elaine said, pulling the silver flask from her purse and taking a hit with no thought of who was watching. Becca gave her a cold stare before facing the jurors filing into their seats.

  The room was noisy, and Judge Maxine started banging her gavel.

  Cricket looked at Elaine, who seemed more sober than at any other time that day.

  In a normal voice, Elaine said, “This court is running most of the time, yet you never see robbery, rape, murder, or even assault cases being tried. And those crimes are being committed. All the time. My daughter is using this court to punish people who no longer think correctly.”

  “Stop the jabbering.” Judge Maxine was out of her seat, gavel in hand, pointing to sections of the courtroom and to one guy in particular arguing with the row behind him. One woman towered over the man, pointing her finger in his face.

  “You get out of that woman’s face or I’ll have you arrested for sexual assault!” the judge yelled, and the room’s volume fell quickly. The man dropped into his seat, and the woman kept nagging him about some point.

  The jury was seated, and the judge instructed the officers at the back of the room to close the doors.

  Cricket looked at the extra officers and Elaine noticed as well, reaching for Cricket’s hand instead of her flask. Cricket also spotted Sergeant Wills in civilian clothes and a full beard. Many of the men and the women in the back row were not ambulance chasers, or seeking a dose of entertainment. They were assessing every move of the judge and the officers in uniform guarding the doors.

  The judge reduced the volume of her performance—less stagecraft, more nervousness, like a cop directing traffic around a horrific accident. But nothing had happened except for the judge to focus on the foreman of the jury.

  One last smack of the gavel and Judge Maxine asked, “Jurors, have you reached a verdict?”

  The foreman stood. “We have, Your Honor.”

  “How do you find the defendant?”r />
  Beth stood.

  “We find the defendant, Beth Grainger, guilty on all counts.”

  The room roared with approval, and Cricket looked around to see the uniformed officers quizzing each other with stupefied looks and then looking up at the ceiling. They had pulled out the standard-issue long black flashlights. Time to crack skulls if the folks rioted?

  Even Judge Maxine looked dazed, staring up. Cricket realized they were expecting another power failure, timed with the verdict. Crazy!

  “What the hell is going on here?” the judge bellowed, and Becca looked confused about her statement. Cricket watched the cops at the back of the room draw their guns.

  “Yeah, what the hell is going on?” a voice boomed from the back of the room. Sergeant Wills stood up and started walking up to the bench.

  “Somebody stop that man,” the judge screamed, “or I will!”

  “Gonna shoot me, Judge?” the sergeant said.