The Ungovernable

by Franklin Horton

  “It could be broken,” she told Ellen. “He probably deserves it. If you’re going to punch everyone simply for being an asshole then you’ll eventually be the only one left standing.”

  Ellen agreed.

  Jim yanked his hand back and walked away from the group. The meeting was over. He was done. There was no way he was going to be able to bring himself down to a place where he could talk logically about the situation before them. When he reached the corner of the house he threw a quick glance back and saw the group was talking among themselves. Maybe they could figure something out but they would have to do it without him.

  At the front of the house, he angled off toward his shop building. There was a bottle of Jim Beam in there and he needed a drink. His back was to the house when he heard the screen door open and then clatter shut. He waited on Ellen to tear into him, lecturing him on his behavior.

  “Go ahead,” he growled. “Say what you need to say.”

  When no one spoke, he spun around, ready to explain himself, and found Ariel on the front porch. He wondered if she’d seen what he did. What had she thought about it? Would she be scared of him now?

  "Daddy?"

  He didn't answer her. Not because he didn't want to, but because he didn't know what to say. Ariel skittered down the porch steps and ran across the yard toward him. She took his hand and examined it, touching the place his knuckles had split. Seeing her soft, tiny fingers holding his dirty, bleeding hand reminded him of how her hands had looked as a baby.

  How much those hands had changed over time.

  Again, he thought of how much the world had changed.

  She swung her pink purse from her side to the front of her body and dug into it, taking out a first-aid kit he’d put together for her when she was going to 4-H camp. She withdrew two colorful Band-Aids shaped like crayons and applied them across his rapidly swelling knuckles, smoothed them with the pad of her little finger, and put her trash back inside her purse. She didn't like to litter. He’d taught her that.

  "I don't have any medicine," she said.

  "That’s okay, baby. The best medicine would be a hug."

  Ariel grabbed him tightly and held on. He wrapped his arms around her and they were a pocket of right in a world gone wrong. A tear worked its way from his eye.

  What had he done to them? What had he done to them all?

  18

  In late evening they switched sentries at the observation posts. Pete, Charlie, Will, and Sara were all brought in and replaced with folks who would hold their station until around midnight. Another of Gary's daughters and one of the Weatherman girls teamed up to man, or “woman” as they called it, the observation post near their homes. Hugh relieved Will and Sara at the post on the river trail into town. Jim relieved Pete at the post near Buddy's old house, wanting time to himself, and taking a solitary duty was a lot easier than telling everyone to leave him the hell alone.

  He didn’t get the privacy he was after. From the front porch of the house he’d shared with Buddy, Lloyd spotted Jim walking toward his post. By the time Jim changed out with Pete and sent him on his way, Lloyd joined him with a banjo and a jar of blackberry moonshine.

  “Do you even have a gun with you?” Jim asked when he saw his old friend ambling toward him.

  Lloyd paused. “I left it on the porch. My hands were full.”

  “You remembered your banjo and liquor but forgot your gun?”

  “Priorities, my friend.”

  Jim was disgusted. “This shit is serious. You shouldn’t be drinking when the weather calls for an elevated chance of lead showers."

  Lloyd started picking Ruben’s Train on the open back banjo. He paid no attention to Jim.

  Jim studied Lloyd’s banjo. “That damn thing is an antique. You’re going to destroy it dragging it all over the place.”

  Lloyd shook his head. “They didn’t baby them in the old days. They went to war. They went to the fields. People threw them over their backs and walked to barn dances through the rain and snow. I suspect a good banjo prefers to be treated that way. They like an active life.”

  Jim went back to watching the road through the ports of the crude structure. “You’re a nut case.”

  Lloyd rolled his shoulders as if conceding the point. “You really think they’ll come for you?” he asked, muting the strings with the flat of his hand.

  Jim was slow to respond, as if hating to admit the truth. “Eh, the idea of a reward is pretty tempting. Somebody will try.”

  Lloyd plucked absently at the banjo. "While I can take it or leave it, a lot of folks are really attached to their electric power. They got all those gizmos they need to charge. Even though I prefer life without it, you can almost understand people's position. Assume that your mom and dad didn't have you taking care of them. What if they were facing a slow, undignified death by starvation and the comfort camps could have stopped that? How would you feel about someone ripping that away from you?"

  Jim threw him a glare, though it probably wasn’t visible in the rapidly darkening structure. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re not doing much of a job.”

  “I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just processing.”

  "Well, your processing is pissing me off. You think I’m not wrestling with this already? Although I knew there were consequences and I weighed them out before I announced the raid on the power plant, this is about a bigger question. It’s about the future of the country and how it survives. It's about what kind of country we’re going to have when we get back on our feet again. After two hundred years of freedom, we could lose it all in a three to five year disaster. I don’t want to see that."

  “I’m not sure that one attack by a small group of people can affect what direction the country takes. That’s a bit ambitious."

  "There could be other people ready to fight back if they know they’re not alone."

  "Then it’s going to get real ugly," Lloyd said. “I don’t know if you’re talking a coup or a civil war, but a lot of people could die.”

  "I’m tired of people telling me that things are going to get ugly," Jim snapped. “I’m well aware.”

  "Fine," Lloyd muttered. “No need to get pissy. I was just making conversation. If you’re going to be an asshole, I’ll just take my jar and go home.”

  “Don’t drink all that blackberry,” Jim warned. “That’s my favorite.”

  “You’re dead to me,” Lloyd said. “No more blackberry for you.”

  “Go home and go to bed.”

  Lloyd wandered off in the near darkness, stumbling because he hadn’t brought a flashlight either. Jim could have lent him one but thought a good spill in the failing light might teach him a lesson.

  After Lloyd's departure things were quiet for a while and Jim was left alone with his thoughts. It was what he wanted, why he’d chosen to man an outpost that evening, yet his thoughts were merciless and brutal. It was hard to avoid the awareness that what he saw as a stand for freedom had possibly screwed him and his neighbors good.

  For as much as he'd never wanted any responsibility for his friends and neighbors, he found himself in that position. He led them, fought for them. They turned to him for answers. Like it or not, that was the state of things. He was their leader and he’d let them down.

  Had any of this been avoidable or would all roads have led to the same destination? Would any choice he’d made have led to this same place? There was no way of knowing. Yet he couldn’t back up and change anything.

  A bright moon rose full and bold, restoring a pale light to the valley. Jim climbed from the observation post to admire the beauty of the night. In the distance, he heard a faint whistling. He froze, the hair on the back of his neck standing up at the spooky, mournful sound coming from somewhere in the darkness. He raised his rifle but couldn’t imagine anyone with ill intentions announcing themselves by whistling. This was someone who wanted to be heard.

  “Who is it?” Jim demanded.

 
A light clicked on nearly fifty yards behind his position. It was pointed at the ground. Jim pointed his rifle in the direction but squinted his eyes, not wanting to lose all of his night vision.

  “Easy, it’s just me.”

  "Shit," Jim mumbled.

  Of all the people he didn't want to see, the sheriff was in the top two. Jim couldn’t imagine what made him want to come up for a visit. Unless he had something new to say, there was no point in talking anymore. Jim took a seat on a chunk of firewood and glumly watched the sheriff’s light approach.

  "Evening," the sheriff said.

  Jim frowned. "I notice you didn't say good evening.”

  "I’m not certain there's anything particularly good about it."

  "At least we agree on something. What brings you out here? Got something on your mind?”

  There was no use going through the motions of a congenial evening visit among neighbors. It was best to cut right to the chase.

  "I do have something on my mind."

  With only silence between the men, the sound of katydids rose in their ears. Spring peepers chanted from a nearby pond. When the sheriff wasn’t immediately forthcoming with the reason for his visit, Jim started grumbling.

  "Why the hell is it that people tell me they got something on their minds and I practically have to pull it out of their face hole? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if the people simply came out and said it? Everyone makes some big announcement, they got something to say, but they never say it. Are you wanting me to beg or is this just a dramatic pause?"

  Jim could sense the sheriff tense up at his outburst. The air changed around them. “Well, pardon me. Forgive me for being polite when delivering information. That’s just how I was raised."

  Jim remained silent. He'd be damned if he was asking again. This was about to become his permanent position on people who came to him with news. Silence.

  "When I got back home from that meeting at your house there were people waiting on me," the sheriff said. "A couple of men from town."

  News of people walking into his valley raised his hackles. "How did they get to your house? Did they walk right by this outpost?"

  "I asked them about that. I wanted to make sure they hadn't harmed your boy since I knew he was keeping watch here. They said they figured the road was being watched so they approached from the woods. There are logging roads and game trails all through those mountains.”

  “Yeah, I understand there are vulnerabilities,” Jim said. “I guess we’ve never faced folks determined enough to come in through the woods.”

  “They knew which house to come to. They knew exactly where to find me. That was interesting.”

  Jim didn’t like that at all. The fact these men had visited the sheriff's house only reaffirmed that there was no way they could watch everything at once. Having outposts on the road only deterred the people dumb enough to approach by the roads in the first place. Anyone intent on doing bad things would skulk in like a pack of coyotes coming for lambs.

  And how did they know where the sheriff lived? Did that mean they knew exactly where Jim lived? Did they know who lived in all of the houses? If that was the case, then men coming for him might know right where to go. Instead of searching the valley for him they could perform a targeted strike on his house. The thought of that made him sick.

  "What did they want?"

  More hesitation, more reluctance to put it into words. "They want me to bring you in," the sheriff finally said.

  "For the reward?"

  "Nah, they say it's for justice, though I reckon they could serve both masters. They could lock you up to serve justice and still turn you over on the 4th of July to whoever sent that flyer."

  "I reckon that brings us around to the inevitable question of what you intend to do about it, Sheriff.”

  "I don’t supposed you’re interested in surrendering yourself, are you?"

  Jim barked a laugh, but it was not about humor, it was the release of tension. "Not hardly."

  "When you take this job, people see you as a figurehead. I ain’t a lawman anymore. I ain’t doing the job but I reckon I'm a figurehead of sorts. People are going to come to me with their problems and I don't reckon I can do anything about that."

  Jim shifted his body, discreetly positioning the side of his body with the holstered pistol away from the light. He eased his hand down to the grip and rested it there. He tugged it gently and it broke free of the friction that held it in the Kydex holster. A calm chill settled over his body, like slipping into cool water on a hot day. “So is Sheriff Figurehead here to make an arrest or merely pass on this information?”

  The sheriff’s response would decide his fate. The lawman was so near to dying that Jim was already planning how he was going to drag Lloyd out of bed to help him dispose of the body. He was already coming up with a story to cover for the shot he was about to fire.

  “I’m not here to arrest you,” the sheriff said.

  Jim tried to relax his shoulders and his neck. Perhaps he’d make it through this long day without inflicting anymore violence. "I reckon that's the safest play for you, Sheriff. The day you come to arrest me is the day you don’t go home to your family. I respect you as a man but I won’t allow you to take me in. I got a job to do here, looking after my family, and it’s not nearly done yet."

  He bobbed his head in the ambient glow of his flashlight. “I don't expect that you’re my problem, Jim Powell, but I appreciate that warning.”

  Jim was walking on a razor’s edge at that moment. It was like when he lashed out against Fred Wimmer. He felt like he’d stepped too close to killing the sheriff and part of him didn’t want to back up from it. Part of him felt like it was the right thing to do, like if he didn’t do it now he’d only have to do it later. That was a lesson of his grandfather’s that had proven correct time after time.

  The constraints that kept Jim a civilized man were failing as often as they worked these days. Sometimes it felt like something was taking over his body, something that knew how to handle these times better than he was rationally able to. Jim wondered if the sheriff knew how close he was to dying. Perhaps sensing that very thing, the sheriff began to retreat. Jim noticed he did not turn his back, as if he did not trust Jim at this point. Likely he sensed within Jim that same thing that Jim sensed within himself, that emerging berserker who was growing weary of struggling with the line between right and wrong.

  "Sheriff?"

  The sheriff stopped in his tracks. It was not a comfortable pause but a concerned one. Perhaps he thought this was when it would happen, when this would turn into a fight for his life.

  "Who were they?" Jim asked.

  “Who?”

  "The men.”

  “The ones who came to see me?”

  "Yes.”

  The sheriff hesitated, perhaps uncertain this was a wise thing to do. Would disclosing their names put those men at risk? The answer was obvious. Most definitely.

  "I’m just questioning their motives," Jim explained.

  “They feel that laws have been broken and you’re the likely suspect. They want order restored to their community. They think you should answer for the crimes if you committed them."

  "If they come back, tell them I’m going to come looking for them next time. They can make their accusations against me in person.”

  The sheriff's profile was outlined against the night sky. He was pensive, perhaps stirred to thought by the questions Jim raised. He seemed more relaxed, less concerned that this conversation was going to end badly.

  "I’m assuming that’s a threat?"

  “Most definitely.”

  19

  Hugh’s outpost was the first to be tested. It was almost predictable. He was manning the outpost on the farm road that led to the river crossing, then eventually into town. Hugh insisted on pulling an all-nighter. While most found sentry duty monotonous and painfully boring, it was Hugh’s happy place.

  He stood outside the crude outpost,
watching the rising sun illuminate the world with golden light. Heavy dew reflected off the low spring grass. Spiderwebs hung damp and heavy from tree branches, weeds, and fence posts. The dew collected on them glowed with brilliant light when the sun caught it. Birds sang and it was a soundtrack that would put a smile on the bitterest man’s face. It was a world coming to life.

  Hugh’s mind wandered to how unaffected the world appeared to be by all that was happening. Inevitably, the world belonged to the animals, to nature, to the rivers, and to the sun. They set the pace, and continued on despite the ripples created by men. It was their world and man was merely living in it. Sometimes man borrowed it, mistaking in his naiveté that he had conquered and controlled it, but it was inevitably taken back by those creatures better prepared to inhabit it.

  On one of his long shifts at the outpost, sometime last fall, Hugh had dug a pit in the ground so he could build a concealed fire. It was about the size of a five-gallon bucket. The old bushcrafter who’d taught him the technique referred to it as a Dakota fire hole. Though the smell of the wood smoke would carry for long distances, a hole in the ground concealed the flames. A tunnel coming off the side provided air. He kept a stash of tinder and kindling in the outpost so people could build a fire when they needed to warm up or cook. Once Hugh demonstrated it, Jim wished he’d known that trick when he and his friends were walking back from Richmond.

  When he had a low fire going he laid a wire shelf from an old refrigerator across the pit, then set a scorched aluminum pot of water atop it. He would toss in some ground coffee, boil it to a strong brew, and drink it straight from the pot. As the coffee cooled, the grounds would settle. While at home he would have strained it through a bandana, he skipped that step in the field.

  Hugh had learned a long time ago that when performing long, tedious tasks it was easy to ignore his basic needs. Being uncomfortable on guard duty made extended shifts seem longer and more brutal. One needed to move around, needed to stretch. For Hugh, it meant that he made coffee, cooked a meal when feasible, and drank plenty of water. He’d figured out that a big part of living comfortably with very little was to attend to basic needs and not let himself feel deprived. There were plenty of times suffering was unavoidable. This was not one of those times.