by Connor Mccoy
“I’ve heard he can match wits with anyone in the second grade. Third grade, not so much.” Sykes quickly patted Wickers on the shoulder. “I wish you the best of luck.”
Before Wickers or Boss could object, Sykes turned to Arnold, calling to him. “Arnie! How about you say hello to your new family? These nice people are going to take care of you.”
Arnold turned to Wickers and Boss, exposing his face more clearly to the Averys. He was a bit pudgy, with pale skin. He wore a confused smile that widened as he checked out Wickers and Boss.
“Hi,” he said.
Wickers and Boss raised their hands and waved, gingerly, and grinned so awkwardly that Jacob thought their faces would break like glass.
Sykes backed up, permitting Arnold to approach the couple. He reached out a hand. Wickers and Boss shrank back but did not run. Jacob thought it was miraculous that the pair did not flee before Arnold embraced them in a bear hug.
Sykes dabbed his right eye. “You guys really are making me feel all warm inside.” He took hold of Courtney and led her right next to the still hugging Arnold Lerner. Her frown deepened, but she cooperated. Standing back, Sykes added, “This is the classic American family right here.” He extended his hand to the surly girl and the giant smothering the young man and woman.
“Arnold, release!” Courtney barked. “You’re going to kill your new parents on the first day!”
Arnold let go and stepped back, allowing Wickers and Boss to hold their chests and gasp.
Wickers fought hard for breath so he could talk. “Mr. S…”
“No need to thank me. I’m sure you all will do a good job working this homestead.” Sykes started backing up toward his truck.
“But is this…I mean, I don’t know if this is going to work out,” Wickers said.
While Sykes talked, his men walked into the Avery household. “Don’t be absurd. The four of you will make a great start of it. Now, once I’ve consolidated my hold on the area, maybe I’ll send a new hand or two your way.” Now his men started leaving, each carrying a handful of glass jars.
Jacob erupted. “Those bastards are stealing our canned food!”
“My first cut,” Sykes said. “A small one. I’ll take about thirty for the road. Of course you all are entitled to a share to keep you going, but if you want to keep up with my demands, you’d better start canning some more before the supply runs out. Next time, I’m taking forty jars, and they better be ready and waiting for me when I want them.”
Wickers nodded. “Of course.”
The flow of men out of the house stopped. “Looks like we’re done.” Sykes backed up toward his truck.
“Don’t look so stressed out, Guy! This land is yours now! Well, it’s mine, but I’m making you the tenants. Pull as much out of her as you can, and you’ll have a hell of a good life. A lot better than many folks nowadays.” Sykes laughed. “See you fine folks later!”
Wickers and Boss waved, though reluctantly. On the other hand, Arnie waved so enthusiastically that he accidently slapped Wickers in the chest and nearly cocked Boss in the head. Courtney just stood there, aiming her sourpuss look at the truck, which started up the moment Sykes got in the passenger side and slammed the door shut.
As the truck pulled out, Jacob let his frustration boil over. “Who the hell does he think he is? That’s my house, that’s my farm, and those are my crops! I rebuilt that place. I made it my own. I raised my kids in there, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let that so-called family and that smiling jackass take it from me!”
“I hear you,” Domino bit down on her bottom lip. “Those guys don’t look tough. We could take them.”
“Wait!” Sheryl pushed herself in between them. “What are you two going to do?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious, Aunt Sheryl,” Jubilee replied. “We’re going to go kick some ass.”
“Kick some…” Sheryl rolled her eyes. “Do you mean you’re going to barge in and shoot them? There’s a girl with them! My God, Jacob, I know you’re embracing the rustic life, but doesn’t that mean still being civilized?”
“Sheryl, I’m not talking about shooting them in cold blood.” Jacob tried to calm down, but he still was steaming over Sykes’s violation of his property. “We are going to get them out of there. How, I don’t know. Maybe we can talk them out of it, but I get the feeling they won’t give up the place without a fight.” He sighed. “We have to assume they are armed. I don’t think Sykes would leave them there without a way to defend themselves in case we showed up at the front door.”
Sheryl nodded. She seemed to accept that Jacob would keep a cool head.
Jubilee turned to Brandon. He still was looking through his eyepiece. “Brandon?” Jubilee looked to see where Brandon was looking. “My God! You’re checking her out!”
Brandon jerked away from the eyepiece. “What?”
“You were looking at her butt!” Jubilee added.
Brandon’s cheeks turned red. “No I wasn’t!”
Jacob frowned. What were his kids talking about? He peered into Brandon’s eyepiece.
His son had focused the scope on Courtney. The girl was dressed in a long, high-waisted jean skirt with black tights. At the moment, her back was turned toward the group.
Jacob turned to his son, keeping his expression neutral. Brandon retreated a little. “She’s…she’s cute! Okay!”
“Great. Our house has been captured and Brandon’s ready to defect to the enemy,” Jubilee said.
“I am not!” Brandon fired back.
Jacob, turning to his wife, said, “This is perfect. On top of everything else, our son may have a crush on a member of the new ‘family.’” Domino managed a small smile before turning somber again.
At least they knew what they were dealing with. Jacob decided they couldn’t spend any more time out here. They had to regroup and think about their next move.
Jacob braced himself against a nearby oak tree. All that lying on the grass and kneeling had made his muscles sore. I’m not in my twenties anymore, that’s for sure, he thought as his kids passed him up.
The Averys managed to slip away from the fence without being detected. They were not going to return to their original campsite. They didn’t need to. They would set up a new camp a short walk away.
Domino, Brandon and Jubilee stopped ahead of Jacob. They had buried their gear and supplies with a thin covering of soil near a large tree. It was easy for them to brush the soil off to retrieve everything.
“You think of everything,” Sheryl said as she approached Jacob.
Jacob rubbed his lower back. “Almost everything.” As she crossed past him, Jacob felt the urge to say something. “I hope we didn’t spook you back there. You know Doms and I wouldn’t go off half-cocked. It’s just…” Jacob braced against the tree again. “Right now, my house is in someone else’s hands and it pisses me off. I guess I know how you feel, losing everything you had in Chantilly. I know I can get my life back, but there’s just no guarantee. That thought scared me.”
Sheryl calmly approached him. “It’s not going to be the same even if you do get your home back.”
“What do you mean?” Jacob asked.
“Did Brandon or Jubilee think of going to college when they grew up?” Sheryl asked.
“I don’t think it had come up with Brandon yet. Jubilee was making noise about a community college, but that’s still far away.”
“Think any of them are going to college now? Or becoming an intern for somebody?” Sheryl shook her head. “Your kids’ futures are going to be so different. And even if you do get rid of these guys, that man, Sykes, he’s coming back someday. You’re going to have to fight him, too. And then maybe someone else.”
Sheryl retreated a step. “Jacob, you left home for good that day. Whatever you’re coming home to, it isn’t the same home you think it is.”
“Jay!” Domino called to Jacob. She and the kids had gathered their supplies. “We’re ready.”
Jacob
swallowed hard. “I’ll worry about the future when I know I have a present. Thanks, Sheryl.”
He turned away from her and toward his family. He had enough worries without thinking about Sykes and what was to come later, although deep down he knew Sheryl was right. Whatever life he was coming home to would be different than when he had departed in his truck those days ago.
Chapter Eight
Jacob sat cross-legged against an oak tree with his family all in a circle. “Okay, time to work out our plan of attack. We know there’s only four people in that house, three adults, one child. Two of the adults likely are armed. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have given guns to the other two, although I doubt they would arm that big guy they took in.”
“Should we sneak inside while they’re all asleep?” Jubilee punched her open palm. “Go into the bedrooms and tie them up before they know what hit them?”
“A nighttime raid.” Jacob scratched his chin. “Let’s talk about that. Pros and cons. We’ve heard a pro. What’s a con?”
Nobody produced a reason why it wouldn’t work. It was up to Jacob to chime in. “If we end up in a gunfight, the house is going to be pretty close quarters. We might not be able to run if we need to. We also could get bottled up inside one of the rooms. Plus, I’m not sure we actually can move around without making noise. Some of those floors do creak a little at night.”
“Can you sneak in at all?” Sheryl asked. “I’ve seen your fences. Some of them have barbed wire!”
“We did have somebody sneak into our yard before,” Brandon said with some bitterness. Jubilee looked at her bandaged arm.
“Right. Some of the fencing in the back doesn’t have any barbed wire. Anybody still could scale those fences and make it onto my grounds,” Jacob said.
“And your door locks? I’m sure they’d bolt it tight before going to bed,” Sheryl said.
“I bet they would. I installed electronic alarms but those are dead now. But all of my entry doors have solid deadbolts and a metal grill over the door windows so no one could smash the glass and access the doorknobs. All my other windows have reinforced glass. Not even jolly old Saint Nick could break inside.”
Jacob looked at Domino and smiled. “Not unless he knew the secret way inside.”
“Secret way?” Sheryl looked back and forth between Jacob and Domino.
“Jacob planned for a lot of things.” Domino chuckled. “Like what if you lose your house key?” She aimed a glare at Jacob, who shrank back as if taking a false accusation.
“What I was aiming for,” Jacob held up his palm. “Was if we had lost our keys out in the wilderness and didn’t have any way to unlock our house when we finally got home. And I did think about emergencies, such as if intruders tried squatting in our house and we had to sneak inside. The back den is built raised.” Jacob raised his arms. “There’s a secret door that leads up into the den’s storage closet. So, you sneak under the house and go up through the passage, and boom, you’re in the closet. Only I know it’s there and only I know how to unlock it.”
“That is amazing you thought of that,” Sheryl said with a laugh. “Like I said, you think of everything.”
“I can’t take the credit. A guy on a survival discussion board thought it up,” Jacob replied.
“Okay. So, it sounds like breaking in at night is a no-go,” Sheryl said. “But aren’t they going to see you if you try going in during the day? At least at night they’re tired, they’re sleeping, they’re not going to be aware of what’s going on.”
“That’s a good point. If they see us coming, they might flee inside and barricade themselves. Then it’s going to be hell to get them out of there.” Jacob snapped his fingers. “But maybe we can mix the two.”
“Day and night?” Sheryl asked.
Jacob nodded. “Sort of. We sneak into the house during the very early morning hours, but we wait until they get up and start working the farm. The way Doms and I do it is to wake us all up early and begin work early. That’s the way a lot of family farms operate, and it wouldn’t be a shock if this group worked that way, too.”
“And when they go outside, we spring out and take the inside,” Domino said.
“Exactly. What we’ll do is pick them off one by one. My guess is we just have to worry about Terri and Guy, maybe Arnie. If Courtney isn’t armed, she won’t be an issue. We probably can talk to her. I get the feeling she’s maybe just as much a victim of Sykes’s game as we are. She might be fine with us freeing her from those two.”
“Are you sure?” Brandon asked. “I mean, she might be dangerous. I think I should take care of her, just to be safe.”
Jubilee shook her head. “Dad, leave him behind. He’s going to get himself captured on purpose.”
“I am not!” Brandon protested.
“Neither of you two are going,” Domino cut in. “This is very dangerous and the last thing we want is to have you in the middle of a gunfight. Aunt Sheryl will be watching you.”
“Mom, we know how to handle ourselves,” Jubilee said.
“Sweetie, you and your brother never should have to use a weapon unless you absolutely have to. If we can keep you out of danger, then that’s where you’re going to stay,” Domino said. Neither Brandon nor Jubilee challenged her further.
Returning her attention to Jacob, Domino said, “So, we take them down early tomorrow morning.” She blew a hot huff into the night sky. “I can only picture what they’re doing inside our house.”
Guy Wickers set the plate of smoking chicken on the dining table. “Give myself some points for not burning the heck out of this one.” He chuckled, but no one at the table laughed, not even Terri Boss, who just rolled her eyes. Courtney just put her head in her hands while Arnie walked his fingers across the table in front of him as if his digits were a pair of legs.
“I should consider myself damn lucky that I learned how to make a cooking fire without electricity or gas,” he said.
No one responded. Wickers gazed at the plates of corn and potatoes that each of them had. Only the chicken had to be served. “Well, let’s eat up. Tomorrow’s a busy day.”
Arnie looked at the chicken with a puzzled expression. “Is there a problem?” Boss asked, not sounding very warm in her concern.
Courtney sighed. “How about cutting out some chicken for him?” She asked it as if Boss ought to have known what to do. “You think a second grader could cut his own meat?”
Boss sighed. “Right.” She started peeling off some of the layers. “Damn that Sykes! What the hell was he thinking?” Aiming a glare at Wickers, she asked, “I thought you said he was reliable? He was going to take care of us. Look at who…” She twirled her knife at Courtney, but quickly clamed up.
“No, go on. Say it. He left you garbage,” Courtney said.
Boss shook her head. “No. It’s just…forget it.”
Wickers stood up and walked over to Arnie to take his plate. Arnie let out a loud grunt, but Wickers said, “Easy. I’m bringing it back.”
He slid it to Boss so she could deposit the cut meat onto it. He said to Boss, “I didn’t have any choice. We lost everything. It was either hook up with Sykes or starve in a ditch somewhere, or maybe worse. He may be dicking around with us but at least we have a roof over our heads and a big supply of food and water.”
With the food cut up, Wickers started sliding the plate to Arnie, but Courtney interjected. “He’s going to choke on it! You should cut it into little bits.”
“Sweetie, do you want to be the mom?” Boss asked.
“Hey, you want your strong hand to die on the first night, be my guest.” Courtney threw up her hands.
Boss got out of her chair as if ready to give Courtney a piece of her mind, but Wickers intervened by saying, “It’s fine.” He snatched the knife away and sliced the meat into smaller pieces. As he cut, he added, “I know it’s a little rough now, but we’ll make this work. Terri knows how to can food and I have some idea how to farm. We can teach you two wha
t to do. It’ll be a snap.” Wickers put on a smile.
No one else except Arnie smiled back.
Boss pushed open the door. “This room belonged to their daughter, Jubilee.” She stood aside to permit Courtney inside. “She was fourteen, so maybe your age?”
Courtney scowled. “I’m twelve!” She marched up to the bed and plopped her rear onto it.
Boss shrugged. “Well, close enough.”
“It’s not close at all. She’s in junior high. I’m still in sixth grade.” Courtney parted her hands. “We’re worlds apart, trust me.”
Boss chewed the inside of her mouth. “Be that as it may, this is your room now. I’m sure you’ll find lots of clothes and things to make your own.”
Courtney jumped off the bed and marched to the dresser. She yanked open drawer after drawer and rifled through the clothes. “Size…size…” she muttered as she pulled them out. “These pants are too small! Is this girl anorexic or something?”
Boss bristled.
Courtney turned from the dresser to the open closet. She reached in and pulled out a pair of boxing gloves. “You’ve got to be kidding!” Tossing them aside, she yanked free some sparring headgear. “This girl’s some kind of what, an MMA fighter?” With a screech, she tossed the gear over her shoulder. “This is the room I’m going to get?”
Boss fought in vain to contain herself. “Well, this is all you’re going to get unless you want to sleep out in the mud with the pigs! You should consider yourself lucky that you have any place to live at all. So, do yourself a favor and park your little ass in here.”
“I don’t have a little ass!” Courtney suddenly leaped at Boss, who retreated out the door to avoid her. “So, thanks for nothing!” She grabbed the door and slammed it shut.
Cringing, Courtney turned toward the mirror. The lit candles provided enough light for her to see her reflection in the mirror.
You’re growing up, said Lily, the only caretaker who was ever nice to her. You don’t have to worry about your body. Ladies come in all shapes and sizes. What matters is what’s inside.
