Liberty or Death (24 page)

She set her baseball bat down with unnecessary vigor. "Dumb bastards, all of 'em. I wish both sides of this damned thing would just stay home. If they used the sense God gave a gnat, they'd see no one's gonna win this thing."

"Amen," Kalyn said, as she shouldered a pile of meals and headed for the door.

I reached for my next meals, but Clyde put a hand on my arm. "Hold on," he said. "Are you okay? You're looking awfully pale."

"I don't feel great," I admitted, "but I think I'm just tired. Still getting used to this, I guess." I picked up the troopers' meals and followed Kalyn. Things in the dining room seemed to have settled down. If anything, it was noisier than ever. As I bent down to deliver their food, Roland said, very quietly, "Can you meet us at midnight? The usual place." I nodded.

His companion, who hadn't said anything, except to give his order, now added, "And bring your stuff with you. The lieutenant wants you out of here."

There was nothing I wanted more, especially after last night, but it was too soon. With all the seething passions around me, sooner or later someone was going to say or do something important, and I wanted to be here when it happened. I wanted to again go over those papers I'd taken. I wanted to learn Kalyn's secret. I wanted to sneak into the church and grab Hannon's piece of pipe. On the other hand, this afternoon I'd noticed a couple carloads of guys in camouflage with out-of-state license plates arriving and parking at the church, and that scared the pants off me. But I didn't say anything to Roland. Too many ears and eyes in the dining room. All I said was, "Can I get you anything else?"

"Pie," they both said, "blueberry."

I wrote it down.

"Hey, honey," a voice said from the other side of the room. "How about waiting on some real people for a change?"

What did he think these troopers were, baboons? If his car overturned on the highway, or his neighbor went bonkers and started shooting everything in sight, or someone was poisoning the public water supply, did he really want to have to sort it out alone? "I'll go get that pie," I said. "Enjoy your dinners." I bit my lip, picked up my tray, and went to see what the man wanted. What he wanted was blueberry pie, too, warm, not hot, with a generous scoop of chocolate ice cream. I got his pie and pie for the troopers, then scooted into the kitchen to put in some more orders. We were out of everything again, and I had to rush to the storeroom, refill the tubs, get another vat of coleslaw, and make another pot of coffee.

By the time I got back to the dining room, Proffit and the other trooper were gone. So were the three men who'd been antagonizing them. It gave me an uneasy feeling in my stomach, wondering what might be going on outside, but there wasn't anything I could do. I was just a waitress named Dora, rich as Croesus with my pocket full of dollar bills and about fifty pounds of change, wondering how I'd get through the next hour until closing. Wondering how I'd stay awake long enough to keep my rendezvous. Wondering what would happen when I got there. When Jack said leave and I said no.

By 10:30, things were pretty well buttoned up and I was entertaining visions of lying down for a while before I had to go meet Jack. Just as I was hanging up my apron, the phone rang. Theresa answered it and handed it to Kalyn. "Your boyfriend," she said.

Kalyn took the phone, listened intently, and her shoulders slumped. "You're what?" she said. "But you promised you'd..." And then, "I really can't ask... not this late... it's not fair..." She listened again, then said, with resignation, "Well, okay, see you when I see you." She hung up the receiver and turned to me. "Dora... I hate to ask you this, but do you suppose you could give me a ride home?" She looked very unhappy. "Andy says his bike's broken down. It hasn't, it's just he's too drunk to drive, but that's what he says. Either way, I'm stuck without a ride."

She looked over at Clyde and said in a teasing voice, "I'd ask Clyde, but he can't do it. Cathy'd have a fit if he was to be alone with me..." She waited, hopefully. I was stunned, brainless, and dead on my feet. My back was killing me, my innards were uncertain, and I would gladly have consented to a double amputation if it meant my feet would stop hurting. Both were yelling, "No. Come on, girl, give us a break." But if I got her alone, she might talk to me.

"How far is it?"

"Five miles?"

"Okay. I'll get my purse and the keys. Meet you out by the Dumpster."

"Story of my life," she said with a flick of her russet ponytail. "Back doors, back streets, back alleys, except we don't really have alleys up here. Out back by the Dumpster." She shrugged. "Guess I should be used to it by now."

Climbing the stairs, my feet felt big as a Clydesdale's, and as heavy. The room was a sauna. I turned on the fan and pointed it at the bed, fighting my body's powerful need to sleep and my brain's desperate yearning for oblivion. I wished my system would hurry up and settle down. Before I went downstairs, I limped into the bathroom and splashed about a gallon of cold water on my face.

Partway down the stairs, I remembered the gun. Jack Leonard wanted me to have it, so I supposed that meant Jack Leonard wanted me to carry it. It improved my chances of shooting myself in the foot significantly. Good old Jack. Always looking out for my welfare. I reached carefully past the guardian spiders, into the box, and under the ancient pads. For a second, I couldn't feel anything. It seemed like the air stood still and my heart suddenly skipped before my fingers found the metal and I pulled it out. I stuffed it in my purse, checked my pocket for keys, and went out.

Then I thundered down on my gigantic feet to where Kalyn was leaning against the car.

I fired up the engine and we rolled down the windows. Air-conditioning was one of the amenities it lacked. "Where to?"

She rattled off a set of complicated directions. I waved them off. "I'm too tired to process all that. Let's take it one street at a time."

"Fine with me. You're good to do this," she said. "I could have asked Clyde. He's too nice to say no. Thing is, though, even if Cathy wouldn't have a bird, which she would, he's one of them. And after tonight, I've had enough of them for a while. They say they're doing this for everyone, but the truth is, they don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. Like I know they don't care that that damned Stuart Hannon's raving got a couple of my tables so spooked they left without a tip. Like it was my fault or something because I'm a local. Can you believe it?"

"There's little about human nature that surprises me anymore."

"Sheesh. It all surprises me. I think I've got people figured out and they go and do something strange. This thing got a radio?"

I reached out and snapped it on. "Not too many stations up here."

"Back ass of beyond," she said cheerfully, fiddling with the dial until she found a country station.

I was trying to think of an innocent way to lead her into talking about Paulette. My brain was too tired for much finesse, though. "That girl I replaced, Mindy. Did she really run off with a guy in a big truck?"

I'd expected one of her flip replies, but instead I got silence. The radio was playing something about a woman who didn't know she was beautiful, even though the whole room fell silent whenever she walked in. I guess we were supposed to think she was modest, but I thought she must be pretty dumb. Then again, after the past week, the ability to be oblivious was looking better and better. A life where I didn't notice much that went on around me might be rather blissful after a constant stiff neck from looking back over my shoulder all the time. After bruised and battered shins from keeping my head down the rest of the time, avoiding any offensive eye contact. Dammit. I was tired of this.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

Kalyn sighed. "You turn right just up there."

I turned right and drove a while in silence. "You as tired as I am?"

"I don't guess I know," she said. "I always think no one could be tireder than I am, but you sure did look tired tonight."

"Theresa never looks tired."

"Theresa is a witch," she said. "There's no other explanation."

"I was surprised at the way she stood up to Stuart Hannon tonight..."

"Oh, that," she said. "Maybe not as impressive as it seems. Not when her boy Jimmy's..."

I wondered if Jimmy was the one Theresa had meant when she said one of them was useless. "Jimmy is what, Kalyn? One of them?"

"You bet your ass," she said. "A very important one of them, is my guess... luckily, we don't see much of him. He's the kind of bully makes Hannon look nice. Jimmy was around this afternoon, while you were off, talking to Theresa. She didn't look too pleased."

I thought about what I'd read, and about what Jed Harding had said. That the way things were organized, not even the militia members themselves knew who the top men were. "Do most people around here know who the leaders are?" I asked.

"They're pretty secretive. But we've got our opinions."

"And in your opinion, Jimmy is a pretty important guy, right? Why do you think so?"

Her only answer was to say, "Up ahead, just past that mailbox, you take a right."

"What about Roy Belcher?"

"Him? He's a bad-guy wannabe. Except that's wrong. He is bad. I wish that stinking bastard would rot in hell."

"Why?"

"Why do you keep asking me why, Dora? What do you care? I already told you. You don't want to know stuff. It's better that way."

"I want to know because I live here. I work here. Because these people have threatened me. I want to know what the hell is going on around here. I want to know how to protect myself. Who to watch out for."

"Just leave," she said. "That's the only way to protect yourself."

"I thought I was protecting myself by coming here."

"Out of the frying pan, into the fire," she said.

I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop in the middle of the road. "It's not funny," I said. "None of this is funny. You can be as flippant as you want, but I know it bothers you. You don't like living in a constant state of fear any more than I do. The difference is, I believe in doing something about it. You and everybody else around here, you go around with your eyes on the ground like you were looking for pennies, while those militia guys run the town like it's a communist country and they're the only ones who are members of the party. Pushing everyone around, beating people up, killing people. And all the rest of you act like it's all right."

When she didn't say anything, I reached past her, grabbed the handle, and opened the door. "It can't be far," I said. "You can walk home from here."

In the sudden illumination, I could see tears on her cheeks. "Sheesh, you really think you're tough, don't you? You want to know why we're all so scared?" she said in a small voice.

"Yes, I do."

She reached out, grabbed the handle, and slammed the door shut again. "Okay," she said. "I'll show you. I hope you've got a strong stomach."

 

 

 

Chapter 16

 

Something in her voice chilled me like a plunge into icy water. "What is it?" I demanded. "What are you going to show me?"

"Wait and see," she said. "It's the answer to your question. Why we all go around with our heads down and our eyes on the ground. Why we're such a bunch of scaredy-cats."

That's all she would say, except for giving me directions. Directions I tried to file in my tired brain, in case I needed them again, to come back here, or make a quick escape. Always, lurking at the back of my mind because of Kavanaugh's warning, and because of the craziness of this place, was the fear that this was a trap. A convenient phone call, a friendly request, and then what? Knowing these people, an ugly death. But this felt like a part of the answer. Like what I'd come here to find, so it was a chance I had to take. This whole business was a chance I had to take.

We drove several more miles down the same road, then a left and then a right, and onto a dirt road, hardly more than a rutted track, that climbed steeply uphill before coming to an end in a clearing. At the edge of the clearing was a mobile home, not quite level, looking forlorn and derelict in the light from my high beams. Kalyn pointed at it. "We're going in there. Hope you got a flashlight."

I hadn't put one in the car, but I was sure Dom had. He was too paternal to have let me drive off into the wilds of rural Maine without a flashlight. I was sure he'd never let either of his teenagers out of sight without a flashlight, a full tank of gas, and a first-aid kit. He was a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy. Sitting here now in the darkness, with mosquitoes whining in the windows, I wished he were here to back me up. This new life was too scary for me.

"Well," she said. "Are you coming?"

True, I'd been pushy before and she was right to be annoyed with me, but now I felt like dragging my feet, or rather, I didn't feel like getting out of the car. Stalling for time, I asked, "Whose place is this?"

"Nobody's, now, I guess."

"Then whose was it?"

"Paulette Harding's. This is where she and Mindy lived."