Renewal 8 - War Council (7 page)

Ten minutes later, we were crossing the bridge for what felt like the tenth time, with Mom in her traditional place in the shotgun seat. She was chattering like we were on our way home from one of Kirk’s old soccer games. Dad was trying to explain the situation.

When we reached the shed, Mom had lost her bubbly mood and replaced it with a new serious purpose. She took the flashlight from Arturo and stepped through the doors. A minute later, she came back out.

“David, these girls have been through too much. They’re not coming out as long as any men are around.” Mom shrugged her shoulders.

“Ok. How far away do we need to be?” Dad asked.

“Pretty far, I’m guessing.”

“Arturo... You think we can drive this truck home?”

“Yeah. It runs. We’ll probably wreck the tires, and maybe the wheels, but we can make it,” Arturo replied.

“All right. Boys, let’s round up anything worth keeping and throw it in the back of the truck. Especially weapons. Beth, tell them we’ll be out of your way in twenty minutes. We’ll pull back to the main road, and keep watch until you’re on your way.”

We went to work, grabbing everything in sight. When we drove away on flopping flat tires, there was nothing left of Eugene’s camp but the cooling corpses – as far as we knew.

Chapter 8 – 7

Gary Tucker, Jr. sat with his new buddy, Wyatt Jenkins, oldest son of the Judge. Neither man had gotten word of his father’s death, nor would they have cared at the moment. They were sitting in Manchester’s one and only house of ill repute, which happened to be sponsored to a great degree by the Jenkins family. Wyatt and his brothers could be found in this very room on any Saturday night, warming up for the main event upstairs by watching the young girls spinning and undulating on a brass pole four feet in front of them.

At the moment, a well-fed blonde named Jeannie was hypnotizing the drunken men with a few shakes and wiggles. In this day and age, well-fed carried no connotations about being overfed, fat, or overweight. Well-fed meant exactly that. No missing teeth, no gaping hollows above the collarbones, and only the lowest ribs were visible for counting.

In a few short days, Gary already knew that Wyatt took after Jerry Doan Jenkins, who was an idiot by the word of his father, the Grand Dragon. Worse than that, Wyatt was a coward by Gary’s code. Thanks to this whorehouse, there had been several opportunities for Wyatt to prove he was a real man, but he never put those girls in their place. Wyatt liked to say nice things, treat those whores real gentle, and leave them fat tips on the nightstand. Gary wasn’t happy unless he left them bruised and crying, maybe with a little blood just so they would know who to respect when he came back in for another little visit.

After the first night here, Wyatt saw it exactly the other way around. To his way of thinking, Gary was a sadistic son of a bitch who needed one of those girls to kick his nuts clear up into his throat until he learned a little respect. As it was, he was having to work new deals with the Madame to keep bringing the Junior Dragon here for his entertainment.
Only a few more days
, Wyatt thought.

“Come on, Gary! We gotta go. Work to do tomorrow. Remember?” Wyatt yelled over an old CD of Huey Lewis, which was the perfect whorehouse music when played at maximum volume.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.” Gary tossed another dog biscuit at his favorite bitch, chuckling at his clever mental image, and followed Wyatt out  through a door, some shiny curtains, and another door into the chilled air of the late evening.

The two men panted on the sidewalk, in the manner of the truly drunk. Gary was a bit worse, as he reeled a bit to maintain his standing position. Wyatt was waiting for the obvious next step to occur to him when he heard familiar voices around the corner. He waited for the voices to cross his vision, and when he did, he saw his entire brown kitchen staff. What the hell were they doing in town? Did someone give them permission? No, he thought with glacial slowness, no one would ever do that with their kitchen staff.

Wyatt’s kitchen staff saw him standing there, staring back with that stupid expression. Then, they saw it dawn on him. They ran as fast their short legs could carry them.

Wyatt had made the connection but still couldn’t name it, even in his own head. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. “Gary! We gotta get back. Something’s wrong!”

“Ok, Brother Wy. Where’s the truck?” Gary asked.

“That’s it, right in front of you.”

“Oh, yeah.”

   Wyatt stumbled around the truck, climbed in and cranked the engine. Gary wedged his foot between the truck door and the sill. He couldn’t figure out how to slide his foot to get it out. Wyatt didn’t have time to wait. He accelerated off the curb and let Gary hang on. Amazing how a little shot of adrenalin will sober you right up, Wyatt thought.

Long before they reached the family farm, Wyatt knew the situation was bad. He could easily see the column of orange flame from two miles away, farther if a low set of rolling hills weren’t in the way. He spun the wheel to slide the truck into the driveway, clipping the gatepost with his taillight on the way through. He could not believe what he was seeing. The farm had been mostly the same his entire life. Now it looked like a tornado had literally leveled the whole place, leaving orange flame as its calling card. The main house – all 6000 square feet – was reduced to a giant campfire. Nothing taller than the first floor window sills remained. Even those were burning hot enough to make the glass sag.

The bunkhouse was invisible beyond the bright flame, but Wyatt’s best guess was that it was gone as well, along with the hundred plus men they had left there three hours earlier. Smaller fires dotted the property and were quickly burning every man-made structure on the Jenkins family farm. Even parts of the wooden fences were turning black.

Wyatt turned to Gary Tucker, Jr. and said, “I told you not to torture Dusty Baer. Told you it would just piss ‘em off. Told you not kick the beehive, but you did it anyway, and now you owe me. You owe me until I say you don’t owe me anymore.”

Gary laughed like he didn’t notice the deadly threat in Wyatt’s tone. “Don’t you worry, Brother Wy. I’ll get you your men. I’ll fix your house. I’ll rebuild whatever we need to build to get those goat-fuckers, because the only thing worse than pissing them off is pissing ME OFF!” Gary alternated between wordless yelling at the sky and stomping around in circles, until Wyatt was forced to turn his head away from the insanity of the ritual.

Wyatt preferred to watch the remains of his family rise in infinite flame. He said it quietly to himself, “If there’s a time for sadistic sons of bitches, that time is now.”

Chapter 8 – 8

Bill Carter had moved himself from his bed on the second floor to his corner study on the ground floor. The tall window was closed against the coolness of midnight air. Bill leaned way back in an old wooden teacher’s chair and kept his gunshot leg propped up on the oak desk, probably salvaged from the same classroom. Terry tried to decide whether Bill was actually feeling better, or if he simply needed to respond to the dense set of decisions coming his way.

“Hey, Terry. I hear it went smoothly tonight,” Bill said, offering Terry a pinch of tobacco from a waxed paper pouch. Terry waved it away.

“Smooth as can be, I guess,” Terry replied.

“John said he bit off more than he could chew with that Jenkins girl. Said you took care of it.” Bill stuffed a sizable wad of the molasses-cured leaf into his jaw, and started working it, like a cow with a cud. He noticed Terry’s surprise at the habit and said, “Keeps me calm sometimes. Now seems like a good time to stay calm.”

“I reckon it is.” Terry replied with hooded eyes.

“Ok, Mr. Shelton. I’m taking a wild guess here, but I’d say you’re not feeling too proud of what we did tonight.”

“That’s true, sir. I mean, I know it’s necessary, but it’s not like they were trying to kill us right that moment. They were just laughing and playing cards one second, and the next second they were just pieces flying through the air. And even Rebecca Jenkins. She was surely trying to kill John, but I didn’t kill her. I thought she would be a prisoner. Now I just wonder if she ever woke up before she burned to death.” Terry looked guilty even as he said it.

“Listen, Terry. I’m going to let you in on a secret. You sat there this morning thinking the whole thing was revenge for Dusty, right?”

“It sounded that way, Bill.”

“It was meant to sound that way. I’m not saying I didn’t want payback for Dusty. I did. I am saying that what we did tonight was necessary for a whole lot of practical reasons, and when they tortured Dusty to death, all they did was give me an advantage. The last thing I want to do is to get our community fired up to fight, but it’s damn well necessary now.” Bill paused to spit brown  juice into a brass spittoon on the floor by the corner of his desk. “You grew up hungry. You grew up understanding how close to the edge we live in this world. Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you found us with our healthy fields, our electric lights and our heavy tables full of food, and you forgot. You forgot how close we all are to the edge of starvation. The truth is that we are one tiny little place in world full of starving people. Now granted, there aren’t that many left compared to the old days, but there are more than enough to show up any day and take what we’ve got.”

“I understand, Bill.”

“Well, while you’re at it, understand this. The only real security, the only endgame that pulls all of us and everyone else back from the ragged edge of survival is if we can spread our way of life to everyone who still lives. If everybody has it pretty good, then we can call ourselves safe.”

Terry lifted his head just a bit. “I think I see where you’re going,” he replied.

“I’m going there anyway. This isn’t perfect. Nothing with people involved is ever perfect. Sometimes we have to do some really ugly things to get there, and I’ll be honest with you. If I could find somebody who does it better than we do, I’d be happy to turn over the reins to those people and let them make all the hard decisions. Until that happens, we are stuck here fighting for our little slice of ‘good enough’ until this whole state and this whole country starts moving upwards again. So, we try to keep it honest because honesty is part of my idea of the future, but if we have to murder, lie, cheat, and steal to deal with an enemy who will do all of those things to kill us, then that’s what we’ll do. And when it’s over, God willing, we’ll try to hold onto whatever made it worth fighting in the first place.” Bill panted slightly, eyes bulging with intensity.

“I do understand, Bill, and you’re right. I’ve been here a short time, and everything seems so good that I forgot it’s not automatic.”

“It’s not. It’s just the difference between planning a day ahead of death - or a year. Any season, we can lose every advantage we have worked years to gain. Right now, after tonight, we may have won the latest battle, or we may have just stirred up a pit full of snakes. We’ll know soon enough, I guess. Kirk’s out right now, following Wyatt and Dragon Junior around. They just found out.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“My best guess is that we bought some time, but that we’ll end up fighting all the families. They’ll see what we did to the Jenkins and they will feel cornered, ready to fight. I’m sure Wyatt will tell them a version that leaves out what they did to Dusty. As for the Junior Dragon, I can only guess, but my guess is that he has plenty more firepower down in Columbia, and he will bring it all.”

“Shit...” Terry said.

“Yeah. If our system works, we’ll survive. If not, then maybe I’m just full of myself, and I’ll condemn us all.”

“I can’t believe that,” Terry said.

“Me neither. Deep down, I think we’re right, and I think we’ll win. I’m cocky like that,”
 Bill said with his first grin since Terry walked in.

“So, what happened with Eugene’s prisoners?” Terry asked, playing his role in the story.

“Glad you asked. Grab us a couple of beers and I’ll tell you.”

Chapter 8 – 9

Luck brought us home to Sally Bean’s farm, no worse for wear unless we counted the shredded tires on our new truck. We limped along behind Mom’s station wagon full of rescued women at our best speed. The tractor could have easily outrun us. When we arrived, we saw the car parked right in front of Sally’s house. Big Bear was flopped on the front porch, seemingly annoyed with being put out during the best couch time of the evening. Thinking ahead, Dad directed Arturo to drive us straight to the hay barn. He pulled the truck inside, up against the loaded hay wagon and George’s old tractor. The headlights threw bulky shadows against the back wall of the barn, making it seem somehow bigger and more sinister than it was in reality. The evening was cool, like all evenings in those days, but in the forties, it was as comfortable as the sixties had felt in years past.

We left the spoils of our day in the truck and went straight to a supply room along the far side of the barn to load up on dusty horse blankets. We carried them up to the loft and threw open the doors to let some fresh air flow into the empty space. We had a nice overview of the backyard and the house, lit up with candle and lantern light. The glow of the right end of the house shone through the plastic greenhouse layers, throwing a milky light across the ground.

Dad was unwinding from the high tension of the past hours and started acting a little silly as a result. “Ok, boys. As you may have guessed, we have penises. Thanks to our dead friend Eugene being a bad man, penises are a very bad thing right now, so we - and our penises - will stay out here tonight.”

We looked at each other in confusion, and Dad walked back down the stairs. We saw him cross the backyard and wait patiently on a raised herb bed near the back porch. Kirk sat for a few minutes before he followed Dad out of the barn. He stopped by Dad for a minute and then faded into the shadows. Arturo and I sat, feeling the soft cool air brush across our sweat-encrusted faces.