“Come on, guys, we’re burning…well, it ain’t daylight, but you get the picture,” Pat chided us like little kids playing hooky from school.
With a roar of chainsaws, we got started.
I’d used the saws in the past when sectioning up logs for firewood, and more recently I’d run the sixteen-inch blade while cutting up the few trees we’d lost around the yard. I quickly learned this was a whole other level of precision as I followed Pat’s lead. The downed trees lay atop each other in a latticework of intermingled limbs, a massive game of Jenga, and figuring out which ones went with which tree was only part of the puzzle. On top of what went where, I figured out that some of the limbs were supporting several hundreds of pounds of weight, and these limbs under such strain were primed to snap, and kick back with bone-crushing force.
“Don’t let them hit you,” was Pat’s advice, delivered in that laconic Texas drawl that he could never shed. Of course, he’d also spent enough time in Georgia and South Carolina that the accents simply overlapped each other. Kind of like the limbs on these damned trees, I thought to myself.
Pat was using the largest of the chainsaws, with the eighteen-inch blade, and he easily ripped thought the major exposed tree limbs with aplomb, but I studied the way he painstakingly worked the whirling length of buzzing steel links on one precariously situated tree trunk. Pat worked to undercut the limbs driven into the earth, snipping away at the supports, and I felt my heart in my throat as the entire sixty foot length of wood shifted and rolled once that supporting cradle of limbs was removed. Skipping back, Pat avoided the crushing blow from the heavy log as he stood by casually and waited for it to stop moving.
I quickly realized Pat was freeing up these trees from the pile, taking a risk to do so, while allowing the rest of us to take on the less dangerous work of trimming off the lesser limbs that might impede the dragging process. While Pat pitted his cat-like reflexes against the pile of trees, Charles and I trimmed, and Billy hauled away the castoff limbs with the same steady determination he always invested in his work. I could tell Billy wanted a chance at using the chainsaws, but one of the deals I had to make with Sally to obtain Billy’s help was centered around the chainsaws, and her prohibition on Billy getting his hands on one.
With our heads down and Earl Lovett leading the first horse team back to the front pasture with our initial log, Billy was the first to break our concentration when he exclaimed, “Look, guys! It stopped raining!”
Pausing to let the clenched muscles in my back relax for a moment, I glanced up at Billy’s words.
Other than the two days immediately after Hurricane Debbie slouched off down the road for Arkansas, we hadn’t seen the rainfall drop below a persistent drizzle in weeks. I started counting on my fingers and corrected that in my head. Months of rain, in fact.
This wasn’t a Disney movie, so the sun failed to break through the overhanging clouds, and no magical dancing animals suddenly rushed onstage either, but the realization sent a hopeful ray of light through my heart anyway.
Right up until the hail started falling.
“Everybody under the awning!” I barked, wincing as a pea-sized hailstone flicked my left ear with a noticeable pop. Matching deeds to words, I set the Poulan down, happy for the automatic cutoff as I dove under the awning. Pat and Billy were right on my heels, but I saw Charles take several hits before he crowded in with us. One of the hailstones had knocked his helmet askew, and I saw a bloody furrow of a scrape running down the side of his neck.
“You okay?” I asked, quickly glancing over to inspect the wound before turning my vision outwards. I was trying to make out Mr. Lovett, but the hail mixed with a rising haze in the air to obscure my sight past a hundred yards or so.
Hail began to strike in greater frequency and I flinched as larger ice spheres struck the canvas, making the fabric dance under the impacts, and informing me I had worries closer to hand. Even if the awning held I felt the wind rising, and I knew we would soon be pelted by windborne hail coming at us horizontally.
“Yeah, I’ll live,” Charles grunted back his response, and I heard him hiss as Pat dumped a dose of betadine to disinfect the wound before pressing a long, narrow bandage over the ragged slice. “Will the cover make it?”
I shrugged. “Not sure about the hail, but the wind’s coming up. See if we can lower the legs on this thing, lessen the chance of it blowing away.”
Billy was already adjusting the legs on one side, dropping that corner of the awning as I attacked the one opposite him. Pat, diving into the mix, started tightening down the cords running to the anchors, then risked stepping out into the growing maelstrom to double up the ropes supporting the now four-foot-tall tent-like structure. This would not only reduce our exposure to wind-blown hailstones but also offer the wind less purchase on the canvas raincover.
As we worked, I waited with growing anxiety for the hailstorm to pass. Hail was something we’d all experienced at one time or another, but usually it was a brief flurry of pea or gravel-sized projectiles. This rapidly built to golf ball-size ranging up to some the size of a baseball, and it continued for a while before gradually tapering off. Like much of what was happening with the weather, this type of a hailstorm was not something we usually experienced. Judging by my watch, we’d had more than thirty minutes of increasingly heavy hail before the storm abruptly died away.
“Would you look at that,” Billy said, his voice filled with amazement at the white fields of ice that covered the ground for as far as the eye could see.
I shivered. Despite the temperature remaining in what I thought was the high fifties, we were all damp with sweat and rain, and more accustomed to something twenty degrees warmer until the last half hour.
The crunch and crackle from behind caught my attention, and I spun about to catch sight of Earl Lovett leading his pair of unencumbered geldings back to our staging area. He looked like he’d gone six rounds with Mike Tyson, and he was bleeding from multiple cuts and scrapes. Unlike the rest of us, he’d forgone wearing a helmet and his battered Stetson showed new dents in the crown and brim.
Billy, his eyes following mine, gave a small cry of dismay and knee-walked out from under the canvas awning and he jumped to his booted feet, taking off in the direction of Mr. Lovett. He skidded to a halt and began looking the two gray geldings over even as Mr. Lovett came limping into voice range.
“Been awhile since I’ve seen something like that,” Mr. Lovett admitted, and I ushered him to one of the overturned camp chairs as Pat rushed to check his wounds.
“Hope to never see another hailstorm like that,” I replied. “You shelter in the tree line along the fence?”
“Eventually,” Mr. Lovett agreed, “but we weren’t that close. Had to drop the load and lead the boys to safety.”
“Well, let’s get you in here and clean you up,” Pat insisted, and I went over to take the leads from Mr. Lovett while Pat fussed over him. Billy quickly joined me, giving the pair of Percheron geldings a quick physical of their own. I could see where their gray coats were streaked with small rivulets of blood, but nothing looked serious to my untrained eye.
“Mr. Lovett, let me take the boys back to the barn and switch them out for your other pair,” Billy asked, but this was not the hesitant inquiry I was accustomed to hearing from the young man. His words came out confidently, and he looked the older man in the eye when he spoke. For Billy, that was amazing. “I’ll get the antibiotic gel out and treat these cuts, but I don’t think any of them will need stitches.”
“Thank you, Billy,” Earl Lovett replied, and he gave a pained grin as he spoke. “If this young hooligan will stop fussing with the little sticker on my noggin, I’ll go with you.”
“Emergency Medical Technician,” Pat said with frayed patience, giving the grumbling farmer both barrels. “I’ve gone to school for years to learn everything from trauma medicine to obstetrics. Yes, I’ve delivered babies, and I’ve also performed open heart surgery and amputated limbs
, as well stitching up more gunshot wounds than I care to remember. I think I can patch up a few contusions and give you a little something for the pain.”
“But you’re not a doctor,” Charles and I chimed together, and all three of us shared a chuckle and Pat relaxed a bit as we threw Pat’s favorite admonishment back on him.
When Earl gave me a goggled-eyed look of concern, I nodded in encouragement before explaining.
“Before he became an EMT, Mr. Lovett, Pat was a Green Beret. They sent him to an Army medical school without the doctor’s license at the end, so we always tease him over it.”
Pat shrugged, a bit sheepish after his outburst.
“Some of my classmates went back for the formal schooling once they got out,” he admitted. “I didn’t. I had a family to support and I enjoyed the adrenaline rush of riding in the ambulance.”
“You think it’s safe enough to keep going?” Charles asked, gesturing to the bruised gray and brown sky, changing the subject and bringing us back on point. Opinions were shared as I studied the heavens. The clouds dipped low as they scudded across to the horizon, and I took a moment to marvel at the phenomenon before offering a comment of my own.
“We’ve got to get back to it,” I said simply. “Can’t stay here under this awning all day. Might as well get the job done and go home.”
With that thought motivating us, we hit the rest of the logs with a determined effort and finished the last of the logs shortly before noon. The Co-Op personnel were only on site for a little over an hour before they finished up, and Sally confirmed it was with a third full trailer load of accepted logs. Chad Evans dropped off tally sheets for all four participating landowners, and Earl limped up from his house to the driveway to accept his own copy.
“Well, don’t replace the cost of what we lost,” Mr. Lovett complained, “but beats a sharp stick in the eye. Can I get cash instead of a check when I come in to redeem this voucher?”
Chad frowned, thinking, before he answered.
“Should be able for that amount,” he allowed. “What would be the trouble with a check? The Feds have worked out most problems we were having with the bank run. No restrictions on commercial accounts anymore,” Chad reminded as he continued, “and they’ve raised the personal withdrawal limit to five hundred bucks.”
I could have explained that the great majority of banks, insurance companies, and investment firms were flat broke, and overextended in a way that was not recoverable. The destruction of the West Coast, the billions of deaths around the Pacific Rim, and the flood damage all around our coastal areas, meant the payout on insurance claims, even if clever adjusters managed to derail ninety-percent of them, would bankrupt every insurance company in the country. Add in the effect of millions of mortgages going delinquent in the coming months, the property owners now missing and presumed dead, and I knew we had the makings for a financial tsunami as massive as the physical one that’d killed millions.
What held things together, at the moment anyway, was the great weight of the Federal government, and a willingness on the part of the Administration to lie effectively to the American people. The Emperor really had no clothes, and I would pity the fool who pointed that out. Riots still occurred in the largest cities back east, while here, the violence on the border with Mexico only increased. I suspected the first earnest political activist who dared speak truth to power, or in this case, expose the empty pockets of the banks and Federal government, was going to earn a bullet in the ear. Then, thinking about it, I adjusted my thinking and concluded the graveyards of the nation were already full of these dumb fucks.
Rather than mention any of my thoughts, I settled with helping build my relationship with the locals.
“Old people,” I said under my breath, but loud enough for Earl to hear me. “He wants to stuff it in his mattress. Probably likes the way the dollar bills crinkle when he’s laying on them.”
That garnered a laugh, and Earl gave me the finger. I counted that as a success in my neighborhood integration efforts. Earl Lovett was a crusty old bastard, but he had a good sense of humor and I could tell he appreciated our help with clearing his fields more than he cared about the few hundred dollars he earned from the process. We needed the support of the locals, and the tacit cooperation of the major employers in the area, if we expected to escape our crooked sheriff’s influence. At some point, if the state of the Union continued to deteriorate, I fully expected the governor to use the sheriffs in a State of Emergency to act more as his surrogates, or for the locals to seize that power for themselves.
Or maybe I was full of crap and jumping at shadows. In the end, only time would tell, but then I had an idea of who might have more information than the endless speculation we received on the radio and the unceasing lies being broadcast as a new brand of truth on the television and internet. We would need to make a little road trip.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When I got back home that evening after the hailstorm, I tried Andy’s number at his shop in Kountze, but the call wouldn’t go through. Since I was fairly certain the public phone was a landline, this came as little surprise. Kountze was in the direct line of destruction for Hurricane Debbie, and from the HAM reports I knew the town had received a proper pasting from the winds, as well as flash flooding in the downtown area. The town was still a good forty miles from the coast, but I couldn’t imagine the Category Five hurricane did much for property values in the area.
Still, I knew from experience that the man built solid structures and I knew him to be a local, married to a girl he went to school with from the same area, so I felt confident he would still be in the neighborhood. Since Kountze was far enough inland to be spared the mandatory evacuation orders, I got up the next morning determined to go see my old close quarters firearms combat instructor.
Before he retired from the Texas Rangers, Andrew Carstairs rose to the rank of major in the organization, and over the years he’d done everything possible to modernize and standardize the firearms training received by the state law enforcement agency, from the Highway Patrol to his beloved Rangers. Andy rose through the ranks, eventually using his position as commanding officer of Company A of the Rangers as a bully pulpit to encourage and cajole the rest of the service to move their pistol training into the twenty-first century. How he managed to reason with anybody was a mystery to me, as the man was as abrasive as sandpaper toilet paper from the first minute I met him. Maybe he got worse with age, but perhaps, I always suspected, he eventually succeeded because his fellow Rangers worried he might shoot them for not going along with his innovations.
All that was in the past, and after Andrew Carstairs hung up his spurs with thirty years in as a Ranger, he moved back to his hometown of Kountze and started work on building up Andy’s Shooting Sports. Andy wasn’t rich from a public servant salary, but he had a wealth of connections and a reputation as a fierce taskmaster who was hard as nails, and he was generating positive cash flow from the time he opened the doors. For services, Andy had indoor pistol and rifle ranges, as well as long range outdoor rifle ranges, in addition to a fully-staffed gunsmithing shop. He sold some firearms, not as many as one might think, because Andy reserved the right to refuse service to some would-be purchasers and he liked to look over everybody who wanted to buy a gun from him.
I didn’t go to Andy’s for weapons, or for deals on ammunition. I never took advantage of his experienced gunsmith services, either. No, I went to Andy’s to learn how to defend myself and my family in a dangerous situation. Ironically, the event that killed my wife and son was not something I could prepare for, and until just recently, I’d never had reason to use any of that expensive training.
None of these details mattered to me as I prepared for a quick drive to the range. No, we needed to find out what Andy knew, and how much he knew about the bigger picture.
“You want some company?” Mike asked, delivering a fake punch to my shoulder as he slid past where I was sitting on the sofa in the living room
.
“I think I’ll need you with me anyway,” I replied softly, glancing around the room. I had no deep secrets from these people, our team, but I also didn’t see the need to advertise, either.
“What’s our cover story when the cops stop us?”
“There’s no travel ban in effect right now,” I replied, and even I couldn’t keep a straight face with that response. Of course the cops would pull us over, travel ban or not. Two or more white males in a pickup crossing county lines would be a warning sign to certain law enforcement officials. Suspicion of being a member of a right-wing militia group.
“All right, all right, yeah, they’re going to pull us over,” I agreed. “The cover story is the truth, which is I’m going to check on one of my friends and former clients to make sure he weathered the storm okay. We only say anything about who we’re going to see once we’re well outside Albany County.”
Mike agreed, and then we spent another ten minutes convincing Pat this was a good idea.
“Look,” I cajoled, “Andy’s tied in with the Good Old Boys network that runs this state, and he’s got connections into the governor’s office and beyond. We want to find out what he knows, and the best way is offer him something in return. The Feds have been working systematically to paper over the existence of this meteor strike from Day One, and I still can’t figure out why. Maybe Andy knows, but if he doesn’t, maybe we can swap information.”
“That’s all nice, but what do you want the man to tell you?” Pat pressed. He’d worked in Austin long enough to know how the pieces fit together.
“What the governor has planned going forward, and if he knows why the president is covering up what really happened,” I said, and I heard several of my friends and family draw in sharp breaths at my words.
“You need to be really, really careful,” Nancy threw in honestly. “Nobody likes a smart ass, and they might think that about you at first.”
Tertiary Effects Series | Book 2 | Storm Warning Page 9