And that the ten minute checks must be in place because there is no real way of preventing suicide with someone who really wants to die.
The checks are, in effect, an admission of failure. An admission that the system can’t stop its prisoners from trying to kill themselves; that the best they can really do is to try to get there quickly enough to bring them back.
Marty left the door and sat on his bunk.
The brig was depressing enough already.
No sense making it worse.
He leaned back with his hands behind his head and pondered his fate.
He’d never been in the military before.
He knew very little about the military justice system, but what he did know wasn’t exactly comforting.
He knew they prosecuted the same crimes that civilian criminal courts did: murder and robbery and rape and such.
But he also knew they prosecuted other things as well; things the civil legal system didn’t consider crimes.
Things like adultery and walking off the job and telling your boss he’s an insufferable jerk.
It didn’t matter if your boss was an insufferable jerk. If you told him, you could get thrown into prison just for telling him.
Marty thought such things were rather odd, but didn’t understand exactly why the military justice system was so hard core.
He was told he’d be assigned a military lawyer to represent him in his case. If he got a chance he’d ask his attorney why such things were illegal in a military setting.
Then something else struck him.
The military had a habit of punishing some people by firing squad.
He sure hoped that breaking into a base and damaging government property weren’t capital offenses.
-40-
Hannah went to sleep that night in the spare hospital bed nurses brought into Mayor Al’s room. The group took turns doing so just in case Al needed something, or had night terrors because of his fear of hospitals.
She drifted off worrying about Marty, but trying to soothe her worries by convincing herself that Debbie was right. That Marty was a sociable kind of guy; the kind of guy who never met a man he didn’t like.
Will Rogers had nothing on him, no siree.
In all likelihood it went down just as Debbie suggested. Mary Hightower’s family was so delighted he’d gone out of his way to find them and make sure they were okay that they’d insisted he stay for dinner.
Then one thing led to another and before they knew it the day was done. It was too late to head back to the base, and the falling snow was making it treacherous.
They would have insisted he stay the night and leave in the morning instead.
Debbie got a ride from a nurse heading to her housing unit on the other side of the base.
It was no problem, really. The nurse said she was driving right past Debbie’s Visiting Airman’s Quarters, the military version of a motel. It was silly to walk.
Debbie was so exhausted she was sound asleep twenty minutes later. Her last thoughts as she faded away were of Frank Woodard, since his name had come up in an earlier conversation.
She and Hannah weren’t aware that Frank used his friend Ronnie’s ham radio to call the Salt Mountain mine and inform them he was okay and on his way back. As far as Hannah and Debbie knew he was still missing and presumed dead.
As Debbie drifted off she thought of him and wondered where in the world he was. And she said a brief prayer for him.
Marty fell asleep immediately that night and dreamed of Glenna, his wife of just one year, who was back in Eden anxiously awaiting his return.
Across the hall from him Colonel Morris Medley was depressed. His friends, who’d been coming to visit him in a steady stream, had two days before been restricted from coming any more.
The order came from the base commander after rumors started circulating that his friends were going to try to spring him from jail and spirit him away.
It was only temporary. The commander promised Medley it would be rescinded once the brig’s security procedures could be examined to ensure they were sufficient to prevent such a jailbreak.
And to add any additional procedures the review team deemed necessary.
As each of them slept that night they had no clue that the next day would bring with it something which would drastically change each of their lives.
Or at least their circumstance.
-41-
Just before Johnny Connolly took the wheel of the Humvee thirty miles or so south of Lubbock, he’d walked back to his pickup truck to brief Tina.
With his pickup door open and blocking him from view of Frank and his friends, Johnny took the opportunity to slip his pistol from his waistband and to his coat pocket.
It was a bit harder to get to there, but less likely to shoot off something important when he sat down. He whispered to Tina that he was going to drive the first vehicle and she’d follow in the pickup truck. And that at some point he’d rob the old man, cast him and his peeps into the snow, and steal his vehicle and everything in it.
“It’ll be three against one,” he told her. “I’ll have to be careful and pick just the right time to do it. And I might have to kill them to keep them from getting the upper hand. So don’t freak out if that happens.”
At the time the words didn’t fully register. She was off the dope for several hours and her head was starting to hurt.
While she was slowly following the big machine through the snow, though, she had a lot of time to consider his words.
And she didn’t like what he said.
She’d moved in with Johnny just before Saris 7 struck after having the mother of all arguments with her parents.
Up to that point they’d hung out together frequently and dated occasionally, but neither wanted to commit to anything more than that.
Johnny wasn’t like the other men she’d been with, who were all hands and ultimatums. Tina’s body belonged to her and her alone, and no one had the right to try to invade it without her permission.
But she was a very pretty girl, just this side of beautiful, and most of the guys tried.
Johnny didn’t. He told her he’d never disrespect her or try to force her to do something she didn’t want to do. And although several other guys told her the same thing, Johnny was the only one who really meant it.
But there was more to their relationship than that.
He gave her something no other guy had ever thought to give her: his time.
They liked to go out late at night and look up at the gray sky and try to figure out where the stars were. They’d talk of their childhood and all the plans they’d made which didn’t come to fruition. All the loves they had which didn’t last. All the promises they made and then broke, and all the broken vows made to them.
She knew Johnny was a drug dealer, but she wasn’t using back then. What he did for a living didn’t concern her much, as long as he was there when she needed him.
Sure he was a drug dealer, but he had a good heart. He was loyal and faithful to her and went out of his way to make her happy.
Surely that cancelled out everything negative there was to say about him, didn’t it?
The argument with her folks came about when another concerned parent told them about the drug dealing.
At first they couldn’t believe it. The boy had been to their house on many occasions. He’d sat at their table for dinner and helped her dad work on projects in the garage.
He’d mowed their lawn for several weeks when Dad was laid up with a back injury. He impressed them with his kindness and the respect he showed them.
They didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t act like a drug dealer, they said, using the strung out dirty scum bags they saw on television as their model.
The thing was, though, that Johnny was dealing but not using. That came later. And since he wasn’t using it was easy to hide what he was doing.
Her folks finally confirmed the drug dealer rumor by consulting wi
th a friend of theirs who was a local policeman.
“He’s a low level street dealer,” they were told. “We’ll pick him up and send him to prison eventually, but right now we’re after bigger fish.”
It is, unfortunately, a sad story in today’s America. In fact, it’s a story which seems to follow one generation after another, and has for quite some time.
Boy meets girl. They fall in love. But boy is flawed and girl’s parents step in to protect her.
“You can’t see him anymore,” they demand of her.
She has to make a terrible choice, and years of careful and cautious parenting go out the window.
Girl runs away with boy. Girl abandons family in a desperate attempt to test new love.
Sometimes things work out. Boy and girl get married and start a family and eventually all parties reconcile.
Too often, though, the harsh realities of life kill the love first, then the relationship.
Too often the boy disappears and leaves girl worse than she started, often with young children she has to raise on her own. Sometimes she goes back to her parents; sometimes her pride won’t let her. But it’s a situation in which no one wins.
And even young boys and girls who see the sad tale happen to older relatives seldom learn from it. For many will repeat the process themselves when their time comes.
All of them – every single one – say their situation is different. Their love will survive.
They’ll cite the one case they know of when friends were able to make it work.
And they’ll ignore ten other cases when it didn’t.
Considering their circumstances, that he was a drug dealer and she never finished high school, many would say they didn’t have a chance.
But they were still together after several years and still devoted to one another.
She still loved him.
She still wanted to be with him.
But then again, he’d never before told her of his plans to murder innocent people.
She’d never seen that side of him before. He was always the lover and not the fighter. He was the peacemaker among his friends, not the troublemaker.
Perhaps it had taken this long to see his true colors.
Perhaps it was up to her to stop this new madness before it started.
Or then again, maybe not.
Maybe she was his Bonnie. And he was her Clyde.
-42-
The sky was still a dirty brown-tinted gray color all the time. It took months or years for the dirt blown into the sub-atmosphere from Cupid 23 to slowly float back down to earth.
It wasn’t always the same tint, though.
At night it was mostly an inky black. Too thick for starlight to pierce. A full moon would present itself as a patch in the sky just slightly lighter than the area around it. Not quite a perfect circle like we might see it tonight. But rather an indefinable blob of sky just a bit less black.
In daytime the sun was easy to find.
It was the lightest patch of grayish brown in the sky.
The light spot still rose in the east and worked its way across the sky to set in the west.
It was no longer blinding and it was no longer warm.
But it was still a welcome sight to see for those counting the days nonetheless.
For every single time that lighter gray spot appeared on the eastern horizon meant something.
To downers and pessimists it meant the muck in the air hadn’t magically disappeared overnight and the earth was still a hellish place to live.
To eternal optimists and the eternally happy of the world it was another day closer to normalcy. The world was another day removed from the collision. One might not be able to see it, but the air was just a tiny bit cleaner than it was the day before. And someday the world would be normal again.
Frank Woodard never had to look at the sky to see what time of day it was.
His old pal Ronnie Rosco had given him a watch to help him keep track.
Not the fancy digital kind that tracks footsteps and records appointments and all that foolishness.
No, this watch wasn’t even digital.
It was analog. Ask ten people under the age of thirty what an analog watch is today and eight of them won’t know. It’s a word that’s very quickly being forgotten because it’s a style of watch that’s going the way of the dinosaur. For you youngsters, an analog watch is simply one with a face. And hands. Hands which rotate in a circle.
You know, like your grandpa used to wear.
But beyond that, this watch was special for another reason.
Because it was a wind-up watch.
A study on modern technology at the University of Tennessee in 2018 determined that seventy one percent of adults have never wound a watch in their lives.
Wind-up watches are old school.
But Frank had one and he loved it.
He didn’t even know he’d dozed off until he came to and realized it was daylight.
He checked the time. 7:10 a.m.
Johnny had been driving for four hours.
And apparently he was doing well, for Frank could still feel the “thump, thump, thump” of the rock-hard rubber tires driving over the road reflectors.
“How far have we gone?”
Johnny looked at the odometer.
“Right at twelve miles.”
Twelve miles in four hours.
It wasn’t much. But they were a little closer to their destination.
It was progress.
Frank looked over his shoulder.
Josie was wide awake and winked at him.
Eddie was still out.
“Um, Frank?”
Frank turned his attention back to the young man in the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, Johnny?”
“I need to pee. Do you mind if I stop?”
“No, go ahead. I’m ready to take the wheel again anyway. I hate being a passenger. And you’re probably missing your girl anyway.”
“Yep. You’re right about that.”
He came to a dead stop and put the rig in park. There was no shoulder to pull onto. And really, it wasn’t like they had to get out of the way of the traffic or anything.
Johnny had been working on his plan for a couple of hours.
Driving along at the breakneck speed of three miles an hour, there wasn’t much else to do but think.
His plan was to step out of the vehicle and to pretend to urinate into the snow, just outside the driver’s door. He’d have his back to the vehicle, and while Frank was coming around to take over the driving he’d remove the pistol from his pocket.
When Frank came around the rear of the vehicle he’d fire.
Two quick shots into the chest and Frank would drop to the pavement like a rock.
Before the back seat passengers knew what was happening he’d pivot to his left as he opened the rear door.
Two quick shots to the chest of the big lug sleeping in the second seat and a head shot to the chick behind him.
The head shot would be a bit messy but the mess would be in the back of the Hummer where they didn’t have to look at it.
Quick and clean.
He’d never killed anyone before. Heck, he’d only fired a weapon a few times in his life.
But he was desperate to get as far away from Lubbock as he could, and they just weren’t moving fast enough to suit him.
Sure he could just go with the flow, follow Frank to Big Spring as planned and then part ways.
But he’d asked Frank’s permission to speed up a bit to put more miles beneath them. Frank refused, saying safety was the best option. If they were to drive into a ditch they were in trouble, for the Humvee wasn’t equipped with a winch like some others were.
Once Frank and his passengers were out of the way Johnny could speed up to ten, maybe fifteen miles an hour.
In his mind, getting to Big Spring today instead of day after tomorrow was worth the lives of three people he didn’t even know
until a few hours before.
It was the perfect plan.
But then Eddie happened.
-43-
Nobody loves rocking chairs more than mothers. Rocking chairs are a means for overworked and overtired moms everywhere to put their little bundles of joy to sleep. And that allows mom to get some rest herself, for we all know that mom can’t relax when baby is up and in need of something.
Babies like rocking chairs almost, but not quite as much, as their mommy.
Rocking chairs aren’t as soft as mommy’s bosom. And rocking chairs don’t smell as sweet as mommy. But rocking chairs relax them. When they get rocked in a rocking chair they feel woozy. Then they get sleepy. Then they crash and get some much needed rest of their own.
It’s hard being a baby. Much harder than any adult wants to admit. When you’re a baby you’re either wet, hungry or have a poopy diaper. Sometimes all three. Sometimes you have gas and don’t understand why your tummy hurts. Sometimes you have diaper rash and don’t understand why you itch.
One thing you do understand is this: the only time you’re not smelly or wet or itchy or hungry is when you’re sleeping.
That’s why you like rocking chairs. Because there’s just something about that motion that makes you fall asleep.
It’s not just rocking chairs, though.
Babies tend to get sleepy any time they feel repetitive motion. Motion calms them. It makes them drowsy. It helps them sleep.
That’s why they sleep in cars, and what new parent hasn’t taken baby for a midnight drive around and around the block when she’s teething and miserable and can’t sleep?
Crazy Eddie was a full grown man.
But he had a damaged mind, and that made him act in rather odd ways occasionally.
Josie liked to say that in a lot of ways he was more like a baby than a man.
Not in every way, of course. He stopped wearing diapers years before and was able to dress himself, though the top button on his shirt was usually higher than the top buttonhole.
One of the main ways he was like a baby was that the motion of a moving car knocked him out faster than a heavyweight boxer.
The Blockade Page 13