by Lopez, Rob
“Don’t you put words in my mouth,” said Eagleburger, getting annoyed.
“I’ve a mind to put more than words in there,” murmured Fick in a low voice.
“What the hell do you want?”
Fick stepped up to him and spoke in a barely audible whisper.
“I want an excuse,” he breathed. “I want you to flaunt the law in front of all these witnesses and try to walk away. I want you to resist arrest, protest, and struggle. I want you to give me the opportunity to put you down. I guarantee you’ll never get up again, so go ahead. Try it on.”
Eagleburger didn’t hear every word, but he heard enough. This had escalated quicker than he’d wanted, and he was very aware that the younger, fitter man before him was coiled like a spring, ready to go at the slightest provocation. There would be no appeal to reason, no emotional leeway and, above all, no remorse. Only a quick and brutal outcome that didn’t favor Eagleburger.
The sheriff looked to the townspeople in the line and found no support there. Only fear, and maybe disappointment.
“Your ring,” said Fick.
Eagleburger took a deep breath, his heart racing. Then he removed his wedding ring.
Fick turned away. “Pay the man,” he said with a trace of disgust, robbed of his opportunity to fight.
Eagleburger threw the ring onto the table, but didn’t wait for it to be weighed. He turned around and started walking.
“Hey, your money,” said the man at the table.
Eagleburger resisted turning back. Resisted the urge to unpin his badge and throw that in too. He simply kept on going, looking neither left nor right.
It was a long walk back to the government compound. Longest walk of his life, tasting the bitter dregs of his humiliation. By the time he reached the courthouse, he felt old, like he’d been dragged up hastily through his years and kicked out the other end.
In the basement guardroom, his deputy sat reading a dog-eared novel by lamp light.
“You okay?” said his deputy, glancing up. “You look like you seen a ghost.”
Eagleburger gripped the back of a chair, panting slightly as his heart rate peaked.
“I’m fine,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Just out of shape.”
He took a stained handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.
“You sure you’re okay?” asked the deputy. “Maybe you should let the doc take a look at you.”
“No, I’m fine,” said Eagleburger quickly. “Prisoner okay?”
The deputy shrugged. “Sure.”
“Good. I’ll take over here. I want you to get out there and follow up on a few things. That missing load of seed, for starters. Somebody’s got to have seen it. Ask down by the river. If it hasn’t been shipped out on a boat, they might have seen it crossing the bridge.”
The deputy folded the page he was on and closed the book. “They won’t say nothing to me if I don’t offer something in return.”
“Ask anyway. Oh, got a report of a woman going missing. Name of Ione. Ask if anyone’s seen her.”
The deputy grabbed his hat. “Considering how many people have disappeared, that’s a long shot.”
“Just do it.”
As the deputy turned to go, Eagleburger called out one last time. “Do you have any gold on you?”
“As if,” said the deputy, surprised. “Why?”
“No reason. Just watch yourself out there.”
Confused, the deputy left.
Eagleburger waited until he heard the footsteps recede, then put his head in his hands. The image of his confrontation with Fick ran through his mind, and he finally admitted to himself that he’d been scared.
That hurt.
He’d built up the image of a no-nonsense sheriff for so long that he’d started to believe it himself. So it was a shock to realize that he’d reached his limit. He was no longer The Man.
He’d had an inkling, of course, after recovering from the illness over the winter. As well as robbing him of his wife, he’d lost something of himself. Mortality had become a weight, and that was not something he’d given much thought to before. Being called a coward stung, and it was because he couldn’t help wondering whether Fick was right.
He massaged his naked finger, still feeling where the ring should have been. Much as he missed his wife, he was glad she wasn’t here to see this. Had she been around, though, she’d have noticed before he did that his sense of duty was an illusion designed to prevent him seeing the obvious. Everything good had become corrupted. The law was being bent over a barrel and shaped to suit a few at the expense of the many. He only needed to open his eyes to see what he’d become a part of.
But he was stubborn. She’d give him that much.
For the kind of job he’d had to do, it usually helped. Guys with too much imagination or sensitivity didn’t last long in law enforcement. They either freaked out and quit, or went the other way and became crusaders, burning out or just burning with anger. The only way to last was to take the middle road and simply do your job. Usually meant not getting too philosophical about it.
His wife could have pointed out the limitations of that approach. But she’d have done it gentle. Fick, on the other hand, had driven the point right through the sheriff’s heart, and Eagleburger was fresh out of excuses. The law did indeed suck, and he was a part of it now.
12
Harry Phelps Jr. had inherited a little of his father’s charm and a lot of his mother’s looks. But what he’d really gained by the bucket-load was a canny eye for political opportunity, and that had always been a feature of the Phelps dynasty. Jim Fairbanks imagined that, once Harry had learned that Black Mountain was up for grabs, he’d wormed his way into the governor’s favor and got as many people as possible to advertise his impeccable credentials to Jeffries. In fact, when offered the post of mayor, Harry likely got all humble and suggested that there were maybe other people more suitable for the role — before waiting patiently for the governor to insist that he was, indeed, the right man for the job. Hell, Harry might even have blushed a little.
“Look, Jim,” said Harry, leaning forward and clasping his hands together on the desk, “I know you’re sore about being demoted from mayor, and from what I hear, you were a damned good one. But think of the long term. I’m just an emergency replacement, and trust me when I say I was as surprised as anybody when the governor asked me to take this appointment. I mean, he pushed me, and I couldn’t say no. But you haven’t been forgotten. All I’ll say is that, if you play your cards right, there’s a chance that someday you could be back behind this desk. You’ve just got to be patient.”
It didn’t surprise Jim that Harry tried to appeal to his personal interests — or what he imagined were Jim’s personal interests. In truth, Jim had never been the mayor in any real sense. He’d certainly never been elected, and would never have put himself forward for that kind of ritual ass-kissing. He’d simply been around while the previous incumbents dropped like flies, and he’d taken the poisoned chalice with a sense of dread, trying to manage the unmanageable, and doing his best to avoid the unforgivable. Harry, on the other hand, couldn’t imagine that there was anything other than personal interest. It was simply the world he’d always lived in.
“I’m not here because I’m sore,” said Jim, standing at the table and leaning on his fists. “I’m here because your goddamn militia are dragging people out of their homes, searching them and taking their valuables.”
“You look sore,” said Harry with an emollient smile. “Care for some wine? Rescued from the Biltmore vineyards, no less. In fact, here, take the bottle.”
“I don’t want your goddamn wine.”
“Take it for a friend, then. I’m pretty sure you’ll make some friends when you start handing that around.”
“Harry, you’re not listening to me. Your militia are out there violating people’s rights!”
“Look, I could use a good assistant someday. If you’re interested, I’d like to c
onsider you for the role.”
Jim wanted to punch him. “You can’t just come in as an outsider and start roughing up my people.”
Offended, Harry withdrew the wine bottle. “Who are you calling an outsider? My family lived in this town for generations.”
“Sure, until the lure of money drew them to Raleigh.”
“I still have property in this town.”
“Harry, there’s probably half a dozen Saudi princes who own property in this town, but that don’t make them local.”
Harry scratched his head. “I don’t recall any Saudis buying property around here. I mean, I think my office would have told me. Because they’re good funders.”
“Jesus Christ, Harry. Try and understand our situation here. The people are mad.”
“There’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Why not? Everything else has been. This isn’t democracy, you’re not a mayor and that sure ain’t the army out there.”
“Coming in here and slandering all and sundry won’t solve anything.”
“And what will?”
“What will what?”
Jim felt like pulling his hair out. “Why are you so goddamn obtuse?”
A clockwork egg timer, shaped like a hen and placed on the table, reached zero and vibrated as it rang. On cue, an armed militiaman stepped into the office, holding the door open.
“I’m sorry that’s all I have time for,” said Harry with a forced smile. “If you have any further issues, talk to my secretary outside and she’ll pencil you in for another appointment.”
Jim gritted his teeth, restraining himself from smashing his fists on the table. If he thought he could get away with grabbing the mayor by his collar and throwing him out of the window, he probably would have, but the militia had proven to be trigger-happy enough, and even if the goon at the door hadn’t reacted quickly enough to save the mayor from an ignominious exit, he certainly would have recovered in time to empty half a magazine into Jim afterward.
Jim turned around before he lost his temper and limped out of the office. The door was shut firmly behind him.
A small group of townsfolk waited for him outside.
“What did he say?” asked one of them.
“As little as he could get away with,” said Jim, unwilling to stop and address them properly.
“Are you going to speak to him again?”
“Oh sure. He promised me that he’d get his secretary to book me in for another disappointment.”
“You can’t just leave it like this,” said someone else.
Jim looked around. Across the firehouse parking lot and down various streets, he could see squads of militia, standing guard. It was clear they’d been told to expect trouble, and many were eyeing the group outside the firehouse.
“It’s best if you break it up, people,” said Jim cautiously. “Now’s not the time for this. Go home.”
Without waiting for an answer, Jim left them, taking a long walk up the road that led to Montreat. Leaving the houses of Black Mountain behind, he passed overgrown meadows and isolated bungalows. The weather was good, and by the time he reached Emily Lucas’s home, he’d grown tired of swatting curious flies away from his face, and his knee hurt pretty bad. He’d never managed to get himself one of Emily’s bikes, because they’d been requisitioned for government use, though Jim had yet to see Harry on one. They mostly went to the militia stationed at Montreat College for passage to and from town.
Jim knocked on the door and Emily opened it, frowning as she looked at his knee, which he was massaging.
“Still bad?” she said.
“Still bad,” he replied.
Emily wore a bib overall and boots. When she wasn’t fixing bikes, she was painting, or taking photographs of what she wanted to paint with an old film camera. Back in the day she used to display her art for sale in the yard for the college students to ignore, and once a month she’d display her work in Asheville. She’d since run out of chemicals to develop photos, and there wasn’t much call for abstract butterfly paintings, so the canvases were stacked five-deep around her living room and studio. Jim hobbled in and gratefully collapsed in an over-stuffed chair.
Duke Robson, the ex-security chief for the town, sat gloomily at a table full of paint tubes and brushes, like a pre-schooler who’d been told off for finger-painting on the walls. Phil Medina, who used to manage a restaurant chain and had been put in charge of rationing and food supplies during the winter, sat on a cushion, his knees rising up as high as his chin.
“I see you took my chair,” said Emily, following Jim in.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to get back up.
“Ahh, stay there,” she said, dragging out another cushion to sit on. “So what did that jackass Phelps have to say?”
“He didn’t say nothing,” said Jim. “It’s like he can’t see what’s going on.”
“That’s why he got the job,” said Phil. “He’s being paid to see nothing.”
“I don’t know. Harry just isn’t that bright.”
“That’s what he wants you to believe,” said Emily scornfully. “You’re being played. You’re just too damned accepting.”
“We should have resisted in the beginning,” intoned Duke, “when we still had all our people here.”
“They were holding some of our people,” said Jim. “What did you expect me to do? You knew them. They were just kids.”
“We gave in too easily,” said Emily.
Phil shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been hearing about that fight over at Round Knob, and the militia used mortars and machine guns on those people. It was a massacre. I think, given the circumstances, Jim did the right thing.”
“Thank you, Phil,” said Jim.
“They were fighting bums,” said Duke. “It would have been different here, against citizens defending their homes.”
Jim remembered the soldier he’d encountered in his own bedroom, with his dark, haunted eyes. “I don’t think it would have been so different,” said Jim. “In fact, I think it would have been worse. I don’t rightly know who those people were at Round Knob, but I don’t think they were bums. Bradley down at the auto shop traded with one of them, and I got to talking with him. Said they freed some Hispanic woman from the raiders and brought her back to town.”
“Who?” asked Emily.
“I don’t remember her name, but I can find out. The point is, Connors’ force is big and well equipped, and we can’t match that. Someone else tried, and it didn’t end well.”
“I don’t call what we have now ending well,” said Emily. “Those leaches are bleeding us dry. We worked hard for what we have, and they’re just coming in and taking what they want. Look what they did to Mr. Cooper at North Fork. Tried to stop them taking his livestock and they shot him dead.”
“But that’s just it,” said Jim. “If we resist, we get the same fate.”
“What about Ben Miller?” said Duke. “He didn’t resist, and they still killed him.”
“That was an accident,” murmured Jim.
“An accident? Are you letting them off with that excuse?”
“I’m not letting anybody off. I’m just saying we’re in a dangerous situation, and we gotta be real careful.”
“What is it going to take for you to get angry?” said Emily. “Why are we just rolling over and accepting this? Let’s raise the town. They can’t fight us all.”
“Emily.”
“What? We pulled together before, and we can do it again. This is our town. Nobody knows the land around here like we do. We can fight them in every cove and ridge. Let’s rise up.”
“No,” said Jim. “We’re in no position to fight. They took our best weapons and our best people, and we’re up against professionals.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Again with the negatives.”
“It’s my job to temper the optimism. Need a little injection of realism here, because this is a big decision. If you go dow
n that road, there’s no turning back. Waving a flag won’t stop the bullets, and you’ll have to see it through to the bitter end. Are you ready for all the lives that’s going to cost?”
There was a moment of contemplative silence in the room.
“Why don’t we lobby the governor directly?” offered Phil. “Make our case to him.”
“Sure, worked well with Harry, didn’t it?” said Emily dryly.
The meeting dragged on into the early evening, with ideas going back and forth, but in spite of the desire to act, no one was willing to commit to any particular plan. When the meeting finally broke up, Jim made his slow way home, disconsolate. Having been told a couple of times that the whole thing was largely his fault, he couldn’t help feeling that it probably was. But if he could have gone back in time to the point when Connors first arrived in the town, he likely would have made the same decision, saving lives rather than gambling on a risky outcome.
Which only convinced him that he was never really the right man for the job. If he could have gone back further in time, he wouldn’t have stuck his neck out like he did.
Dusk fell quickly across the valley, and Jim slowed right down on the slope up to his house. He’d detoured to avoid the checkpoints, but he was worried now about running into a militia patrol.
That was how Ben Miller died, last seen walking home with his shotgun over his shoulder. In the dim light, the patrol mistook him for some kind of raider, and opened fire on him. That was their version of events, at any rate. Jim didn’t bother carrying his shotgun anymore. Not only was it heavy enough to aggravate his knee, its silhouette would have attracted the wrong kind of attention, even if it was still legal. He carried his .38 in the inside pocket of his coat, seeing as no new regulations had been issued about concealed carry. It would be useful in some situations, but left him free to put his hands in the air during others. It was for that reason that he hadn’t cut himself a walking stick, in case that too made him look like a raider to some jittery patrol. Every footfall, however, sent a jab of pain up his leg, and he considered getting himself a stick with a white flag attached, so he could wave it, if need be.