by Akart, Bobby
Delta shrugged and muttered, “That’s indiscriminate.”
Meredith added what she’d picked up on from news reports in Charlotte. “The media is blaming the president and his supporters for creating a climate of rage and hate. Basically, they’re excusing the actions of the mobs in Richmond as being frustrated students and disadvantaged residents who decided to take out their anger on anyone in their path.”
Ryan took a deep breath and gave his opinion. “That’s predictable, and we all see the media’s agenda coming out. Let’s be honest, a lot of Americans have had a lot to be angry about for a long time. Blacks struggled for a long time to get their freedom and continue to struggle for equality and opportunity. There are also working-class Americans who feel like a mouse on a wheel, living paycheck to paycheck, hoping for a better economic opportunity at some point.”
“These issues have been ongoing for half a century,” interjected Cort. “The point, at least from my perspective, is that the anger started many decades before the president was elected. It dates back to the sixties and the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.”
“Exactly,” added Ryan. “I’m comfortable in saying this, however. Over the last dozen years, an us-versus-them narrative has risen to the forefront. Name-calling—including the labels racist, misogynist, dregs of society, and deplorables—is far too common. Eventually, when a large group of any people, especially proud Americans, continue to be called names and be disparaged by the media, whether it be news or entertainment, then hostilities can boil over.”
Echo sat up in his chair and pushed his plate forward. “Ryan, are you saying that all of this social unrest is partly our side’s fault? And listen, by our side, I’m referring to conservatives. I make no bones about where I stand politically.”
“You and I’ve had this conversation before,” Ryan began his reply. “To an extent, there’s plenty of blame to go around. I’ve been warning for years, albeit privately, that if the rhetoric and rancor didn’t get tamped down, we’d end up shooting at each other.”
“But that’s not our fault,” said Echo.
Ryan took a deep breath. “Okay, let me tell you a story.”
Blair groaned. “Here we go. We’re about to get one of Ryan’s famous analogies or theories.”
Most of the group chuckled, but both Delta and Echo were intently listening to Ryan.
Ryan squeezed his wife’s hand and smiled. “You’ll survive. For the benefit of our new friends, I have a habit of making analogies so that they are relatable. Let me give you this example. How many of you have seen the Stephen King movie Needful Things?”
Everyone raised their hand.
“Okay, good. Now, you know there is this evil guy, Leland Gaunt, who shows up in this small town, Castle Rock, in Maine, of course, and opens up a shop. He calls it Needful Things. But Gaunt is more than a shop owner. He’s the devil incarnate. Now, he knows what makes the people of Castle Rock tick. He knows what they’re hiding, what their fears are, and how to stir up their angers.”
“Yeah, my favorite scene was where the kid was throwing chicken poop and mud on crazy Wilma’s sheets,” said Charlotte before continuing, “I would’ve taken a switch to that boy if I caught up with him.”
“See, that’s the point,” said Ryan, who had command of the room. “Wilma didn’t know it was young Brian who ruined her sheets. She thought it was Nettie. Gaunt played those two against each other to the point a crazed Wilma and a grief-stricken Nettie duked it out in the middle of the street with a knife and a meat cleaver.”
“Gaunt pitted everyone against each other by playing on their emotions,” interjected Cort.
Ryan smiled and nodded. “The same thing has been happening in America for decades. One side of the political spectrum has effectively convinced their constituents that our side is full of racists, misogynists, and is guilty of every ism created in the social-justice-warrior handbook.”
“But we’re not saints either,” added Blair.
“I agree. Our side has convinced us that everything related to government is bad. Washington is out to get us so that all of our tax dollars can be squandered on social programs and freeloaders and illegal aliens.”
Echo agreed. “I have to say it’s hard to argue with that. All I’ve ever heard from people who think like me is that the government needs to get out of our lives and the downtrodden need to get a job.”
“Here’s what I’m saying,” continued Ryan. “Many of us have lost the ability to step back and look at the situation from an independent, detached perspective. Why? Because the media and politicians, the real-life Leland Gaunts, keep us stirred up in a fit of anger against the other side. That’s called polarization, and we haven’t experienced levels of division this great since the sixties. Both the 1960s and the 1860s.”
The group grew quiet as they allowed Ryan’s words to soak in.
“That’s an interesting analogy to the Civil War,” said Delta, breaking the silence. “Do you think our country is headed toward a second civil war?”
Echo started laughing and then apologized for his outburst. “Trust me, Ryan and I have discussed this topic since the day we met. I say yes. He says no.”
Ryan smiled and pushed his chair away from the table slightly so he could cross his legs. “I can imagine that conversations like this were had around dinner tables over drinks in places like Washington, Georgia, or Charleston, South Carolina, in the late 1850s. Gentlemen, plantation owners, and slaveholders all vowed that the North could never be allowed to force their Yankee ways on the gentile Southerners.”
“I’m a Yankee.” Delta laughed. “Pennsylvania born and raised.”
Ryan pointed at Delta. “Again, his statement will help make my point. In the eighteen hundreds, America was divided culturally by geography and economics. The South was primarily agricultural, requiring large amounts of inexpensive labor to tend to crops and cotton. The North was primarily industrial, requiring machinery and more skilled workers to work in the factories or coal mines.
“Make no mistake, slavery was a horrible practice and needed to be abolished. But Northerners had their own form of slave labor, too. The men they sent into those unsafe coal mines and unregulated industrial manufacturing plants were paid, and they were free, but they were put at great risk. History has shown that more people died in the industrialized North, working a regular job, than slaves died in the fields of Southern plantations. That doesn’t make slavery good, but it adds context to the struggle for equality.”
Delta persisted. “Setting aside the basis for the Civil War, can it happen again?”
“Back then, it was easy to define your opponent, the enemy. Southerners spoke in a distinctive dialect, and their cultural mannerisms were far different from those in the North. They lived in states like Virginia, Georgia, and others across the Southeast. As the conflict deepened, it was easy for certain states to secede because the vast majority of its citizens were like-minded thinkers.”
“That wasn’t necessarily true west of the Mississippi,” interjected Cort, who was also a student of history. “States like Kansas and Nebraska were brutally divided as people were forced to take sides.”
“The same is true today, Cort,” said Ryan. “Our nation is homogenized.”
“There’s a hundred-dollar word,” said Blair sarcastically. She was always teasing Ryan, her author-wannabe, about his use of big words.
“Do you mean like the milk?” asked Meredith, who decided to play along and tease her host.
“Yes, and it’s not a hundred-dollar word,” replied Ryan with a wink. “Onomatopoeia is a hundred-dollar word. That means—”
Blair interrupted him and raised her palm toward Ryan. “Hold up. You need to explain homogenized first.”
Ryan grinned and playfully wagged his finger at his wife. “To homogenize something is to take two normally insoluble liquids, like fat and cream, and integrate them into something that works—milk.
“Our s
ociety has become integrated since the sixties, supposedly into something that works. America is no longer divided geographically by culture or political thinking. North Carolina used to be a traditionally red state that has turned purple by the influx of liberals into areas like Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham. Virginia is similar, as left-leaning federal government employees moved into the northern part of the state, but commute to DC.”
Cort was enjoying the conversation. “So, because the nation doesn’t have defined geographic boundaries, like whole states during the first Civil War, a division, or secession, couldn’t take place.”
Ryan sighed. “No. Not in my opinion.”
“Then how do we resolve the continued division between us?” asked Meredith.
Ryan grimaced and then answered, “Sadly, I think it’ll happen the same way that Nettie and Wilma resolved it in Needful Things—with a butcher knife and a meat cleaver in the middle of the street.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Delta’s Cabin
The Haven
Skylar was having so much fun with her new friend, Hannah, and her mom that she’d completely lost track of time, although there was no set schedule for her. At home, her mom worked, and she was used to fending for herself after school. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for her to stop at a friend’s house to play and even eat dinner before her mom got home around six in the evening.
She’d said her goodbyes earlier and declined the offer by Meredith to escort her inside. Despite the fact she was in a new place, under mysterious circumstances, Skylar was comfortable in her surroundings. The day at the Little Red Schoolhouse had helped give her a sense of normalcy.
So when Ethan wasn’t at the cabin, and her dad was still busy, the isolation didn’t feel unusual. In fact, she immediately embraced it. Back home in Philadelphia, she’d probably turn on some brainless television show and get a snack.
She wasn’t into video games like her brother had been when he was eleven. Skylar was a painter, and, on this evening, she was excited about being alone to focus on the artwork requested by Miss Blair.
She retrieved her sketches from her bed and spread everything out on the dining table. Feeling a chill, she opened up the wood-burning stove’s door and stoked the coals like her dad had taught her. They kept a stack of firewood and kindling in the cabin to stay dry, so it didn’t take long for Skylar to get the heat going again.
“I’m a pioneer woman,” she said to herself as she retrieved the last of the Mountain Dew her dad had brought home for lunch.
She sat at the table and became immersed in her artwork. Time flew by, and Skylar stopped just once to use the restroom. She didn’t have a watch, but since it was dark outside, she assumed it was after six o’clock. Skylar found her dad’s laptop and opened it. Although the display was locked by a passcode, she could see the time.
“Seven!” she said aloud as she instinctively looked around the nine-hundred-square-foot cabin to see if anyone heard her.
Consumed by her project, Skylar had lost track of time and considered that neither her father nor Ethan had come back to the cabin. For the first time since their arrival at the Haven, she became concerned. She didn’t have a phone, and her father had a two-way radio, but he carried it with him everywhere.
For the next fifteen minutes, Skylar paced around the cabin, stepping onto the front porch several times to look and listen for any signs of life. The Haven was like no other place she’d ever seen before. It was completely quiet and dark. Standing in the dim light emanating through the open front door, she blew smoke into the cold air as the water vapor in her breath condensed into tiny droplets of water and ice.
Skylar grimaced, looked up and down the deserted gravel road one more time, and decided to go find somebody. She scurried back inside, gave the fire a final look-see to make sure it was safe, and bundled up for a walk.
She ambled along the gravel road, kicking at rocks and blowing smoke, trying to make the most out of a frightening situation for a young girl. She expected to come across a moving car or a cabin with a light on, but neither materialized.
An eastern owl screeched to her right, startling her. Skylar picked up the pace as she made her way toward the fountain in the middle of the circle between the main house and the front gate.
She’d begun to jog toward the fountain when she came to an abrupt stop, causing her to slip on the gravel and fall to her hands and knees. Skylar wanted to scream in pain, but her voice betrayed her. A primal fear had overcome her as she froze on all fours, eye level to a ghostly creature that stared directly at her and hissed.
Then it began to utter a low growl followed by a chattering sound. Skylar’s eyes grew wide as the all-white animal approached her. Mouth agape, she tried to find the strength to yell for help but couldn’t. She backed up, tearing the knees in her jeans on the gravel road, causing her hand to bleed on a sharp stone.
The moonlight illuminated the animal, so Skylar could see it better. She stopped her retreat and, in total bewilderment, studied her adversary. She was face-to-face with one of the rarest creatures in existence—an albino raccoon.
Albino raccoons, weighing twenty-five to thirty pounds, live naturally in the Eastern United States but rarely make it to adulthood. Because they weren’t born with natural camouflage like their counterparts, they spent the vast majority of their lives avoiding predators.
The probability of Skylar encountering this unusual critter was similar to the odds of winning the lottery. Yet, there they were, in a standoff as the two tested each other’s will.
Skylar was relieved to see that the ghost was in fact a raccoon. She was aware of the rabies threat from her classes in school, so she knew better than to reach out to the rare raccoon. At this point, she was happy for the experience and would like to be on her way, as she suspected was the case for her adversary.
“Shoo! Go away, pretty girl!” Skylar had no idea how to determine the gender of the raccoon, but the animal was cute in its all-white fur, so she presumed it to be a girl.
Skylar started to stand, and the raccoon rose slightly to mimic her actions. The standoff continued, as neither was willing to give ground. As Skylar found her footing, she inadvertently kicked a rock in the albino’s direction, causing it to react with a subtle hiss before moseying back into the woods.
Skylar brushed the leaves and stones off her pants before letting the albino raccoon know she hoped to see her again sometime. The fear had left her, and she remembered the reason for being out in the dark alone in the first place. She picked up the pace and trekked up the hill to Haven House, where only a faint orange glow could be seen from the windows.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Danbury Municipal Airport
Danbury, Connecticut
Jonathan Schwartz stood on the tarmac outside the Bombardier Global 6000 jet as the final preparations were being made for their departure. He wanted to personally supervise the loading of their luggage and nearly two dozen crates hastily put together by the estate’s staff. Under the circumstances, he and his father would not be traveling light for their trip to New Zealand. Computers, some family heirlooms, and precious metals would also accompany them out of the country. Jonathan surmised that their self-imposed exile from the United States would be long-lasting.
The pilots were readying the aircraft as the final boxes were loaded in the baggage compartment. Jonathan paused to check his cell phone for any final messages or phone calls before he removed the SIM card. SIM, an acronym for subscriber identity module, was a small circuit board that, practically speaking, acted as a middleman between the phone and the carrier’s cell tower, allowing the two pieces of hardware to communicate.
Each SIM card had a unique identifier that was engraved on the body of the card and communicated to the cell phone tower. Once it was removed from the phone, it didn’t have the necessary hardware to connect with a cell phone tower, rendering the phone useless, but untraceable.
Jonathan was in the process
of dismantling the device when a black Chevy Suburban came roaring around the side of the airport hangar. Several other vehicles could be seen at another entrance to the airport runway.
He had to make a decision. They were caught by surprise and it was too late for the jet to take off. The baggage handlers were frozen like a deer in headlights, mesmerized by the sudden activity. Jonathan wanted to protect his father, but he knew there wasn’t a way to avoid his own capture.
He glanced up at the porthole windows of the Bombardier. His father’s sullen face looked back at him. With an imperceptible nod and a wink, he received the blessing he needed to run. In a flash, Jonathan ran toward one of the baggage cars and grabbed a blue Danbury Airport uniform jacket. He quickly slipped his arms through the oversized jacket and scampered under the nose of the aircraft.
The airport was dark except for the blinking runway lights. Jonathan had to hope that the approaching vehicles would be focusing their attention on the aircraft and the prospect of arresting its passengers.
He raced across the concrete runway as fast as his leather Ferragamo slip-ons could carry him. His hopes of escape lifted when he hit the tall unmowed grasses between the runway, until he slipped and fell, falling forward. He tumbled over and over into a drainage ditch, ripping open his pants. Blood began to ooze out of his knee.
Out of breath and scared, Jonathan lay in the cold grass, listening. Sirens were approaching, but he dared not look up to see how close they were to him. He rolled over onto his belly and began to crawl through the ditch. Now soaked and shivering, he came to a thirty-six-inch corrugated-steel culvert.
He needed to get his bearings, so he risked popping his head out of the grass despite the closeness of voices carrying across the runway. The culvert led away from the aircraft. To where? Jonathan didn’t know. All he knew was he’d be caught if he remained where he was.