by A. American
I had to give Mark credit, what he did next surprised me. He walked over to the people gathered at the back of the truck and called for their attention.
“Listen up, everyone.” He paused to give them all a minute.
“Considering the situation we are in, everything, even things we previously took for granted, has a new value. We need to utilize every asset we have, take every advantage that comes our way. With that said, and considering what just happened here, we are going to search Pat’s house for anything that can be used. We will distribute these items on an as-needed basis, and to ensure that everyone knows what we find and this is on the up and up, anyone who wants can come with. Rick and I will conduct the search; no else is going inside, but you will all see what’s there. Everyone understand?”
There were several glances in the crowd and some murmuring, but no one objected. I guessed the thought of getting something overrode their objections to pillaging the house of the dead. Pat’s house was less than a block from Mark’s, so the walk over was short. Our little procession down the road brought a few more people out of their houses. Pat and her husband had a ten-acre spread; there were three horses and a couple of cows as well as a chicken coop. Most of this, except for the horses, couldn’t be seen from the road, but once everyone was past the hedge of cedars, you could see it all. We weren’t even in the house yet and people were already talking about the chickens.
Mark and Rick walked up to the front door and brought their weapons up to the ready. Rick reached over and opened the door and Mark stepped in, sweeping the room with the muzzle of the AR. They were inside for quite a while, the crowd was alive with rumors about what was in there. They were already trying to divvy up the stuff outside the house they could see, like the grill and the tractor. I stayed well off to the side of everyone, just watching and listening. Mark emerged from the house and called me over.
“What’s up?” I asked him as I walked up, the crowd starting to press in.
Mark looked past me and said, “Everyone stay back, no one is going inside, just wait.”
Then he looked at me.” I can’t fucking believe this, there’s a fucking pile of food in here.”
“I kind of thought so. What did you find?” I asked.
“There’s a pile of canned food and a shelf full of dry beans and rice. I mean, it isn’t a mountain or anything, but it is enough to last them several weeks,” Mark added, his eyes big, that bewildered look on his face again.
“Well, what are you going to do?” I asked him. People in the crowd were craning their necks trying to see into the house. “Whatever it is, you better do it quick,” I added.
“I guess we’ll bring it all out and divide it up.”
“If I can make a suggestion, bring it all out and pile it up out here so they can all see it. If we can’t divide it evenly, and I mean to the ounce, then maybe you should take custody of it and we work out a way to prepare one meal a day and everyone comes and gets fed. And think about it this way: if people have to come to you for a meal, that’ll reinforce your authority. Having people feel like they owe you can’t hurt,” I offered.
Mark thought about that for a minute. “That may be best, but if they don’t get something today, they may riot; if we’re hauling it all out here, they could take it when we’re inside, and they might accuse me of taking it. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”
Danny stepped up, having been off to the side listening. He said, “Then have some of them go in and bring it out. Have Rick stay in there to make sure they don’t pocket anything, have someone out here to inventory it all and assign someone else to keep track of the inventory. Make them all part of the system so they can’t point fingers.”
Mark and I looked at one another, then back at Danny. “That’s a damn good idea,” Mark said.
Mark turned and went back into the house to give Rick the plan, then came back out with a notebook and pen in his hand, looking at the crowd as he called out some names. “Reggie, Luis, can you two come in and help carry some stuff out?”
The two men moved toward the house and Mark scanned the crowd again. “Marie, can you come over here and write down everything they take out, what it is and the amount? Get someone to help you if you need.” Marie was the woman who had spoken out about me at Mark’s house. She looked around at the people standing around her, waved to another woman and the two of them went up to Mark and took the notebook and pen.
Reggie and Luis started carrying out canned goods and bags of rice, pasta and beans. The two women noted every item that was carried out and the items were laid out on the front yard. When it was all said and done, there was a substantial pile of food. It wouldn’t feed everyone for very long, but it could for several days. As the spread of food increased, the crowd pressed in. People were talking amongst themselves about what they wanted, how much they would get and, in a couple of cases, the best way to cook what they saw.
Once everything was brought out, the anticipation was building into a fervor in the crowd; it was obvious that some of these people hadn’t had much to eat recently. Mark stepped between the crowd and the food and said, “All right, everyone, back up a little.”
Someone from the crowd shouted, “Just pass it out already!” This was followed with a round of “Yeah!” and other approvals. Mark waved Rick, Danny and myself over; we joined him in a semicircle.
“All right, everyone can see what’s here. Marie, you got it all down?” Mark asked.
Marie held up the notebook. “Every last ounce,” she announced.
“Good. As you can all see, some of this we can’t just break up and pass out, so here is what we’re going to do. Marie is in charge of the inventory of this food; she will keep track of how it’s used and how much,” Mark called out.
Marie had a look of horror on her face. Mark said, “What we are going to do is secure this food and we will prepare community meals.” This was met with some jeers and protests; the crowd was turning decidedly hostile. Mark raised his hands, trying to quite the crowd, but to no avail. Rick fired a shot from his pistol and they quieted down immediately.
Mark looked over his shoulder at Rick and said, “Thanks, you scared the shit outta me.” That got a few laughs from the crowd. Mark told them, “Look, if we all take a little of this, then we all might have something today, but if we pool it and prepare community meals, then it will go further. Everyone will get a meal. We’re going to track the food and everyone will know how much is left and how many more meals we can make. It’s the fairest way to do this.”
“So who decides when we get to eat, and what we get to eat? You? Now the law is going to feed us?” Someone from the crowd called out.
“Yes. This isn’t your food; this belongs to all of us, to the community, our neighborhood, and it must be done equitably and fairly,” Mark said.
“Well, how are we to know someone isn’t taking it when no one is around? Marie has the list; what’s to keep her from taking food?” another voice called out.
I stepped forward and asked, “Mark, you going to store this in your shed?” Mark nodded. “Then we’ll put two locks on it. Marie will have one key and Mark the other. That way they both have to be there for the door to be opened and no one will be in there alone.”
There were no more objections from the crowd. The last detail to work out was when the community meals would be served and where. Once that was sorted out, Mark asked me to bring my Suburban over, which I did, and then a couple of the guys loaded the food. I drove Mark, Marie and Reggie back to Mark’s house, where all the food was stored. Mark had two new locks in his shop. They were hung on the hasp and Marie took one set of keys and Mark the other. There weren’t any further objections, especially once Mark pointed out the fact that he had just passed out the county food to them all.
Not everyone was at the food distribution, but it didn’t take long for word to spread that th
ere was food being handed out and those who weren’t there started to trickle into Mark’s yard. I told Mark I was done for the day and was going home. He stopped me, saying, “You aren’t done yet.”
“Now what?” I asked.
“You have three bodies that need buried in a decent manner,” he said.
All I could do was look at him. I just wanted to go home. I was spent, done and tired. “Are you serious?”
“Damn right I am. You aren’t going to leave them in my yard overnight. You made the mess, you can clean it up.”
My head dropped to my chest. The thought of having to dig three graves seemed beyond me right then. Reggie walked over from the shed where he had finished storing everything and said, “I’ll help you, Morg.”
“There you go, get it done, it’s going to be dark soon,” Mark said.
When Mark was gone, Reggie looked over at me. “Where we gonna plant ’em?”
“I guess on their property. Let’s go over to their house and get some sheets to wrap ’em up in, then we’ll load ’em in the Suburban and drive them over. Digging three holes was not on my list of things to do today,” I said to Reggie with a sideways glance.
“Well, if I had fuel for my tractor we could use the bucket to scoop out most of it. That’d make it a hell of a lot easier,” Reggie said.
“Tell you what: you go find the sheets, and I’ll get some fuel,” I said. Anything that would keep me from digging until midnight was fine by me.
“Sounds like a plan,” Reggie said as he started off toward Pat’s house.
I jumped into the truck and headed toward home. I drove around to the shed where the fuel was stored and parked the truck. In the shop I found the pump I’d picked up at Harbor Freight, one of the ones that screwed into the bung and had a handle to crank out the fuel. As I was heading back toward the shed, my neighbor Don called out to me from the fence. I gave him a wave and said I’d be right there and set the pump on the drums and walked over.
“Hey, Morgan, have you been listening to the radio at all?” he asked as I came up.
“No, been dealing with other issues. Why, what’s up?” I asked.
“Just get on the twenty-meter tonight and work the band. There is some bad stuff going on, real bad,” he said.
“There’s bad stuff here, my friend, real bad,” I said. Don just looked at me with a questioning look.
“You’ll hear about it soon enough,” I told him
“Yeah, Pat should be down any time to fill me in,” Don said.
“No, she won’t either, ole buddy.”
“Is she all right?” he asked.
“No, her husband and son too,” I said.
“What the hell happened?” Don asked.
“I’ll check out the twenty-meter tonight. I gotta go right now, talk to you later,” I said as I walked off toward the drums.
I had already filled one five-gallon GI can and was filling the second when I heard a small sniffling voice call out, “Daddy?”
Looking over my shoulder I saw Little Bit standing there, tears running down her face. Stopping the pumping, I knelt down. She walked over and fell against me, crying. “What’s wrong, baby?” I asked.
Through the sobs and tears she told me how she was no longer allowed to play with her friends next door. Their parents told her she was no longer welcome there and that her father was a horrible man. I squeezed her tight and kissed her on the head.
“I’m really sorry, honey. Something bad happened today, really bad, and some people are angry at me for it. I did it ’cause they said they were going to hurt me, and I didn’t want anything to happen to you, your sisters and Mommy,” I told her, trying to comfort her and at the same time spare her the details.
She looked up at me with those tearstained cheeks. “But who am I going to play with now?”
“I’ll talk to them and see if we can fix it, okay? Why don’t you go inside and ask Mommy to put on a movie for you?”
“What are you doing? Can I come with you?” she asked, rubbing her nose.
“No, baby, I’m sorry. What I have to do, you can’t be there, sorry. But tell you what: tonight we’ll play a game together, all of us.”
“They won’t play, they never play with me,” she said, referring to her sisters.
“They will tonight, I promise,” I said.
“Okay, Daddy,” she said and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I squeezed her tight again and she ran toward the house, yelling that she was going to go and pick out a game for us.
After finishing the second can, I loaded them into the back of the Suburban and headed for Mark’s house. As I approached it I didn’t see Reggie out front so I passed by and went to Pat’s place. Reggie was standing in the front door with some sheets draped over his arm, looking at something in his hand. I pulled up and called out to him, “Jump in and we’ll go over to your place and fuel up the tractor.”
He looked up from whatever it was in his hand, then turned and started toward the truck. Reggie was a big man, a diesel mechanic by trade. He was bald-headed and sported muttonchops; he had “outlaw biker” written all over him. He walked up to the driver’s side of the truck and stuck his hand out. He handed me a driver’s license. I took it and looked at it; it was a pretty young girl with blonde hair. The sort of woman that would drive the young rednecks around here wild.
“Who is it?” I asked.
Stern-faced, he replied, “My niece.”
I looked back down at the little card in my hand. “Where’d you find it?” I asked without looking up.
Reggie pointed back at the house without looking away. “In there. In Randal’s room.”
I looked back up at him. “Yeah, well, it wouldn’t surprise me, but now we’ll never know.”
“If he were still alive, we would.” Reggie fixed a cold gaze on me.
I handed the card back to him. “Well, if you think he had something to do with it, then he’s already been dealt with. I hate to say it, and I’m sorry, but she’s gone and nothing’s going to change that.”
He stood there another minute, then walked around and climbed into the passenger side. He didn’t say another word. We fueled the tractor, he drove it back over to Pat’s, then we went over to Mark’s and wrapped the bodies in the sheets he took from Pat’s house and loaded them into the back of the truck. Back over at Pat’s house, Reggie went to work on the pit. He started scooping out the earth, working progressively deeper, like an inverted ramp. With the way he was going there wouldn’t be any hand digging.
The sound of the tractor brought people out. A small group gathered and watched as he worked. I guess some were curious, others were just plain bored and this was better than the view from the porch. Others were looking decidedly unfriendly. The way Reggie had dug the hole, I was able to back the Suburban down into it. Together, we slid the bodies out one at a time and laid them on the ground, careful not to just toss them or drop them. We laid them out side by side, with Pat in the middle.
When I tried to drive the truck out of the hole, it got stuck. Being only two-wheel drive, it slipped in the soft sand. There were some snickers from the gawkers when I got out and went to the back for my tow strap. I didn’t have to say anything to Reggie; he was already backing the tractor up to the front end. I put one loop over a tow hook on the front end and dropped the other over a hitch on the back of the tractor and we pulled it out without incident.
Reggie pulled around to the other side of the hole and started pushing the dirt in. He pushed slowly, allowing the earth to roll in and gradually cover the three bodies. As I stood there watching, I thought back to James on his tractor doing the same thing. I wondered how he and Miss Edith were doing. I missed them and the time I had spent with them. A wave of uncertainty washed over me. How many was it now? Six? Seven? I ran through it in my head: no, it was eight, or more. At least eight
people I had killed. And why? What kind of person could kill that many people? I thought back to earlier in the day and looking down at Pat, that and the impact of the bullet. What had I done? I had to, didn’t I? There was nothing to stop them from doing what they had threatened to. It wasn’t like I could have called the sheriff and had a restraining order placed on them, not that that even worked before. And it wasn’t that I had been making a point: I didn’t doubt that Randal and Leland would have lain in wait for me. Maybe not today or this week, but eventually.
But could it have gone differently? I was still standing there when Reggie shut the tractor down. I looked at the smoothed-over fresh dirt and couldn’t even remember the hole being filled. Reggie walked up to me and stood there, looking at the spot. He said, “I hope we don’t have to do this too many more times.”
I looked over at him. He was still looking at the bare dirt. I said, “Me too. Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. The way I figure it, you need all the friends you can get around here right now,” he said, finally looking over at me. I glanced up and nodded my head.
One of the onlookers called out, “Is anyone going to say anything for them?” No one spoke up; the few that were there just looked at the bare soil, then at me.
I walked over to the Suburban and drove home. It was almost dark by the time I got into the house. Mel was in the kitchen, fixing dinner: chili with rice.
She asked, “You okay? What happened today?”
I looked at her and said, “I just don’t feel like talking about it right now.”
She stood there looking at me for a minute, then gave me a hug and stepped up onto her toes and kissed me. “You hungry? You never came for lunch.”
I was starving, and I told her so, but first I needed a drink. Going out to the shop, I pulled some buckets out from under the shelves, then got on my hands and knees and pulled a case of Benchmark No. 8 out it. It was cheap whiskey that I had bought on a whim and put away for “just in case,” and today was just the sort of case that called for it.