Straw Man

by Gerry Boyle

  “Liberals,” he said.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “A lot of good men died, too, get old Georgie off our backs. Read much about the Revolution?”

  “Some.”

  “I’ve got a whole room full of books about that war. Hell of a fight, outgunned and outnumbered. Total miracle we pulled it off. Now, with the liberals, it’s no guns for civilians. No God in schools. All the power to the central state? What does that sound like?”

  I thought.

  “Soviet Union?”

  “Or Communist China. Take your pick.”

  “Right.”

  “Democracy isn’t something you’re given. It’s something you have to earn. Every day.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “That’s why I sell firearms. Every time I put a firearm in the hands of a law-abiding citizen, I uphold and defend the Second Amendment.”

  I nodded, picked up the S&W. It was solid and comfortable compared with the cheap knockoff.

  “What do you do when you’re not selling firearms, Sam?” I said.

  “Diesel mechanic. Taught me in the army. But I’m retired. You?”

  “I work for one of the other freedoms. The press.”

  He tensed.

  “Reporter?”

  “Right.”

  “You working now?”

  “On a story about the firearms business in Maine. Would you mind talking on the record?”

  He looked at me from underneath the headband.

  “Mind? Hell, no. Free speech—I exercise that all the time, too.”

  So he did, repeating most of what he’d said, a little more. I scribbled in my notebook. When he was starting to slow, I thought of the ATF guys, and said, “How would you feel if one of the guns you sold was used in a homicide?”

  “I’d feel like crap,” Sam said. “But there’s only so much I can do.”

  “Like what?”

  “You got a permit to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Maine?”

  “Me, personally?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said.

  “Then I’d sell to you. No valid permit, no handgun deal. Proves you’re not a criminal or a nut job.”

  “I see,” I said. “What about long guns?”

  “I gotta like the cut of your jib.”

  “So who bought the rifle, Sam?”

  “Lawyer from Augusta, this one. Kind of a city type. Said his buddy offered to take him hunting and he didn’t want to show up empty-handed. Usually I get the locals. Before him, a coupla farm boys, from down the road a piece,” he said. “Nice kids. Getting ready for deer season. One of ’em, he was interested in a handgun, but no dice. Like I told you.”

  “He didn’t have a permit?”

  “Nah. One buying the rifle didn’t even have a driver’s license. I said, ‘How you get around?’ He says, ‘Good Samaritans.’ I said to myself, ‘Any boy knows the Bible, he’s good people.’ ”

  I paused.

  “So you interested in the handgun?” Sam said.

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  “How do I see this story?”

  “I’ll call you when it comes out. You can read it online.”

  “Deal.”

  “So, Sam,” I said, “what did the Samaritan kid look like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, putting the S&W back in its case. “Nice-looking kid. Your height, in shape like farm kids are. Aren’t sitting on the goddamn couch in front of goddamn video games all day.”

  “Right.”

  “Kind of old-fashioned-acting. Polite. Respectful. Even had kind of an old-fashioned haircut, like he cut his hair himself.”

  “Where’d you say he was from? Maybe I could talk to him?”

  Sam looked at me.

  “I didn’t say. But it was one of those towns down around Hyde, past Posterity.”

  “Prosperity?”

  “Yeah, that was it.”

  “Huh. That’s where I live. Maybe I know them. The other guy? What did he look like?”

  “Jeez, you reporters got a million questions, don’t you.”

  I smiled.

  “A little rougher around the edges. Bigger kid, built like a basketball player. Didn’t say too much, except he wanted the handgun. Had a bruise on his cheek, a scrape. I asked him how he got it, and he said mixed martial arts—you know, where they punch and kick each other? I guess I got the basketball part wrong.”

  “Huh,” I said. “So he was the designated driver?”

  “Yup. Put the rifle behind the truck seat. Said they’d e-mail me a photo when they got their deer. Then they said they had to get back. Smaller kid said his dad would be missing him on the farm. And then went roaring off.”

  “Roaring.”

  “Right. Kids like that loud exhaust.”

  “Was this pickup a red Chevy? Older truck, black spoke rims?”

  “Yeah. So you do know them?”

  “Pretty well,” I said. “One more than the other.”

  I mulled it over all the way back to Prosperity, and kept coming up with the same conclusion: Abram was buying guns with Semi, and in pretty sizable volume, the way our paths kept crossing. He was the wholesome one, the farm boy with the innocent smile. Why couldn’t Semi pull it off himself? Maybe he didn’t want his name tied to the guns, if, as in the Boston case, they were tied to a crime. Maybe some people were suspicious of him, his outlaw feel. Maybe he had felonies on his record. Maybe sellers didn’t always like the cut of Semi’s jib.

  But who wouldn’t like Abram, who looked like John-Boy Walton and could quote the Bible?

  It was after 2:15 and Sophie got out of school at 2:30. Roxanne was usually there for another hour, so that gave me just enough time to make the twenty-mile trip back to Prosperity, provide an armed escort from the school to home. When I thought of Billy’s leering threats, I picked up the pace.

  I rolled into the parking lot at 2:50, shut off the truck, and reached for the Glock, left the knockoff .45 in its box. I placed the Glock on the passenger seat, covered it with a notebook, and sat back and waited.

  The rain had stopped, the sky had lightened. The school was quiet, the buses gone, but a handful of parents were sitting in their cars. The field trip was late.

  I picked up a notebook and went over my notes from the gun guys, filling in the words where they’d been skipped or were illegible. It was good stuff, and once I had the law enforcement side, I’d be ready to write. I wondered if I could get the family of the homicide victim in Boston, see what they had to say about guns in Maine.

  I Googled homicide and Boston on my phone and came up with dozens of hits, including the last one of 2014, a black teenage guy who was number fifty-two. I put the phone back down.

  Still quiet. I looked at my watch. It was 3:05. I called Roxanne. No answer. I texted, Hey, where are you? Waited a minute. No reply.

  Sophie had said she was going to ride in Salandra’s daddy’s big truck. Did that mean Roxanne, too? Well, she wouldn’t be taking the bus. I heard Billy’s sneering voice. Maybe that goat farmer, he does more than look.

  I scowled, scanned the nearly empty lot. Took a deep breath and picked the notebook up off the Glock. It was my Mennonite notebook, initialed “OOM” on the front cover. I flipped past my notes of my conversation with Abram and Miriam and their friend Victor. Past the notes from my chat with Abram at the restaurant. At the next blank page I wrote what I recalled of my conversation with the Bishop, if it could be called that.

  Do you know the way to hell, Mr. McMorrow?

  How had he said it? Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.

  Leadeth.

  I sat back in the seat. I felt for him, as he truly believed that Abram might be straying from the righteous path. What would you do if you thought someone was sending your child to spend eternity in hell? Kill that person and take the rap yourself? Would I kill to save Sophie’s soul?

  In a h
eartbeat.

  A strange thought to have, sitting in the parking lot of an elementary school. I looked out at the playground, the peace garden, the frog pond with its wire safety fence. When the kids went to collect tadpoles they wore life jackets. What we did to protect our children from the world. Buckled them in, held their hands when they crossed the street.

  Sat in school parking lots, handguns locked and loaded.

  At that point a minivan rolled in, a woman at the wheel whom I recognized as a mom from Sophie’s class. Then a Toyota pickup, a dad driving and two boys in the backseat. An Audi station wagon, a mom and two more of Sophie’s classmates.

  The field trip was back.

  Mrs. Robinson, Sophie’s teacher, was with a mother in an SUV. She got out, stood in the parking lot in her tall rubber boots. She had a clipboard and she was checking kids off, noting that they had returned from the goat farm. The cars rolled out one by one, and finally Mrs. Tracy went into the school.

  No Roxanne. No Sophie.

  I waited, the good Jack and the bad Jack jostling for position. Maybe that goat farmer likes to do more than look. Roxanne saying, I’ve never been so mortified in my life.

  Tell him again to back off. Or be conciliatory, give old Welt a big smile, ask about the goats. Make Roxanne happy. Or, at least, happier.

  And then the shiny Tacoma wheeled down the entrance road and into the lot. Welt was driving, Roxanne in the passenger seat. They were smiling, laughing. When was the last time Roxanne had laughed with me?

  I choked back my resentment and got out of the truck, locking it behind me, the Glock on the seat. Sophie saw me from the back of the cab and waved as they passed. I followed them to the door and walked up as Welt got out.

  He smiled.

  “Jack. You missed a great day.”

  I smiled back.

  “I’m sure.”

  Roxanne came around the rear of the truck, opened the back door. Sophie slid out and down and beamed as she ran to me.

  “Daddy,” she said. “I milked a goat. All by myself.”

  “Wow, honey. Did you bring me some goat’s milk?”

  “No, but we brought you some cheese.”

  Salandra ran up, handed Sophie a brown paper bag, the Heaven Sent Farm label printed on it. The cheese.

  And then Roxanne.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “I was driving by,” I said. “Thought I’d see how the day went.”

  “I had to get the milk out of the udder,” Sophie said.

  “Which one?” I said. “This one or the udder one?”

  “No, Daddy,” she said, laughing.

  “Gonna make a farm girl out of her,” Welt said, and for a moment I thought he meant Roxanne.

  “Thanks for having the whole crew, Welt,” I said.

  “Oh, my pleasure, Jack,” he said, bygones clearly being bygones in the Welt Prescription for Peace. “It was a great time, didn’t you think, Roxanne?”

  Their eyes met and there was a pause, a moment of connection. Some sort of understanding, a shared experience. I felt like a third wheel, fought it off.

  “Daddy,” Sophie said. “You should learn to milk the goats. It’s really warm and it comes squirting out.”

  “Did you drink some?”

  “It has to be—”

  “Pasteurized?” I said.

  “We sell raw milk,” Welt said, “but I wouldn’t give it to the kids without their parents’ permission.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “That would be—”

  I looked at him.

  “—overstepping your bounds.”

  Roxanne gave me a look, and then the girls were hugging good-bye and Welt gave me a pat on the shoulder, said he’d see me around. Roxanne got a finger wave from him—for my benefit?—and then she was getting into the car with Sophie.

  The truck rolled out. Then Roxanne’s Subaru. I was the rear guard in the motorcade, the Secret Service car packed with weapons.

  Billy was out there. Baby Fat, too. I reached over and touched the gun.

  17

  That afternoon Roxanne went upstairs to finish preparing her presentation for the school board. I went to the barn with Sophie. She chattered about goats and udders and teats, not to me, but to Pokey as she rode him around the paddock.

  Pokey plodded and appeared to listen patiently. Clair came out of the house and waved and then stood beside me. After I told him about my day, he said, “Could talk to them.”

  “Break more of their limbs?” I said.

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Legs this time,” I said.

  “Been done,” Clair said.

  I told Clair about the Bishop, and he disagreed that I was violent. “Maybe by Old Order Mennonite standards,” Clair said. “Compared to the rest of the world, you’re a librarian.”

  I smiled.

  “Louis told me he’s going to be staying with you more.”

  “Seemed like a good idea. He has trouble being alone.”

  “The demons come when it’s just him and his thoughts?”

  “That’s why he’s such a vampire, roaming all night, sleeping all day. He said he has fewer nightmares when it’s light out.”

  “What’s he going to do here, out all night?” I said, but I’d barely uttered the words when I knew the answer. “He can patrol until these guys are in jail or gone,” I said.

  “It’s what he does,” Clair said. “Or did, in Iraq.”

  “That won’t bother him?”

  “It wasn’t fighting that got to him. He’s one tough son of a bitch.”

  From Clair, high praise.

  “It was fighting with no purpose,” he said. “Seeing his best buddies, dearest friends die, often horribly, and then handing the territory back to the enemy. Fallujah. Helmand. Just a shameful waste of brave soldiers.”

  “The underlying cause wasn’t just,” I said.

  “The intention was. Analysis and implementation was flawed.”

  “This is simple to analyze. The guy threatened to assault Roxanne.”

  “No confusion about who the enemy is,” Clair said.

  “None whatsoever,” I said.

  Sophie had stopped talking and was making faint clucking noises. They were enough to keep Pokey from skidding to a halt. And then he was past us, a live carousel horse marching to the music in his head, Sophie waiting to grab for the brass ring. Where would she be if Billy ever . . .

  I shuddered at the thought, as, like a ghost, Louis materialized beside us. Friend, the big dog, was beside him. Louis leaned. Friend sat.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Louis nodded. His hair was mussed, like he’d been sleeping. His black T-shirt was wrinkled, his camo pants, too.

  “She’s quite the equestrian,” he said.

  “Olympics-bound,” I said.

  “I think the horse is ready,” Louis said.

  “Peaking at the right time,” Clair said.

  Pokey passed for the fiftieth lap, looking like he’d seen it all.

  “I don’t think he’ll be rattled by the occasion,” I said.

  Louis smiled, but darkly. And then he said to me, “How you been?”

  I shrugged. Started to explain, then stopped. Clair stepped in, told the story in hushed tones. Semi and Abram and the guns. Billy and Baby Fat. Louis listened intently. And then the story was done. He waited for Pokey and Sophie to pass and said, “In Iraq, out in the boonies, the Taliban raped women so they could plant enemy seed in their wombs.”

  We looked at him and he continued.

  “And then the women would be shunned, or worse, because they’d disgraced their families.”

  He took a long breath, watching the pony, but his mind a million miles away.

  “And then we had our own guys, they started thinking that way. That women were something to plunder or loot or something. I didn’t know anyone who actually did it, not in my unit. But one guy, he started making comments. ‘Like to get her veil off.’ That kin
d of thing, except worse.”

  Another pause for Pokey and Sophie to pass, Louis waiting, his eyes dark. The dog watched Louis, not the horse.

  “I called him on it. I’d seen enough, you know. Iraqi women tortured by insurgents, bodies dumped in the street. They said they were prostitutes, like that made it okay. So I took it out on this guy, all of it. We fought and I put him down and if they hadn’t stopped me, maybe I would’ve killed him. But it wasn’t him I was fighting. It was everything, you know? These women, girls, all of it. Like half of humanity was devouring the other half. Like cannibals.”

  The word hung, and there was a long silence. Louis breathed in, blew a breath out in something like a sigh.

  “So what are we fighting for?” he said. “Here, I mean.”

  I considered it. It was simple, right? To protect my wife and daughter. To beat back the forces of evil, which sometimes seemed all around us. Then I thought of the Bishop, corralling his clan of God-fearing folks, building a spiritual fort to keep out marauders. Were he and I the same in some way? Maybe so.

  I looked to Louis. “Because we can’t let them win,” I said. “Not now. Not ever.”

  The pony clumped past. Louis watched him, then turned to me.

  “I’m in,” he said.

  “You don’t have to be,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  So Louis said he and Friend would patrol the woods at night, starting at dusk. Clair said he’d be around—keep an eye on the west end of the road, behind the barn. They’d communicate by radios, which Clair had.

  “Nobody will get in,” he said.

  “And nobody will get out,” Louis said.

  I said I’d be around, too, but first I had to tell Roxanne of the plan, and the problem.

  She was sitting cross-legged on our bed, papers strewn around her, typing on her laptop. She glanced at me when I walked in, then back down at the screen.

  I said we needed to talk. She said she was listening. I said we had a problem. She said she knew that. I said it wasn’t the same problem, it was a different one. Roxanne looked up and I told her about Billy and Baby Fat in the parking lot, what Billy had said.

  “These people are disgusting,” Roxanne said. “Let’s talk to the deputy. Staples.”

  “We can but I don’t think that’s enough.”