by Jf Perkins
Renewal 8 – War Council
By J.F. Perkins
Copyright 2011 J.F. Perkins
Kindle Edition
Website/Blog: http://www.jfperkins.com
Twitter: @WriterJFPerkins
Renewal 8 – War Council
JF Perkins
Chapter 8 – 1
Bill Carter was late for his own meeting. The leaders of Teeny Town knew the stakes on this long-dreaded day and found themselves waiting impatiently for the man who had fostered their way of life. Bill walked into the conference room at the town hall and noticed for the hundredth time that it looked like a throwback to a smaller version of the room where the founding principles of America were hammered out. The wooden floor, the large windows to catch the stray summer breezes, and the massive hand-hewn table all contributed to the weight of history in this humble place.
With a sharp pang of loss, he also noticed the gaping hole in the trusted group before him. Dusty Baer’s chair sat empty between his brother, Kirk, and the community doctor, Sue Jacobs. Aside from the pain of loss, the missing man served as a powerful illustration of what they faced in the days to come. For Bill, there was another aspect. He scolded himself silently for his pragmatic way of handling the death of his friend, but he would need to fill that chair very soon.
Dusty had served as the voice of the community in the county at large. He watched for promising recruits, sounded the alarm when Teeny Town was at risk, and subtly steered the attitudes of Coffee County residents to serve Bill’s purposes. Tough job to fill, Bill expected. It was never part of his grand plan to have such a role, and it was well after Dusty started making a difference in the development of the community that it occurred to either of them. A secret like theirs could benefit from a quiet form of public relations. Dusty was gone, tortured by the enemy to reveal Teeny Town’s long-hidden location, and dumped in a ditch like a bag of garbage.
Bill’s hands gripped the curve of the thick table, flexing and releasing as the thoughts surged through his mind. He looked across at his youngest brother and said a silent thanks for the years of lighthearted humor Tommy had provided through some amazingly hard times. As a middle aged man, Tommy still carried himself with an eternal sparkle of wit and used that attitude to help keep the community working in the same direction. He was Bill’s human relations officer. Not officially, but that’s how it worked out.
Bill’s older brother Kirk was Tommy’s polar opposite. Where the younger brother made people feel happy and included, Kirk made them feel nervous and intimidated. Kirk’s deadly nature had decided an uncountable number of conflicts over the years, yet had prevented even more from occurring at all. No one had ever won a fight against Kirk, and his reputation alone made the community members feel that much safer under his military leadership.
Bill was somewhere in the middle. His people loved and respected him, but they were not going to avoid him in the street. On the other hand, they were not likely to come up and give him a familiar slap on the back either. They gave him the affable distance that came from years of following his plans and watching those plans succeed. On his right was his wife, Aggie. They had met through hardship many years ago, and she had had been the best partner he could have ever imagined. She was tough when he was not, and she reminded him to go easy when he wanted to plow through people like a bulldozer. Aggie automatically picked up the pieces he missed. Most of the details he would never know, and that was just fine with him.
Bill’s sister Lucy was the reluctant head of Teeny Town’s food production efforts, and she did it very well. She was in a constant search for her own replacement. She wanted to retire to the peace of her own personal garden, where she could focus on each plant, each ripening tomato, and avoid the inevitable need to think in terms of bushels and truckloads and logistics. On the brink of a major conflict, they would discover if she could literally feed an army.
Most other production fell to Henry Hall’s supervision. He lovingly maintained the array of salvaged equipment that allowed the community to operate more like a 20th Century business, and less like the Little House on the Prairie. His prime weapon minions, Geoff Hill and Larry Roper, handled guns and blades with the same level of near-religious fervor. All of them looked like grizzled bridge trolls hunched at the far end of the conference table. They waited expectantly for Bill’s orders.
Ellie Tate, bless her alcoholic but efficient heart, had never come to terms with the Breakdown. There were plenty of days when Bill wondered how her liver continued to function into her mid-sixties. She buried her anxiety in keeping the paperwork in order around City Hall, and of course, imbibing Joe Poole’s finest moonshine, which he distilled down by Brewer Creek. She sat anxiously with her pens and paper, ready to record everything that was said.
Along the back wall stood Bill’s hopes for the future. His own daughter, Sally, stood impatiently with one hip cocked to the side. His crew of young men from the recent excursion into Nashville surrounded her, wearing expression of men who had followed him into harm’s way, and would do so again. Kirk’s favorite lieutenants all sat in the double row of extra chairs brought in for the occasion. Normally, Bill saw them as a lively bunch of kids, but in this room, they were serious adults looking to him for leadership. He felt their eyes upon him.
Bill snapped out of his reverie, and began to speak.
“First of all, my apologies for being late. There’s a good reason. I’d like to start by introducing our new friend. He arrived with over a hundred of his friends, family, and neighbors just a little while ago. They all came in from Beech Grove to help us out. I want to acknowledge the debt we owe these people, and to welcome him officially into our community. Folks, this is Larry Harris. Come on in, Larry.”
Larry stepped uncertainly into the room, and immediately gave the impression of a man overwhelmed. Like most people in the countryside, he had not seen a formal gathering for decades, and couldn’t help but feel like he was in over his head. He smiled and bobbed his head awkwardly as he came to Bill’s side. Everyone at the table stood and sent greetings his way. For a minute, the room was a happy place.
“Larry, rather than go through everyone now, I’d like to say that your fighters will report to my brother, Kirk.” Bill aimed his arm at Kirk, who responded with his inscrutable military expression and nodded at Larry. “He’ll make sure you’re up to speed.”
Larry bobbed his head agreeably.
“The rest of your party will follow my wife, Aggie. She’ll figure out the best places for everyone, ok?”
“Ok, Bill. I gotta say, there’s more to you than meets the eye.” Larry looked around the room with wide eyes.
“We’ve worked hard to keep it that way, but those days are over. Cat’s out of the bag,” Bill said with a smile that was mirrored by his people.
“Well, I’m glad to meet all of you folks,” Larry replied.
“Not half as glad as we are, Larry. We all want to thank you for coming to help us out. We won’t forget,” Bill declared with a leading look to his people. They nodded in return. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some business to discuss, ok?”
“Ok, Bill.” Larry gave a final wave to the room and scuttled out the door, apparently relieved to escape the center stage.
Bill waited until he heard the outer door slapping shut. He knew that Sam was busy cooking for the newcomers from Beech Grove. He hoped that would keep them happy until Aggie could put Larry’s people in order.
“Folks, I’ll try to keep this short.” Bill began, still holding himself upright with the table, despite the fact that Aggie was trying to get him to sit down. “I’m sure we all know, but for the record... Dusty was captured by the Jenkins and the Dragons, working in co
ncert. He was tortured until he gave up our location, and who knows what else. The damage was fatal. Now I know that some people in this room are blaming themselves for his death, but I’m here to say it was entirely my fault. I gave him the instructions to begin open recruiting in Manchester. I failed to anticipate that it would make him the world’s easiest target. I failed to protect him against that obvious fact. My fault. We lost a good man today and we’re going to retaliate.”
Bill let his head drop for a few seconds. When it came back up, his face had changed to something darker and more dangerous. “First thing, I know our defenses are in order. All of the guard stations and treehouses are manned, and the patrols are doubled. Kirk, I want to you to run through Larry’s people. Figure out who’s good enough to work with our guards. Everyone else fills support roles, toting ammo or whatever. Community defense is our number one priority no matter what happens. If things go bad, everything goes into defense and we’ll let them come to us. We planned for it.”
“However, while we can afford it, we need to do as much damage as possible. John Hall, you’re in charge of attacking the Jenkins farm. Before you do, recon as much as you can without fighting, and make sure... Make sure you get a report back to Kirk before you engage the enemy. I want you to kill as many as you can, and I want you to burn down the entire farm.”
This wasn’t typical Bill. The room reacted with surprise at his orders.
“It’s simple math, people,” he said, reacting to the unspoken question. “One way or another, they’re coming to get us. I want them to have less to throw at us, and I want to cut off their support from home. The more damage we do to them, the less they can do to us.” Then he shifted stances. “Ok, I know. We try not to fight, but this is different. Can anyone here think of a reason to let the Jenkins continue to do what they do?” Can anyone give me a reason why we should even allow the Dragon’s people into our county, much less to our door?”
No one answered. After a solid minute of quiet reflection, heads began to shake. Bill could feel them turning to the necessity of the ugly task before them.
“Before we go any further, there’s something you need to know. The Grand Dragon is dead. The Judge is dead. In both cases, they were as close to reasonable as we were going to get. Now we have to deal with their ruthless offspring. We know what the Jenkins can do. We have no idea what the Dragon’s people have to throw at us. This could be a long fight, people. We need every advantage we can get.” Bill paused and waited for some small sign of agreement.
When he got it, he continued, “Good. Now for a personal note... From the look of his body, Dusty held out a long time to keep our secret. We owe him. I don’t know what you think Dusty’s life was worth, but to me it’s worth every last one of those Jenkins bastards and their nasty new friends. I intend to extract every last ounce of Dusty’s life from their worthless hides.”
Fear and hesitation were being replaced by resolve and determination.
“Personal feelings aside, we’re all here trying to make a future that’s worth living. Every Jenkins, every Dragon, everyone who thinks the way they do stands in the way of what we’ve worked long and hard to build. You all decide, here and now, if it’s worth the fight.”
Bill waited. Kirk stood immediately. No surprise there. Tommy rose to his feet, followed quickly by Geoff Hill. Finally, the rest of the council members stood up. The younger folks in the back rose in one swift wave. That’s when the cheering began. Bill’s wounded leg was pounding him with throbbing pulses of pain, but he refused to sit down until the matter was decided. He scanned the room as his people roused themselves to the fight ahead. When he was sure they were committed, he spoke again.
“Thank you,” Bill said. “Ok. You all know your jobs. Let’s get moving.”
The crowd began to shuffle out the door. Bill pointed at John and beckoned him over. When the room was almost empty, Bill said quietly, “John, bring me a prisoner.”
Bill sagged into his chair.
Chapter 8 – 2
Sally Bean seemed to take the news of the end of life as we know it fairly well. When Dad finished giving her the highlights, she flipped another pancake on the flat griddle and made a noise that sounded like someone had just told her that the hat she was wearing was not appropriate for church. I think we were all expecting some kind of violent - or at least loud -reaction, but it never came. She continued to manage three hot stove eyes with seeming unconcern.
After meeting Sally in the front woods where we were camped, she had left her huge dog to guide us to her home. We were skeptical at the time, but it turned out that we had indeed needed her dog to locate Sally Bean’s house. Finding the four-acre clearing in the woods was easy enough, but the house itself was buried inside a chaotic fortress of raised garden beds, deer fences, and a haphazard collection of sheds, outbuildings, and small barns. Bear the dog weaved through the various structures, looking back frequently to make sure that all of us were still following him. When we finally decided which building was the house proper, it was still questionable. The house looked like it had almost grown out of the ground and sprouted a chimney. The thin gray streamers of smoke from well-kept fires were the biggest clues to Sally’s whereabouts. Sure enough, the huge dog took a single step onto the sagging front porch, and turned as if to say, This is it.
There was an aura about the place. None of us could identify it. Dad’s engineering eye was probably trying to decide which part of the swaybacked roof would collapse first. Mom was likely looking at the moss and lichen clinging to every unused surface. She visibly counted the multiple pairs of muddy boots congregating by the door. Arturo was not paying attention. Sally Bean’s house was a short walk from our new campsite, but it was a long pull for Arturo. His leg was getting better, he said. It only hurt when he moved. The rest of us were standing once again on the threshold of something completely new, another doorway into the murky future.
Mom started to knock, but Bear tugged on a heavy rope tied to the outer door, and pulled it open. He used his stupendous canine length to hold it in place with his hip while he pushed the inner door open. He did his level best to move to the side, letting us enter the house. When all eight of us had passed through the door, the dog deftly moved to let the storm door wing shut. He stepped in and used his hind leg to close the heavy inner door. He seemed to know that we were impressed. His floppy lips parted in a cocky grin.
“That you, Bear?” Sally Bean called from the kitchen.
Bear barked once.
“Well, bring ‘em back!”
It was one of those houses in which the inside and the outside seemed completely disconnected. Inside, the house was warm, cozy and spotless in a 1935 kind of way. Every piece of furniture was covered in some form of hand knitted cloth, all in riotous patterns and colors. Set against the muted brown walls and wooden floor, the rainbow effect seemed perfect. A heavy rag rug framed the center of the living room, and more colorful afghans were clipped to the curtain rods on top of lacy white curtains. These were pulled to the side with metal spring clamps on the windowsill to let in the morning light. The photos on the walls showed at least five generations, and of the set, only about a fifth of the images were in color. By the time we entered the kitchen, the biggest disconnect was that Sally had one of those houses that seemed twice as big as it had appeared from the front yard.
The kitchen was bigger than the living room, so long that it almost extended back in time. The front section was relatively modern, again in that 1935 style, but as the room extended back to a tiny mudroom, everything seemed to change gradually into the model kitchen from “Amish Monthly” magazine. Cast iron, hardwood countertops, baked white enamel, and hand cranks dominated the back of Sally Bean’s home. The kitchen table was made from a single piece of white oak, the product of a tree that had probably been growing when the last ice age retreated. It was maybe five feet wide and twelve feet long, with enough colonial oak chairs to seat half the people pictured on the walls of
the living room.
“Howdy, folks. Go ahead and take your seats. Any one you like. We don’t stand on ceremony around here, do we Bear?” Sally said with a laugh.
Bear woofed twice, gently. He was happy to have some new people around, I imagine. New people for dogs mean people who don’t know the rules, and that in turn means snacks.
“Ok, David. I’m holding up my end over here, slaving over this hot stove. How about you tell me what’s been going on in the world?”
He did, and now we were still waiting for a reaction, and some pancakes - or flapjacks as Sally called them.
When she had finally cooked to her satisfaction, Sally retrieved the mountainous plates of pancakes, sausage, and biscuits from the oven with her bulky oven mitts. She placed them one at a time on cast iron trivets placed on the table, and went back for a stack of white stoneware plates along with a handful of silverware. The napkins were in line with the cloth color theme of the house. Any old color at all, but since we had spent months wiping our mouths on our sleeves, I took my pink napkin and loved it. I ended up sitting across from little Jimmy, whom Bear had identified as the most likely sucker, and I tried to decide which one of them was drooling harder. Then I checked my own lips, just in case.
Sally’s water situation was better than the backyard hand pump at the Carroll’s farm. One of the three sinks in her kitchen had its own hand pump. She filled glasses with water and scattered them around in front of us, while we busied ourselves passing plates and silverware. Judging by my parents’ reactions, Sally performed a full scale miracle when she brought mugs to the table, and poured actual coffee into them.
“You have coffee...” Dad said, nearly hypnotized.
“Why sure. Plenty. You mean...” Sally replied, and then stopped. “Oh, I see your point. No stores, no coffee.”
Dad nodded.
“It think it’s going to take me a little while before this Breakdown idea sets in,” Sally remarked. “Meantime, dig in. Don’t let it get cold!”