Fifty Years of Peace (Abrupt Dissent Series)

by Andrews, Charlotte

  “It’s Arnold and a whole bunch of Texans.”

  “Well open up,” Mayor Trestle said. “We’ve got to keep up appearances.”

  The sheriff twisted the deadbolt.

  “Sheriff Dickson. My apologies for waking you at this hour, I wouldn’t do such a thing if it weren’t urgent. I’ve got new evidence, and I’d like to ask your help with something rather delicate.”

  “And what would that be Linden?” Mayor Trestle asked as he limped into view.

  “Ah Mr. Mayor,” The assemblyman concealed his surprise well. “You’ve saved me a trip. Would you both mind coming with me?”

  The sheriff let the mayor pass in front of him, then stepped out into the street. Four of the assemblyman’s Texans joined them, along with Dillon, who seemed to be enjoying himself altogether too much. They stomped down the street in silence until they reached the jail. One of the Texans knocked three times, then a delayed fourth knock. The door opened, and Jacob stood in front of them. The boy was blurry-eyed and squinting from lack of sleep, but he snapped alert as he saw who was entering.

  “We’d like to see the prisoner,” the assemblyman said. Jacob nodded, fumbled in his pocket for the keys, and then opened the prison door. The sheriff watched Jim eye the boy as he passed, and knew what he felt. Jacob was dedicated, smart. It certainly hadn’t been a mistake to add him to the town’s payroll, but he believed the larger story the New States was telling, and Sheriff Dickson knew it had to eat his friend up inside.

  Richard was asleep in his cell. Linden tapped his rings against the bars until Jenny’s grandfather awoke and sat up. Be smart Richard, the sheriff thought to himself, don’t say a word.

  “So…Richard,” the assemblyman began, “I understand you’re something of an expert in…antiquities.” He withdrew a small glass rectangle from his pocket and instantly the sheriff knew they’d found out what Richard had been trying to keep secret. The man was in grave danger, but he showed no emotion. The assemblyman dropped the device onto the cell’s concrete floor. It bounced once, a few bits of plastic splintering from its case.

  “I have all the evidence I need to present your case to the New States’ Congress for prosecution. This conversation is merely a courtesy. Do you understand?”

  Again, Richard said nothing.

  “Your granddaughter and two known criminals from the United States were seen at your ranch trying to access this technology. It’s a high crime for a private citizen to own such devices.”

  Richard rose from his bunk.

  “Where’s Jenny?” he said. “What have you done with her?”

  The sheriff glanced at Jacob. The boy seemed uncertain. There was nothing to do but listen.

  “I find your question particularly interesting,” Linden said. “You see…”

  “She’s on the run in the mountains,” Dillon interrupted. The tracker seemed amused, “She and the dirty boy you let into your house two days ago are probably lying down next to each other for the night right now, lighting a fire…”

  “You son of a bitch,” Richard said.

  “That’s right,” Dillon answered, “I’m the son of a bitch who’s going to hunt her down and kill her.”

  Richard threw himself against the bars, trying to reach the tracker but seizing the empty air.

  “I think that’s quite enough Linden,” Mayor Trestle said. “If there are charges to be brought against this man we’ve got a legal process in this town that needs to be followed.”

  The big Texan turned. His smile had disappeared.

  “You’re still with us, I forgot Mr. Mayor, please accept my apologies. I should have informed you first but my…passion got the best of me. The New States’ Congress has placed the town of New Louisville under martial law. Effective immediately, I am the ultimate authority here.”

  “And why in the hell would you think you needed to do that?” the mayor asked, fuming.

  “I suggest you ask your friend Doctor Stinson that question Mr. Mayor, that is, if you can find him. Providing material support or hospice to those acting against the New States’ interests is a high crime.”

  “I know the law!”

  “Do you?” Linden raised his eyebrow. “Sheriff, arrest this man under suspicion of treason.”

  Dickson looked at Mayor Trestle. The man shook with anger, but he nodded.

  “Do as he says Lou.”

  The sheriff pulled a set of handcuffs from his back pocket and cuffed the mayor. Then he opened the cell next to Richard and locked his friend inside.

  “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this Mr. Mayor,” the assemblyman said, “but there is a grave security threat in this town and I aim to root it out. Let’s go boys.”

  “What happens to Richard?” the sheriff asked.

  “Oh I nearly forgot,” the assemblyman said. He looked down at where the small computer lay on the floor, then ground his boot heel into the device. Glass shattered, exposing tiny wires and circuits from another era.

  “Richard Williams, I hereby find you guilty of treason, a crime punishable by death. In two days’ time, you’re to be hung by the neck until dead.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jacob woke for his shift, bathing himself in a bucket of cold water before getting dressed. He heard heavy boots stamp up to his landing, pause, then continue on. When he opened the door, no one was there and he wondered what the person had wanted. He ate a few crackers at his small table for breakfast, then heard voices shouting outside. Something was happening, he needed to know what was going on in the town.

  Outside, flyers had been affixed to every telephone pole and building window, screaming in colored ink:

  The time is now! Stand against oppression and the threat to your rights. Fight the U.S! Be at the fairgrounds Wednesday morning.

  Farther down the street, he saw that the door to Mertle’s drug store had been kicked in and her front window smashed.

  He waved to the sergeant of a patrol of Texans that was marching down the street.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  “Who wants to know?” the man growled.

  “I’m an aide to Assemblyman Arnold.”

  “Not much of one if you don’t know what’s happening…we’re under martial law. Anyone suspected of treason is being rounded up. The assemblyman will be giving a speech Wednesday morning at the fairgrounds before they execute Williams, and you’d better be there.”

  “Uh yes, yes of course,” Jacob said, and the soldiers marched on.

  The Texans stopped to knock on the door of the post office, and a man Jacob didn’t know answered. The Texans asked him a few questions and the man’s voice rose. They pulled him from his doorway and tied his hands behind him. The man shouted behind him, all the while trying to reach back for his wife, but the Texans shoved him out into the street. Jacob took two steps toward the group, thinking he should help, but then he stopped. He worked for the New States now, for Assemblyman Arnold, and this man must have done something. Maybe the mayor had implicated him, or maybe the man had given Richard technology.

  Jacob shuddered. He believed he was doing the right thing, but it was difficult to watch his townspeople be manhandled by Texans and placed under arrest.

  When he unlocked the sheriff’s office, he was startled to see Sheriff Dickson still at his desk. The man’s shirt was rumpled and he looked like he’d been drinking.

  “Surprised to see me Jacob?” he asked.

  “Of course not Sheriff,” he mumbled.

  “Are you proud of yourself son?” Dickson asked as Jacob passed toward the jail. Jacob didn’t answer. “I asked are you proud of yourself?”

  “I’m trying to help this town the same as you,” he called behind him. Then he unlocked the prison door, relieved the two Texans, and saw Mayor Trestle staring at him from the second cell. He slumped down across from Richard, not knowing what to say to either of them.

  ***

  Lenora wept. George held her close, rocking her back
and forth for a long time. Jenny sat on the other side of the campsite with Doc Stinson, staring into the darkening mountains.

  “It was my plan,” Jenny said.

  “They all agreed to it Jenny, Aiden included.”

  “But he’s dead because of me.”

  “No he’s not Jenny. He’s dead because evil men would rather kill than let the truth get out. Aiden gave his life to stop a corrupt government. It wasn’t your fault.”

  She thought of her grandfather, fighting back tears of her own. The men who held him in the valley were killers. The sniper had killed Manuel and many of the field hands, good people who’d deserved better. People were getting hurt because of her. People were dying, and she felt powerless.

  After a time, Lenora limped over and sat with them. George stayed by the tent, picking rocks and throwing them into the night.

  “When I’m healed, we’re going to go back over the mountains Jenny,” Lenora said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s the only way to stop this. You can go to the town and turn yourself in. They’re only holding your grandfather because they want you to turn us in. They want to know what we know, why we’re here. You can tell them we kept you prisoner, that we didn’t tell you anything. It will all be over.”

  The thought of giving up hadn’t even occurred to her. It would be easy to go back to how things were. The town would settle down, Lenora and George would go back to their home, and everyone would leave each other alone like they’d been doing for fifty years.

  Then she looked at George. He squatted, seized a new handful of stones, and hurled them away. Was Doc Stinson right? What had Aiden and Manuel and all the others died for?

  “I can’t give up,” she said. “If we give up then everything was for nothing. That’s not who we are.”

  “Are you sure?” Lenora asked. “A lot more people could get hurt.”

  “I have to do the right thing. You and George can both go home if you want and I’d understand, but I need to help my town. If I give up, then who’s going to fight for us?”

  “That’s the way Jenny,” Doc Stinson said, “I’m proud to follow you.”

  Lenora nodded.

  “I thought you might say that,” she said.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “George took this from the shed.” Lenora lifted a small cube with dials and numbers attached to its face.

  “What is that?” Jenny asked.

  “It’s a radio,” George called. “You can use them to communicate across long distances.”

  “Really? So we could ask for help?”

  He threw harder. A rock sparked against the mountain’s granite.

  “No, no we can’t,” he said. “You need a transmitter so they can hear you, but I didn’t take one,” he said. “I forgot. Instead of helping dad I got us something useless…”

  “He gave his life for the mission,” Lenora said.

  “We could have brought everything we needed here, but we didn’t. Now we can’t even ask for help!” George cried.

  “We were under orders not to bring any technology and you know that,” Lenora grew stern. “We couldn’t risk it. George it wasn’t your fault…”

  But her son had walked away from the campsite. Lenora sighed and shook her head. For a long time, she didn’t speak, only stared at the radio.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Jenny said.

  She clambered over the rocks to where George sat throwing stones into the trees.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You didn’t kill him.” His rock clattered against the mountainside. “You couldn’t have helped him.” Another ripped through a pine bough. “Maybe we should just go home. There was no point of us coming here,” George spat.

  “Do you mean that?” she asked.

  George dropped the rocks in his hand. When he looked at her, his face was streaked with tears.

  “He shouldn’t have died.”

  “No, he shouldn’t have George, but we can get the man that did it. Tell me how the radio works. Tell me what we can do with it.”

  “Well, if we had a transmitter, we could contact the United States and let them know what’s happening. They could send help, but I was stupid and scared, and I grabbed the wrong thing.”

  “What do the transmitters look like?”

  “Well, they look like metal mesh on a tube or rod. It might have some buttons. They’re called microphones, and if we can find one, my mom or I could rig it to connect to our radio and transmit a signal. That’s all it needs, but I…Jenny?”

  She’d stood up in her excitement. The words rushed out of her.

  “I know where we can find one!” she cried.

  “Where?”

  “Right under their noses, but George, it’s going to be dangerous.”

  He turned to her, his face clear and determined.

  “I’ll do anything to stop them. Just tell me what to do.”

  ***

  Jacob snapped awake. From the light coming through the cell window, the sun was about to rise. He’d fallen asleep on his stool, and his neck hurt from resting awkwardly against the wall. As he rubbed his muscles, he saw Richard was awake and watching him. Jacob studied him, wanting to understand what he should do. He and the mayor had been jailed for what they believed in, and it was hard for him to understand what the right thing to do was any longer.

  “Is there something you want to ask me son?” Richard said.

  “Why did you have the technology?”

  “Because I believe in progress.”

  “But why? All technology did for us was start the war.”

  “No Jacob. No it didn’t. Humans start wars. The decisions we make, what we tell ourselves about other people, those are what matters, the tools are just tools.”

  “I’m trying to do the right thing.”

  “I know that Jake. I still remember you learning your math at my table. I know who you are. I just hope you remember it too.”

  ***

  Jenny, Leonora, George, and Doc Stinson crept down the mountain into the overgrown outskirts of Old Louisville just before dawn. The buildings looked like forgotten memorials, with grass sprouting from the crumbling roads and vines climbing up what had once been pristine concrete walls. The occasional squirrel or bird darted past them. The air felt heavy to her, as if the ghosts of everyone who’d lived here before the war were watching. She could not let her fear show through, there was too much at stake. She ignored the staring glass eyes of the tall buildings, hurrying as quickly as she could from building to building.

  “Do you need to use my compass?” George whispered to her when they stopped for Lenora to rest outside the mouth of a manmade cave labeled Parking Garage.

  “I know the way,” she said. It was the one place in Old Louisville where every student went, and it sat just off the main road that led straight across the river. So far, they hadn’t seen any Texans, and she hoped their luck would hold.

  “It’s not too much farther,” she said, “just beyond that round-domed building.”

  George squinted, and then stood.

  “Mom, are you ready?”

  Lenora grinned, then leaned on Doc Stinson and stood.

  “I ran across Rockfish Gap with a bullet in me George, I think I can walk with it out of me.”

  Jenny smiled, and they started into the growing light. Moving in between the buildings’ great pillars, they scanned each intersection until they reached the two-story building she remembered from her school trips.

  “Well, here we are,” she said. Then she pushed open the door and led them into what was now known as the Old Louisville High School, though it had been abandoned for years.

  Inside, the familiar musty air greeted her, the smell of a building too long shut and moldering. The hallway yawned like a dark throat in front of them.

  “Which way?” George whispered. She could barely see him as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, but she remembered the way.

>   “It’s in the back. Stay close, it’s going to be hard to see.”

  A match sparked next to her, spreading candlelight over George’s face.

  “Stay away from the windows with that George,” Lenora called.

  They walked as quickly as they could down the hall with George holding his hand in front of the candle to keep it from blowing out. They passed bulletin boards with fading notices about dances and exams, and pictures of long-dead teachers and students were still scattered on the walls. The classrooms still contained their strange conjoined desk chairs and leftover school supplies. At the end of the hall, Jenny turned right and led them up a staircase, and then into the first door on the left. The room contained thirty or so chairs arranged in a crescent, with yellowing sheet music still on many of the music stands. In front of each station was a microphone, attached to a long cord.