by Chris Offutt
“You know how many people were killed last year by a bayonet attack?”
Joe shook his head.
“None,” Frank said, “But there’s a warrant out on me over it.”
“What’s a bayonet got to do with these damn things?”
“The Feds were going to drop the charges if I rolled over on Coop and Owen, No way I could do that.”
“Coop and Owen?”
“Sure, Joe. They print them and take them to town.”
Joe couldn’t speak. He threw the bundle onto the pile. Dust streamed away from the impact.
“Welcome to the real world,” Frank said.
“That stuff’s not real, it’s made up. It’s bad.”
“This isn’t about good or bad, it’s about politics.”
“Politics.”
“You bet. You should have seen the leafleting we did in “Vietnam, Iraq, and Nicaragua. It’s just a tool, same as my rifle and computer.”
“Those pamphlets are full of lies.”
“How do you know, Joe? How do you know the Jews don’t run the world banks? Are you sure there are no video cameras on interstate highways? Can you tell me that UN troops aren’t building detention centers in Michigan? Answer me that. Can you for sure say no?”
“It’s hard to believe, Frank.”
“Of course it’s hard to believe. Nobody believes what’s going on until it’s too late. I shed blood for this country and look what it’s become—a multicultural welfare state run by FEMA and the UN. We have to stick together.”
“Who?”
“You get blood in your face, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you blush, you turn red.”
“I reckon.”
“That’s what makes you a white man. And white men got to protect their own because the government’s busy protecting the mud people. Don’t look so funny, Joe. Everybody knows you’re on the run. Let he who is innocent cast the first stone.”
Joe stepped away from Frank. He felt smothered, as if the force of Frank’s words were a fire that had leached the oxygen from the room. He inhaled deeply but was unable to get enough air in his body.
“Let me ask you something, Joe.” Frank’s voice was conversational, as if they were fishing buddies. “Did you know that this country’s been in a declared state of national emergency since 1933?”
Joe shook his head.
“Oh, yeah. Roosevelt did it. That’s not in the pamphlets. There’s a lot that’s not. Do you have a dollar?”
“A dollar?”
“Yeah, a dollar bill. The fake currency that’s not worth the ink it’s printed with. Do you have one?”
“Yes.”
“Take it out.”
Joe opened his wallet and removed a dollar.
“Now look on the back. See the pyramid and the eye? Good, now below is some writing in Latin. Novus Ordo Seclorum. Know what that means?”
Joe shook his head.
“New World Order. This has been coming for a long time, Joe. It’s not new, it’s old. What’s new is public knowledge and armed resistance.”
He smiled and leaned close.
“I am the New World Order.”
Joe stepped backwards and Frank moved with him.
“Do you have a warm coat?” Frank said.
“Not really. A jacket.”
“I’m glad to hear that. In Luke it says to sell your cloak and buy a sword. I get cold in winter sometimes, but my sword keeps me warm. The problem is too many people stay warm the wrong way, know what I mean?”
Joe nodded, willing to agree with anything to leave the room.
“You’re a good soldier, Joe. Now I want you to take some of those pamphlets with you up to the house. Go on and grab some. Don’t be shy. Take a whole pack.”
Joe crossed the room to the stacks of paper.
“Read them, Joe. Educate yourself.”
Joe tried to figure a way that the pamphlets weren’t as bad as he knew them to be. He told himself that having killed a man removed his right to judge.
“Take them, Joe.”
Joe faced Frank. He was very scared.
“No,” Joe said. “I won’t. You all got some good ideas, but those things are evil.”
“What do you know of evil? The Four Horsemen are riding black helicopters over Skalkaho Pass.”
Joe left the room and hurried outside. The valley opened before him, calming him with its vast presence of space and light. The landscape instilled a tremendous sense of loyalty, and he understood the desire to defend it.
He drove past the ranch house and up a rough slope to a clearing that overlooked the river. Sparrow hawks glittered in the field. He wanted to give Owen enough time to set Coop up and leave before Joe returned to the ranch. His sense of disbelief settled into confusion and fury. He wondered if Botree was aware of the pamphlets, then realized that she had to know. He felt as if he’d been betrayed by everyone but Ty. The Bills had duped him all along. Maybe he really was a dumb hillbilly.
Botree met him at the door. Coop was asleep in her childhood room, surrounded by feather and bone. The radio equipment glowed on a card table beside the bed. Botree went into the living room, and the couch creaked in the dark. Light from the stars slid past the curtains.
“I saw the pamphlets,” Joe said.
He sat in a rocking chair that faced the fireplace. His body was very tired. He felt overwhelmed by his feelings for Botree, undercut by loss and shame. The house hummed with quiet.
“I’m glad,” she finally said.
“You knew what they were doing?”
She nodded, a shadow moving in darkness.
“Were you in on it?” he said.
“No.”
“But you went along with it.”
“They’re my family.”
“What’s in those things is wrong.”
“It’s covered by the Bill of Rights.”
“Please.” Joe lifted his hand as if to ward off a blow. “I can’t hear any more of that right now. The only people who get to be free are the ones who think the same way as Frank.”
“I don’t think that way.”
“If those things aren’t against the law,” he said, “why did the ATF want to know who was making them?”
“Other stuff was happening all over the state. Idaho, too. People weren’t paying taxes. One family killed a deputy who came to serve a foreclosure notice on a ranch. Another man went in the bank and shot the loan officer. Some people got thrown in jail for buying antitank weapons. The Feds were looking for anything on anybody.”
“Were Coop and Owen part of that, too?”
“No, they’re not bad people. You know that. Somebody could have got them saving wetlands or spiking trees, and they’d have jumped on it. They were ready for whatever came along.”
“This is a whole lot different.”
“I know, Joe. I came back from Texas in bad shape. I didn’t know what to do.”
“How’d it start?”
“Frank. Nothing but Frank. He grew up here, and joined the service. After the war, he stayed gone another twenty years. He worked for the government, you know, one of those outfits he hates now. When I got home, he was here. He was fun and he was powerful and he could talk for hours. We were a big family. Frank thought the country was in trouble and people needed to protect themselves.”
“When did they start making the pamphlets?”
“Frank bought a handpress and they made flyers against the Brady Bill, and the assault-weapon ban. Then Frank gave them stuff from the Constitution and things the Founding Fathers said. When that ran out, they used quotes from the Bible. Next it was about Indians and Jews.”
“Anybody but themselves,”
“That’s why Johnny left the bunkhouse. He came and told me they wanted him to make new pamphlets. But he wouldn’t. Coop and Owen don’t really believe that stuff.”
“So what. They put it in the world,”
“It made Frank like them, Joe. That’s all any of us wanted. It was important.”
“You, too?”
“All of us. You have to understand, it felt good for people to be together. It’s been hard for small ranchers. All the new people moving in drove up our property taxes. They keep trying to pass bonds. They want to make Highway 93 four lanes wide now. We can’t afford to live here anymore.”
“That’s got nothing to do with the pamphlets.”
“What happened up in Idaho started it at Ruby Ridge. Then the gun laws. Frank didn’t talk about anything else. No more picnics or ballgames. He bought guns and everybody else did. Then we started burying them. They’re in PVC pipe all over the place, twenty-four inches below the surface. We put a decoy above them.”
“What do you mean, a decoy?”
“A piece of metal. That way, when the Feds came, their metal detectors would find the decoy. They’d dig to that and go on. They wouldn’t be able to get our guns later, when it happens.”
“When what happens?”
“It’s happening now, just like he predicted. After he sold those guns to the ATF man, people really believed him, because everything he’d been warning about started coming true. Then they killed all those kids in that church down in Waco.”
Thoughts flitted through Joe’s mind like blinks of light. Boyd could have lived easily among the Bills, enjoying the camaraderie of weapons, the flirtation with being a small-time outlaw. He’d have burned his driver’s license and Social Security card in front of the group. Under the right circumstances, he might have helped produce the pamphlets.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Joe said.
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I was afraid you’d leave me.”
He went to Botree and swung her legs onto the couch and lay beside her. Their arms twined and he could feel her breathe. They held each other for a long time while outside the hillsides burned.
25
* * *
Thunder in the mountains meant the threat of lightning rather than the relief of rain. Day by day, Joe knew where the worst fires were by the hazy darkness of the sky. Communities were being evacuated near Missoula, but the ranch was safe. Coop was weak and often slept in a chair facing the CB unit. Two police scanners monitored the airwaves for official transmission. The combined sounds of the three machines reminded Joe of wind and water and rustling leaves.
The family saw no one but each other. They communicated by radio with their nearest neighbors who were in turn linked to people farther up and down the valley. The Bills were living battle-ready, alert to any change.
Botree received a message that Johnny was fine, and could be reached by radioing a man who worked at the Wolf. Late at night, Frank began broadcasting from the mountains nearby, long taunts of the government forces he felt certain were preparing to attack. As Coop listened, he drew possible routes of attack and escape on his topographical maps, blotting the soft brown and green lines with his own overlapping network of heavy black. As one map became illegible, he started another. He ate little and refused to bathe.
After a week, Joe went to the bunkhouse for dehydrated food, but it was empty of all supplies, including sheets and dishes. His boots echoed like distant gunfire. Mice had gnawed the Liberty Teeth pamphlets and Joe carried them outside. The autumn sun made his eyes hurt. He siphoned gas from his Jeep onto the pile, and lit a match, The paper ignited and coils of smoke joined the brown sides above.
Joe kicked a tower of ash, which exploded into tiny black pieces that spread rapidly through the air. He jumped into the fire and began stomping the fragments of burnt paper. Ash and smoke whirled around him. He worked in a frenzy as if trying to grind the pamphlets into the earth, but succeeded only in killing the fire. He dumped gas over the unburnt paper and lit it again.
When he returned to the house, Botree sniffed at the smell of gasoline and carbon, but said nothing. They ate and played a board game with the kids. Later, after the boys were asleep, Frank’s voice crackled over the air.
“This is Camp Megiddo on the mountain with an urgent message to all patriots in Montana. We have an army to protect your family. The blue-helmets of FEMA are coming. The black helicopters are coming. The yellow-bellied bastards took your guns and now they want your land.
“When David fought Goliath, he said, ‘I shall strike you down and cut your head off and leave your carcass for the birds and wild beasts.’ We shall be victorious in the name of the Bill of Rights.”
His voice stopped. Botree and Joe stared at each other in the sudden silence of the house.
“Do you think he’s got an army?” Joe said.
“Maybe. A lot of people go along with him.”
“If the government thinks, so, he’s in trouble.”
“We all are.”
They went to bed, and for a long time Joe stared at the ceiling, wondering if she was right.
The morning sky was thick with smoke. Joe missed working, and he decided to forage the nearest timber for winter firewood. He wore his pistol and carried a bungee cord for a tourniquet in case of an accident. He used the ax the way his father had taught him., letting its weight perform some of the work. The pine split easily, each chip scenting the air. He gathered kindling against his body and carried it to the pile beyond the treeline. His leg ached and he limped. A man’s voice spoke from the woods.
“I see you, Virgil Caudill.”
Joe stopped moving. He felt an unmistakable relief.
“Turn that wood loose,” the man said.
Joe let the kindling drop.
“Set down right where you’re at.”
Joe eased to the earth. The hard weight of the pistol pressed his back Brush rustled and a young man stepped from the woods, aiming a rifle at Joe. Everything about him was familiar. His features were of the same rough mold as Joe’s, the Scots-Irish pioneers who’d settled the hills of eastern Kentucky. His face was too young for a beard.
“I’m Zack Stargil’s boy, Orben. You killed my cousin.”
His accent was a comfort. Joe felt as though he’d been temporarily deaf and had suddenly regained the ability to hear. He knew several Stargils. He recalled the man as a redheaded boy, the last of a long line of brothers. Little Stubbin, they called him.
The man spat and moved closer, squinting over the rifle sight. Joe was surprised that the gun was an old .22. He lifted his chin.
“You best speak while you still yet can,” Orben said.
Joe swallowed and licked his lips.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“You ain’t the boss of me,” Orben said. “And I ain’t in no rush.”
He moved sideways to the pile of wood and sat on an upturned log. He was very skinny.
“Did you talk to Billy any?” he said.
Joe shook his head.
“Just killed him in his sleep.”
“He was awake,” Joe said.
“Know who I am yet?”
“Little Stubbin.”
“They don’t call me that no more.”
Joe nodded.
“My cousin seen you driving a truck here. He works for the state, fighting fires out of Menifee County.”
Joe nodded.
“He didn’t say nothing about you having a bad leg. What happened?”
“Bullet.”
“Billy get one in you?”
“No.”
“You scared, Virgil?”
“Maybe.”
“Was Billy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I ain’t,” Orben said. “For your information, I ain’t scared one bit. You smoke?”
“No.”
“Me, neither. Cigarette does.”
Orben laughed and pulled a cigarette from his pocket without removing the pack. He lit it and inhaled, keeping his rifle aimed at Joe.
“I bet you never thought anybody’d find you,” Orben said.
Joe shrugged.
“You were pretty smart. They was all kinds of stories. The biggest was you going to Myrtle Beach.”
“I don’t reckon.”
“They found your car in Cincinnati and Marlon went and got it. It caught on fire one night, accidental on purpose.”
“Is he okay?”
“Hell, yeah. Nobody bothered him. You can’t hurt that big bastard anyway.”
The sun had moved past its noon spot in the sky and smoke came filtering from the west. Conifers surrounded the men with a wall of green.
“How’s Marlon doing?” Joe said.
“He opened up a muffler shop down on The Road. By God, they say he’s the best in the county.”
“He said he wanted to, but I never believed it.”
“That son of a bitch can weld. Looks like a line of sewing thread when he’s done.”
“Well,” Joe said. “How about Sara and the kids?”
“Same I guess. I never see her out. Them kids are fine, you know. Just growing.”
“And Mom.”
“She died.”
“How?”
“In her sleep.”
Joe stared at the dirt, his mouth clamped tight.
“I’m sorry,” Orben said. “She never done nothing to nobody.”
“Thank,” Joe said. “What about Abigail?”
“Took off. Some said she went with you and some said she was pregnant. I heard she went up to Detroit.”
“She’s got people up there.”
“So do I,” Orben said.
“Me, too.”
They looked at each other, trapped by the intimacy of meeting in a foreign world.
“Didn’t you work at that car plant in Georgetown?” Joe said.
“Damn sure did, building them little rice-burners till I couldn’t take that drive no more. Hundred and fifty miles a day. I got on at Rocksalt Maintenance. Landscaping crew.”
“I’ll be go to hell. I used to work there. You don’t know Rundell Day, do you. Boss of garbage.”
“He retired. Old boy named Taylor’s crew boss now.”
Joe began to laugh, a harsh sound in the still air of the woods. Taylor had gotten Joe’s old job, drew a salary, and wore his name on a shirt.
“Taylor was the biggest drunk on the crew,” he said. “He got so drunk he’d apologize for things he never done. That old boy ran on whisky.”