The Bleeding Edge

by William W. Johnstone

  CHAPTER FORTY

  As Hallie had predicted, the weather on September 7 was gorgeous. At that time of year in Texas, the temperatures can still be blistering hot, soaring to more than a hundred degrees, but instead the predicted high was eighty-two, the blue sky was streaked with feathery white clouds, and there was just enough of a breeze to keep things comfortably cool.

  Stark hoped the weather was a good omen and that the election would proceed without any trouble.

  He knew better than to expect that, however.

  The story had picked up steam in the media again as Election Day approached. The regular protesters had been there every day, although the Black Panthers hadn’t shown up again. With the sheriff’s deputies posted at the gate, the protesters were on their best behavior, which was still pretty danged obnoxious and annoying as far as Stark and the other residents of Shady Hills were concerned. No one liked being accused of the things they’d been accused of, even if they knew it wasn’t true.

  Election judges appointed by Judge Oliveros would run the actual election, which was to be held in the community center. In addition, officials of the Justice Department had shown up early that morning, before the polls opened at seven o’clock, demanding to be allowed to monitor the election as well. Jack Kasek had told them that they were welcome and to go right ahead, although the “welcome” part of that was stretching the truth.

  Representatives of the media were on hand, too. Previously they hadn’t been allowed inside the retirement park, since it was private property, but as Hallie had explained, holding the election in the community center meant that they couldn’t enforce those limits today.

  “All the registered voters inside the proposed boundaries of the town have a right to come in and vote,” she said in a meeting of the community’s leaders early that morning. “So we have to let everybody else in too, although we can keep the protesters back two hundred feet. Also, we’re within our rights to allow only those registered voters into the community center. Anybody else will have to stay outside. There won’t be any electioneering or intimidation inside the polling place.”

  “We could make sure of that if we posted a few fellows with shotguns in prominent places,” Jack suggested.

  Hallie shook her head.

  “That could be interpreted as intimidation, too. Sheriff Lozano has promised to have deputies on hand to make sure everything is peaceful. We’ll just have to hope for the best.”

  They would be using old-fashioned paper ballots, and one large metal box with a sturdy lock and a slot in the top would serve to hold them all. That box was at the end of the table where the election judges sat. When the deputies arrived, one of them planted himself behind that box to keep an eye on it and make sure no one tampered with it.

  Sheriff Lozano showed up with the deputies. He came into the community center, looked around, and nodded to Stark.

  “I hope everything goes well today,” Lozano said.

  “Thanks, Sheriff. We do, too.”

  “I’ve said all along that I support you folks, even when there was nothing I could do to help. I still feel that way.”

  “Just make sure there’s no trouble outside,” Stark told him. “Everything ought to take care of itself, one way or another.”

  “I hope so.” Lozano looked at his watch. “Five minutes to seven. I guess you’re about to get started.”

  “That’s right. Election Day’s finally here.”

  And so it was. At seven o’clock, the main doors of the community center were swung wide. The polls were open.

  Before the first voters could come in, the thunderous beat of rap music exploded outside. Stark looked out and saw a sound truck parked down the street, beyond the two-hundred-foot limit. It was surrounded by Black Panthers, all of them wearing dark sunglasses and carrying baseball bats. More of them spread out on both sides of the street.

  Jack Kasek came running up to Stark.

  “Look at that!” Jack said. “People will have to walk or drive right past them to get here and vote! That can’t be legal.”

  Stark looked around for Sheriff Lozano but didn’t see him. The lawman was already gone.

  “Hallie, what do you think?” Stark asked, raising his voice above the pounding beat of the music.

  “They’re not actually blocking the sidewalks,” she said. “And those are baseball bats they’re carrying. Technically they’re not weapons. This isn’t my area of expertise, John Howard, but I’d lay odds they know exactly how much they can get away with legally. They’ve done things like this before.”

  Stark figured she was right. He thought quickly and said, “We need to get some people up to the gate. There’s nothing wrong with us escorting anybody who wants to vote, is there?”

  “Don’t ask me. Like I said, I’m not an authority on election law.”

  Stark glanced at the observers from the Justice Department and muttered, “I’d ask those folks, but somehow I don’t think I’d get an unbiased answer.” He turned back to Jack Kasek. “Spread the word to the volunteer captains, Jack. We’ll provide escorts for anybody who wants one.”

  Jack nodded, but he sighed and said, “This is gonna be a long day.”

  Stark had a feeling his friend was right about that.

  As soon as Stark had cast his own ballot, he joined the volunteers escorting voters to the polls. Many of those who lived in the retirement park could walk to the community center. They were joined by several volunteers who formed a buffer between them and the Black Panthers and the other protesters. Some of the demonstrators shouted angrily at the people coming to vote, calling them racists and fascists. The Black Panthers didn’t say much, just leveled hostile glares at the voters.

  “Don’t worry about those folks,” Stark told his friends and neighbors as he walked alongside them, shielding them from potential harm. “They’ve just got a lot of poison inside them, and it has to come out some way.”

  When the trouble started, it wasn’t on the street but rather at the entrance to the community center. Several pickups full of men had pulled into the parking lot, and their passengers, a dozen in all, piled out of the vehicles and lined up at the doors to show their voter registration cards to the election judges posted there.

  One of the judges said to the first man in line, “There seems to be something a little off about this card, sir. Do you have any other ID on you?”

  “Why should I have to show you anything else?” the man demanded. He pointed at the card in the election judge’s hand. “You got my card right there. That’s all I’m supposed to need to vote, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s not signed, and the printing on it is a little smeared, like it’s been photocopied.”

  “Well, that’s just a bunch of bull! That’s my card, sent to me in the mail proper-like.”

  “It’s the law that we can ask you to produce a photo ID if there are any doubts about your eligibility to vote,” the judge insisted. “If you can’t do that, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to step aside and let someone else come in.”

  Stark had walked up in time to hear most of that exchange. He stood nearby, watching intently, as the would-be voter grumbled some more but pulled a wallet from his hip pocket and produced a driver’s license.

  The election judge compared it to the voter’s registration card and then said, “The addresses don’t match. I’m sorry, sir—you’re not eligible to vote. The address on your driver’s license doesn’t fall within the proposed boundaries of the new town.”

  “I moved!” the man insisted. “I live in Dry Wash! We all do!”

  He waved a hand to indicate the men who had arrived at the community center with him.

  “That’s not true!” Ben LaPorte said loudly as he walked up. “I’ve lived in Dry Wash for fifteen years, and I don’t recognize any of these fellas.”

  The first man in line sneered at Ben.

  “Are you sayin’ that you know everybody who lives there?” he asked.

&nb
sp; “As a matter of fact, I believe I do,” Ben replied in his characteristically mild voice.

  “Well, you’re either wrong or a damned liar, and either way I’m goin’ in to cast my vote against this phony town!”

  The man snatched his card and driver’s license back from the election judge and started forward, obviously intending to bully his way in. His companions crowded up behind him.

  Ben reached out and grabbed the man’s arm. He was six inches shorter and at least forty pounds lighter than the troublemaker, but he didn’t hesitate.

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “This is an honest election, and it’s gonna stay that way.”

  With a bellow of rage, the poll-crasher whirled around and swung a sledgehammer blow at Ben’s head.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The punch might have torn Ben’s head off, but it was too slow and ponderous. Before it could land Ben ducked under it, stepped in, and hooked a powerful punch of his own to the man’s midsection. The man doubled over, turning a little green as his eyes bugged out, and Ben hit him again with blinding speed and enough force to send him sprawling under the feet of the men who had come into the park with him. They had already started toward Ben, yelling and cursing, but the ones in front stumbled over their fallen comrade.

  That slowed down the charge long enough for Stark, Reuben Torres, Nick Medford, and several other men to meet it.

  They got between the troublemakers and the entrance to the community center. Stark ordered, “You men back off!”

  They ignored the command and started throwing punches. Stark blocked a fist coming at his head and coun-terpunched, slamming his fist into the man’s midsection. The man staggered back, looking as green as if he’d been kicked in the belly by a mule.

  The fight didn’t last long. Deputies ran up and got between the Shady Hills residents and the men who claimed to come from Dry Wash.

  “They’re frauds,” Ben said. “Check their IDs and their voter registration cards. The cards are phonies.”

  “That’s a damned lie!” one of the men blustered. “You’re just tryin’ to disenfranchise us!”

  “What’s that? What’s that?”

  The excited cries made Stark look over his shoulder. Justice Department observers and ACLU lawyers were practically stepping on each other in their eagerness to reach someone who claimed that their rights had been violated. A couple of the deputies were having a hard time keeping them back. One man shouted, “I’m from the federal government! Get out of my way! A disadvantaged citizen needs help!”

  Stark’s mouth twisted in disgust.

  One of the deputies asked wearily, “Can somebody who actually knows what he’s talking about tell me what’s going on here?”

  The election judge who had challenged the first man’s voter registration card spoke up, pointing to the offender and saying, “That man attempted to vote with a fraudulent card. If I can examine the cards of the other men, I can tell you whether or not they’re legitimate.”

  “You heard the man,” the deputy told the men. “Let’s see those cards.”

  “We don’t have to show ’em to you,” a man insisted.

  “You don’t have to vote, either. You can turn around and go back where you came from.”

  Across the street, the protesters began to chant, “Disenfranchisement! Disenfranchisement!”

  Stark wondered just when and how he had wandered into an insane asylum without noticing.

  Or was it just that the whole country had gone crazy over the last few decades as the government and the news media had force-fed the population one perverted idea after another? Those perversions didn’t have to do with just sex, either. Everything, from schools to business regulations to courts, had been twisted almost beyond recognition in the pursuit of so-called progressive ideas that didn’t add up to anything except class warfare and taxing the “rich”—which included practically every small businessman and entrepreneur in the country—into oblivion, while at the same time spending so much and regulating so much that the national economy was always in danger of crashing down in flaming ruins. None of it bore any relation to anything resembling good old common sense.

  It was all just plumb loco, as the old Westerners would say, and anyone who tried to change it ran the risk of being crushed. Stark had seen it time and again. He had been the victim of it himself.

  And he greatly feared that nothing short of violent revolution would be able to change it now.

  But that didn’t mean he and those who believed like him were going to quit trying. Not as long as they believed in the ideal of America.

  That was never going to change.

  The deputies weren’t backing down, Stark had to give them credit for that. After a moment, the leader of the group of poll-crashers sneered and said, “None of this matters anyway. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah,” another man said. “I didn’t want to vote anyway.”

  Still casting hostile glares at the deputies and the Shady Hills residents, the men turned and walked back to their pickups. They got in and drove away, tires squealing on the pavement.

  Stark turned to Ben LaPorte and clapped a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder.

  “Glad you were here to step in and stop those fellas, Ben,” he said.

  “Like I told you when I first came down here, we may not be fancy in Dry Wash, but we’re law-abidin’ folks,” Ben said. “I don’t like it when trash like that claims to be from my home.” He smiled. “I guess after today I can tell people my hometown is Shady Hills.”

  “And we’ll all be proud for Shady Hills to claim you,” Stark told him.

  With the skirmish over, the election proceeded. After a while the protesters got bored with shouting, “Disenfranchisement!” and went back to their other chants and slogans. Stark had learned how to pretty well tune those out, the same way he did with the rap music from the Black Panthers’ sound truck. He and his friends went back to escorting voters to the community center.

  One thing worked in the residents’ favor as the day went on: not many things were more boring than an election. There was nothing glamorous or exciting about watching voters troop in and out of the community center. The reporters and cameramen withdrew to their satellite trucks. Some of the protesters put their signs down and sat on the ground under the few shade trees along the road. Even though the day could have been a lot hotter, once the temperature hit eighty degrees and the sun was shining brightly, standing around out in the open got pretty warm, pretty fast.

  Sheriff Lozano showed up again in the middle of the afternoon. He said to Stark, “I got a report that there was a little fracas out here this morning.”

  “It didn’t amount to much,” Stark said. “Your deputies did a good job of stepping in to break it up before things got out of hand.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. How’s the turnout been so far?”

  “Good,” Stark said. “I think most of the people who live here in the park have already voted.”

  “The polls close at seven o’clock?”

  Stark nodded.

  “That’s right. In accordance with Texas election law.”

  “Did you have any advance voting?”

  “Weren’t required to,” Stark said. “Today is the whole shebang.”

  “All right. I’ll have deputies on hand as long as the polls are open and until all the votes are counted.”

  As it turned out, that wasn’t really necessary, although Stark was glad to have the law enforcement personnel around. By six o’clock, with still an hour of voting left, the protesters had trudged back out to the buses and driven off. The Black Panthers had shut down their sound truck and likewise disappeared. The actual voting had slowed down to a trickle. Stark and his friends gathered on folding chairs outside the community center to wait for everything to be over.

  “It went pretty well, I think,” Jack Kasek said. He looked at Hallie. “Nothing happened that can be used to challenge the results in court,
did it?”

  “Not that I saw,” she said. “Those people from the Justice Department and the ACLU have been in there all day, watching everything like hawks. I can tell by their expressions that they’re frustrated because they haven’t seen anything they can pounce on. It’s driving them crazy.”

  “So now we just hope for the best on the vote count,” Stark said.

  “I don’t think we have anything to worry about,” Reuben Torres said. “Earlier some of those reporters were interviewing voters when they came back out, doing what they call exit polls. Nearly everybody was willing to answer when the reporters asked them how they voted, and I didn’t hear a single person say that they voted against incorporation.”

  “I’m sure some people did,” Hallie said. “But I think the question is going to pass in the affirmative.”

  Aurelia Gomez and some of the other women showed up with sandwiches and iced tea, and there were soft drinks in ice chests. It was sort of like an old-fashioned church supper on the grounds, Stark thought, and that put a good feeling inside him. No matter how crazy the world got, no matter what personal trials he went through, he still had his friends, the good people who surrounded him now. He still had beautiful Texas evenings like this one. And he still had hope that everything would turn out all right.

  Night had fallen and it was close to ten o’clock when the Justice Department observers and the ACLU lawyers trudged out of the community center looking depressed. That was enough right there to tell Stark the outcome of the election. But a moment later one of the election judges came out and announced, “Here’s the final tally, folks. Four thousand three hundred and sixty-seven in favor of the incorporation of Shady Hills as a legal town, and five hundred and ninety-eight against.”

  Several hundred people had gathered in front of the community center by now. As they heard those results, a loud, excited cheer went up. People slapped each other on the back in congratulations. Husbands and wives embraced. Reuben Torres and Antonio Gomez, who had been talking to each other most of the evening, high-fived.