by Jf Perkins
The last of our rescues was Jones. We didn’t know if it was her first name or last name. It was the only name she ever offered. According to Margaret, Jones had been through the worst of the abuse at Eugene’s camp, and it was easy to see why. Jones was a pretty woman, with short dark hair and a light dusting of freckles under her big brown eyes. She was tall with a slender body, but not skinny. Jones was just well balanced, at least in the physical sense. She reminded me of my fourth grade teacher in a way, but prettier. Kirk spent entirely too much time looking at Jones until my mother took him aside one day and gave him a lecture that sent him into the woods for forty -eight hours straight. Jones seemed fine to me, but she was very quiet. She almost never spoke unless someone asked her a question. Mom went out of her way to include Jones in the conversation, but her efforts always stalled on one-word answers. In time, we just let her sit quietly and stopped worrying about it.
That left Aggie. Aggie was two people in one. Around the family she was polite and, like Jones, almost never worked her way into the conversation. If she was asked a question, she would talk until she felt it was answered. When she was alone with me, she was a chatterbox. She talked about everything that entered her mind. Occasionally, I wanted her to be quiet for a change, but most of the time, I basked in the bubbling fountain of hope and joy and intelligence that rode on her stream of words. She tried to catch me daydreaming through her chatter with sudden silences followed by a pop quiz. She once told me that I made a grade 93 for the year. I guess that was pretty good. These days, I’m probably more of a “C” student.
Again according to Margaret, Aggie was fortunate that none of Eugene’s men had any particular taste for young girls, especially skinny little girls with no signs of development. Her biggest trauma was being witness to what they were doing to the other women, and the simple fact that she was imprisoned in a dark shed with no hope of escape. Mom’s theory was that Aggie would take a long time to trust any adult again, and it was good that I was her friend. I was happy to be near Aggie. Mom’s approval was just a bonus.
Our first real argument was over a cow. Aggie was just as busy as the rest of us, but she took on her own special project of making sure that every animal on the farm had a proper name. In the case of one Black Angus beef cow from Joe Miller’s place, she drew her line in the sand. She named the cow Stella, and when I cleverly mentioned that Stella would eventually end up as juicy steaks, the fight was on.
“We are not going to eat Stella!” Aggie shouted in my face.
“We will if we get hungry enough,” I replied, thinking I had logic on my side.
“So, if we get really hungry, we’re gonna eat Bear too?”
“Dog doesn’t taste good, my dad told me, so we’d have to be starving to death to eat Bear,” I replied. “I bet if we had a dog last March, he would have looked pretty tasty.”
Aggie’s face turned red. “If we’re gonna eat Bear, then we might as well start eating each other. We might as well turn cannibal!”
She had me on a technicality, sort of... “Well, we’re not going to eat Bear, but we might eat Stella because cows taste good.”
“What’s the difference? Bear’s an animal. Stella’s an animal. Let’s just eat them all!”
I backed down. “Listen, Aggie. We probably won’t have to eat them all. Maybe things will work out so we don’t have to eat all that many.”
“You’d be stupid to eat Stella!” Aggie said loudly.
“Why? Stella’s a cow.”
“Stella is a girl cow, and girl cows can make baby cows. It doesn’t matter how many we eat. We’ll need more cows.”
And there it was. Aggie had neatly outmaneuvered me, not with shrieking fuzzy girl mush, but with the cold, hard logic of the situation. I was beaten. “You’re right, Aggie. I hadn’t thought of that. We’d have to be desperate and stupid to eat Stella.”
“I know it,” Aggie said, folding her arms across her chest in defiance.
I gave in gracefully, and Aggie held her victory over my head, forming the pattern of a lifetime of arguments in which I would walk away defeated. At twelve years old, I couldn’t live with that. I looked around for a parting shot and found it. “Well, Stubby over there is a boy cow. We only need one or two of them. I think those Stubby burgers are going to taste dee-licious.” I drawled the word out and threw in a lip smack for extra measure.
Aggie whirled around and stalked away.
We met back up later like nothing had happened. We rocked on our swing, and she talked about everything she had done and seen and loved about her late summer day. I was grateful that she was willing to forgive me. I returned the favor by keeping my mouth shut.
Mom eventually waved us inside for supper. Ironically, a beef pot roast was on the table. Sally Bean was ready to talk. I could tell because Joe was sitting at the long table, looking very much alone in the midst of thirteen other people. I knew it was going to be an uncomfortable meal. It began in normal fashion, with Arturo offering a blessing and the normal sounds of daily chatter and clinking dinnerware. Jimmy was literally humming with excitement as the juicy meat was placed in front of him. He had a little squirming chair dance that he liked to perform before his first bite at every meal. Thinking back, I always took that as the real blessing before we ate. In one exuberant display, the seven-year-old managed to show us all how delightful it was to have a meal and to be able to sit down at a table in a normal kitchen and to eat with the people we loved.
Most of our day had involved changing the fences around to hold the new animals, which is why those animals were on Dad’s mind.
“Hey, Joe,” he asked for the hundredth time. “Are you sure you want to part with your livestock. We can come over and help you with them if you want to keep them.”
“David, we’ve had this conversation more often than I’ve used the john. For the last time, yes, I’m sure, and you’re welcome.” Joe smiled to show he appreciated the thought. “Which reminds me...”
Joe reached around and pulled a slightly crinkled packet of blue paper out of his back pocket. He unfolded it on the checkered tablecloth and revealed the white, official looking document inside. “This here’s the deed to my land. I’m not sure about the legal stuff, or if it even matters anymore, but I wrote a note on the back page. It says I’m giving it to you, David.”
Dad literally dropped his fork. The clatter startled everyone to silence as the fork bounced off the table and rattled its way to the floor. “But, Joe...”
“But nothing. I’ve made my decision. Sally and I talked it over, and she may not agree with me, but she says she understands why I’m doing it. Here’s why I’m doing this, David.” Joe paused to take sip of water and to gather his thoughts. “You’re good man. You too, Arturo... You got a great family, and you’ll need a way to build a future for them. You’re also young enough to put in the sweat it’s gonna take to get through this mess and come out the other side. Normally, I’d pass it along to my kids, but you know they’d just end up selling the place to pay the taxes. They’d have no interest in farming it anyway. Things are different now. I’d like to see my land go where it will do the most good, and that’s you folks.” Joe looked a little embarrassed at his speech and covered it with a big mouthful of pot roast.
Salle Bean got to her feet with tears in her eyes, and I was expecting her to either launch into a lecture or walk out. Instead, she stepped over behind Joe and nearly choked him to death with a hug. She kissed him on the cheek and said, “You’re a good man too, Joe Miller. A damn fool, but a good man.” She sat back in her chair and let the tears mingle with her supper.
“Aw now Sally. You ain’t rid of me yet. David? You mind if I shack up on your farm for the winter? If I left now, I would be a damn fool.” Joe said, regaining his voice as he spoke.
Dad struggled to speak as well. “Joe, I hope you’ll stay long enough for me to give this paper back to you. Thank you, for everyone. Until then, stay as long as you like.”
After supper, everyone managed to find a way to thank Joe personally. Jackie from across the room, Mom and Lucy with big hugs, the men with back thumping man-hugs, and Tommy and Jimmy by holding tightly to Joe’s legs as he staggered for the front door.
Chapter 9 – 9
Tam thought maybe she had done her job too well. She was standing in the woods overlooking the Duck River by the old green bridge east of Shelbyville. She figured that after the mess she had made of their convoy on the other side of town, a smart man would have circled out by Beech Grove to leave Bedford County by a less direct route. Thanks to the spotters and runners she had deployed along the highways, she knew that Gary Tucker Jr. was not a smart man. She said a little prayer of thanks that she wasn’t tangling with the Grand Dragon himself. Any man who could control two counties would make for a tougher challenge.
Her second concern, now that she knew Tucker was bringing his convoy this way, was that they might not make it before nightfall. Tam’s tactical mind knew that the darkness would make her trap even more deadly to the Dragon army, but her selfish and angry side just wanted to watch the show. After enough glances at the sun to make her family as nervous as she was, Tam finally heard the distant sound of engines growing slowly in the distance.
There was one final junction where Tucker could choose to take the back roads north. She had backup plans in place to hit the Dragon army either way, but she would only see the trap sprung if the enemy took Highway 41A towards Tullahoma. She tried to imagine how Tucker thought that taking a turn through Tullahoma was the best idea, and she concluded that he wanted to end up on the side of Manchester where the wealthy families were clustered. Possibly he was just trying to avoid passing too close to Teeny Town, where the engines of the convoy would surely be heard. Either way, she saw the yellow flag waving from a high spot in the distance and pumped her fist in excitement. The Dragon army was coming.
The horses were being watched back in the woods. Three hundred of Tam’s family and friends were crowed in as close to the river as they could get without being spotted from the highway. The bridge was sabotaged, of course. Tam’s old Uncle Chet, who had spent his entire life as a metalworker, had supervised the effort to cut through steel in strategic places on the rusty framework of the bridge - in ways that she hoped would cause the bridge to collapse under the load of all those trucks. She had given some thought to the value of the bridge before she made the call to destroy it. The truth was, according to Chet, that the bridge was on its last legs, no matter what they did. He figured if it didn’t collapse today, it wouldn’t be too long before it could collapse when someone friendly was using it. That made the decision easy.
Not long after the flag signal from her rider, she saw the first of the trucks appear by the old gravel plant. They were grinding up the road at a stately twelve miles per hour, using both lanes in a double line of trucks. She made a downward motion with her arm to remind her people to stay out of sight, and to quell the excited buzz that was beginning to build behind her. Her people were well trained and dropped into silence. The convoy pulled within a hundred feet of the bridge. Tam watched for any sign of slowing. If it had been her, she knew she would stop and inspect every bridge they crossed, but to her relief, the convoy maintained its speed right onto the bridge.
She watched the lead truck through her binoculars and saw that Tucker was talking rapidly about something. She noticed that he was in a truck that was decidedly less impressive than the one he had been occupying earlier. She wondered how he had survived the barriers. In less than a minute, Tucker’s vehicle was safely across, and Tam looked at Chet. He spit tobacco juice on the ground and shrugged back at her.
“It didn’t collapse,” Tam said.
“Give it time,” was Chet’s reply.
“The sooner the better.”
“It’ll happen,” Chet said with another emphatic spit.
The trucks kept passing, and Tam was beginning to panic. She had a third trap planned but if she didn’t thin the herd here, she could be forced to call it off. She quelled the urge to run down to the bridge and start jumping on it to help it along. She was laughing silently at herself when she saw the bridge begin to bounce, just slightly. More than half of the convoy was safely past the bridge when something snapped and the bridge jerked downward about a foot. The drivers in the middle did the worst thing they could do. They stopped to see what was wrong. The trucks behind them braked suddenly and came to a stop right on their bumpers. More trucks stacked onto the bridge as each row stopped neatly behind the one in front. The trucks ahead of the first ones to stop seemed to notice that something was happening and they stopped to check with the trucks behind them.
The old bridge was tougher than anyone would have guessed, but when the critical mass was reached, the entire span folded up in the space of a few seconds. Men and trucks seemed to float in midair, but that was an illusion that was created by the speed of the bridge’s plunge into the river. That illusion was shattered when the floating bits caught up with the shrieking bridge, and the whole mess hit the water with a deep punching sound that Tam could feel in her guts. The water freed by the impact shot amazingly high in the air, easily doubling the original height of the bridge and raining down on sinking trucks with an endless hiss.
Men flailed in the water. Some reached the banks easily. The men who had made it across poured out of their trucks and ran back to the ragged threshold of the river. A few of those men were even good enough to scramble down the steep slope to help their fallen comrades. Plenty of men drowned, either caught inside or underneath the vehicles, or pummeled under the mad churning of others as they grabbed anything to survive the boiling chaos. On the west side of the river, thirty some odd trucks were lucky to have stopped before the bridge. Those trucks watched in horror for a minute or two and then came to their own panicked conclusions.
Tam observed the catastrophe of her own making with an icy calm on her face, but managed to smile as the end of the convoy began to swing out onto the shoulder of the highway, heading back the way they had come. Of course, it was possible that they were simply planning to go around the long way through Beech Grove, but somehow she doubted it. She wondered how far they would need to run to escape Tucker’s eventual reckoning.
A baker’s dozen climbed out of the water on that side and staggered up the embankment to the highway. Even at this distance, the body language of dismay was almost comically displayed as those thirteen men found themselves alone without transportation in the most cursed land in the state. They too began to walk west. Tam’s people would pick them up before long.
Gary Tucker Jr. stood at the broken edge of the bridge for long minutes before he began to curse. He cursed the water, the fire, the bridge, the men, and the bitch he was sure had done this to him. Mostly he cursed God. He knew that the Knights of the White God was a con, but maybe somewhere along the way, with all of his success and privilege, he had begun to believe in his special standing, just a little, and God was calling his bluff.
Chapter 9 – 10
Terry pulled Big Bertha to a stop in the gravel lot north of Manchester. He angled the big truck to shine the headlights on the four men sitting in the middle of the lot with their hands bound by rope. There were two older men and two that appeared somewhere in their late twenties. The men were guarded by an even dozen of Kirk’s best men, including John Hall. That didn’t surprise Terry. Those two were the best at sneaking in and doing damage. Bill Carter slid from the passenger seat, choosing to land on his good leg in one bound rather than using the awkward middle step. Terry killed the ignition and left the lights shining.
By the time Terry joined Bill and Kirk, Bill was already speaking to the oldest man. “Garrett Cox. This your boy?”
“No. That’s my boy behind me. I’m sitting next to Talley’s kid,” Cox said with obvious anger.
Kirk said, “My mistake.” He offered it with a who-gives-a-crap shrug.
“No matter,” Bill said. “As far as I
’m concerned, you’re all in this together.”
“In what together?” Cox asked.
“Well, we can start with men you sent out to burn our place down last night.”
“I don’t know jack sh...”
“Stop right there. We wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of plucking you fine gentlemen out of your big old houses if we didn’t have witnesses and proof. For one thing, we can show you a nice collection of bodies. Some of them died shooting at my people. The rest died trying to set my barn on fire. Anyone you know?”
“I don’t know anything,” Cox growled in answer.
“Ok, well just so you know, I came out because I’m the one who doesn’t like all this torture and killing business. This man,” Bill indicated Kirk, “Seems to really enjoy it. He saves me a lot of sleepless nights.”
Kirk picked up his role as the bad cop. “So, Boss... We gonna torture the kids to get the daddies to talk, or the other way around?”
“I figure the daddies know more than the kids, so I guess it’ll have to be their boys up first. Either way, somebody will talk. I mean, shit... The things you do to them.” Bill gave a theatrical shudder.
Garret Cox was beginning to sweat profusely, as opposed to the normal sweat of a hot August night.
“What’s your boy’s name, Mr. Cox?” Kirk asked. “I like to know who I’m working on.”
Cox said nothing.
“Doesn’t really matter, though. He’ll tell me his own name, won’t you boy?” Kirk circled the men as he spoke and dragged Derek Cox to his feet. In reality, the entire families were well known to everyone in Coffee County.
Terry felt about eighty percent sure that this was all an act, but it was convincing enough to make him think of excuses to leave. Kirk was using a slippery redneck accent that sounded like a chainsaw revving, and frankly, it scared Terry. He couldn’t imagine what the Coxes were feeling right then. Terry stood rigidly and watched new beads of perspiration forming on Garret Cox’s hairline, even as his own sweat started to run.