Brushfire Plague: Reckoning

by R. P. Ruggiero

“You are making my head hurt,” Cooper responded. “What does this all mean?”

  “It means that the pitch of the cliff we have been travelling over just got steeper,” Dranko replied smugly.

  “It means the end of the United States,” Julianne added dryly.

  The door flew open so abruptly that everyone had pistols drawn and pointed at the door in a flash.

  Tim’s flushed face peered over the edge of the door, he recoiled when he saw the multitude of guns pointed at him. His face appeared a second time, this time more slowly.

  “We got company.”

  Julianne hustled Jake into the basement, while the others grabbed their rifles and took up their pre-arranged defensive positions inside and outside the cabin.

  Headlights stabbed through the darkness haphazardly as a single vehicle made its way up the winding driveway.

  “Either a friendly or someone incredibly brazen to be coming up like that,” Dranko observed.

  He and Cooper were standing exposed in front of the cabin door. Someone had to do it. They had reasoned that if everyone was hidden away, that the risk of mistaken identity with someone who was friendly was very high.

  As the vehicle rounded the tree line, they breathed a sigh of relief when they saw it was Mile’s truck. That relief was very short-lived.

  He piled out as soon as the wheels stopped, “We need you guys now!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “That son-of-a-bitch Hodges came out to Keith’s place tonight, drunk as all get out. He just took Valerie off, kicking and screaming. Junior’s men held Keith down until she was good and away.”

  Cooper’s face felt warm and his hand quickly ached from gripping his rifle so tightly, “So, what’s the plan?”

  “We’re gathering at my place in thirty minutes. I want you guys to be there.”

  Dranko and Cooper exchanged a quick look and immediately knew their answer, “Okay. We’re there.”

  They decided to bring Tim with them, since he was from the area. Calvin and Angela would stay behind and split guard duty in case they were gone all night. They gathered their gear and got into Dranko’s Jeep for the short drive to the Stott’s.

  **********

  When they arrived, the Stott’s place looked like a parking lot at a busy summer fair. Cars, but mostly pickups and SUVs, were squeezed into every available patch of land. Drivers had long ago stopped worrying about boxing others in and the vehicles were parked nose to tail, and side to side. Cooper quickly counted over twenty. He noticed the wide range of vehicles, from old rusted out pickups that looked like they would keel over and die at any second to brand new trucks with extended cabs and shiny new paint. The handful of cars in the yard told a similar tale: from an old Dodge K car to one as new Cadillac. You can always tell the economic background of who has come to a meeting by checking the parking lot, his father had said more than once or twice.

  Any pretense of holding the meeting inside had been abandoned and a crowd mingled in the chilly air. Cooper felt the electricity in the air and the hairs on his arms stood up.

  “Feels like home, eh?” Dranko asked, winking.

  He smiled back, “I guess you’re right. Feels like an eternity ago when we gathered on my stoop and tried to figure out what to do next, doesn’t it?”

  Dranko grunted as an affirmative, paused, and then commented, “Good crowd.”

  “What do you mean?” He intoned, curious

  “I bet we got more guns on hand up here than back in Portland.” He’d laid the scorn so thick into his voice that Cooper felt scolded, even though he was a gun owner himself. Now, it was Cooper’s turn to grunt in agreement.

  Someone tugged on his elbow and Cooper turned to see Miles with a flushed face and small beads of sweat on his brow, despite the obvious chill hanging in the air. Cooper offered him a reassuring smile.

  “Nervous?”

  Miles gulped, “That obvious, huh?”

  Cooper clapped him on the shoulder, “You’ll be fine.”

  “I ain’t never spoke to this many people before. What do I say?”

  Cooper thought for a moment before responding. “My father did a lot of public speaking in his day and he gave me precious advice when I asked him the same question.”

  “What was it?”

  “Ask what you need to know. Say what you know to be true. And, most importantly, don’t screw it up and embarrass me!”

  Cooper exploded in laugher, hoping his boisterousness would carry Miles along in the joke and get him laughing, too. It didn’t. Miles looked like he was turning a shade of green.

  “Look, I’m sorry, Miles. Bad joke! I was just trying to get you to loosen up. If you get stuck, I’m here to help you,” Cooper said as he clapped him on the other shoulder.

  Miles nodded his head quickly a few times, “Yeah, Okay. I’ll be fine.” With that, he turned on his heel to make his way to the edge of the group. He was breathing so rapidly and shallowly that Cooper was worried he might pass out.

  “Breathe! Deeply!” He shouted after him.

  He watched with bemusement as Miles clambered up onto the hood of an old Chevy pickup that was bereft of a single flake of paint, as near as Cooper could tell. Rust had long since claimed its victory.

  “Can everyone gather here along the fence line?” Miles shouted to the group.

  “Hey, Miles, watch it. Don’t scratch the paint on my beauty there,” a gruff voice yelled. A round of chuckles ran through the crowd.

  “Hell, Frank. Any scuffing he does will be an improvement!” This catcall got more laughter than it should have. People venting their anxiety, Cooper mused.

  Miles began tentatively, his voice cracking from nerves, “I wish we could make jokes all night, guys. But, we got some serious business to discuss.” Frosted air jerked outward from his mouth as he spoke in a broken, awkward cadence.

  “Let’s get to it,” the gruff voice called out once more.

  “Junior Hodges has crossed a line. Many of us have been complaining about the ‘levies’…”

  “Damn that word. Call it what it is. Taxes!” Someone interrupted him.

  Miles took a long moment to recover, “Fine. Taxes. We’ve been complaining about them since they started. Now, he first demanded to have a go at Keith’s wife, Valerie, or Keith had to give up his only rifle as payment.”

  A bevy of hoots and boos descended upon the crowd and grew to a low roar. Colorful catcalls were liberally mixed in the general din. Miles raised his hands to quiet them. When the noise had subsided, he continued.

  “It gets worse. He told Keith he’d have two days to think it over. Then, tonight, he came over, drunk, and took Valerie away.”

  The place was deathly silent. Miles looked confused and looked around searching for an answer. Apparently, he decided that they hadn’t heard him.

  “I said, he came and took Valerie away!”

  The effect was catalytic. The stunned crowd erupted in a frenzy. The shouting was so loud that Cooper clapped his hands to his ears. People were yelling, stomping, banging rifle butts against the nearest vehicle, and crying out an indiscernible cacophony of protests. Miles was visibly shaken and took a step backward on the pickup’s hood, trying to gain scant distance between himself and the mob’s rage. Cooper turned to look at the man to his right. He was in his thirties, with black hair and a neatly kept beard. The man was screaming at the top of his lungs, but the noise was so deafening, Cooper couldn’t make out a word. He lip read profanities lacing every third word, but could not hear those, either. To his left, Dranko was as dumbstruck as Cooper; gaping at those around him and the spectacle. Then, it hit him. Junior’s outrageous act is magnified because of the horrors everyone has just lived through. They are imagining their wife or daughter being in Valerie’s place and what would have been unfathomable a month ago is now cause for the mob’s ferocity. The enormity of their loss makes the crime shift to beyond heinous.

  Miles remained on the hood of the pickup for a
t least five minutes as the crowd vented its fury. Finally, after repeated attempts, he gained some semblance of order.

  “The question now is, what do we do?”

  “We kill the son-of-a-bitch,” the man with the gruff voice yelled. That drew a loud round of clapping and yells of support for the idea.

  As it subsided, a nervous voice chimed in, difficult to hear, “He’s got a lot of armed men with him.” Space cleared around the speaker. Almost like you have the plague, ain’t it? Cooper half-expected to see a bespectacled frail-looking man, given the voice and the comment. Instead, he saw a stocky, well-muscled man, wearing a green flannel workingman’s shirt and a Carhart tan jacket. Matching workpants and black boots completed his attire.

  The man shifted his feet, gaining traction. His voice found greater confidence, too, “You know what I say is true.”

  His comment drew a spattering of support, before others rushed in to silence them. The word “coward” struck clean through the crowd.

  The man reared up, “Who said that? Come say that to my face!” The man’s brown eyes searched frantically for the offender.

  Miles quickly lost control as the group splintered into a half-dozen animated arguments about whether or not taking on Junior Hodges was what they should do. Several of the groups were quickly moving beyond exchanging words and pushing and shoving started. Miles locked onto Cooper’s eyes like a drowning man does the life raft. He beckoned him to join him on the hood.

  Cooper saw that the situation was about to descend into abject chaos. He quickly climbed atop the pickup. His father’s advice came to him once more. When put in front of a group who don’t know you, make a dramatic entrance. One they won’t forget. His father had offered all sorts of examples that were appropriate to calmer times. Cooper improvised.

  He drew his pistol and fired at a low angle into the air.

  Everyone froze, some in comical looking mid-grapple positions or in the middle of yelling at the person in front of them. All heads swiveled to look upon this stranger with the smoke drifting up from the muzzle of his pistol.

  Someone spoke for the group, “Just who the hell are you?”

  Cooper began, “My name’s C.J. and…”

  He was cut off by a familiar voice, “This man brought me out to Miles’ from Portland. More importantly, he done got our neighborhood through the crisis a damn sight better than any other down there. You need help figuring out what to do next, I suggest you listen to him.”

  The same man confronted her, “If you don’t mind me asking ma’am, who the heck are you?”

  “Lyle, she’s Miles’ mother. Anyone who’s been here for a while knows her. She don’t blow smoke up anyone’s…anything.” This time, it was a man in his fifties, gray-haired, and wearing the clothes one would expect to see on a well-to-do hobby farmer.

  He turned to Cooper, “So, what do you have to say?”

  In a fractured group, find agreement first, his father called to him once more.

  “Why don’t we start with what we agree on?”

  Murmurs of assent filtered through the group.

  “Junior Hodges has crossed a line that every living soul here wants to make sure he doesn’t ever think about crossing again, right?”

  The crowd signaled its agreement with a deafening boom of “hell yeahs” and “that’s rights.” Cooper felt the familiar feeling of capturing a group’s attention and forging unanimity from it. An electric charge shot through him. Damn, I think I’m starting to enjoy this!

  “And, we want to make sure he’s held accountable for what he’s already done, right?” Cooper felt the crowd joining him, accepting him.

  “Now, one option that’s been suggested is to rally ourselves into a posse and go and kill him.” Once more, the sparks of disagreement began flying. Cooper held up his hands and was somewhat surprised that silence resumed so quickly.

  “Let’s evaluate that choice using cold logic. First, raise your hand if you have a gun of any kind.” Nearly every hand shot up.

  “Now, leave your hand up if you have a rifle or a shotgun.” Three-quarters remained up.

  “Finally, leave your hand up if you have a military-style weapon with a mag that holds twenty or more rounds.” Only a dozen hands remained up.

  “Alright. How many men does Hodges command?”

  “About forty!” Someone shouted.

  “That right?”

  “Close enough,” someone added. Seeing agreement in the group, Cooper continued.

  “Next question. Most of his men have military-style weapons, right?”

  This question was answered with a mix of enthusiastic and reluctant “yeses” depending on where people had stood in the original argument.

  “So, the question is, do we really want to start a war when the numbers are about even, but the other side has us outgunned?” Mumbles and grumbles were the only answers he received.

  “Good; this is progress. We are gonna respond, but we are going to be smarter than trying to bring a bolt-action to a machinegun fight.” His joke received a few laughs.

  “Let me try this on for size. We march on Sheriff Hodges tomorrow morning at nine. We come armed. We go with two simple demands. One. No more payments in human form for anything.” Cooper choked out the word, as it felt so foreign in this context. He continued, “Two. The taxes are reduced by 10% permanently. On top of that, 10% of the taxes collected go to Keith and Valerie for the next six months.”

  “What about holding Junior accountable?”

  Cooper paused before responding, “It’s up to you all. But, my daddy taught me to always leave the other guy a way to save face when negotiating. I don’t think someone like Hodges will publicly agree to do anything to his son.” Cooper held up a finger to stifle the protests, “But, I’m willing to bet that you take twenty percent from Hodges, that Junior will get punished well and good.”

  A disturbance came from the back of the crowd. It was Keith. “Not good enough! He’s raping my wife, for God’s sakes! He’s gotta get punished!” Cooper caught the glint of a killer in Keith’s eyes and watched his muscles ripple as he struggled to free himself from those around him who were trying to restrain him.

  Cooper had an idea, “Keith, I bet you’d beat the hell outta Junior if given the chance?”

  That brought a baritone laugh from him, “I could have whipped that weasel in a bar fight a month ago. Now, I’ll tear him limb from limb.”

  “Good. That’s what I thought. You gave us our third demand. Keith and Junior go toe to toe in a fair fight. No holds barred.”

  The shouting and applause was so loud that Cooper felt like he’d just been elected the Mayor of some small town. Before he could enjoy the elation, he heard his father’s voice. When getting people to do something they will be scared to do, get them to commit to each other, not you. That will hold. His father had been talking about workers confronting an abusive boss or going out on strike. Cooper was taking this group up against a boss with guns.

  He quieted the group once again. “So, if you’re in, raise your hand.” Every single hand shot rapidly skyward.

  “Now, stop looking at me. Look at each other. Look each other in the eye. Any one of you get cold feet tonight, you remember who you are committing to. It ain’t me. It’s to each other. It’s to this community. It’s to what’s right. It’s to saying you won’t ever have to worry ‘bout Junior coming for your wife, your daughter, or your mama next time he wants to.” Cooper felt the weight of his words and saw them sinking in. He paused to let it all happen. When most of the crowd had turned back towards him, he continued, “You all in?”

  Cooper had expected another chorus of yells and applause. Instead, he looked out onto the crowd and saw neighbors, relatives, and friends looking each other squarely in the eye with an unspoken promise. Jaws were firmly set. Some eyes glistened in the light cast by the moon and the headlights. Many had clasped hands or were holding one another by their shoulders. A few grabbed one another i
n tight embraces. A chill ran down his spine. Now, I know what my father was talking about when he spoke of the ‘electricity of that damned thing called solidarity’.

  “I know one thing to be true,” he muttered to Miles, who stood next to him on the hood.

  “What’s that?”

  “I wouldn’t want to be Sheriff Hodges come the morning. There’s a reckoning coming.”

  **********

  The rest had been details and the myriad of questions that took another hour to sort through. Cooper let Miles handle most of it, but jumped in when he had to. Miles had thanked him profusely after the meeting and a dozen men had come to introduce themselves and thank him for his help in getting things organized. He was offered, and took a few nips, from flasks containing alcohol of all kinds. The homebrews burned his throat like kerosene while the store bought whiskeys felt like sweet water going down. His belly and his head felt warm and light by the time the group had dispersed. Instinctively, he made his way to the Jeep.

  Dranko stopped him, “I think we should just stay here.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Fuel. Things are set back home ‘til the morning. We brought our gear. We need to start conserving anywhere we can.”

  Cooper didn’t like the idea of being away from Jake for the night, but agreed with his friend’s reasoning. Before the plague, I could have just called and checked in. Cell phones had been down for a while and the land lines were dead up in Estacada, as well as most places across the United States.

  “Alright, let’s bunk here. That fine by you, Miles?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “There’s one added plus to your plan,” Cooper said, directing his comment at Dranko.

  “I surely won’t die tomorrow.”

  Dranko grinned at him, smelling the setup, “Why’s that?”

  “Because God wouldn’t let my last night on this fine earth be spent sleeping next to an ugly mug like you. Even post-Brushfire, I don’t believe he’s that cruel.”

  Dranko clutched his chest, feigning a wound. Then, the three men fell into easy laughter.

  Chapter Ten