English Lessons

by J. M. Hayes

  He gathered the collection and carried them back to the hole that had become their light source.

  “What are you going to do?” Cassie asked.

  “Make the hole larger,” Mad Dog said. “Our size, maybe.”

  He bent and examined the base of the outside wall again. Corrugated steel. It would be hard to bend it with the tools he had. And he couldn’t pound on it. That would bring the bad guys with their cattle prod.

  But it looked like there was a seam beside the hole. A spot where two pieces of corrugated metal overlapped.

  “If I only had a little more light.”

  “Does this help?”

  Mad Dog’s eyes blinked in the sudden blinding glare. He looked up. Fluorescents lined the ceiling. And Cassie stood with her hand on the light switch beside the door. The one he should have realized had to be there. Duh!

  “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

  There was a seam, all right. He tried one of the hay hooks and managed to work it between the pieces of metal. He strained, pushed. The hook scraped against steel, but the steel yielded.

  “Well, what do you know,” Mad Dog said. “This might actually work.”

  ***

  Mrs. Kraus beat Ned Evans to the phone when it rang. Then danced around her desk to keep him from grabbing it.

  “Benteen County Sheriff’s Office.”

  Ned whispered, “Careful what you say.” He came around the desk and got his ear near enough to hear the voice on the other side of the connection.

  “Mrs. Kraus. This is Sergeant Parker in Tucson.”

  Mrs. Kraus heard the wail of a siren in the background.

  “I’m in the middle of an emergency,” Parker said, “but I thought Englishman should know….” That was all Mrs. Kraus caught before Ned changed his mind and took the phone.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Ned said. “We’ll tell him.”

  “What is it? What’s going on?” Mrs. Kraus tried to take the phone back but Ned was too strong for her.

  “We got a couple of minor problems here,” Ned said. “Mrs. Kraus is on the other line. Who, me? Why I’m the new deputy. Ned…uh, Ned Smith.”

  “Ned Evans, give me that phone. Let me speak to Pauline Parker this instant.” Mrs. Kraus raised her voice hoping Parker could hear her. Ned glared and one of the militia men in the foyer looked in to see what was going on.

  “No. No problem. I’ll tell the sheriff,” Ned said. Then he said ouch when Mrs. Kraus kicked him in the shin and yanked the phone out of his fingers.

  “Pauline? Pauline? You still there?”

  Parker was gone, though. And Mrs. Kraus had no idea whether Parker had understood Mrs. Kraus intentionally called her by the wrong first name. Pauline—it was the best Mrs. Kraus could manage on the spur of the moment. The Perils of Pauline were silent movie serials, dating back to even before Mrs. Kraus’ time. Sergeant Parker might not know about them. Might just think the years had taken their toll and the old woman back in Benteen County had forgotten her real name.

  Or Parker could be too busy with her own emergency, so the wrong name wouldn’t even register. But it might, and if Parker realized Mrs. Kraus intentionally missed her name she’d understand Mrs. Kraus needed help. Just like the heroine in those ancient motion pictures, whether Parker caught the reference or not.

  Ned took the phone out of Mrs. Kraus’ hand and put it back in its cradle. “Don’t answer it again,” he said.

  Harvey Koestel strode into the sheriff’s office. “Who called?” he asked. He carried some kind of automatic rifle that looked like it held about a million rounds. His uniform had stars on the shoulders and was topped with a gray Civil War kepi, a Confederate battle flag pinned above the visor.

  “Someone from Tucson. About Mad Dog.” Ned stepped over to the counter and filled Koestel in on the details, conveniently standing with his back to Mrs. Kraus and whispering so she couldn’t hear. Very slowly, she lifted the receiver back off its hook. The dial tone sounded incredibly loud to her. Not loud enough to alert the cream of this Kansas country-boy militia, though. She was going to dial Englishman, but she suddenly saw a bright fuchsia message in the War of Worldcraft’s usual shorthand appear on her computer screen where Femfatale now faced a swarm of lavender hornets, each the size of a St. Bernard.

  “called eman. gave message. tell me bout game u 2 r in soon. got 2 go 2 dungeon. brb.”

  So Englishman had been warned. But he’d need help. Who would understand and believe there was serious trouble here with the fewest words? Who would care enough to be sure to do something about it? Easy, she decided. Heather, in far off Arizona. Her fingers danced across the phone’s key pad.

  Ned slammed his palm down, killing the call before she got a connection. Koestel stuck the muzzle of his machine gun in her throat.

  “Who’d you call?”

  Mrs. Kraus turned and glared into his eyes with an intensity that should have turned his heart to ice.

  “Do your mothers know how much trouble you boys are in?”

  ***

  Just-the-family Christmas dinner at the Cole’s turned into a disaster. The senator took call after call. By the time Niki finally persuaded him to sit at the table, the mashed potatoes were cold, the salad had wilted, the turkey was overcooked, and Mrs. Cole wobbled from sampling the cooking sherry. It didn’t help much when the phone rang again midway through the senator’s efforts to carve his way to a piece of meat moister than cardboard.

  “Don’t answer it,” Mrs. Cole said. As usual, the senator ignored her. He’d brought a phone to the table, evidently anticipating more news.

  Brad sighed. Niki rolled her eyes. Brad thought she’d been away from home too long if she expected an idealized version of their normal family meals.

  “Senator Cole,” their father barked into the receiver. Mrs. Cole lifted her wine glass, saluted everyone at the table, and drained it.

  “Yes,” the senator said. He said it several more times while his wife refilled and re-emptied her glass. Heather would get an instructional introduction to the Cole family if the day continued like this.

  The senator finally put the phone down. “I don’t believe it. All hell seems to be breaking loose today. That was the mayor.” Tucson’s mayor, Brad assumed. Greater Tucson had Balkanized a few decades ago. It consisted of half-a-dozen interconnected and competing communities now. Tucson was by far the largest, though. The senator wasn’t apt to take a mid-Christmas dinner call from the mayor of Marana.

  The Coles, however, didn’t live in any of the metropolitan areas. Their home lay in the foothills, an unincorporated suburb on the north side of Tucson where the wealthy had fled as municipal neighborhoods began containing diverse populations that reflected the rest of Southern Arizona. They really were foothills—the lower reaches of the Santa Catalina range. The area wasn’t as exclusive as it had once been, but there were still gated communities, like this one, where Hispanics and Blacks were the exception, and, when present, at least very wealthy.

  “Not only is the governor dead, his daughter is missing,” the senator announced. “And now a drug war has broken out in central Tucson. One cartel leader has been murdered on North Stone. Another, they think—not all the bodies have been identified yet—was gunned down near Grant and Campbell. A house got bombed. A cocaine house. People are dead from automatic weapons fire. Another explosive device hasn’t gone off yet. Something big, the mayor tells me. Big enough to level a city block.” The senator stood and stepped to the wall of glass that looked down over the Tucson valley.

  “See that smoke?” he said. “That’s where the bomb is. Should be spectacular when it blows.”

  Niki tried a piece of turkey, then spit it into her napkin. “Maybe we should go get some burgers,” she whispered to her brother.

  Their mother heard. She r
ose and marched unsteadily from the table to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Brad shrugged. The senator never turned from the window. “Get me something, too,” he said, never looking away from where Tucson’s bomb squad might be momentarily vaporized. “Super-size, and with some of those seasoned fries.”

  ***

  When the hole was big enough, Mad Dog poked his head out. The bad guys weren’t waiting to grab them. A wall stood a few feet away—adobe or an expensive effort to look like adobe. To the right were clumps of brush, thick and high enough to block his view of anything but the tops of some nearby mesquites. To his left lay distant mountains.

  He went back to work on the hole. Every effort made a lot of noise. Mad Dog expected the bad guys to burst through the door any minute. He paused long enough to stack up a bunch of grain bags in front of the door. Not enough to stop them, but enough to give him a warning.

  The hole was already big enough for Cassie now, but he didn’t think she should try to get away on her own. One last super effort should make it big enough for him, too. If that brought the men with their cattle prod, maybe he could put up a fight at the door. At least give the girl a head start.

  But the bags proved unnecessary. He soon had a hole big enough even for a hefty Cheyenne shaman. He followed Cassie through with room to spare.

  Mad Dog had brought a bailing hook and the pitchfork with him. Not the ideal weapons to counter what these guys were probably carrying, but they made him feel better. Mad Dog ducked down against the adobe wall and considered their options. There was a driveway and a cleared field to the west, toward those mountains. The brush to the east offered better concealment, so Mad Dog led them that way.

  When they got to the end of the building, he dropped to his hands and knees, below the top of the scrub. Cassie did the same, and the two of them crawled through a tired screen of desert broom, creosote, and prickly pear. An empty corral lay behind the building. And, where the wall ended, more brush. They angled into it, seeing no one. Hearing no one. Expecting excited yells and the baying of bloodhounds that did not come.

  Mad Dog and the girl bled from dozens of tiny scratches where thorns and brambles made it clear their passage wasn’t welcome. Finally, they came to a place where the brush thinned. A row of mesquites grew along one of the many arroyos that crisscrossed the desert.

  “Down here,” Mad Dog whispered. There had been no rain for weeks. The wash would be bone dry and should prove a perfect route.

  Cassie nodded and followed him through the trees and over the lip of the arroyo. It wasn’t deep, but its sandy bottom was free of prickly vegetation. They could travel fast down here and stay out of sight.

  Mad Dog checked behind them. Still no evidence their escape had been discovered. They had come quite a way northeast of the building in which they’d been held. For the first time, Mad Dog had a clear view of the house in front of the adobe wall.

  “Damn!” he said. He recognized the place. And he recognized the mountains behind it. The house was an unlikely Santa Fe Ranch style and it stood half a mile from his trailer. He’d been kidnapped and brought practically back home. How crazy was that?

  ***

  There was hardly any traffic, and, what with everything going on today, Heather thought circumstances allowed for exceptions to the no-cell-while-driving rule. As she headed west on Ajo Way toward Three Points, Heather flipped open her phone and hit the speed dial to Mad Dog’s place. A motorcycle ran a red light, making the reason not to multitask abundantly clear. It pulled out directly in front of her. Heather slammed on the brakes, lost hold of her cell, and nearly lost control of the Sewa patrol unit.

  Even after she got the Toyota stopped, and scrambled to find her cell on the passenger’s side floor mat, Mad Dog’s phone was still ringing. Damn him for not having an answering machine. She tried his cell. It, too, rang and rang, then went to the message box he never checked.

  She pulled the Toyota back onto the road. As she neared the turn off to her uncle’s place, she felt an overpowering urge to take it. See if he might have gone back home and just wasn’t answering the phone. But Captain Matus had been very specific about how urgently he wanted her and the letter she’d found returned to the reservation. She shook her head and decided to follow orders, this time.

  Until she saw a wolf-like figure sitting in the middle of the highway right at Mad Dog’s turn.

  Heather tried to put flat spots on her patrol unit’s off-road tires. The animal waited, confident, and she managed to stop just short of impact.

  How like Hailey to come get her, Heather thought. But it wasn’t Hailey. It wasn’t even a wolf. A big German Shepherd, whose color and markings were similar to Hailey’s, got up and trotted off the road. Disappeared in the nearby scrub in the direction of Mad Dog’s place.

  Heather would have followed Hailey without hesitation. Hailey had a way of appearing and letting you know when help was needed. Mad Dog believed she was his guardian spirit, and Heather thought that was an accurate description of their relationship. But this hadn’t been Hailey. Still, what were the chances…? Why would a dog just sit in the road right in front of her, just before she would pass the road to her uncle’s place?

  She took the turn. On the way, she tried Mad Dog’s number again. He didn’t pick up, but she had a feeling she would find Mad Dog there. And trouble.

  ***

  Mrs. Kraus was on the verge of trying to sneak out a call again when the Benteen County Sheriff’s Office phone rang. Ned caught her before she could get it. The phone rang a dozen times and then went silent.

  “Who were you trying to call, Mrs. Kraus?” Koestel demanded. “And who was that?”

  Mrs. Kraus gave him a winning smile. “I thought I’d call Bertha and see if she’d come down to the café and cater us some sandwiches and pie and coffee. That incoming call? I have no idea. This phone is thirty or forty years old. Don’t have no caller ID on it. If you’d let me answer, I could tell you. Now I can’t.”

  “Isn’t there some number you can dial to find out where the last incoming call came from?” Koestel asked.

  Mrs. Kraus thought he was right, but she didn’t tell them that. Ned Evans shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said, “but that idea about Bertha’s sounds mighty good to me.”

  Before Koestel could react, another militia member stuck his head and shoulders, and what appeared to be an M4, in the door. “Doc Jones is here to set up our MASH unit. Where do you want him?”

  “What?” Koestel said. “Who called him?”

  The guy spread his hands and disappeared. Doc followed a medical gurney stacked with supplies into the office.

  “Nettie Frost, that’s who called me,” Doc said. “Wally Wasserman put his pickup in the ditch in front of her house and she found him passed out behind the wheel. So she called me. Wally’s not hurt bad. Some bruised ribs and a bloody nose. And a crushed finger. Caught it in the breach of the automatic weapon he was fooling with as he drove to town to join you boys. Crushing the finger’s what caused him to pass out and go in the ditch. Wally tells me you’re seizing local government, so I called his wife to come fetch him home and headed right over. Figured I should be in the same place as all the dead and wounded.” Doc waved a hand at his gurney. “I brought a bunch of body bags. You want to check them out?”

  “Body bags?” Ned Evans took a step back. “Why on earth would you bring body bags, Doc?”

  Doc wrinkled his forehead, which was pretty wrinkled to begin with. “Surely you don’t think you can take over a government building in the middle of America’s war on terror and not have the U.S military slap you down hard and fast.”

  “We’re saving the United States, not going to war with it,” Koestel said.

  “That why you’re wearing that secessionist flag on your cap?” Doc asked. “Wally told me you boys ar
e all upset over Englishman seizing guns. That you’re sure he’s got a team from Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms helping confiscate every weapon in the county. But any damn fool knows that’s not true. Englishman broke up a quarrel this morning, isn’t that right Mrs. Kraus?”

  “Yup.”

  “By himself,” Doc continued. “As usual. No outside help. Right?”

  Mrs. Kraus confirmed that as well.

  “That’s not what we’re hearing,” Koestel countered. “And Crabtree said the sheriff never would have got his guns if it hadn’t been for all those armed men backing Englishman up.”

  “Yeah,” Ned Evans said. “And now Englishman has gone out to the Porters to seize their guns. Word is, shots were fired there. And nobody’s answering their phone.”

  Doc shook his head. “Well, I don’t know what Englishman is doing at the Porters, but if he wanted to confiscate guns, surely he would have come after one of you boys first. I know for a fact several citizens have now reported you to the military. Told them armed terrorists have seized this courthouse and are holding hostages.” He nodded toward Mrs. Kraus. “I suspect a crack counter-terrorism squad is on the way to Benteen County right now. When they get here, I figure you boys will need these body bags, unless I can keep a few of you alive to be tried for treason.”

  Koestel went to the window and peered at the sky, as if expecting to see the black helicopters beginning to circle. Or paratroopers dropping through the clouds. Evans checked a different window. While their backs were turned, Mrs. Kraus raised her eyebrows. Doc shrugged. Confirmation, as far as she was concerned, that he’d just made up all the stuff about a military response. Doc pulled up the edge of a blanket on his gurney. Mrs. Kraus recognized the butt of Doc’s twelve gauge.