Last Call America- Last Call Before Darkness Falls

by Debra Tash

  A half hour ticked by before Mrs. Bradley and her child were at the front table, handing over their rations cards. Everyone had to collect their share in person. The Bradleys were handed back their cards and told to move on. Christina and I performed the same ritual and were ushered into the cavernous depths of what had been our local grocery store.

  The shelving, once chock-full of goods, had been removed, leaving the inside an open landscape as barren as the trees outside. We went to the back, where dark, empty coolers lined the wall.

  Stacks of boxes were piled in front of them, marked and sorted by contents. Christina picked up one box from each stack and placed them in the collapsible pushcart we found by rummaging through our attic. Vera used to wheel it through local swap meets, buying things none of us needed but always treasured. The Bradleys towed a red plastic wagon and filled it as they went. When we were nearly to the back door, Mrs. Bradley paused and gazed at that wagon, a puzzled look on her beautiful face. The armed guard swept his rifle toward the exit, a silent order to move. Giving no word of protest, she stepped outside.

  Christina placed the last of our supplies in the pushcart. Done, we went through the back door and outside to the rear parking lot. Mrs. Bradley knelt by their wagon, opening boxes and shaking her head. She looked at the two of us. “I thought so. I did. See this?” She held open a box. “They’re cutting rations. They cut them a little bit the last time we were here. I thought it was a mistake. But they cut it even more today.”

  We joined them and quickly examined the box’s contents. I hadn’t noticed any draw down in rations, but it didn’t matter to us, with having more than enough.

  “How am I going to feed my baby?” she pleaded. “It’s three days until they’ll let us have more. This will last a day if we’re lucky. Why did they take our food? Raid our gardens?” Her face contorted with anger. “They’ve no right to starve us to death!” She broke down and wept. Her little boy rubbed her back.

  “Here, Mrs. Bradley.” Christina reached into our pushcart. “You can have some of ours.”

  “Why would you give us your food?”

  “Because we can get by on less,” Tina answered.

  “How?”

  “We’re used to living lean,” my sister lied. She gave them as much as she could put in the wagon.

  “Just make sure no one sees you with the extra rations,” I warned.

  The woman nodded, obliviously still struck by Christina’s kindness.

  As we walked off, Mrs. Bradley called, “God bless you!”

  I threaded my arm through Christina’s and laid my head on her shoulder, smelling the sweet scent of her long dark hair. My sister was such a gentle creature. It didn’t matter that we had stores of our own and that we didn’t suffer from want. She had taken a risk in leaving a question behind with Mrs. Bradley.

  But my peaceful respite didn’t last long. I disentangled myself as we walked on, head hung as I jammed my hands into my jacket pockets. I plodded beside Christina as anger welled up in me. It flared against the authorities who had stolen our life’s blood and now held it back with a greedy fist. Such rage inside. We were once human beings, once neighbors and friends. Now we had been reduced to hungry rats. I suddenly felt just as soulless as the faceless machine destroying us.

  When we got to the house, I stopped at the back door. “I think I’m going to go for a walk.”

  “It’s too cold out,” Christina said.

  “You’re sounding like Poole now.” I turned and went off just as a light snow began to fall. I walked past the Distribution Center where the line still snaked outside the door and around the corner. I walked by instinct, followed some ingrained childhood memory. I walked until I found myself outside our church, looking up at the bare steeple. At that moment, its missing cross possessed a deep and bruising meaning. “God bless you,” Mrs. Bradley had said. Where was He, the God my father and Vera had prayed to? Where was He, the One who left us in shackles like the Israelites, enslaved not to Pharaoh, but the heartless government? We had all been abandoned.

  I spotted a solitary figure standing in the middle of the burying ground behind the church. I hesitated, then sucked in a deep breath and started toward him. “Sergeant Hernandez!”

  He didn’t acknowledge me even when I came up beside him.

  Several long moments passed until I finally asked, “Are you all right?”

  He just continued to stand there, looking at the old cemetery.

  We were silent as the falling snow lightly peppered our faces.

  After a time, he spoke, his voice a hoarse whisper. “The ghosts. They’re here.”

  I gazed at the November landscape, the tombstones and patches of earth where the first snow had melted and was being replaced by new crystals of white. My heart became a muffled tattoo playing in my ears. There was nothing out there but that lonely prospect and the cool hush of snow.

  He turned to me, his tattered winter jacket pulled up to his chin.

  “I’m part Suquamish. Actually, mostly Suquamish. A tribe that lived along the Kitsnap Peninsula across Puget Sound from Seattle. The Suquamish had their own museum at one time. Dedicated to the tribe’s history. I would go there when it was open. It’s not there any longer…like so much of what we had. Well…when it was, I would take the ferry from the city and cross the Sound. Chief Seattle’s buried near the museum. Not far. Just behind the Catholic mission. I would sit by his grave for hours. And you see, there’s this marker…a grave marker, white and weathered…it had, well, up on top…” He bent back his head, eyes fixed on the sky. It seemed as if he were trying to pierce the gray shield above us to see something out of reach.

  He slowly lowered his head, his gaze set on the cemetery once more. “It was white marble perched on a granite pedestal. There was a weathered cross on top of it. I’d sit there listening to the ghosts.” Hernandez leveled his gaze on me. “You understand? Chief Seattle and the others. They would tell me about the end of their world.”

  The sergeant shifted his weight and adjusted the rifle at his shoulder. “Guess it’s what got me interested in history. The mistakes. The ones they had made. The ones we keep making.” He turned to the burying ground again, his voice lowered to a bare whisper. “I’m still listening. Even if no one else will.”

  With that, he walked off, leaving me alone.

  Dinner passed rather quietly, absent remarks laced with innuendos and jabs. It seemed as if the four of us were attending a wake, each of us having experienced some unspeakable tragedy.

  When the dishes were cleared and placed in the sink, Poole pushed back from the table. “To the parlor. If you don’t mind.”

  Without protest, we went into the den. Poole opened a drawer of our father’s desk and took out the half-empty bottle of brandy left over from two nights of his solo drinking. Neither my sister nor I had ever taken any of the liquor, and after that first time, the sergeant had passed on it as well. Hernandez removed wood from a stash he had carried up and left in the closet. Soon, a warm fire flickered in our potbelly stove. As usual, Poole stood before it, glass in hand, silently watching the flames feed off the seasoned wood.

  Christina sat on the couch, reading one of her books, while the sergeant, seated on the couch as well, just looked to the solitary window as if he were still listening to those echoes from the past. I exited the room to find a glass, then came back and walked to the desk. After grabbing hold of the bottle Poole had left there, I poured myself a tall drink and took a long swallow. It burned all the way down to my gut.

  All three looked at me. Poole put his back to the fire and lifted his glass. “Here’s to whatever reason is inspirin’ you to imbibe, Honey Beck. May it be far different from the one that’s inspirin’ me this fine evening.”

  I lifted my glass. “Well then, Poole Sugar, here’s to all the reasons you have, especially the one this evening.” We bo
th took a drink.

  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Oh, Beck, you have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “You like me to guess?”

  He grew sullen, turned around, and stared into the depths of the fire again as he grumbled, “Damn it.” He finished off the contents of his glass. “Well, let’s start with the first. You ever hear of Civil Asset Forfeiture?”

  No one answered.

  He poured himself another drink. “It’s perfectly legal, Beck. If someone does a crime on your property, well, the law can mosey on in and take that property away from you. Mosey-posey on in. Yes, ma’am. Amen.” He had half the glass emptied by the time he reached the stove. “We had a ranch outside of Fredericksburg. Quite a spread at one time. Some real fine country. Whittled down by the Feds from over five hundred acres to a measly ten. Mother was a widow and I was just out of high school. Couple of good ol’ boys were dealing drugs out back. We didn’t know it. Had nothing to do with it. We were as innocent as prairie dust.” He chuckled, finished that glass, and held the empty crystal to the fire, letting the light break into sparkling shards through its prism. “Those good ol’ boys were caught. Off to the hoosegow with the pair.”

  Once more he faced me, arms crossed. “The authorities seized our property. Land my family homesteaded at the end of the nineteenth century. Mother fought them in court. Fought them until she was broke and broken. And my ma just up and died, leaving me to shift for myself.”

  “You seemed to have done well enough,” I said, my tone cold, despite the brandy roasting my gut.

  “That I did, Beck!” He laughed until he ran out of breath. “Leastways when it came to our old house. I burned the damn place to the ground.” Poole started for the desk to finish off the bottle.

  I blocked his way and screamed, “Then why the hell did you become one of them?”

  Poole looked into my eyes, refusing to give me an answer.

  “They didn’t give you any other choice, isn’t that it?”

  Still no response.

  I refused to be intimated any longer. “No choice, Poole, but to starve the people here?”

  “The Federal Authority is starving them. And let me tell you something, the Department of Homeland Security just issued units all across these fair United States enough hollow-point ammunition to kill an army. And with it, they gave them and the regulars orders to use it. Didn’t they, Hernandez?”

  Now it was the sergeant who wouldn’t answer. I took a step back.

  Poole took one forward. “That’s right, Beck. Orders to shoot at will when—not if—the civilian population rebels.” He spat. “Like I said, thinning the herd. And soon you’ll all be pushed into the city. Leave Farmsworth behind. Your stash of food. The weapons your daddy stockpiled. All of it. Into the city to be assigned your permanent occupation. My guess, it won’t be serving hash. But what else you’re good for, God only knows.”

  Poole finally pushed by me and emptied the bottle into his glass.

  I whirled about and shouted, “You’d do that? Help them turn us into slaves? The same bastards who took your land and drove your mother to her death?”

  I waited but received only his indifference for an answer. With fists raised, I came at him.

  He grabbed my wrists, held me off, and yelled, “You really want to know the truth, Beck?”

  My mouth went dry. Something in his expression made me feel I didn’t want to know any of it.

  Poole pulled me closer, his breath heavy with the brandy he’d just drunk. “I hate the bastards. All of them. If I could, I’d use that ammo to blow them to hell. Sons of bitches sitting fat and sassy in D.C. Starving the people by design. Tamping them down into the new global workforce. Waiting for them to rise up so they can smash them into servitude. Getting the men and women in uniform to take out babies, the old and crippled, anyone who they deem unfit to live. Anyone who can’t contribute to the State anymore. Yes, Beck, it’s all by design. Grand scheme. Master plan. And they just about have us to the finish line.” Poole finally let go. “Dear God, help me.” He picked up his glass and drained it.

  “Don’t do it. Fight back! Fight and burn their damn house to the ground.”

  “How?” he snapped. “You think our company can hold off what DHS can throw at us? Even if we arm all the sheep out there with your daddy’s arsenal, are you that fucking stupid to think we can win against Homeland Security?”

  “Yes,” I answered, trying to keep my back straight.

  “Damn it all, here I thought you were a smart Bay State gal.” He shook his head and put his back to me, returning his attention to the fire. “You need someone on the inside of DHS. Deep inside, if you want to get by their security and get hold of some real armament.” He snorted. “Advanced state-of-the-art shit.”

  “I have someone on the inside.”

  He looked over his shoulder, an eyebrow cocked.

  “My mother.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Put your hands behind your back,” Poole ordered as we stood together in our abandoned diner.

  I did as I was told. Poole put me in restraints, loops of black plastic that went around my wrists. He slid the locking bar up to where the two bands were threaded together.

  “That’s too tight,” Christina protested, her voice a trembling whisper.

  “It’s okay,” I assured her.

  “Hernandez will keep an eye on you while I take your sister in for questioning,” the captain informed Tina.

  Standing beside my sister, the sergeant nodded and answered with a crisp, “Yes, sir.”

  Poole led me through the front door to the Humvee parked at the curb. A few people who had been passing by had stopped to peer through the diner’s window. They watched as I was paraded out to the vehicle. The Humvee had four doors and what looked like a short truck bed at the rear. The paint job, shades of green on a canvas background, had chipped and flaked from wear.

  The captain opened one of the rear doors and had me climb inside. It smelled of sweat, acrid and not all that pleasant. I sat in what seemed to be a jump seat. A large divider-like console ran down the Humvee’s center, starting between the two front seats to the vehicle’s rear. Poole slammed the door shut, got in the driver’s side, and started off. He looked at me through the driver’s side mirror. “David will keep a good eye on your sister.”

  “I know he will.”

  “Did you bring the map you were talking about?”

  “Yes. It’s in my underwear.”

  “Geez. Let’s hope it’s still legible.”

  I stuck out my tongue, then studied the equipment at the front of the vehicle. One item looked to be a scope, another a radio perhaps, and still another some kind of tracking device, all sophisticated instruments. “You must have GPS in this thing.”

  “Disabled.”

  My teeth chattered. “Hope you didn’t disable the heater.”

  “You’ll get warm soon enough.”

  When we went through the first checkpoint at the edge of the city, we weren’t asked for orders. These men were under Poole’s command and he told them I was his prisoner. Just outside of town, the captain pulled off the road and down a dirt track. The tires spun up snow, creating fountains of white powder cascading on either side of the Humvee.

  Poole stopped and turned in his seat. “Your hands.”

  I put my back to him as he took a knife and sliced off the restraints.

  “Gear’s under the front passenger seat. Knock on the window when you’re changed.” With that, he opened the driver’s door, got out, and shut it behind him.

  After getting on my knees, I pulled out a set of fatigues, neatly folded with a pair of boots stowed with them. Once I wiggled out of my clothes, I donned the military garb. The sleeves went past my hands and the pants swam around my middle. The only things close to fitting were the boots
after I slipped the army-issued socks over my own. I pulled on the heavy winter jacket, also too large. Instead of knocking on the window, I flung open the door, scuttled out, yelling, “What’s with this?”

  Leaning against the hood, Poole turned to look at me. I stood in the snow with my right hand holding up my pants, and my left arm spread wide with the jacket hanging off.

  He shook his head and chuckled. “Damn, ain’t that a sight?”

  “I gave you my size!”

  “And I forgot it.” He pulled his door wide open. “Now get in before your pants fall off.”

  I hiked them up, slid onto the front passenger side, and yanked the door shut. He got in, reached down under his seat, and slapped a cap on my head.

  “When we go through the next two checkpoints keep your mouth shut, private.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” I grumbled.

  “It’s ‘Yes, sir, Captain,’ unless you plan on joining the navy.”

  “If you say so, Poole Sugar.”

  He threw the Humvee into gear. “So I have, Honey Beck.”

  In less than a half hour, we went through the second checkpoint just outside of Boston before we entered the interstate. At the stop, Poole produced a peek, a toothpick-sized device that had our orders on it. The sentries placed it next to their tabs to read the contents. Whatever was on the tiny device passed inspection. Relieved, I sat back and set my eyes ahead. From time to time, I could feel Poole studying me, trying to penetrate my silence. After a while, I closed my eyes and fell into a fitful sleep to escape him.

  “Final checkpoint at the border. Look lively!”

  Startled awake, I sat straight and hurriedly tucked my far-too-generous uniform in place.

  “Look lively, Beck, not panicked.”

  I took a deep breath, and attempted to be lively without showing my anxiety. Poole handed one of the two soldiers at the checkpoint our orders. My empty stomach growled, loud and long enough to cause the two sentries to stare at me.