Indivisible (Overlooked by Liberty) (4 page)

      
Tater sensed her distress.  She pushed up the truck's back lid with her nose and bounded to the ground.  In four bounds, she was in the thick of the crowd staring down at her lifeless master.

      
Helen pushed her way through the group.  "Oh God, is that my son?"  Mrs. Larson stopped doing CPR and looked up with tears in her eyes.

      
"Don't stop!" said Butch.  "He was just alive on the trail.  Don't stop!"

      
Helen crowded the woman aside and took over mouth-to-mouth ventilation.  Mrs. Larson continued on heart massage.  Between breaths, Helen asked, "Did anyone radio the hospital?"  Someone in the group said they had.  After a few more breaths she blurted, "We've got to take him to the hospital.  Now!"

      
Still performing CPR, three women and Max reached under Barry and carried him to the back of the pickup.  Tater followed, prancing and whining.  As Helen and Mrs. Larson crawled in, Tater jumped in the back with them.  "Get out, you damn dog!" Larson yelled.  Another woman tried to grab the dog's collar to pull it out, but Tater snarled and flared teeth.

      
"Just go!  Just go!" yelled Helen between breaths.

      
The tailgate and back door stayed open as Max sped off down the hill, leaving the anxious parents behind with a glimpse of their own boys' fates.

      
Tater, perked ears and motionless, gazed longingly at her pallid companion and whined.  When Helen came up for air, Tater dipped down to lick the boy's face to wake him as she had every morning.  Helen pushed the dog back.  "Stay, you mutt."  Helen paused, "Barry, you can't die.  You can't."  She turned and gazed at Tater; the distressed animal had a look of confusion.

      
Helen shared that anxiety.  Her son was her life.  After her failed marriage and the illusion of true love shattered, she clung to the hope that her son would not be deprived of a happy childhood.  Her ex-husband Bradley, rarely paid child support and didn't visit his son for months at a time.  She struggled to make payments, cleaning rooms for the Balsams Resort after she had lost her nursing job due to Federal cutbacks.  In her youth, Helen had been smart and attractive; grades came easy in school, boys crowded to be near her.  All that had changed, she learned what it was like to struggle; she had discovered failure.  Helen had been determined not to let her fate affect Barry's happiness.  Now, the life she gave breath to was her own.

      
Her face streaked with tears, Mrs. Larson squeaked, "My boy was up there too."  Her sizable frame quivered as she said it.

      
Helen wiped the tears from her cheeks and continued resuscitation.

      
Max opened the back window of the cab, "Holler if it's too rough back there."  Uncle Max had raced stock cars in his younger days; he was a mechanic now.  Today he raced for life, accelerating out of corners faster than he went into them--using his horn as a siren.  Whining the Nissan to an extreme rpm, he jettisoned in front of other cars just before oncoming traffic whisked by.  Trees, farms, and fields of wildflowers zipped by in an undefined mass.  And the stunning red sunset they raced toward went unappreciated because of its blood-like hue.

      
"There's a dog trying to get into the hospital," said an orderly, entering the emergency room.  "It bit a guy."

      
Mrs. Larson relinquished her spot on heart massage to a nurse, and found a man at the hospital to take her back to Dixville Notch.

      
"Somebody get the defibrillator and prep 1cc of adrenaline for injection!" Helen ordered.  "And where's the damn doctor?  Who's on duty?"  Helen insisted on staying at her son's side, even though she no longer worked at Upper Connecticut Valley Regional Hospital.

      
In a two-patient room on the ground level, a nurse delivered dinner to Margaret Bouvier.  Mrs. Bouvier was raising a spoon of green gelatin to her mouth just when Tater dove through her screened window and bound out the other side of the room toward the hallway.  Gelatin on Margaret's spoon flew into the air; her tray landed on the floor.  The nurse ran into the hall after the animal.  Undaunted, Tater's paws clicked on tile as she slid around corners.

      
"What the hell's wrong?  Where's the hypo?  Where are the damn paddles to jolt him?"  Helen used a mechanical ventilator now instead of mouth-to-mouth.  The young doctor she was addressing stood aloof with the boy's statistics chart in hand.  Deb Philbin, Helen's best friend and former coworker, was on duty and worked the heart compressor--but out of courtesy; Barry felt cool to the touch.

      
"Helen," said the doctor, "I'm sorry, your son has been dead for awhile."

      
"That's impossible.  He was alive fifteen minutes ago," She snapped.

      
"Not according to his temperature."

      
Deb looked at Helen's face but kept working.  Helen didn't answer.  She just kept staring down at her boy and squeezing the resuscitator.  Tater shoved her nose between the double swinging doors, walked over and sat below Barry's table.  She had sniffed and probed and finally found her way to her friend.

      
The doctor exploded: "How'd that dog get in here?  Deb, get it out of here!  Deb?"

      
Deb never changed her rhythm, meanwhile pleading with the doctor silently with her eyes.  She couldn't stop, not until Helen was ready.

      
"Helen, I sympathize with you, but you can't bring him back.  Touch him.  Come on, there might be other wounded coming in and we're understaffed as it is."

      
Helen stopped resuscitation and took Barry's mouthpiece off.  She rubbed some of the dirt blotches off his face.  It was as if he slept like a toddler.  She flung herself over her boy and wailed.

      
Tater pranced and whimpered at the sight.  But a whimper was all she could do; the dog couldn't bark, a hunting accident several years earlier left the animal without voice.  She nudged Barry's hand with her nose and waited for a response.

      
Deb Philbin left the table so Helen could be alone with her boy.  Though many years older than Helen, they were best friends and she felt the loss.  She wondered about her grandson who was also on the mountain.

      
The doctor affirmed to Deb, "Look, I believe I gave you an order.  Get the damn dog out and get this place ready in ten minutes."

      
Dr. Tim Remington was new in Colebrook.  He hated being there.  Transferred from a larger urban hospital by the Federal Health Board, he resented the lack of respect nurses gave him.  He had graduated from an Ivy League school as a surgeon; now here he was, stuck in a backwater village to replace doctors who defected from the local health alliance.

      
Helen pulled her son to an upright position and hugged him--rocked him like a baby.  Deb watched, motionless.  She turned to Tim and spoke deliberately, "She needs a little time."

      
"Don't use this tragedy as an excuse to undermine me again.  I'm sick and tired of it.  Get the dog out and clean up the place or I'll write you up for insubordination."

       
"You don't understand.  They killed a mother's son!" Deb shouted.  Then she couldn't stop her own tears, "
You
get the dog!"

      
Tim walked past Deb, pointing his finger in her face, "I'm writing you up!"

       
When the doctor reached for the animal's collar, Tater snapped at him with flared teeth and bit his outstretched hand.  "Ahhhhh!  That damn dog bit me.  The sheriff will take care of this."  Tim stomped toward the door.  To Deb he repeated, "And I
am
still writing you up."

      
Deb set her jaw, "Kiss my ass, Doctor!"

      
Helen continued to rock her son, now singing a lullaby.  Her worst fear had been realized: Now, she was thoroughly alone.

      
Tater watched and somehow knew.  She'd seen death before in the hunt, partaken of it in feast.  This was different.  A friend who had been a daily part of her life for seven years lay cold as the groundhog had.  And the soul who laughed and tossed sticks for her to chase, had gone elsewhere.  Tater collapsed below the table with chin on forepaws, feeling an emptiness she couldn't understand.

      
Lush green rolled from hill to hill; all was cut to carpet level.  The tree lines lacked the usual scruffy weeds that customarily line a golf course.  Artificial rock formations rose above the grass here and there.  On the far side of a pond, President Winifred and Chief of Staff Lucas Bennett were planning their final putts on bluegrass around the sixth hole.

      
Security personnel, all dressed in black overcoats with receivers plugged in one ear, encircled the area.  They talked to one another through transmitters clipped to their lapels.

      
An Army Private chauffeured Secretary of Defense Kyle Paz to the green in a cart; they stopped at the edge of the green.  The ball Lucas had putted cut to the right of the hole and passed beyond it ten feet.  He turned to the intruders with contempt.

      
Kyle reported grimly of the Dixville incident to President Winifred and Chief of Staff Bennett.

      
A security person above the valley watched as Lucas slammed the golf cart twice with his club and hurled the putter into the pond.  The President shook his head and paused in thought.  A flock of sparrows fluttered about the leaves of a nearby tree and caught the security guard's attention; the guard looked to see what stirred them so.

Chapter 3

Colebrook, New Hampshire four days after the massacre (August 16)

      
Seated in the first row at the funeral service, Helen caressed a photograph of Barry with the back of her hand.  A flood of memories . . . his first day of school.  She smiled;
He was so frightened--standing there at the bus stop with his little backpack on.  And that blond-haired girl in his school play who had a crush on him; he was so bashful.
  She scraped a tear from her cheek and pulled a tissue from her purse to wipe her nose.  "I won't forget a thing," she whispered to herself.

      
"That's right," confirmed Max seated beside her.  "We won't forget a damn thing." He referred to the Feds and his vow of revenge.  The evidence he had found at the massacre site confirmed everything Butch had said: It
was
Army Regulars.  Washington denied everything.  Max concluded that if justice existed in this nation, it had to be taken.

      
More like brothers, Max and Barry had done a lot together: hiking, canoeing.  Max helped Mr. Ronolou whenever he could.  His relationship with Barry had been critical after Helen's divorce.  Helen had asked him to help her by taking her son to sporting and Scouting events.  Her intent had been to create a male presence for her child; a bond had formed.  Max
wished
he had been with Barry that day at Dixville.

      
Medium height and stocky, Max had chocolate-brown hair and piercing dark eyes.  He felt responsible for the Scout Troop attack because he had organized the smuggling ring used to bring medical supplies to the States from Quebec.  He concluded the Feds automated ambush had been waiting for them.  Max had grimly helped collect the scattered remains left at the Dixville Massacre.  He was well beyond grieving; Max's mind whirled.  He sucked his teeth and planned his next move. 

      
Desperate measures to circumvent the Federally run health care system had come about after a decade of economic decay.  Taxation due to The War on Terrorism and Federal regulations created the downturn.  A year before, the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont had formed a community covenant to take care of local needs, bypassing Federal HMOs.  Max's smuggling operation supplied the Northeast Kingdom as well as the newly formed Colebrook Covenant with medical supplies.  The Dixville Massacre, as the media dubbed it, consolidated the hatred of rural Vermont and New Hampshire toward big government.  Despite the cover-up by the White House, everyone in the region knew about the Massacre through illegal CB broadcasts near Todd Hill in Vermont.

      
Colebrook's First Congregational Church had the original straight-back pews installed at the building's dedication in 1802.  Though refurbished many times, the structure still proclaimed the same principles elders envisioned at its inception.  The same bell in the church's white steeple that rang to assemble the community for the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, now rang sixty-four times--once for each child lost.  The clanging echoed through the valley as people walked toward its source in silence.

      
At the request of aggrieved parents, local police, firefighters, friends, and neighbors blocked off all roads into the village to keep out reporters or politicians who wished to attend.