Indivisible (Overlooked by Liberty) (5 page)

      
State Police came to reopen the town for government officials.  On the outskirts, reporters from the major networks, with umbrellas and yellow rain slickers reminded the State Troopers of their First Amendment right to cover the event.  But Colebrook citizens had drawn guns to ensure their privacy in mourning.  Though the Federal government had outlawed private ownership of handguns and high-powered rifles years earlier, New Hampshire's people still lived by the Second Amendment--as envisioned by the founding fathers.  State Troopers and reporters alike noticed the thickets on the surrounding hills: Grim-faced Colebrook men dressed in camouflage came into focus through the drizzle; they were scoping reporters and police with high-powered rifles.  But to enforce Federal Law would have been a second bloodletting.  The local residents didn't flinch.

      
Meanwhile inside the church, Mrs. Larson sat near the back with her three remaining children.  Throughout the service, she repeatedly looked down the pew at a lone man seated near the aisle in a dark, Armani suit.  Mrs. Larson was active in the PTA, a member of the Board of Trustees in the Congregational Church, and she supervised the Daisy Girl Scouts for her youngest.  During the school year she worked part-time in Colebrook at the diner on Main Street. As a result, she knew everyone in town.  This man did not belong here.

      
Near the end of the minister's eulogy, the stranger in the aisle seat got up and left the church.  Mrs. Larson ordered her kids to stay put; but she raised her sizable frame and followed the man in the Armani suit outside.

      
"I can't believe it!  I just can't believe it!" Bradley Conrad sputtered.  "Damn it!  I am Barry's father.  You had no right telling your Colebrook cronies to keep me out.  No right!"

      
Helen sat in the car with her ex-husband and blandly watched the road ahead.  She accepted a lift home from the funeral with him, presuming she'd have to put up with his criticism.  She was too numb to care.  "This is some kind of cruel joke," Helen reflected aloud.  "You're finally anxious to visit our son after the boy's death."

      
"What?" asked Bradley.  "Stop ignoring me.  You could at least be civil.  I'm his father."

       
"You
were
his father; you stopped being his father the day you walked out and shacked up with that bimbo of yours--ah, what's-her-face."

      
Bradley pulled over at a convenience store.  "I haven't had anything to eat since breakfast.  You want anything?"

      
She said nothing.

      
He shook his head and climbed out of the car.  Bradley knew there was no talking to her when she got like this.  He left Helen to wallow in her bitterness as the car idled with the windshield wiper whisking.

      
Bradley Conrad worked as a Federal Agricultural Extension Agent for the Northeast Concern.  He advised farmers and farm co-ops about crop trends and sale prices and gave talks on herbicides, pesticides, and soil composition.  He still looked good: tall, dark hair and solidly built; the pudgy waist that accompanied most middle-aged men had passed over him.  He was active in sports even while married: summer softball, skiing, touch football on Sunday mornings while Helen and Barry went to church.

      
Helen resented Bradley leaving her.  She had been the darling of most men in Colebrook at one time.  But she thickened up after having Barry, which changed her into a chunky, middle-aged mom.  Her facial beauty was still there: high cheekbones and thick, dark hair.  Her narrow, hazel eyes added an oriental enchantment.  But the alluring contours that had formerly attracted men hid somewhere beneath thick thighs.

      
She regretted the body change; a once proud, self-assured woman changed into the ordinary.  But as Barry grew up and transformed into a little person, she found her life centered around him, enjoying his happiness, preparing him for his chance at life.  With Barry dead, her life reeled out of focus.  Bitter thoughts dominated her mind, leaving her alone in a world of suspicion.

      
Bradley returned with an ice cream cone.  "What was all the ruckus in town about?"  He started the car and continued on.

      
She looked at him squarely to say it, "A Federal Agent got stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife."

      
He turned quickly, "For real?"

      
Helen closed her eyes to narrow slits, "You should be grateful I kept you from getting into town."

      
Bradley shook his head, "I should have had Barry living with me, the way things are in this armpit of a place."

      
"This 'armpit' is my home.  It was Barry's home.  We were born here.  Stop the car, I'm getting out.  I don't want any favors from you."  When he continued down the road, she yelled, "Stop the damn car!"

      
"Now, you don't mean that, Helen."

      
"'I don't mean that'?  You mean to say I don't know what I'm saying?"

       
"Stop, Helen, I don't need this.  Not after today."  He paused awhile, but couldn't keep from saying it: "You've made it a point to put all the blame for us breaking up on me.  It wasn't just me.  You had
something
to do with it.  That, and your bullheaded brother Max, trying to take my place as a father when I'm not around.  I resented the hell out of that."

      
Helen stared at the side of his face, enraged.  Bradley was fully aware of her temper and watched her warily out the corner of his eye as he drove--still licking his ice cream cone.  But he glanced at the road at just the wrong moment: Helen took a roundhouse swat and drove the ice cream in his face, rubbing it into his pores and down his shirt.  Bradley jerked and shouted as the car swerved to the opposite lane.  Helen jammed her left foot on top of his, on the brake, skidding the vehicle to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road.

      
Leaping out, she slammed the car door and kicked it, then stomped off into the woods adjacent to her home.  Shortly after entering the forest, Helen followed a worn trail through an open stand of hemlocks.  Gray light from clouded skies peeked through the conifers.  Droplets clung desperately to needle tips--only to be yanked loose by a gust of wind that stirred through the trees.  An August wind, colder than usual, whispered sounds and carried fragrances of evergreen.  Helen noticed none of it.

      
She stumbled upon a rustic campsite just off a trail: Rocks encircled a fire pit, a brush lean-to was off to the side.  Its roof was an old plastic tablecloth --her tablecloth.  Helen looked around the camp and found a box.  She lifted the lid and discovered her kitchen knife, some silverware, matches, and a picture of Tater and her with Barry.  Her eyes brimmed with tears as she studied it.   It seemed like just yesterday they had taken that hike and set the camera to automatically photograph them in front of Cascade Falls.  Helen looked through all the articles and smiled; she would have scolded Barry for playing with knives and taking her kitchen utensils.  Now she sat in his lean-to and recalled what a solid young man he had become.  She couldn't recall when he stopped asking for a bedtime kiss; she wished that nightly routine hadn't ended.

      
Helen followed the trail out of the woods to her lane that curved between large pine trees.  She spotted Max's truck in her driveway.  Her brother waited for her inside.

-

The White House (August 17)

      
The decor in the Oval Office was a seventeenth century motif, from the carpet to the ridged, Baroque furniture.   Near the window, a Gothic bird cage of wrought-iron and mahogany housed a peregrine falcon.  Like its relative the hawk, its eyes zoomed in on unsuspecting prey: this time, a small bird in the forsythia, safe beyond the windowpane.

       
"You screwed up, Captain!  It
was
Captain, wasn't it?" Chief of Staff Lucas Bennett pranced about in rage.  Captain Thomas was their scapegoat for the Dixville incident--at least unofficially.  "How could you let that gun cut loose like that--without anyone watching over it?  What the hell happened?"  President Clifford Winifred and Secretary of Defense Kyle Paz looked on as Chief of Staff Bennett performed the debriefing. 

      
Lucas was medium height and lanky, rather good looking with dark, slicked back hair, dark eyes as well.  A disappointment to women who looked on him longingly, the tiny tattoo on his left cheek denoted his lifestyle, and he was not the least ashamed of it.  In fact, he had been described as arrogant; Lucas always had a look of contempt.  He listened to other's ideas but Bennett's opinion usually had a dig within it, designed to poison the source of other's suggestions that vied for the President's favor.  He was Chief of Staff, young, and he had the power to include or exclude anyone from the audience of the President.

      
Captain Thomas sat at attention; eyes fixed, head up and facing forward; his brown skin glistened with sweat.  "The metal sensors were shutdown.  And for some reason no soldiers had been designated to to watch over the unit, sir.  Even without supervision, AutoMen used mass, heat, and motion as a qualifier for targeting."

      
"And who shutdown the metal sensor, Captain?"  Bennett stared at the soldier from the side, only inches away from Thomas' face.

      
"I take full responsibility for anything that happens under my command, sir."  Thomas' expression and tone never changed.  And he did take responsibility; they stationed four AutoMen on the trails of upper New Hampshire and Vermont.  Twice, smugglers got by them.  As Thomas' commanding officers applied pressure, the technician had taken it upon himself to change the program on the AutoMen so the reprobates would be detected. 

      
"That isn't what I asked, Captain!  I asked who, Captain?  Who?"

       
Thomas rotated to Bennett now, "I said I take full responsibility for my men,
Mr
. Bennett."  It was a stare-down.  Thomas didn't blink.

      
Lucas had contempt for the military.  Even after fully integrating the armed services with women and ethnics, there was still that macho camaraderie among males who served.  Bennett resented the gays' condition in military life, how they were excluded from off-base activities; the straight-male faction of the military still had their own exclusive cliques.

      
Secretary of Defense Kyle Paz stood near the door at the back of the room, finally unable to contain himself.  He cleared his throat before speaking, "This isn't necessary, Mr. President.  This is a debriefing, not an inquisition."  General Paz, a brawny Latino with wavy hair, had made it to the top because of his political savvy--knowing who not to rile.  In this case, he had to speak up; Captain Thomas had been a victim of events. 

      
It had been the President's idea to stop the contraband medical supplies smuggled from Quebec.  Chief of Staff Bennett had approached Paz three months ago in a meeting, the Secretary recalled well:

      
"Use Army Regulars, the Rangers from the Capitol here.  We want to keep things quiet.  The National Guard can't be trusted to keep their mouths shut."

      
"I'll begin as soon as I get my orders," said the General.

      
"You have your orders."

      
"Nothing in writing?"

      
"You know what we need as an outcome.  Make an example of someone."  Lucas Bennett leaned closer to the General, "Draw some blood." 

      
General Paz squinted as he stared back at the Chief of Staff, "I don't like this.  It isn't procedure."  The General knew what Lucas meant, but he didn't like having no orders to authorize his mission in the North Country.  He had seen death before . . . and the idea of neutralizing scoundrels smuggling contraband from Quebec didn't bother him, but Kyle knew nothing about the people of the North Country.  The tactical skills demonstrated by southerners in the Tobacco Wars a year earlier had surprised the White House; the Tobacco Boys, as they were called, inflicted tremendous casualties.  In war, missions don't always work out the way they are planned. 

      
"Politics contradicts proper procedure," Lucas explained.  "You've come too far not to understand that, Kyle.  You're a smart man.  Don't worry, we don't plan on pissing anyone off before the election.  If we succeed in settling the North Country problem, President Winifred gets the credit and you move up in the party.  If it doesn't work out, you get the blame but you still move up in the party.  I don't have to tell you how it works."

      
Now, when Paz's premonitions about the North Country directive had come true, he wasn't about to let an officer under him hang when the White House had initiated the mission.

      
Lucas broke the stare first, looking to Paz with contempt.

      
"You're right, General," said the President.  Lucas backed off and looked around the room impatiently as President Winifred continued, "But it is a major screw-up and could have been damaging if there had been survivors."  Winifred looked at the laptop monitor on his desk that displayed a list of names of Colebrook's Cub Scouts; Butch and Thad Rousell weren't on the list.  "Captain Thomas, you're responsible for any loose talk from your team.  That action at Dixville was classified top secret and remains that way."  He looked to everyone in the room, "Are there any questions?"  Clifford then turned to Secretary of Defense Kyle Paz, "General?"