Liberty or Death (12 page)

On the table were a couple dozen lemons, a knife, and a cutting board. As I came in, Theresa waved a thin hand toward them. "Could you make wedges, for iced tea?" I grabbed the knife, pretending each lemon was Roy Belcher. The work went fast.

The evening was a big blur. We were insanely busy and I rushed back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room like a little wind-up robot. All over the dining room, there were conversations I wanted to eavesdrop on but there wasn't a chance. The whole place was buzzing with talk about the confrontation between Norah Kavanaugh and the boy who had been shot. That was normal. It was a small town, after all, and he was a local boy. It was the tone of the conversation that was surprising. Even in snatches, it made me shiver with fear for Andre and the other troopers I knew.

I heard it first from a motherly, gray-haired woman in a powder-blue cardigan. As I was setting down her dinner, she said to the man sitting across from her, "It's like I told you, Ben. The time of reckoning has come. When our authorities begin shooting us down, like that woman cop did to poor Danny Parker, just like that shooting over to Jackman, it has begun. Time for us to take up our weapons just like our forefathers did and stand up for ourselves." She patted her permed gray curls, asked for extra butter, and said, "There's nothing illegal about a citizen shooting a government official when that government has begun to operate illegally." I almost dropped her dinner in her lap.

I might have dismissed her as a crazy—motherly looking older ladies can be crazy, after all—but that was just the first of many. It's one thing to read about the militia movement—it's scary enough on paper—but to hear it, sense it, feel it seething all around me? There have been times in my life when I felt like an alien who has landed in a strange place where everyone looked familiar but sounded incredibly wrong. This was worse than the worst of those. I knew from my reading how plausible some of the ideas could sound to people who felt disenfranchised and helpless, and how that could lead to paranoia. Intellectually, I understood how those twisted second-amendment arguments could appeal to independent, rural, gun-owning folks, especially in a place like this where a bad economy, mill closings, and the threat of converting paper-company land into a national forest had affected people's lifestyles and livelihoods. But as I learn over and over, there is a giant difference between book learning and the real world.

The real world was right here. A cheerful, noisy, knotty-pine-paneled dining room in a small Maine town along the shores of Rangeley Lake. A decor of mounted fish, deer, and moose heads, with a few mediocre paintings by a local artist. A full spectrum of the population, from fragile senior citizens with walkers to tiny blanket-swathed newcomers to the planet. The clink of silverware. Smells of delicious food. And lively conversation about hanging all the deputies from the county sheriff's department from bridges or shooting them all like Gary Pelletier and dumping their bodies downstate.

That would send a message to those fools down in Augusta who didn't understand a damned thing about how it was to be an ordinary working man up here. State bureaucrats sent their fish-and-game inspectors, their forest wardens, their park rangers up here to tell people where and when they could hunt and fish and hike and cut some firewood and snowmobile. These were all things they'd done perfectly well their whole lives without no government busybody telling 'em when, where, and how.

"Goddamn government wants to tell us what color we can paint our houses."

"They want us to register our guns. You know why? So they know who has 'em. Then when the New World Order comes, they can take our guns away. Gun control is just the first step."

"I heard they've got a big stockade up to the Limerock Air-force Base. That's the first place they'll take people."

If I heard it once, I heard it a dozen times. "Well, I've got my gun. Let 'em come up here and try to tell me what to do. I know my rights. My constitutional rights. When the government begins to betray the Constitution, it's up to all of us—the constitutional militia—to take matters into our own hands." It scraped on my nerves until I felt raw.

All right. Jack Leonard had tried to tell me, coldly and pedantically, but he'd tried. "Believe me, Thea. You have no idea what you're getting into."

I hadn't. I've always hated to admit it when someone else is right. I've grown up and matured and gotten better at it. I'm striving for wisdom and balance. I can listen openly and fairly to the other side of an argument. Even though Andre still accuses me of being pigheaded and stubborn and too sure I'm right, I'm more balanced. Able to consider the other guy's point of view. But these other guys' points of view, considered or not, scared me to death.

Any second I was going to drop a hot plate of food onto some poor, hungry, gun-toting customer. I had to get away for a minute and get a grip on myself. As I hurried through the kitchen, I called to Clyde. "I'll be right back. I've got to get some air."

Even the back porch was too bright. I needed the darkness. Someplace that wouldn't assault my senses. Someplace away from all the noise and commotion. They were only words but it seemed to me that the dining room was full of bright swords, slashing through the air, pricking me a million times. I did not bleed. What flowed out was my energy and hope. My head was bursting with the things I'd heard; my heart gripped with fear for Andre, for myself, for all of us. For where this thing was heading. I was the last person who should have been surprised to discover that the world was going to hell. I'd seen man's inhumanity to man up close and personal. But I suffered from persistent naïveté. Fool that I am, I had come here believing I could help.

I leaned against my car. The metal, still faintly warm from the sun, seemed to be trying to comfort me. I closed my eyes and fought against my rising fear and despair. For the third time, I felt Clyde's butterfly touch between my shoulder blades.

"Dora, you okay?" he asked. In the cool air, his body gave off waves of heat. I wanted to hurl myself against his broad chest and wail. But I didn't win all those Miss Independence awards for nothing. Needing people is a step down the slippery slope. I only needed one person. The one I couldn't have.

"I'm fine." F.I.N.E.
F
ucked up.
I
nsecure.
N
eurotic.
E
motional. I
was
fine.

"Here." He pressed an icy glass into my hand. Ginger ale. The universal tonic for the ailing. "Take your time. World won't end if people have to wait a minute for their dinners." And he was gone. It was eerie. He moved so quietly for such a big man.

I leaned against the car, sipped ginger ale, and stared up at the stars. As a child, I must have read too many novels. I still had a highly fictional view of the world. At work I was a cold-hearted realist, but in my own life, I was still a romantic. I hoped for happy endings and riding off into the sunset. Out here, with the soft darkness and the twinkling stars, the backdrop of murmuring voices, the clinking sounds of people enjoying their food, it still seemed possible. When I walked back though that door, though, I would be surrounded by the kind of thinking that had led to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Thinking that justified blowing babies and small children to bits to make a point. Why would they release a state trooper, the very embodiment of the enemy? They shoot troopers, don't they?

The ache I felt as I walked up the steps and back into the busy kitchen wasn't from hours on my feet or lugging heavy trays. It was from the weight on my soul.

 

 

 

Chapter 8

 

At the end of the evening, I climbed the stairs to my room with Theresa's words echoing in my head like a benediction. "Day after tomorrow you can sleep late if you want. Cathy's going to give me more hours, so I won't need you till dinner." Get through one more day and I could sleep late! I wouldn't have to roll out of bed before six and stumble downstairs to the toaster and the coffeepot. A few more blissful hours when no one would call me "honey," try to grab my arm, or wave at me like a demented traffic cop. In just two days I had grown to loathe all those little plastic packets of slippery substances—jam, syrup, butter, and cream—that were the staples of breakfast. It was going to be harder to eat out after this.

Even though my room was like an oven, I was so exhausted I wanted to throw myself down on the bed and sleep. Fully dressed. Unwashed, unbrushed, and unkempt. Instead, I opened the box, took out my fan, set it in front of the window, and began sucking in some cool night air. I lay down on the bed and let it blow over me, not daring to close my eyes. I knew, after the violent emotional climate of the dining room, that the evil director of my dreams would have it in for me. If I slept at all, I'd have nightmares. It was a kind of Promethean torture. Chained forever on the cusp of sleep, desperately longing for it and desperately fearing it.

My feet pulsed with a steady, throbbing ache. Every muscle in my legs begged for mercy. My arms and shoulders felt like I'd been holding up the world too long. Where was Atlas when I needed him? Or my good friend Morpheus. Sometimes, when he took me in, I slept without dreams. The clock loomed large ahead of me. If I had a restless night, I wouldn't get enough sleep. Not until the next day. My morning off. Then I could sleep as late as I wanted.

The truth was, I already knew how I was spending my morning off, and it wasn't sleeping. I was going to play fairy godmother to a sad little boy. If this town was the lion's den, then I was going deeper. I was going to stick my head right in the lion's mouth. If his cautious grandmother was willing to let him go off with a stranger, I was going to drive Lyle Harding to see his daddy. And in my truth-telling heart of hearts, it wasn't an entirely altruistic move. I had to see if I could make something happen, or learn something, before this fearful atmosphere drove me back to the safety of the Boston suburbs. Compared to what was going on around here, road rage, blind self-involvement, the incivility of people walking, driving, and dining while talking on their cell phones, the company of spoiled brats with too much money and too few manners seemed positively benign.

Eventually, the room cooled down, my eyes closed, and I drifted off. The dictionary defines sleep as: "the natural periodic suspension of consciousness during which the powers of the body are restored." Torture is defined as: "physical or mental anguish." Somewhere along the line, my brain has gotten the two mixed up. After a period of deep, restful sleep which might have begun restoring the powers of my body, I segued into nightmares. Usually my nightmares are coherent—surreal and yet lucid enough so that I can see what's coming, even if I'm powerless to prevent it. Tonight it was more like a film-clip montage assembled by a sadist.

Scenes from all the awful things I've experienced—my sister's body, tumbling cars crashing and burning, blood flowing from slashed wrists, car trunks popping open to reveal bodies, a handsome bully with a hard fist, a dead woman in suggestive lingerie. Helene Streeter, fatally stabbed, crawling toward her front door. Waking on my kitchen floor to the smell of smoke and an earth-shattering headache. Action scenes. Beaning an assailant with an IV pole. Leading a troupe of camouflaged commandos to raid a home for unwed mothers. Whacking a lunatic writer with a stick beside a mist-shrouded winter pond. Andre, rigid with anger, walking out of my hospital room without looking back. Fighting with my mother in her kitchen. Dreams colored red with anger, blue with sorrow, gray with confusion, black with despair.

I woke hot, sweaty, and disoriented, feeling like my skin was filled with worms. A cold shower didn't help. My body longed for sleep; my mind was too afraid. The only thing for it was to walk. Keep moving and hope that I could tire myself out enough to fall into a sleep without dreams. And if I couldn't sleep, I might as well do a bit of detecting.

I pulled on shorts and a tank top, shoved my key and a tiny flashlight into my pocket, and set out down the street, feeling like the only person left on earth. In the damp air, the street lights glowed like giant, ephemeral balloons and all the green vegetation shone an eerie silver. My footsteps echoed loudly in the dense quiet and I stepped off the sidewalk and onto the adjoining grass to silence them. My feet seemed to have more purpose than my brain as they took me down the main street to the church and carried me across the rolling lawn. That old man Beau's reaction when I mentioned the church had been too violent not to mean something.

There was a faint path, probably unofficial, that led along the side of the building toward the parking lot. As I passed through a gap in a lilac hedge, I stopped and stared. I wasn't alone on the planet after all. The parking lot was filled with cars and trucks, even though it was well after midnight, and lights were on in the church basement. The grass muffled my steps as I slipped quietly along the blank white clapboards until I came to a basement window. I knelt down and peered in.