I dropped my hand and my smile. In the most formal voice I could muster, I asked, “Could I tell her what this is about?” What I really meant was, “Do you mind telling me where the hell you get off swaggering up here like you own the place and demanding to see my mother-in-law?”
He caught it, but my businesslike tone left him no opening to call offense. He looked me over disdainfully, as if trying to determine whether or not I deserved a real answer. Evidently, I didn’t. “Sorry, Mr. Dawcett, but that really ain’t no concern of yours.” He started to step past me.
I moved in front of him, less worried about manners than about keeping him outside. “I’m sure it isn’t. But the house is a wreck right now, so if you’ll just wait right here, I’d be happy to run and get her for you.” Those questions kept running through my mind.
He reached down and pointedly put his hand on his holster. The meaning was clear. “Mr. Dawcett, would you please step aside?”
I wasn’t about to, and it looked like it was going to come down to a more physical confrontation. I was close enough that I knew that he would never get the pistol out of its holster if he tried, and I had seen the way he carried himself. I was certain that I could take him without any difficulty. The problem was, with or without that attitude, he still represented law and order. Could I afford to make such an enemy?
Ken stepped out of the front door at that point, looked warily at our standoff in the front yard, and saved me from having to make such a decision. “Problem, Leeland?”
“Yeah. Officer…” I glanced quickly down at his badge. “Kelland seems to be very eager to speak to Amber. Would you mind getting her?”
“Sure thing.” Ken left quickly.
Kelland stared at me through his shades. He must have seen he wasn’t going to be able to bully his way past me, but now he was sure I was trying to hide something. So he tried a different approach. “There some reason you don’t want me to come in? Hot as it is, seems like that’d be the hospitable thing to do.”
“Officer Kelland, I don’t know what I’ve done to piss you off so much, but ever since the first time you saw me, you seem to have had it in for me. You were rude at the roadblock, and you were rude when you stepped out of your truck just now. Now I realize, as far as you’re concerned, I’m city folk, and I’ve got no business in your town. I also realize that ever since those bombs fell, everyone has been under a lot of stress. But I’ve got news for you, Amber is family, and technically, I’m her guest. So she’s the only one around here I have to please. And she’s the only one that can tell me to leave. Until that happens, my family and I are here to stay. That means that this is now my home.
“Now, I’ll grant you that things have changed a lot, but not so much that you can come up here flashing a badge and a gun and forcing your way into people’s homes.” I stopped for a second to catch my breath and let him absorb the implications of what I had said.
“I’m not city folk any more, Kelland. I live here. I’m Rejas folk. And you might need to get to know me a little before you start playing your little mind games.” I glanced at his right hand, still resting on his holster. “So if you think for one freaking minute that I’m going to invite you into this house with your sorry attitude, you can just jump up my ass and fight for air.”
I turned my back on him and walked to the house. I wasn’t sure if he would get the message, but where I grew up, to turn your back on someone like that was one of the worst insults imaginable. It showed nothing but contempt for anything they could do.
Of course, I also watched his reflection in the front window as I left. I saw the curtains in that window move slightly as I stepped up to the front porch, so I knew that someone was watching us from inside. Sure enough, Amber met me at the front door as I came in with Ken beside her holding the deer rifle.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s he doing here?”
“Wish I knew.” I shrugged. “He wasn’t real inclined to tell me much, and I didn’t exactly help matters any.”
“How’s that?”
“I think I insulted him a little.”
“Gee, thanks. So now that you’ve buttered him up, I’m supposed to go talk to him?”
“You want me to go out there with you?”
She peeked out the window again at the fuming Officer Kelland. “No thanks,” she said dryly, “It looks like you’ve helped enough.”
“Would you rather I invited him in?”
She sighed. “No, I guess not. But I’m not looking forward to this.” Taking another deep breath, she opened the front door. “Well, I guess I’d better find out what’s going on.”
“We’ll keep an eye on you.” Ken raised the rifle as she left.
I smiled. “What’s the matter, Ken? You act like you don’t trust the nice officer.”
He didn’t even bother turning back to face me. “That’s the sumbitch that stuck a gun in my face. See if it doesn’t change your attitude about a person.”
I tried to hear what they said, but Amber and Kelland spoke too softly. At any rate, the discussion lasted only a few minutes before Kelland turned, got back in his truck, and left.
We both pounced on Amber when she came back inside. “Well, what did he want?”
“They need me at the hospital,” she replied solemnly. “I wrote on my form that I was a retired nurse, and now it seems they’re swamped with people suffering from radiation poisoning. They need any experienced medical personnel they can get. Fifty-seven deaths and over three hundred hospitalized.”
It was grim news, but we had known it was coming. We also knew it was going to get worse. Rejas was a pretty small town of less than ten thousand people. It also happened to be the site of two hospitals, each with about two hundred beds. Evidently, they were already doubling up.
She looked me in the eyes. “One of the deaths was the chief of police. That means the officer you were oh, so charming to is now the head authority figure around here.” I groaned.
“You picked the wrong man to mess with this time, Leeland.”
She reached up and ran her finger across the scarring line at my throat. “I would have thought you’d know better by now.” She sighed. “Well, no use crying about it now that it’s done. I need to get to the hospital. Would you mind if I took the van? There’s no telling when I’ll get away, and it’s not like I can call you when I’m ready to go.”
“No problem. When are you planning to leave?”
“There’s no reason I can’t go now,” she said. “There’s nothing here someone else can’t do. I’d be more useful at the hospital.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic. She was useful at home, but medicine had been her chosen field for many years, and I couldn’t expect her to ignore its call.
I turned to get the keys from where they hung on the wall in the kitchen. Debra handed them to me before I had completely turned around. She, Cindy, and the kids had all come in the back way to see what the commotion was about. Walking in on the end of my conversation with Amber, Debra had known with that special sixth sense of hers what would be needed.
I passed the keys to my mother-in-law. “Take care,” I told her. “We’re going to need you back here.” Not very eloquent, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything else to say. It was the first time any one of us had been separated from the others. It seemed like one of those occasions that should be remembered as significant. But in reality, it was simply Amber going to work. Everyone else gathered around for hugs and goodbyes.
Five minutes later, she was gone.
July 4
The next day, trouble visited our neck of the woods. It wasn’t subtle, like the dangers we had begun to accept as a part of every day life. We didn’t need our PRDs to detect it, or to take extra precautions with our garbage to prevent it. It was loud, and we knew it immediately for the threat that it was.
A short volley of gunfire, followed by several seconds of silence. It sounded like four or five guns being fired at random. Nearly fifteen seconds passed, then more gunfire. Sporadic, this time. Five or six shots, then silence. Then, nearly a dozen shots. And again, silence. It went on like that for nearly two minutes before the short echoes of the last shot were absorbed by the forest.
