“Oh, Jesus God!” The cry came from the rear van. “There’s blood and shit ever’where. Ever’one’s dead. God, don’t shoot no more—please!”
Ben waited.
“We’s a-comin’ out. Don’t shoot no more.”
“We’s,” Ben muttered. More than one.
We’s! Nola thought, a grimace on her face. Illiterate redneck trash. Forgive me, Lord, but a rose by any other name is still a rose. Thank you, William and Gertrude.
“Hands high in the air!” Ben shouted. “If I see anything except skin in your hands, you’re dead, bastards!”
He could have phrased that a bit more eloquently, Nola thought. But it was firmly spoken with a great deal of conviction.
Two young men, apparently unhurt, slowly got out of the van. Their faces were pale with shock and disbelief. Only two minutes before they had been riding high—king of the territory. Now their kingdom was in smoking ruins. And worse, they had peed their jeans.
“You.” Ben spoke to a punk with a pimply face and what Ben assumed was a mustache under his nose. “Facedown in the street and don’t even think about moving.” The punk obeyed instantly. The dark stain on the front of the other’s jeans appeared darker.
The elderly of the town appeared, walking slowly up the street. Homer with the riot gun in his hands; another man with a rope. He was fashioning a noose.
The punk on his feet fainted. The would-be tough on his belly started blubbering and hollering.
“Y’all cain’t do this to me! I got rights, man.”
Ben smiled, a grim warrior’s baring of the teeth. “So do other people, punk. Violate theirs, and you lose yours.” He turned to face the man with the rope. A noose was made. “Do with them as you see fit.”
They did. And that problem was solved permanently.
The people of the town cried when Ben and April pulled out. They were tears not only of sadness, but of relief and gratitude, for Ben had removed a horror from their lives. Before leaving, Ben had driven into a nearby town, prowled the stores and homes, and taken a small arsenal back with him: rifles, pistol, shotguns, and plenty of ammunition.
“You’re off the beaten path here,” Ben told them. “You shouldn’t be bothered too much. But the next time a gang like that comes through—and there will be a next time, bet on it—don’t let them get the upper hand on you. One or two of you go out into the street. The rest of you get behind cover and poke your weapons out the windows; let the bastards know you’re armed and ready to shoot. And don’t hesitate to fire. Your lives are on the line.
“I’ve brought you CBs and two base stations; I’ve set them up for you. You’ve got a long-range radio to monitor news. I don’t know of anything else I can do. I’ve gotten you several new cars and a van; all the medicine you asked for. I guess that’s about it.”
All of the elderly wanted to scream out to him: you could stay with us.
But none of them would do that. They knew he had done enough—more than most would have done.
Ben shook the men’s hands and kissed the ladies on the cheeks. Then he drove away. He did not look back.
When the tiny town was no longer in sight, April asked, “What will happen to them, Ben?”
“Some of them will die this summer from heart attacks, trying to put in gardens. Some will probably die this winter from the cold, or from fire. Medicines will run out. And if they’re really unlucky, punks and crap-heads and other assorted scum will find them.”
“You’re such a cheerful bastard, Ben Raines. You could have told me everything would be all right.”
“I would have been lying.”
“Nobody ever seems to care about the old people. Not their kids, not the state, especially the federal government—when we had one, that is.”
“Of course not, little liberal. The kids take off because they don’t want to fool with the old folks. What was good for their daddy isn’t good enough for the modern-day youth. The state can’t provide because they’re too busy spending money keeping up with government rules and dictates—most of which are no business of the federal government. Our central government was far too busy handing out billions of dollars each year protecting the rights of punks, funding programs that never should have been started in the first place. They were too busy seeing to it that rapists, muggers, murderers, child molesters, armed robbers, and others of their dubious ilk were not overcrowded in jails and prisons; that they received free legal assistance—at taxpayers’ expense, I might add. That a committee was always present in Europe to speak out on the standardization of the screwhead—and that is no joke; and all sorts of other worthwhile tasks. Hell, they didn’t have time to worry about a bunch of goddamned old people. What the hell, little liberal… priorities, you know.”
Ben felt her hot eyes on him. “You conservatives really piss me off, you know that? It’s so easy for you people to find fault with social programs, isn’t it?”
“I thought helping the elderly was a social program, April. I’m all in favor of that. Or have you forgotten what we were discussing?”
She folded her arms across her chest and refused to look at him. “I was going to ask what you would have done, Ben—but I think I know. Able-bodied welfare recipients would have been forced to work, wouldn’t they, Ben?”
He looked straight ahead, up the highway. Let her get it all out of her system, he thought.
“Women who birthed more than two illegitimate children would have been sterilized, right? The death penalty would be the law of the land. Chain gangs and work farms and convict labor. You people are sick!”
How to tell her she was right to a degree but way off base in the main? Ben kept his mouth shut.
“Damn it, Ben, talk to me! It’s all moot now, anyway, isn’t it?”
He sighed. “No, April, it isn’t moot. Not at all. Someday… some way, we’ll pull out of this morass and start to rebuild. That’s the way people—especially Americans—are. And we’ll do it. I just don’t want us to make the same mistakes all over again.”
“But you want tough, hard laws, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Don’t you think criminals have any rights, Ben?”
“Damned few. They sure as hell don’t show their victims any rights, do they?”
“I will never, ever, forget the way those boys cried back there, Ben. And you helped
“They were not boys, April. They were men. You think I would have hanged a thirteen or fourteen-year-old? What kind of monster do you think I am?”
Miles rolled past before she spoke. “How far is Macon, Ben?”
“Twenty-five or thirty miles west of us.”
“There is a college there.”
“Wesleyan. I would imagine there might be some people there. Would you like me to drop you off, April?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I would, Ben.”
Actually, there was quite a gathering of professors and young people at the school. And actually, Ben was more than a little relieved to be free of April.
Jerre, he figured, had more sense in her big toe than April had gleaned from her years at college.
Which is very often the case.
Ben headed up the interstate, toward Atlanta. The truck was running rough, black smoke beginning to pour from the tailpipe. But Ben whistled as he drove. Somewhere around Atlanta, he thought, I’ll prowl the dealerships and get me a truck that’s got a tape deck in it, get me a bunch of symphonies, and keep on trucking. Literally.
Juno and me. See the country. His thoughts drifted to Jerre, as they often did since the day he had left her. He wondered how she was faring; had she found herself a nice young man? He hoped he would see her again. And he felt he would. With that thought, his mood lifted and he clicked on the cassette recorder and began taping. Suddenly, with an unexpected and unexplained warmness, he thought of Salina.
He cut off long before he reached Atlanta and using state and county roads, he took a winding route around the city. But he saw no one as he drove. No signs of life for more than sixty miles of traveling through the Georgia
