“Gentlemen, have a seat. The AG will be with you momentarily.” With that, she left the room, and Bill could hear her sit down and immediately start to shuffle papers at her desk.
The delay was intended, Bill expected, to give some time for the power of the office to sink in. From his point of view, he hoped it was long enough to give his men time to stop staring at everything like they had found the lost treasure of Oz, or something. Bill had developed a cynical attitude about the trappings of power down in Coffee County, but he understood the effect it could have.
As it turned out, the AG burst in through the side door, startling Bill and the boys. Before they could even react, he had scurried right over to Bill, and started shaking hands while they were still trying to get to their feet. Clearly an energetic man.
“No, no. Don’t get up. I’m Charlie Bell. Good to meet you all,” the AG said vigorously. Ten seconds later, he had finished shaking hands and flopped into his own chair with obvious relish. When he did, the AG slowed down enough for Bill to get a good look at him. He was short, stout, balding with a semi-respectable comb over of brown hair, turning to gray, but he was not fat. He was just naturally stocky. He had a jolly face, one that was hard to match to his job, but one that would clearly get votes if he ever wanted to move up in the world.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Bell.” Bill said.
“Hey, gentlemen. It’s a public service job. What can I do for you?”
Bill looked around meaningfully. “It looks like a complicated job.”
“Nah, nah, not so much anymore. These days, it’s mostly about contracts and getting people who hurt other people. I’m just sort of a historian of the law. Everything you see is law from before the Breakdown... Except for these two.” He jumped up, pulled two volumes from the shelf next to him, and slapped them on his desk. As he sat back down, he said, “One for federal law, and one for state law. There are twenty-six more out in the library for county law, but most of them are very similar. Truth is, I’m as much judge and jury as anyone these days. We get a lot of authority to make decisions. I kinda feel bad for lawyers in the old days, they had to thread the needle of about ten million pages of crap on every case. The catch is that there are lots of rules about what us lawmen can and can’t do. The idea is to make sure that my chair is not filled with some asshole who wants to be king.”
“That can be tricky, I’d guess,” Bill replied.
The AG grinned, and said, “All too often, that is the case.”
“Well, funny you should mention keeping officials in line...”
“Uh, oh. Bill, you’re not here to ruin this beautiful day, are you?” the AG asked, the smile on his face disappearing in a heartbeat.
“Maybe. Depends on your point of view, I think.”
“All right, let’s have it.” The AG pulled a legal pad from somewhere behind the desk and grabbed a shiny pen from its holder.
“Do you know Jerry Doan Jenkins?”
“Oh, God. That rich bastard... What did he do now?”
“Well, he apparently won our land in a card game, and came out to claim it.”
“I’m guessing, since you’re here now, that it didn’t work out too well for him.”
“That would be correct. We have him in custody, and frankly, considering all the abuse he has delivered in Coffee County, we’d like the state to do something about it.”
“Did he come out to your place alone?” the AG asked.
“Uh, no... His men didn’t make it.”
The AG scribbled something on his pad, and asked, “Not to sound stupid, but Bill, why is the man still alive?”
“Two reasons. One is the practical fact that if he dies, another one of his family will just pick up the reins and start riding on the backs of the people. Even if that doesn’t happen, one of the other wealthy families will just fill the vacuum he leaves behind. None of that solves our problems. The other is a bit more symbolic. The people need to know that the state still exists for them, and the only way that will happen is if the state publically handles his punishment. As far as they can tell, they live in a feudal society under the local lords. We’re supposed to be citizens, not serfs.”
“Well, you’re no serf. I can see that you are a historian yourself.”
“When I have the time, I like to read. Trying not to repeat the mistakes of the past, you know?”
“I do. That’s why every day, I look at these books, and thank God himself that I don’t need a staff of twenty just to tell me what I need to know.” The AG shrugged theatrically.
“So, not to be pushy, but can you help us?” Bill asked with his tight body language.
“Well, you may be interested to know that big part of our policy meetings lately have been about this very thing. We have a plan to slowly get the county leadership back in line. The autonomy has been helpful, to be honest, up until recently. The state had literally no resources to help individuals within the state. The best we could do was to send out shipments to the counties and hope that they were distributed. We know that, more often than not, it didn’t work out that way. Coffee County is a bad example, but it’s not even close to the worst.”
“I’m surprised to hear that you know that.” Bill said.
The AG grinned again, and said, “Oh, we know enough. For example, I know about your place, and I know that the young man sitting next to you is Terry Sheffield. There’s a reason why we keep the official licensing through the state. At some point, someone would approach young Terry and offer him a side job sending us regular reports. Dusty Baer, you’ll be glad to know, has never said a word about your operations, but he has given us a pretty good picture of how things work in Manchester. Frankly, once the state approved your claim, we were pretty darn curious about what you were doing with all that land. We had to piece it together, since your people are extremely loyal. So, we don’t know details, but we know the gist of it. You’ve got a good thing going, and you take care of your people. Good enough.”
Bill’s mouth had dropped open, which made the AG laugh loudly.
“How do you think you got in so fast?” the AG asked.
“I wondered,” Bill replied, recovering from the shock of discovery.
“As far as I know, we should be sending people down to you for training, but I bet you are not ready to go that far yet,” the AG commented.
“No. We hand pick our people carefully. Maybe when the rest of the area is not so dangerous, we could talk about it.”
“Fair enough. So, on to business. I assume I’ve made my point about the state’s lack of resources?”
“Yes, but from this office, it’s hard to believe,” Bill said.
“Ouch! Got me there,” the AG replied with a chuckle. “Sure, we can do the easy stuff. Imagine how easy it is to build when there is a state full of hungry workers. The hard part is the training, and the planning, and the endless support of long term efforts.”
“Yeah, I understand that completely. It’s easier for us. We rarely use money.”
“Sure, sure. Good food and a safe place to sleep are worth more than money these days,” the AG said.
“You bet.”
“Unfortunately, the state is full of money people who insist on putting a dollar value on everything, which means that it’s all too easy to project the numbers into the future, and watch the legislature panic when they see the cost. Plus, we’re back to the point where state employees themselves see in dollar signs, which means that everyone costs something on that big old ledger.”
“How many people work for the state?” Bill asked.
“I couldn’t tell you with any accuracy, but it’s a four-digit number now, counting our state police, which brings me back to business.”
“Ok, let’s have it,” Bill said, frowning just slightly.
“Well, normally, I could send an entire platoon down to Coffee County to pick up the Judge, but right now, every free man I’ve got is in Nashville.”
“Can’t you just call some back?”
“No, I can’t,” the AG replied, wincing. “And that’s the problem. Someone attacked our salvage operations down on the river, and we sent all our available men to Nashville to clean it up. Something went wrong and we lost contact four days ago. We’re trying to scrape up enough of the older guys to make a run into the city to find out what happened. Problem is, between you and me, they are old and fat, and they are resisting the idea very strongly.”
“So, you want us to go in and rescue your men?” Bill asked. “I’ve got seven men, all told.”
“No. I want you to go in and find out what happened. If you see an opportunity to help, great, but I’m not asking you to jump into the middle of a fight. If it’s too hot, get the heck out and come back to let me know. We’ll make plans from there.” The AG was almost pleading by the end.
“There’s more to it,” Bill said.
“Yeah,” the AG said, with a distant look in his eye. “My son is a state cop. He’s in the middle of it.”
Chapter 4 - 4
There wasn’t any question after that. Bill looked at his men and saw the determination on their faces, and he had agreed to the mission. Other than Terry, they had all been in some dangerous places, and Bill knew he could rely on his men. Privately, he expected that each one of them was worth about two state police officers, but maybe it was just pride talking. He had spent some time talking with the AG about details before he had accepted Mr. Bell’s invitation to spend the night at his home.
Bill and his men found themselves sitting around Charlie Bell’s dining room table in a house that was easily big enough to hold all of them, including the pickup truck, which was locked safely in the garage. The AG’s home wasn’t nearly as ostentatious as his office but it was nice, and only possible in a town that was safe and established well enough to support a nice home without any special defenses. Charlie, as he insisted they call him right after they agreed to search for his son, introduced them to his wife, Judith. She was a strikingly tall and lean woman with shining dark hair and eyes that were an even darker shade of brown. Next to her husband, she looked even taller. She had him by at least five inches. Anyone could see that she was trying to contain her worry about their son, Michael, but she had much practice in hospitality and managed to make them all welcome without pouring her gratitude all over them.
While she was preparing an early supper, Charlie quietly shared the fact that Michael was their only child. Judith had caught one of the many roving epidemics almost twenty five years ago, and had not been able to have children ever since. Her desperation was understandable, and almost palpable from the next room.
They chatted about the state of the world for a while, until Judith came out and took her seat next to Charlie, at the head of the table. Bill was seated at the far end and his men filled the length of the table. Two middle aged women brought out the food. One was Hispanic, and the other was a Caucasian woman who looked as if she had seen the open gates of hell. It was a little disturbing to the younger men, but Bill understood completely and made a point to thank both of them. The boys followed suit. They turned to the excellent meal of massive steaks, mashed potatoes, corn, and green beans, with warm, fluffy rolls. Not much was said until the table was a sea of empty plates and bowls, and the men from Teeny Town were leaning back and groaning with a combination of pleasure and stuffed discomfort. At a signal from Judith, the ladies brought in dessert, two buttermilk pies and vanilla ice cream. The men made various expressions of surrender at the thought of eating more, but then switched to determination. They dug in, and were glad that they did.
Afterward, the men retired to the living room and discussed more details of the trip. It was becoming more complicated than Terry would have expected, but they had to work hard to avoid known trouble spots between Murfreesboro and the heart of Nashville. He asked about radiation, which having grown up in post nuclear world, he thought was a reasonable question. He ended up feeling foolish as Charlie explained that the background radiation had fallen to safe levels long ago. Nashville had never been picked clean because of the belief that it was still too dangerous to approach. The only reason there was anything left to salvage was the luck of where the single nuke had hit, on the southwest side of Nashville. It took out most of the larger buildings, but the buildings themselves and geography had sheltered a great deal of the city from the blast. The combination of early radiation and panicked humanity had probably done more harm than the nuclear explosion.
Judith appeared and made sure that Bill and his men knew where they could sleep. John and his brother shared a room with a double bed, which triggered a round of jokes at their expense, while Seth, Rob, and John shared a room with two bunk beds. John claimed the bottom one on the left, and the other two fought over the lower bunk on the right. Bill and Terry shared a room with twin beds, but Bill asked him to come back downstairs for a bit. They needed to talk about Terry’s role in any trouble they might encounter.
“Ok, Terry. You can shoot, right? I mean, if I give you a rifle, you’re not going to shoot yourself or any of us?” Bill asked.
“Yes, Bill. I can shoot a rifle. It’s the handgun that worries me.”
“You’re comfortable with the knife, so I would recommend leaving it where you always have easy access. The handgun, you can hang on the left with the butt facing forward. If you need it, you can cross draw with your right hand. Just be sure you don’t put your finger on that trigger until it’s pointed in the right direction. That’s how people shoot themselves in the foot - literally. After you’ve practiced for about ten years, we can revisit the technique.” Bill smiled to show he was kidding. “If we get into a firefight, you use the rifle. Handguns are only useful when you’re up close and personal. If things are that bad, we’re probably screwed, so keep it for insurance, but don’t worry about it too much.”
“Yes, sir.”
“One more thing, if we get into a firefight, and I don’t have time to tell you what to do, here’s the rule. Cover first, shoot second. Got it?”
“Cover first, shoot second. Got it.”