Dominatus (27 page)

‘So you didn’t agree with him then…about the growth of government power, the gun grabs, all of that?”

Bear stood up from the bed and bent from side to side, stretching his back.

“Mind if I stand?  Got a bad back.”

Without waiting for me to answer, Bear continued his story.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with my dad.  It was more…I wasn’t really paying much attention.  I was a guy in his 20’s making a couple million dollars a year playing pro football and having a blast.  I thought the football ban in high schools was stupid, didn’t like the idea of the government taking away people’s guns, was sad to see my parents’ business close down…but I figured I could take care of them anyways. That they deserved some time off and I could give that to them, so what was the big deal?”

“And that’s how you put it to your dad – what’s the big deal?”

“Sorta.  I told him I didn’t think it was really that bad - that he was taking things too personally.”

‘And how did he react to that?”

“He blew up, basically told me I had blinders on.  Kept saying how it wasn’t America anymore.  That the country was gone…that Obama was pushing us into a one-world organization where we no longer had control over our own lives as American citizens.  He told me to stop listening to the Mainstream Media.  He was listening to some Internet radio program with a couple women who he said were explaining how everything was really happening.  He walked out of the house after dinner.  Mom said he was going for these long walks more and more.  That’s when she showed me the guns.  All the guns he had picked up over the last few months back then.”

“Guns?  What kind of guns?”

“All kinds…we always had a couple guns in the house since I was a kid.  A basic 12 gauge he used for duck hunting with friends…and a little 22 rifle him and me used to do target practice with.  We weren’t into guns all that much as a family…just those two guns.  Mom took me into the shed…we had this little ten by ten shed in the backyard…she opened up that shed and showed me all the guns.  Must have been about twenty of them in there.  Handguns, rifles, a few more shotguns, all hanging from the walls…and boxes and boxes of ammo.   That’s when I really started to think my dad was losing it.  Becoming way too paranoid.  I asked Mom if she felt safe and she said yes – he never threatened her.  Dad was just…he just kept saying how it wasn’t America and the government was destroying everything.  Just swallowing everyone and everything up.”

“Did your mom agree with your dad on any of those feelings?  Toward the government?”

“Maybe a bit…she just wasn’t aggressive like he was.  I know it broke her heart to have to close the coffee shop and lay off the employees.  Some of them were like family…had been with them for a lot of years.  She didn’t like all those guns though…she was worried that Dad was taking things too far.  He would tell her it was to protect their home…that every gun in that shed was a legal firearm, that he had every right under the Constitution to own them.”

“So what happened then – after the holidays?”

“I was back on the road with the team, I’d check in with Mom every week or so.  She would say they were doing fine…but I could tell something wasn’t right.  Then I got a call…it was very early in the morning. Mom was crying, said Dad had gone off to join some anti-government group calling itself the Texas Resistance.  I had already heard the name from some news reports, the media was calling it a white power group.”

“Was it?”

Bear scowled at the question.

“No.  White power…my dad would never be involved in something like that.  That was just media propaganda so that people wouldn’t be upset when the resistance was wiped out by the government.  Most of the original members were actually hunting rights advocates…people who were getting harassed by government officials about their guns.  By then, in the cities…Dallas, Houston, the urban areas…the gun bans were being enforced.  People were getting fined and imprisoned.  Out in the rural areas, the enforcement was just getting started but the people outside the cities weren’t so willing to comply.  Eventually word got out there was this trailer park outside Waco…the owner there was telling people to bring their guns and live there for free.  That they were all going to tell the government to go to hell.  Dad had tried to get Mom to come with him…he said the city of Marlon wasn’t safe for them anymore.  That he was being watched – they both were.  Mom stayed, Dad left.”

“What did you do then?”

“Played football…made some calls.  Had a guy working in the Marlon police department I went to school with…asked him if he knew anything about the Texas Resistance…told him my dad was mixed up in it.  He told me…I remember exactly how he put it…told me that my dad was already a dead man.  That all those people in that trailer park were not going to come out of that alive…the Feds had taken over the response.  Then…it was not even a full twenty four hours later…I’m getting called into the front office…the general manager is telling me they’re letting me go.  They’d pay out the remainder of my contract and that’s it…I was told to clean out my locker immediately.”

“Just like that?”

Bear nodded.

“Yeah – just like that.  I asked why of course, asked to have my union rep intervene.  They told me it was out of their hands.  The union wanted nothing to do with me…that if I wasn’t out of there by the end of the day I would be arrested for trespassing.  Later I got a call from the coach…he said two people from DHS…Homeland Security… had come in a couple days earlier and then I was dropped from the team.  The next I’m at home, still in shock, and I get a knock at my door and there’s two guys from DHS.  They are both armed, and ask to come in.  I say yes and they sit me down and start asking all these questions about my dad and mom.  Ask me if I’ve spoken to my dad, if we have any other homes he might be staying at, asking me about what type of guns he has…if my mom knew how to fire a gun…it was question after question.  They finished up and left, but then I started noticing a car parked outside my place all the time - black sedan, government plates.  So I’m getting more and more paranoid.  I go to see my mom.  I’m there for about twenty minutes, look out the window.  There’s the car again parked outside.  Same car.  I ask my mom about it.  She said she was noticing the same thing - like she was being followed.

“Few weeks later I start hearing about how the authorities are shutting down that trailer park my dad is supposed to be at.  So I drive out there to see what is going on.  They turn me back – they got the place surrounded ten miles out…must have been a hundred military people on that road easy.  The day after I tried to go out there, the same two guys from DHS are at my home again…asking what I was up to.  Why I made the trip.  Day after that I get a visit from an IRS agent telling me they suspect me of owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes.  I call my mom and she tells me she got a visit from the IRS too.  Same thing – told her she and my dad owe taxes.  I could tell…tell things were closing in on us.  All of us.”

Bear paused again, lifting his arms above his head in another stretch before sitting back down on the bed.

“It was maybe a week…week and a half, and  news report says that the Texas Resistance had dispersed…that the authorities were able to successfully negotiate with the group’s leaders and that everyone just handed over their weapons and went back home.”

“But that’s not what happened.”

“Oh no, that’s not what happened.  Never heard from my dad again.  I went back out to where the trailer park was supposed to be…where there were supposed to have been ten thousand people living, and it was gone.  Not a trace of it.  Like it never existed.  Mom was…she was really freaking out.  Demanded I take her out there too.  She kept saying they killed him…that the government killed my dad.  She felt guilty, said she should have believed him.  That he was right…America didn’t exist anymore.”

“And how did you feel about it by then, Bear?”

“Me?  I felt the same way my mom did, that Dad had been right.  If a government can come in and bomb ten thousand of its own citizens and lie about it, cover it up like it never happened…that’s not the America I was taught about growing up.  I realized then that we were living a lie.  That we had given up what we used to be without realizing it.  Just like Dad tried to tell us.  He was right about the football ban too. The next year the NFL was terminated.  NASCAR was gone too.  Bad for the environment was the reason.  Seems like anything that gave people pleasure, the government was taking away because it was for our own good – or for a good cause, or whatever other lie they came up with.”

“You said your mom passed away about five years after…after your dad’s death.  Can I ask you about the circumstances of that?”

Bear shrugged again.

“Not much to say.  She just kind of…faded away.  Little by little, she just lost her spark.  Guess it was the guilt of not really believing Dad until it was too late, I don’t know.  Didn’t make sense to me then and doesn’t make any more sense to me now.  I had more life to live – I wasn’t ready to give up.   Maybe…Clancy told me years later that maybe that’s why Mom just let go.  She knew I was strong enough, and she wanted to be with Dad again.  Whatever, it seemed like every time I checked in on her there was a little less of her to see.  Physically she seemed about the same, but mentally and emotionally, she was checking out.  Talked less and less. More indifferent to anything around her.   And when the mandates started to really impact every day life…all the government controls over everything…I think it just reminded her again that Dad had been right all along.  So it was about five years after Dad was gone. I got a call from a hospital saying a neighbor had found Mom inside the house on the bed like she was asleep…but she was gone.  She just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

“Did you suspect foul play?”

“No, Mom wasn’t a threat to anyone.  She just got tired of living.”

There was a light knock at the door and Clancy Tedlow peered into the room to ask if either Bear or I needed anything.  I knew what she was really doing was making sure her husband was cooperating with the interview. 

Bear rose from the bed again to walk over to his wife, placing his tree-trunk sized right arm around her small shoulders.

“No need to worry honey, I’m being a good boy.  Ain’t that right, Reese?”

I informed Clancy her husband was doing great – and told them both how much I appreciated the opportunity to speak with him.  Clancy leaned up onto her toes to give her husband a quick kiss on the cheek before stepping back out into the hallway and closing the door behind her.

“Would you like to tell me how you met Clancy?  She obviously cares about you a great deal.”

Again Bear smiled, his eyes softening at the question.

“After Mom passed, I drifted.  Did some refinery work in the Gulf, before regulations cut all that work in half.  Bunch of us made our way to the Dakotas.  Did rig work there for a couple more years.  Then got an offer to work with a crew in Alaska doing a refit job for the North Shore pipeline.  We were told it would be a three year job.  Came all the way up here and the project was shut down by the Feds after six months.  The whole pipeline was shut down just a year later.  After that I drifted some more, ended up on St. Paul Island working in a cannery.  I worked, drank, fought.  It was a tough place but people were allowed to do their own thing.  The bars allowed drinking, smoking, music – seemed like the federal government hadn’t really reached out there yet.  I liked it.  It was the first time since they took away my ability to play football that I was happy doing something for a living.”

“And that’s where you met Clancy?”

“St. Paul, yeah.  She was working at a pay as you go health clinic…lot of the fishermen used it.  Run by this Eskimo doctor.  Cash and carry type place.  No records.  No government bullshit.  Busted bones, stitch work…had a dentist there too.  Without the regulations the cost was low.  The way it could be.  The way it should be.

“I had gotten into a scrape with a couple guys at a bar.  They thought between the two of them they could have a shot at me.  Didn’t work out that way but they did manage to bust my head up pretty good and it kept bleeding.  Wouldn’t close up right.  So I finally walked my way down to this clinic I was told about and there she was working the front counter.  Beautiful little thing – great smile.  She’s about ten years younger than me, but a hell of a lot smarter, more mature than I’ve ever been. 

“So the first time she sees me I got this blood soaked towel wrapped around my head and I’m still hung over from the night before.  Sure I smelled like the cannery and stale beer.  Not exactly a great first impression.  But, as soon as I saw her I felt like we had this connection.  Sometimes…sometimes you just know.

“She takes me to the back room and the doctor comes in and looks over the gash in my head.  He’s telling me I should have come in sooner, that it looks like there’s some infection already setting in.  Clancy spends about ten minutes washing the wound up.  She’s trying to be gentle about it…and the damn thing starts bleeding as bad a when I was first opened up.  Just running down the side of my head and she’s kind of freaking  out about it.  The doctor comes in and shaves around the wound and tells Clancy to apply pressure so the bleeding stops.  So that’s my future wife, standing next to this stinking man with a head wound, pushing a handful of gauze on top of my head for about thirty minutes until the bleeding slows down to a trickle again.  The doctor comes back in, and stitches me up.  No shot…just goes right in with the needle and thread.  Hurt like hell but by then I’m trying to act the part in front of Clancy.  The tough guy.  So I hardly flinch, but you could of pulled a diamond out of my ass I was clenched up so tight.