Virgil thought about jumping off the trailer, fearing that it would roll on him, but the driver made a turn and then a woman in a motorcycle helmet was running alongside, and she speared one of the front truck wheels, and Virgil heard it go out with a POOF-WOP-WOP, and then she got the back one POOF-WOP-WOP-WOP, and the truck began to stall out and parts of the crowd began running toward it.
Virgil jumped off the fender and ran to the passenger-side door, but got there a few seconds late: a woman with an aluminum baseball bat knocked out the window, then took a swing at Virgil, who shouted, “I’m a cop, I’m a cop,” and she hesitated and asked, “Virgil?” and he shouted, “Yes,” and she ran away.
Behind the broken glass, D. Wayne Sharf was peering out at them, and Virgil shouted, “You’re under arrest. Open the fuckin’ door.”
“Fuck you,” Sharf shouted back. He turned toward the driver and looked like he might try to crawl over him, but Virgil reached through the shattered window and got him by the shirt collar and dragged him all the way back to the window and shouted, “Open the fuckin’ door or I’ll drag you right through the broken glass.”
Sharf twisted and turned and couldn’t get free, then cut himself on the window, and on the next pass, got blood on his hand and finally screamed, “Okay. Okay.”
Virgil heard a woman shouting, “That’s Virgil, that’s Virgil,” and the truck was rocking as the attackers crawled over it, breaking every piece of glass they could find, breaking out headlights and taillights and knocking off mirrors, while others began unloading the dog crates and freeing the dogs.
There were a half-dozen dog brawls going on around the pasture, the dogs howling and barking with excitement, gathering in crowds to prance across the alfalfa, and stopping to mark various lumps and humps and truck tires.
Then D. Wayne popped the door locks and Virgil had him out of the truck and on the ground, and he rolled the other man on his back, dragged him fifteen or twenty feet to a perimeter fence post, and cuffed him and said, “You’re in a whole lot of trouble. Don’t make it worse by breaking out of these cuffs and trying to run.”
“I didn’t do anything,” D. Wayne whined. The woman with the aluminum bat ran up and asked, “You got him?”
“Yeah, this is the guy who stole all the dogs in Trippton. He’s going to try to get out of these cuffs. I’ve got to try to stop this mess.” Virgil waved at the field, where two pickups now lay on their sides, and a bunch of large men were standing in a circle, facing a crowd of attackers, and one of the men appeared to be holding a shotgun. Virgil said to the woman, “So if he tries to escape, use the bat and break his legs. Not his head, just his legs. Okay?”
“I can do that,” she said. She waved the bat at D. Wayne, who shrank back into the fence.
Virgil started running down toward the man with the gun, just about the time the man pointed the shotgun up in the air and fired a shot. BOOM! Twelve-gauge.
In the sudden silence after the gunshot, Virgil was shouting, “Stop! Stop! Everybody stop!”
One of the women in the crowd shouted, “That’s one! Two more shots and we put ropes around your necks. Somebody get the ropes.”
One of the men in the circle broke out, running across the pasture, and nobody chased him, but the crowd pressed the circle tighter, and the two TV cameramen, who turned out to be camerawomen, were riding on the shoulders of two men, getting the cameras up in the air, and then Virgil got there, shouting, “State police. State police. Put the gun down, put the gun down.”
The man with the gun, who had the muzzle still pointing in the air, shouted back, “They’re gonna lynch us—”
Virgil shouted, “No, no, no… Move that way.” He pointed toward the far end of the field, and then, “Everybody else, everybody else, go that way.” He pointed the other way. “Take care of the dogs, take care of the dogs, the dogs are freaking out.”
Most of the dogs seemed pretty happy: there were now dozens of them, even hundreds, of every color and size, racing around the field, in celebration.
That got the dog rescuers looking away from the circle, and the two groups pulled apart, and when the circle of men, including the guy with the shotgun, were moving down the field, Virgil shouted to them, “Listen! Listen! We don’t want anybody to get killed. You’ve all got insurance on your trucks, you can get them fixed, these people… just let them go.”
One of the men, white-faced, scared but angry, said, “If you’re a cop, go arrest them.”
Everybody stopped and looked at him, and Virgil looked back down the field, where dozens of people were either freeing dogs or beating the hell out of the trucks. One of the big trucks, the buncher truck, went over on its side, and the other was rocking.
He turned back to the group and said, “Tell me what to do. Huh? What the hell am I supposed to do? You guys stay here. Sooner or later, you’ll get back to your trucks. Some of those people, you saw it yourself, weren’t afraid of your gun. They’re willing to be martyrs, if you’re willing to go to prison for murder. And, tell the truth, I’d hate to think of what they’d do to you guys if you shot one of them. So calm down and stay here, and I’ll try to get everybody I can out of here alive.”
Virgil jogged away from them. People were still beating up the trucks, but four of them had brought down a roll of fencing and a dozen tall stakes, and were setting up an impromptu pen in the center of the field. Virgil had to walk close to them, so he swerved over and asked, “Who are you guys?”
“Buchanan County Humane Society. We’re all legal here, we’re just seizing distressed and stolen dogs, the ones we can get inside the fence.”
“God bless you,” Virgil said.
Virgil continued walking toward the last of the trucks that were still being unloaded. As the attackers finished the unloading process, they’d unhitch the trailers and turn both the trucks and trailers over on their sides. Virtually everybody was now wearing bandannas over their faces, and the TV camerawomen and a couple of Big Hairs were interviewing the raiders.
Johnson Johnson, who would have been unmistakable for his tattooed arms even if he hadn’t been wearing a black bandanna, came jogging up and said, “I hope you’re not pissed.”
“Get away from me, fuckhead.”
Johnson veered away.
The yellow dog, the same one that Virgil had seen in the crate, came loping up and sniffed his knee, and then fell in beside him. Virgil said, “Go away. Shoo.”
The dog looked up at him and stuck its tongue out, and hung next to his knee as Virgil got into the heart of the crowd and shouted, “Hey! Everybody! You’ve made the point. These dogs are gonna die out here if they run off and hide and we don’t find them. So start herding them up to the Humane Society pen while we’ve still got them here.”
That got the crowd interested in something besides wrecking the trucks, although one more truck went over onto its side, and then ten or twelve people cooperated in rolling it over onto its roof. The roof flattened a bit, and oil and other fluids began dripping out from under the upside-down hood.
“Did you just have to do that one more?” Virgil asked. “Did you just have to do that?”
“Yeah, we did,” said a man behind a red cowboy mask.
Virgil asked, “Winky? Did you get your dogs back?”
Winky said, “Yup. I owe you big, Virgil. Carol wants to have you over for dinner.”
A woman’s small hand slipped into Virgil’s back pocket, and Virgil turned and found Daisy Jones smiling up at him. “Virgil Flowers. My, my, my. Did you organize this shindig all by your little ol’ self?”
“I would arrest everybody here, including you, if I could,” Virgil said.