The general stopped to talk. As the dogs sniffed each other and got acquainted, the man said, “Was you in the air force?” L’Angistino was wearing a faded air force T-shirt and red shorts. He nodded.
“I was too,” the man said. The hands that caressed the worn old lever-action Winchester were the hands of a working man. “Wound up in Thailand turning wrenches on F-105s. Now them was airplanes!”
“Why the rifle?” the general asked.
“Oh, a bunch of us are going out to the base this mornin’. Going to talk to those people out there. We’re gonna meet at nine o’clock. Can’t sleep very well anymore, so came out here to the park to sit. Gonna get hot today”—it was already pushing 80—“but with the clear sky and still breeze, it’s mighty nice right here right now. At my age, you enjoy ever’ day because you don’t know how many more you got.”
“Think there’ll be trouble at the base?”
“Hope not, but you never know about the blue suits. They’s good ’uns and bad ’uns, just like ever’where. But if there’s any shootin’, I fully intend to shoot back until they get me.”
“I see.”
“My folks was in Texas before the white and black people ever showed up. One of my great-great-great-grandpappies died at the Alamo with Travis and them. His nephew rode with Terry’s Texas Rangers during the Civil War and lost a leg at Shiloh. Yankee doctors cut it off for him. I’ve had granddaddies and uncles and men kin fight in ever’ war this country ever fought. The world wars, Korea, and me in Vietnam. We’re Texans.”
“What kind of pistol is that in your holster?”
“It was my daddy’s Colt Police Positive. He was a policeman in San Antone until he retired and moved here to Abilene to be near his daughters. I got it when he died.”
“So what do you think of independence?”
“Some more of us are gonna have to fight for Texas again.”
“When did you get out of the air force?”
“Seventy-five. Came back here and opened a garage. It was a close squeak at times, but we have six bays now. My two sons run it, and I sit and watch baseball on TV and drink beer.”
General l’Angistino glanced at his watch. He needed to get going, but…
“Texans don’t seem to like illegals. What is your opinion?”
“I’m like ever’body else. They flood in here and take jobs away from poor Texans because they’ll work for the minimum wage or less. Down in Mexico the Church won’t let ’em use contraceptives. Lots of kids guarantees they’ll never get ahead and will always be poor. I’m Catholic, but believe me, after the two boys arrived I used rubbers back when the old lady could still get knocked up. I tol’ the priest about it, and he said I had to do what God tol’ me to do. I tol’ him that I was gonna do what my wife tol’ me to do, and if that got me sent to Hell, at least I’d know a lot of the people there.” The old man chuckled. Apparently he had told this story many times before and still liked it.
“What does your wife think about you going out to the base this morning carrying a pistol and rifle?”
“She tol’ me to be careful and never forget my family or Texas.”
“Good luck to you,” Brigadier General l’Angistino said. As he jogged back to his car, dog in tow, he thought, I’m the one who’s going to need the good luck.
Newspapers all over Texas carried the news about independence in headlines in the largest type they had. The Dallas Morning News devoted its entire front section to the declaration and interviews with lawmakers, including a short one with the governor. Of the paper’s editorials and op-ed pieces, all but one favored independence in order to preserve the freedom of the people of Texas. The lone dissenter was the paper’s token liberal, whose column most Morning News subscribers read only for aggravation.
The publisher defied federal edicts when he published the paper. He got away with it because the federal censors spent Sunday at FEMA headquarters getting briefed on the latest orders from Washington, which was in a dither, apparently, unsure how to handle those goddamn Texans.
At eight that morning five FBI agents, two women and three men, plus a FEMA representative, showed up at the publisher’s house in one of Dallas’ toniest neighborhoods to arrest him.
They were met by several dozen armed civilians. In the shootout that followed, one civilian was killed and another wounded, but all six of the federal officers died on the scene. Two minutes after the shooting stopped, there was one more shot, which may have been a coup de grâce, but afterward none of the participants could recall hearing it.
Leaving the agents and their weapons where they lay, the victors of this encounter took their dead comrade to a funeral home and the wounded man to a hospital. Then they went to Dallas FBI headquarters and arrested everyone they could find, even the office help. The sheriff incarcerated all the prisoners in the Dallas County jail. He had to release some drunks and potheads to make room.
When the crowd, which had swelled to more than two hundred armed men and women, arrived at the Dallas FEMA building, they found it empty. The FEMA employees had fled: that was probably a good thing since the crowd was in an ugly mood.
Later that morning a television reporter on Good Morning Texas questioned the sheriff, Milo Makepeace. Milo claimed he was a direct descendant of Comanche war chief Quanah Parker, and he had enough Indian blood in him to make that plausible, even if newspaper reporters had been unable to ever prove or disprove the relationship. Not that it mattered. With his dark skin tint and Indian features, Makepeace was Texas “to the bone.” The interview ran on Good Morning Texas, a popular morning staple for many in the Dallas area. The show ran fifteen seconds of footage of ambulance crews in front of the publisher’s house loading the bodies of the FBI and FEMA agents. Then the station aired the interview. The reporter asked about the slayings of the FBI and FEMA agents.
“I don’t know a solitary thing about it,” Sheriff Makepeace said, “other than the fact they’re dead. I also was told that they had federal credentials and weapons on them. Maybe they got in a shootout and killed each other, or maybe they tangled with persons unknown. If they had packed up and gotten out of Texas yesterday, that incident wouldn’t have happened. It’s very sad that they didn’t.”
“I understand you jailed some FBI agents this morning.”
The sheriff nodded. “As of yesterday morning federal employees got no authority whatsoever in Texas. The FBI people had a lot of concealed weapons on them that they didn’t have permits for, which is a violation of the laws of Texas and Dallas County. Texans are big on self-help, and the folks in the crowd that brought them in looked like voters to me. I’m holding them until Jack Hays or a Texas judge tells me what to do with them.”
“How about a federal judge?”
“Federal judges have no authority in Texas. I just explained that. All their summonses, orders, warrants, and such don’t mean diddly-squat. If they want to keep drawing federal checks, they’d better get themselves back to Soetoro-land. If they want to stay here, they need to get a real job. That goes for all federal employees, from the janitor at the federal courthouse to the people at FEMA, ICE, the DEA, the FAA, the EPA, and the Federal Reserve Bank. All of ’em. Get out of Texas or get a real job.”
Major General Twilley read Governor Jack Hays’ note and came around his desk to shake JR’s hand. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am,” he said. “I have a son in the U.S. Army Special Forces and a daughter in the U.S. Air Force in Germany. I couldn’t fight against them under any circumstances, and you know as well as I do that Barry Soetoro won’t let Texas go without a fight. I was going to write Jack Hays a letter and ask for immediate retirement. He saved me the trouble.”