Nora crouch-ran toward the safety of a dead cottonwood for a closer look. Her knee cracked and she cursed silently.
Among the ruins, hulking shapes from childhood memory. A tank. Convoy trucks. Vintage, as if from a black-and-white movie. She flashed on the air base doing military maneuvers: crisp uniforms, adrenaline smell, the thrum of convoy trucks. Her mental newsreel turned in the projector, motes of dust dancing in the light, as her young self sat squished between Rosa and Frank in the safe, warm dark.
But that was then. Like the billboard said, this was the future.
Beside the outdated convoys, a circle of new, mud-spattered pickup trucks. A glammed-up Humvee nearby. Not bird hunters — hunters of another kind.
She steadied her breath and lowered her temperature, an amphibian on a wire. Edging a few steps closer, she squatted down. Stasi quivered with readiness.
Nora clicked her tongue and released the dog like a silent missile. “Good girl. Bring me something.”
Dawn leaked into day, pouring itself across the bleak ground. She picked out a couple of sleeping bags humped with blankets. Folding chairs blown on their sides. A head slumped against a truck window.
The breeze kicked up and chilled her sweat. Flapped the Confederate flag on the back of a pickup.
A truck door creaked open. Nora dropped low. Saw the leg — army boot, camouflage pants — coming down. Heard the hock of boozy phlegm followed by the sound of urine marking territory. Stasi hopped into the cab of the now-empty truck. Nora held her breath until she saw the canine shadow leap out.
Circling back to her, Stasi dropped the wad of paper on Nora’s knee and waited for the handstroke on her forehead that said love.
Nora flattened out the paper and wiped away the dog saliva. She squinted at the blur of words.
WARNING! PRIVATE PROPERTY... You are hereby notified that the owner of this property requires all public officials, agents, or person(s) to abide by “THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND”... A person who knowingly enters unlawfully upon this property could place his/her LIFE AT RISK...
She stuffed the paper in her back pocket.
Militia. Nora had dated one once. A one-night stand, more like it, on the road home from Vegas. Too much booze, too many painkillers. She was lonely. He was in his midtwenties, on his way to Lincoln, Montana, to support some miners in an armed standoff against the Forest Service.
The militia were just regular guys, he’d told her: carpenters, drywallers, firefighters, EMTs. Even cops. Hard-working guys in a tough land. Vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. He’d done three tours. He was a concerned patriot who didn’t like what our government was doing over there and liked what he saw at home even less.
I got no problem with Obama being black, he’d told her. I fought next to his kind. But he’s pushing un-Christian values. Others in the militia thought Obama was the Antichrist. A front for the United Nations taking over the world or the Chinese buying America.
Someone’s gonna get hurt, her new friend had said. She’d since met others like him. Locals who filled their freezers with deer and elk in the fall to feed the wife and kids. Stacked supplies in their sheds in case the feds took away their constitutional right to bear arms. They’d change a tire for you on a dark road, call you ma’am, and shoot you if you trespassed on their land.
Nora ran back through town to the house.
Aunt Rosa and Phil took up half the kitchen, two old crash cars in a fading carnival ride, brewing coffee, burning toast. Rosa, in the middle of pulling her long silver hair up in a ponytail, let it fall loose when she saw Nora in the doorway. Instead she pulled the threadbare kimono around her slight body and raised her coffee mug in the air, offering. At seventy, Rosa was flirting with twenty.
Nora nodded yes to the coffee and pulled off her watch cap. Stasi lapped water before bringing in her food bowl and dropping it at Nora’s feet. Phil muted the local Fox News. A Botoxed face yapped in silence. Montana’s congressman and an Asian trade delegation appeared on the screen.
“Look who’s back,” Phil said. “Fuckin’ Yul Brynner.”
Nora dried her bald scalp with Stasi’s mud towel.
“Put some clothes on, fuckface,” she replied. “Animal act is over.”
Phil looked down at his ragged T-shirt, his paunch, his birdy legs that barely held his weight. He ran his hand through his thinning hair and tugged his stringy ’Nam ponytail.
“Girl, I love ya,” he said, putting her in a headlock.
Stasi growled. Nora raised two fingers to signal she was fine and the dog sat.
“Cut it out, you two,” Rosa intervened, her voice burred with sleep. “We’ve got work ahead.”
Phil rubbed his face with his T-shirt, turned to Rosa who was scraping toast. “Got a spliff?”
“Not today, hon. Today’s the big day. We’re buying off the old man’s liens. Tell her, Phil.”
Nora pulled a parcel of chopped elk from the freezer to thaw for Stasi’s dinner.
“Whoa, back up, girl,” Phil said to Rosa. “Gonna be next week. Jenkins says more paperwork and then down to Great Falls for the big OK.”
Aunt Rosa frowned. “Well, we’re signing the bill of intent today, though. I hate all this waiting.”
“Just one more week, love,” Phil said. “Then Mailer and his militia can go eat shit. We beat them fair and square. This’ll be ours, for our business, and no damn Constitutionalist militia is comin’ in here and buildin’ a compound.”
Nora reached into her pocket for the piece of paper and handed it to him. “Too late,” she said. “They’re here.”
Phil fumbled for his glasses. While he read, everything on him sagged: his jaw, his shoulders, the hula-girl tattoo on his arm.
Nora unscrewed a bottle of cheap bourbon, tipped coffee out of her mug, and added a generous shot. She broke a painkiller in quarters, popped one, and washed it down.
“No way!” Phil shouted. “Not today! It’s not happenin’!” He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it at the unmarked cartons sitting near the door. “You know that bird-hunting group? The Duck Fuckers? They rented the range for today. Raffling off new guns for their fundraiser. Today! Money in the bank.” Phil lurched toward the cartons and started pulling them apart. “Look! Springfield Stainless model 1911 .45 ACP!” He put it down, pulled a twelve-gauge shotgun from another carton. “Beretta A400 Xplor! Even has its own ducker serial number!”
Rosa balanced against the sink, her eyes as big as poached eggs. “Today was supposed to be our day, Nor. That money from the duckers puts us over the top.”
“Browning bolt-action 7mm!” Phil ranted, spit flying.
“The duckers brought them here last night, so’s we’d be all good and ready this morning.” Rosa cocked her head toward the building where the illegals slept. “And the girls in the back are doing the food. Mexican. Real nice.”
Nora heard sounds outside. A staple gun punching wood. Measured voices. Idling trucks. She held up her hand for quiet. “Shh.”
“Shit, shit, shit.” Phil paced. “And Bert’s eightieth. The party.”
“We hired those exotic dancers,” Aunt Rosa explained. “From that white van. They’re giving Bert a breakfast surprise.”
Nora broke the bourbon bottle on the corner of the counter, loud as a hammer, shards and whiskey flying. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
“Don’t talk to your uncle—”
“Mailer’s militia. They know about the ammunition?” Nora asked. “The business? The illegals?”
Phil shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”
“They want the UFOs,” put in Rosa.