Miles began tentatively, his voice cracking from nerves, “I wish we could make jokes all night, guys. But, we got some serious business to discuss.” Frosted air jerked outward from his mouth as he spoke in a broken, awkward cadence.
“Let’s get to it,” the gruff voice called out once more.
“Junior Hodges has crossed a line. Many of us have been complaining about the ‘levies’…”
“Damn that word. Call it what it is. Taxes!” Someone interrupted him.
Miles took a long moment to recover, “Fine. Taxes. We’ve been complaining about them since they started. Now, he first demanded to have a go at Keith’s wife, Valerie, or Keith had to give up his only rifle as payment.”
A bevy of hoots and boos descended upon the crowd and grew to a low roar. Colorful catcalls were liberally mixed in the general din. Miles raised his hands to quiet them. When the noise had subsided, he continued.
“It gets worse. He told Keith he’d have two days to think it over. Then, tonight, he came over, drunk, and took Valerie away.”
The place was deathly silent. Miles looked confused and looked around searching for an answer. Apparently, he decided that they hadn’t heard him.
“I said, he came and took Valerie away!”
The effect was catalytic. The stunned crowd erupted in a frenzy. The shouting was so loud that Cooper clapped his hands to his ears. People were yelling, stomping, banging rifle butts against the nearest vehicle, and crying out an indiscernible cacophony of protests. Miles was visibly shaken and took a step backward on the pickup’s hood, trying to gain scant distance between himself and the mob’s rage. Cooper turned to look at the man to his right. He was in his thirties, with black hair and a neatly kept beard. The man was screaming at the top of his lungs, but the noise was so deafening, Cooper couldn’t make out a word. He lip read profanities lacing every third word, but could not hear those, either. To his left, Dranko was as dumbstruck as Cooper; gaping at those around him and the spectacle. Then, it hit him. Junior’s outrageous act is magnified because of the horrors everyone has just lived through. They are imagining their wife or daughter being in Valerie’s place and what would have been unfathomable a month ago is now cause for the mob’s ferocity. The enormity of their loss makes the crime shift to beyond heinous.
Miles remained on the hood of the pickup for at least five minutes as the crowd vented its fury. Finally, after repeated attempts, he gained some semblance of order.
“The question now is, what do we do?”
“We kill the son-of-a-bitch,” the man with the gruff voice yelled. That drew a loud round of clapping and yells of support for the idea.
As it subsided, a nervous voice chimed in, difficult to hear, “He’s got a lot of armed men with him.” Space cleared around the speaker. Almost like you have the plague, ain’t it? Cooper half-expected to see a bespectacled frail-looking man, given the voice and the comment. Instead, he saw a stocky, well-muscled man, wearing a green flannel workingman’s shirt and a Carhart tan jacket. Matching workpants and black boots completed his attire.
The man shifted his feet, gaining traction. His voice found greater confidence, too, “You know what I say is true.”
His comment drew a spattering of support, before others rushed in to silence them. The word “coward” struck clean through the crowd.
The man reared up, “Who said that? Come say that to my face!” The man’s brown eyes searched frantically for the offender.
Miles quickly lost control as the group splintered into a half-dozen animated arguments about whether or not taking on Junior Hodges was what they should do. Several of the groups were quickly moving beyond exchanging words and pushing and shoving started. Miles locked onto Cooper’s eyes like a drowning man does the life raft. He beckoned him to join him on the hood.
Cooper saw that the situation was about to descend into abject chaos. He quickly climbed atop the pickup. His father’s advice came to him once more. When put in front of a group who don’t know you, make a dramatic entrance. One they won’t forget. His father had offered all sorts of examples that were appropriate to calmer times. Cooper improvised.
He drew his pistol and fired at a low angle into the air.
Everyone froze, some in comical looking mid-grapple positions or in the middle of yelling at the person in front of them. All heads swiveled to look upon this stranger with the smoke drifting up from the muzzle of his pistol.
Someone spoke for the group, “Just who the hell are you?”
Cooper began, “My name’s C.J. and…”
He was cut off by a familiar voice, “This man brought me out to Miles’ from Portland. More importantly, he done got our neighborhood through the crisis a damn sight better than any other down there. You need help figuring out what to do next, I suggest you listen to him.”
The same man confronted her, “If you don’t mind me asking ma’am, who the heck are you?”
“Lyle, she’s Miles’ mother. Anyone who’s been here for a while knows her. She don’t blow smoke up anyone’s…anything.” This time, it was a man in his fifties, gray-haired, and wearing the clothes one would expect to see on a well-to-do hobby farmer.
He turned to Cooper, “So, what do you have to say?”
In a fractured group, find agreement first, his father called to him once more.
“Why don’t we start with what we agree on?”
Murmurs of assent filtered through the group.
“Junior Hodges has crossed a line that every living soul here wants to make sure he doesn’t ever think about crossing again, right?”
The crowd signaled its agreement with a deafening boom of “hell yeahs” and “that’s rights.” Cooper felt the familiar feeling of capturing a group’s attention and forging unanimity from it. An electric charge shot through him. Damn, I think I’m starting to enjoy this!
“And, we want to make sure he’s held accountable for what he’s already done, right?” Cooper felt the crowd joining him, accepting him.
“Now, one option that’s been suggested is to rally ourselves into a posse and go and kill him.” Once more, the sparks of disagreement began flying. Cooper held up his hands and was somewhat surprised that silence resumed so quickly.
“Let’s evaluate that choice using cold logic. First, raise your hand if you have a gun of any kind.” Nearly every hand shot up.
“Now, leave your hand up if you have a rifle or a shotgun.” Three-quarters remained up.
“Finally, leave your hand up if you have a military-style weapon with a mag that holds twenty or more rounds.” Only a dozen hands remained up.
“Alright. How many men does Hodges command?”
“About forty!” Someone shouted.
“That right?”
“Close enough,” someone added. Seeing agreement in the group, Cooper continued.
“Next question. Most of his men have military-style weapons, right?”
This question was answered with a mix of enthusiastic and reluctant “yeses” depending on where people had stood in the original argument.
“So, the question is, do we really want to start a war when the numbers are about even, but the other side has us outgunned?” Mumbles and grumbles were the only answers he received.
“Good; this is progress. We are gonna respond, but we are going to be smarter than trying to bring a bolt-action to a machinegun fight.” His joke received a few laughs.
“Let me try this on for size. We march on Sheriff Hodges tomorrow morning at nine. We come armed. We go with two simple demands. One. No more payments in human form for anything.” Cooper choked out the word, as it felt so foreign in this context. He continued, “Two. The taxes are reduced by 10% permanently. On top of that, 10% of the taxes collected go to Keith and Valerie for the next six months.”