Foodchain (22 page)

“He’ll be fine,” Sturm said. “I trust him.”

Herschell shrugged. “Because of your…situation. So be it. That permit you just filed, that’ll cover the next few weeks. You need anything, you let us know. Take care of yourself. You got our prayers.” Herschell and Olaf solemnly climbed into the cruiser and shut the doors. Sturm waved. The cruiser slowly lumbered off across the parking lot and down the street towards the center of town.

Sturm clapped his hands together and blew past Frank. “How’re my girls?”

DAY TWENTY-ONE

Sturm had Pine plant dynamite in a ditch tunnel under the highway for a roadblock. The thing that struck Frank was that there wasn’t really a need to do much of anything to the highway. There was no traffic. There was nobody. Just the fields, a few sheep, the sun, and the men running around like ants building some kind of awful trap for a fat, unsuspecting bug.

But Sturm had a plan, and he didn’t want any unexpected visitors during the hunts. He explained how it worked. If the town was expecting you, you were given a set of instructions. Instead of just taking the highway into town, you went back up the highway a ways until you came to a gate, secured with a heavy chain and combination lock. Beyond the gate was a road that looked like the parallel tracks of a dirt railroad through deep grass. It led around a swamp thick with cattails, up a little valley, and back down to the highway into town.

Sturm didn’t want to blow up the bridge over the ditch just yet. He wanted it to be an event, a celebration. They left the trigger under a five gallon bucket in case of rain, more of a distant hope than anything, and kept the dynamite waiting.

* * * * *

That night, Jack showed up at the vet hospital to pick up Frank. “Got a meeting,” Jack said, cracking a beer as they pulled out of the parking lot. The sun was drawing closer to the western mountains, but the temperature was still 104 degrees.

They drove through town, and Frank could see that nearly every window of every building had been covered with particle board and aluminum siding. It looked like the town of Whitewood was preparing for an especially destructive hurricane. Jack explained it was for the hunts. No point in leaving the windows exposed for stray bullets.

The taxidermist wasn’t taking any chances. He’d hung thick sheets of lead over his windows and front door. Instead of a hurricane, he appeared to be preparing for nuclear war.

A line of nearly forty pickups, all stuffed with what looked like junk at first, waited in town, starting at the park. Men stood in small groups, smoking and talking. They all looked up as Jack’s pickup circled the park. Jack pulled into a U-turn, tossing his beer can out the window. He honked his horn a few times. Men got back into their pickups, and engines started up and down the line.

Frank asked, “Who are all these people?”

Jack headed south, back down the highway towards the backhoe and dynamite. “Farmers, ranchers.” He shrugged. “Folks that live—
used to
live around here. Mr. Sturm went around and talked to ’em. Those that were just renting, he kicked ’em off. Those that owned their land, Sturm bought it off ’em. Hell, he gave ’em more cash that these people have ever seen in their life. Everybody’s clearing out, they’re heading for greener pastures.” The pickup rattled slowly through the empty town, windows blind with wood and aluminum.

The line of pickups followed, loaded with what looked like every possession the families could carry. The trucks beds were stuffed with mattresses, washing machines, rolltop desks, oak cabinets, swing sets, televisions, children’s bicycles, couches, sewing machines, water heaters, refrigerators, satellite dishes, and plenty of cardboard boxes. Often, the children themselves rode in the back, silent and sullen, wind whipping their hair. The back ends rode low, shocks compressed to their max, shuddering after every bounce, the kids automatically rolling with the stuttering progress of the truck. It looked like something out of
The Grapes of Wrath
.

“Why are they all leaving at night?” Frank asked.

“So the kids don’t fry in the sun.”

Frank nodded. It made sense. “I didn’t think there were this many people in the town.”

“Yeah, it’s most everybody,” Jack said, as if he knew most, if not all, of the people in the pickups.

Jack led the procession down the highway out of town. When they came upon the backhoe, lit in front by the headlights of all the pickups, backlit by the setting sun, Frank saw Sturm’s pickup. Sturm himself was leaning against his pickup, arms crossed, black hat low, cold gray eyes watching and noting each pickup and family that passed him.

Jack pulled off the highway and stopped behind Sturm’s truck. The procession passed, picking up speed once they had seen Sturm. Sturm never moved, never even nodded, never acknowledged any of the passing vehicles.

* * * * *

Jack and Frank watched for a while, then Jack headed back into town, passing pickup after pickup until finally there was nothing but the bare highway. He roared back into the empty town. “Goddamn. Look at it.”

“So?” Frank asked. “Didn’t Sturm own damn near everything anyways?”

“Well, sure. But the point is, they’re gone. Say you’re shooting at something.” The pickup slid to a stop under the only stoplight in town, the one on front of the park, the same one the cops had ran Frank’s first day. “Before, ’less you’re back in the hills, you always gotta be thinking about your backdrop. Now,” Jack belched, tossed his beer can out the window. It bounced and the hollow sound echoed throughout the streets. “Now, fuck it. You can shoot…without hesitation.” He pulled his rifle out of the gun rack in the back window. “You don’t have to worry about anything,” he said, settling the rifle in his lap, barrel out of the open window. “Nobody’s there.”

Frank didn’t think that anybody in this town believed in air conditioning.

Jack cracked open two new beers and handed one to Frank. Above them, the red light changed to green. Jack aimed his rifle down a dark street.

Frank took the beer, upended the one he had been holding. He finished it, squeezed the can and crumpled it on his knee. “One sec.” He opened the door, got out, put the fresh can on the roof, and unzipped his fly, pissing beer all over the green asphalt. His piss on the street turned golden, then the color of blood. Frank knew it was just the stoplight above him, but it still made him nauseous.

Jack fired, blowing a spiderweb of cracks through the windshield of a Ford pickup parked under a eucalyptus tree fifty yards away. Frank wasn’t expecting this; he flinched and damn near choked the piss off in mid-stream. He felt like he might vomit, sick from the heat. The sound of the rifle shot faded into the bare asphalt, thirsty trees, and dark buildings and houses. There were no shouts. No telephones. No car alarms. No dogs barking. Just a quiet sense of vast emptiness.

* * * * *

Sturm waited for everyone on the front porch. He sat in a large rocking chair, toes of his cowboy boots just barely touching the planks in the floor, just enough to rock back and forth an inch or so. He rolled his head with each transition in motion, from one end of the inch to the other, emphasizing the barely perceptible rocking. He looked like a child, with the top of the chair, all carved swirls and bows, over a foot above his hat. He was bare-chested again, save for the bandages. Blisters had formed on his shoulders, the color of embers left in the BBQ. His pocketknife was out, etching complex patterns into his wooden cane. Originally, it was an unblemished perfectly straight two and a half feet rolling up into a graceful half circle handle, but was now tattooed like a Maori warrior.

Jack and Frank were the last ones to the meeting. Everyone else was waiting in their pickups, in an unspoken agreement to wait for Jack. Nobody would actually get out of their pickups yet; that would be breaking the rules. Stepping out of a man’s vehicle, hell, then it’s required you approach the owner of the property. That would mean facing Sturm, and Sturm didn’t look ready to talk just yet.

Everybody respected Jack. So they waited for him, cleaning fingernails with pocketknives, squeezing blackheads on their forearms, smoking cigarettes, or just blankly staring at the fields.

Frank wasn’t sure he had a handle on how many respected him. Even now, after three weeks in Whitewood, Frank still couldn’t quite figure out whether the clowns were actually that stupid, or they whether they were just fucking with him, stringing him along until they flat-out killed him.

Sturm didn’t say anything to anybody except, “Follow me,” and marched out to the barn. The barn, once open and hollow, was now choked with supplies. The empty stalls were now overflowing with boxes of all shapes and sizes, as if the dirt floor had suddenly sprouted a cardboard fungus overnight.

Sturm broke down the inventory soon as everyone was inside. He pointed to the first stall, stuffed with stacks of ammunition. “I opened fourteen credit card accounts under fourteen different names. What happens is, you buy too much ammunition with the same account, a red flag goes up. Then you got Mr. Mr. King Shit Federal Man sniffing around your financial concerns. Maybe asking the reason of your purchases. Well, I got news for him.” Sturm cocked his index finger and fired off imaginary shots. “This is America, land of the free. And I’m brave enough to say fuck you. That’s right. This is business. I will not pay one goddamn cent of any goddamn tax from here on in. This is my business. And you, my employees, you will not pay one goddamn cent for any fucking tax they come at you with. You will all reap the rewards of these hunts.”

Sturm introduced the rest of the barn. It was stuffed with fifty-three boxes of liquor—mostly whiskey, bourbon, tequila, scotch, gin, and tequila—five Army tents, four giant generators, twelve lanterns, two portable showers, sixteen kegs of water, four axes, two cords of firewood, three gas BBQs, and enough knives, tables, chairs, bar supplies, and cigars to keep a small army comfortable for weeks. “And we got sheep in the corrals out back, case anyone gets excited.” Again, nobody was sure if Sturm was making a joke or serious. Frank suspected that Sturm was joking, and didn’t know how to deal with the lack of laughter. “Case you got the shits, we got approximately four hundred rolls of toilet paper. The portajohns’ll be here in three days.”

The rest of the stalls held, tiki torches, mirrors and washbasins for cleaning and shaving, furniture for the tents—couches, beds, tables, chairs—and on each of the tables there was bug spray, condoms for the hookers.

Sturm had led them around the barn, and now they were back at the door. “Any questions. Anybody think of anything we forgot?”

“I know we got the barbeques, but I don’t see anything else for cooking,” Jack said. “These guys, these hunters, they’re rich old boys. Can’t see them eating off the grill with their fingers.”

“True, true. They ain’t that type at all.” Sturm smoothed out the dirt in front of him with the flat leather sole of his right cowboy boot. “Fact is, I’ve made an arrangement for an outside party to handle the food situation. You are to treat this party with the utmost respect and offer them any and all assistance if necessary.”

“Just who is this outside party?” Jack asked.

“The Glouck family.”

The clowns recoiled as if Sturm had just told them they’d be eating dogshit for dinner.

“Fuck them. Fuck all of them,” Jack said.

“You questioning my decision?” Sturm asked quietly. He didn’t wait for Jack to respond. “Anybody here questioning my leadership?” Sturm kept moving his foot in a slow, circular motion, smoothing the soft dirt directly in front of him. “If so, then let’s have it out right fucking now. Any dick licker here got a problem with my decision? Speak up. Any employee of mine has himself a problem with the boss, the only man that signs every goddamn check in this county, then step up and say what you have to say.”

Sturm kept the flat sole of his boot drifting effortlessly back and forth across the dirt, the sharp toe like the movements of a stalking rattlesnake. The dirt was smooth as the hood of his Dodge.

Sturm’s foot was really the only thing moving within the barn. Even Sarah, down at the far end, had enough presence of mind to freeze, to breathe slow and easy so as not to attract the attention of a predator. Everyone was as still as the lion hide stretched tight against the corrugated roof, slowly cooking in the heat. Especially Jack. He’d seriously overstepped his bounds and he profoundly regretted his transgression. He kept the brim of his hat aimed at the ground, watching everyone out of the corners of his eyes.

Sturm’s foot sank into the surface of the dirt like a semi tractor settling into a still pond in slow motion. He searched out every man’s eyes. Jack was the last to look up. Looking directly at Jack, Sturm said, “But say it like a man. Be honest. Let’s have it out. Right fucking now. Or, so help me god, you will either do your fucking job or I will hurt you.”

Sturm waited about the time it takes to unlock and open your front door, then finally said, softer this time, the sandpaper grit of his voice much finer now. “I didn’t like it at first neither. But you listen. You all know what I got in my head. Nobody knows how much time I got left. I am not a patient man. I am a man who needs things done.” Sturm let that sink in for a moment. “The family will handle nearly all of the food—with only the exception of when we BBQ—but even then, the family is responsible for dressing and butchering the animals. And they handle everything else, the dishware, the tablecloths, the wait staff, the cleaning of dishes, pretty much anything related to the food. So let’s have an understanding here. That family has their place. They understand that. Every ruling power has its serfs. You goddamn hotheads, you don’t think. You don’t use the mind God gave you. Beer, pussy, and fighting. That’s it. Hell, I know. I been there. My boy, he’s about to understand that. I’m asking you to trust me. Not just with this family, the goddamn Gloucks. Not just them. No, I’m talking about the future of this town. I’m talking about the hunts. Thanks to Frank here, we have ourselves a genuine opportunity here. So you are either with me, or you can get the fuck out.”