Out of the Ashes (19 page)

“I do,” Ben said. “And I can tell you who they are: businessmen and -women who lost their businesses through boycott or riots; men who had wives or daughters mugged or assaulted or raped by Latins or blacks and then had to watch while our courts turned them loose—if they ever even came to trial—because of the pleadings of some liberal bastard lawyer whining about past wrongs, that had absolutely nothing to do with the crime; store owners who were repeatedly robbed and were unable to do anything about it or who watched criminals turned loose because of some legal technicalities; people who lost their jobs because of hiring practices. It's a long list, with right and wrong on both sides. But the hate finally exploded into violence—the hate directed toward the minorities. Many of us, of all colors, wrote of its coming. No one paid any attention to us. Well ... now it's here.”

“That's the part of your book I didn't like,” the black woman said.

“Two wrongs don't make a right.” Ben defended what he had written, so many years before. “But don't misunderstand me. I am totally, irrevocably opposed to what is happening in Chicago. I just saw it coming, that's all.”

“Be careful on the road, Mr. Raines,” the minister cautioned him. “I'm afraid it's going to get much worse before it starts to get better.”

The black lady looked at Ben. “I believe you wrote that, too, didn't you, Mr. Raines?”

 

“Ben, it's
stupid
going into Atlanta!” April told him. “The same thing might be going on there as happened in Chicago.”

“We won't go into the city proper,” he assured her. “But I want to get close enough to hear what's going on.”

They were on Interstate 75, heading for Atlanta. An hour out of Moultrie.

A few miles further, Ben saw his first manned roadblock on an interstate.

“Oh, hell, Ben!” April said, her fingers digging into his leg.

“Relax.” Ben patted her hand. “Let's just see what's happening. Hold the wheel for a minute.” He took a grenade from the pouch at his feet on the floorboards and pulled the pin, holding the spoon down with his left hand, just as he had back at the station with the so-called Georgia Militia.

Ben rolled up and stopped, lowering his window, his left hand out of sight. “Howdy, boys—what's the problem?”

“We just like to see who is comin' and goin' out of Cordele, mister. No real problem.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben said.

“I can see your right hand, buddy. But I can't see your left hand. You wouldn't have a gun pointed at me, would you? One word from me and that bunch over yonder,” he jerked his head, “would shoot this truck full of holes.”

“You like to shoot strangers who have done you no harm?”

The man's eyes narrowed. “That's kind of a dumb question, mister.”

“Humor me,” Ben said, but there was no humor in his voice.

The man spat a brown stream of chewing-tobacco juice on the highway. “You 'bout half smart-ass, ain't you?”

“Maybe. Maybe I just don't like to be stopped for no reason. Ever think about that?”

“Not often. Git outta the damned truck. Both of you.”

Ben smiled and lifted his left hand. The man almost swallowed his chewing tobacco. “No. You get on the running board. My fingers are getting tired. I might just decide to drop this out the window.”

“Man, you are nuts! That thing ain't got no pin in it! Jesus Christ!” he hollered. “Don't nobody shoot, or nuttin'. This crazy son of a bitch is holding a live grenade.”

“Fragmentation type. Get it right.”

“It's a frag type. Lordy, Lordy!”

When Ben spoke, his voice was loud enough for all to hear. “Now all you men listen to me. It is not my intention to bother a soul—unless that person first bothers me. And you people are bothering me. Now you get on the running board and tell your buddies to open that goddamned roadblock.”

“I ain't botherin' you, mister. Lord, no—I ain't botherin' you. TEAR DOWN THAT FUCKIN' ROADBLOCK!” he screamed.

The blockade came down. The man stepped up on the running board. That put his face level with Juno's muzzle and bared teeth. “Oh, Lord!” the man hollered.

Ben stepped on the gas and drove up the interstate, out of rifle range, stopping in the middle of the highway. “Get off,” he told the man.

The man did so, gladly. “Mister,” he said to Ben, “you jist ain't pullin' a full load.”

“Yeah? I heard that the first time I ate a snake during survival training.”

The man paled.

“Now you listen to me,” Ben told him. “I don't know what kind of trouble you people have had with thugs and punks, and you definitely have a right to keep those types of people out of your town. But you do not have a right to keep people from traveling on this interstate.”

The man bobbed his head in agreement, watching with great relief as Ben inserted the pin back into the grenade. “Yes, sir.”

“If I were you, I'd dismantle that blockade. Somebody's liable to come along and really take offense at being stopped and questioned.”

“More than you did?”

“Hell, friend.” Ben smiled at him. “I'm a saint compared to some folks roaming around out here.” He put the truck in gear and rolled on, leaving the man standing in the middle of the interstate, shaking his head and mumbling.

“Ben?” April asked. “Why did that roadblock make you so angry?”

“I really don't know,” he confessed. “I think maybe the arrogance of the people behind them—some of them—has always irritated me. And the structure itself somewhat. But the reasons have always been the real irritant with me: checking for a driver's license, to make certain it's the proper license for the state you're living in. What earthly difference does it make? If you can drive in California you can certainly drive in Utah. Or if you can drive in Hartford you can drive in Dallas. Country should have had one national driver's license and to hell with it.” He smiled. “That's one of my very few pet gripes, April.”

“The others?”

Ben grinned. “Those people who take it upon themselves to tell others what to read, what to watch on TV, or see in the movies. Or out of a township of one hundred people, fifty-one don't drink liquor, so they tell the remaining forty-nine they can't drink in their homes, or purchase a six-pack or a bottle in that township. What a person does in his or her own home is nobody else's business. But I'm death on drunk drivers, April. I have always believed that if a drunk driver kills someone, the charge should be murder—not manslaughter. And”—he grinned—“nobody on the face of this earth loves a drink of whiskey any more than yours truly. But I don't drive when I'm drunk, or even drinking very much for that matter. I used to, though. Until one night I almost ran over a kid on a bike. That was about ten years ago. That put a stop to it—for me. Don't get me started, April. My beliefs are intense.”

“You're a complex man, Ben Raines.”

“Maybe. And maybe I'm just a man who doesn't want to get too far away from the basic concepts of living.”

“What if a drunk driver ran over and killed a loved one of yours, Ben—what would you do?”

“Now?”

“No. I mean, back when things were normal.”

“My first inclination would be to kill him. But that would be wrong for several reasons. Our laws—back when things were normal, as you put it—were far too lenient on most criminals, especially the drunk driver involved in fatal accidents. So how can you blame the guy for drinking when the penalty for getting caught really, in many states, almost encouraged the drunk driver? No, education and stiff laws are the answer, and then gradually, over a period of years, as people become accustomed to those laws, and a generation grows with them, that's when you get tough with those who flaunt the law. Not abruptly. Not unless
everybody
in that state, and I don't mean fifty-one percent of the population, I mean about ninety percent of the population, agrees with those harsh laws. This fifty-one/forty-nine plurality is now and always has been, to my way of thinking, a crock of shit.”

“How about those people, say, to use your figures, that ten percent—what happens to them? Those who disagree with it?”

“They can live with it, or leave.”

“That's hard, Ben.”

“Yes.”

April was silent for several miles; miles that passed in silence, with only the humming of the tires on concrete and the rush of wind.

“All this ...” She waved her hand, indicating the emptiness of highway, the silence of the land all around them. “All this doesn't really bother you, does it? I get the impression you're looking forward to rebuilding.”

Ben thought about that question. “I guess I am looking forward to the rebuilding, April. As to it bothering me? No, I guess it really doesn't. Not to the extent it should, I suppose.”

“Why?” She glanced at him. “You don't believe all this is God's will, or something hokey like that, do you?”

“Hokey? Well, yes. I have to admit I've wondered about the hand of God in all this. Haven't you?”

“I don't believe in God,” she said flatly. “I think it's a myth. I think when you're dead, you're dead. And that's it.”

“That is certainly your right.”

“Not going to give me a lecture about it?”

“Not me. Believe what you want to believe. That is your right.”

“How about prayer in public school?”

He laughed out loud. “You're really hitting all bases, aren't you? All right, April. Fine, for those who want to pray. Those that don't could whistle ‘Dixie' if they so desired.”

“And take a lot of abuse and bullshit from the kids and the teachers, too, huh?”

“Root cause, honey.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Root cause. Ignorance, prejudice, thoughtlessness, all those things will never be stamped out unless and until we attack the root cause. And that's in the home.”

“Total state control, Ben? That's just a bit Orwellian, don't you think?”

“Yes, it is. But if our present method of education isn't, or wasn't, eradicating the inequities, what would you suggest as the course of action?”

“What inequities? Give me an example.”

“One kid wants to play sports, another kid wants to study music: the piano, the violin. Each should be able to do as he or she wishes without being ridiculed for making a particular choice. But it didn't work that way. The kid who chooses to pursue a life of music is often—ninety-nine percent of the time—subjected to taunts and jeers and ridicule for his choice, while the kid who wants to play sports is adored and given honors. The sadness of it, April, is this: the kids who ridicule and jeer have to have learned it at home; their parents have to be condoning it. Perhaps not knowingly, but still condoning it. If they do no more than refuse to broaden intellectual horizons, they're condoning and passing their ignorance on to their kids.”

“Ben ... do you want a
perfect
society?”

“No,” he said. “Just a fair one.”

And he thought of the mountains. And of the Rebels. Waiting. Something stirred deep within him.

April looked at the man; took in his lean ruggedness. How fast he was, to react to a deadly situation. He had a ... dangerous look about him. She said, “You look the type to spend Sunday afternoons in front of the TV, watching football.”

“I did, for years,” Ben admitted. “Still think it's a great sport. Played it in high school. But it's gotten—had—out of hand. I began to open my eyes and my mind and to look and listen to all that was happening around me; with my friends and others; what they were teaching their children. I was at a friend's house one evening, watching Monday-night football. I heard my friend tell his boys that anyone who didn't play sports was a sissy and probably a queer. I thought, what a terrible thing to tell a child, and told my friend so—in front of his kids. That man hasn't spoken to me since.”

“And never will again,” April reminded him.

Ben glanced at her. “I don't consider his death any great loss to the world.”

Ben had pulled off the interstate just a few miles south of Fort Valley and headed east. “Just wandering,” he told April. “We're not on any timetable.”

At a small town located on a state highway, Ben pulled over when he saw a group of elderly people gathered on and around the porch of a general store. When they saw the truck stop, they ran as if in a panic.

“Why are they afraid of us?” April asked.

“There is a certain type of filth in this world that preys on the old. I think these folks have been the victims of those types of slime. Let's see.”

But when Ben opened the door to the truck, he found himself looking down the twin barrels of a shotgun. It was, he thought, like looking down a twin culvert. He lifted his eyes to meet those of the man standing on the porch, behind the shotgun.

“I didn't stop to harm anyone,” Ben said. “I'm a writer, traveling the nation, attempting to chronicle all that has happened. If you people are in some sort of difficulty, perhaps I can help?”

“Lower the shotgun, Homer,” a woman's voice said. “He speaks as though he has some degree of education.”

The shotgun was lowered to Ben's legs. “One funny move, sonny,” Homer said, “and I'll shorten your reach considerable.”

Ben forced a grin and told Juno to please stop growling. Juno licked him in the ear. “I can see where that 12-gauge would definitely do it, sir.” He cut his eyes to the door of the general store. An elderly woman stood looking at him. Ben nodded. “Ma'am.”

The woman asked, “Where did you attend school, young man?”

“The University of Illinois, ma'am. For about twenty minutes. I didn't like college.”

She laughed. “What books have you written?”

Ben began reeling off titles and the various names he wrote under. She waved him silent.

“That's enough. Some of those books were pornography, Ben Raines. Filth. The sex acts were too descriptive. We're all adults; we know how the act is done.”

Ben laughed. “But I'll bet you read every word, didn't you, ma'am?”

She grinned and moved out onto the porch. “I taught English for fifty-five years, Mr. Raines. You need to learn about the positioning of adverbs and the splitting of compound verbs.”

“And don't forget who and whom and me and I.”

“Yes,” she said, sitting down in a chair. “That, too.” She pointed to April, sitting in the truck. “Are you and that young lady married, Mr. Raines, or are you living in sin?”

“No, ma'am, we're not married. As for living in sin, I wouldn't know about that. She doesn't believe in God.”

“I'm Nola Browning, young man.
Ms
. Nola Browning, thank you. We have all gathered here from several small communities in this area. I'll introduce you around a bit later. Given a little age, your young lady will come to her senses concerning God and what is His. If not,”—she shrugged—“her loss, not His. As to our troubles ... well... it seems we have a gang of hooligans and roughnecks roaming the countryside, preying on the elderly ... those who survived God's will, that is.”

“They have been here?” Ben questioned. “Bothering you folks?”

Ms. Browning laughed without mirth. “Bothering us, sir? Oh yes, I would say so. They came up on us ... what, Mr. Jacobs? Three months ago? Yes, something like that. They roughed up the men—humiliated them, I won't go into details—then they left. We hoped they would not return. But of course, they did.

“The second time they took all the weapons in the town. Mr. Jacobs hid his shotgun in a ditch; they missed that. Then they disabled all our vehicles. Left us stranded here. They've been back a number of times since then. The last time just the past week. Mrs. Ida Sikes is the youngest of us all: she's sixty-two. They took turns raping her. Then they pulled Mrs. Johnson out of her house and raped her the next time. A woman a trip. Mrs. Carson is next. She's sixty-five, but still a very attractive woman. The things they said they were going to do to her ... well, they were rather perverted, to say the least. So can you help, Mr. Raines? Yes, very probably. But there is only one of you, fifteen of them, at least. What can you do?”

Ben smiled, and Ms. Browning noted that his smile was that of a man-eating tiger who had just that moment spotted dinner. “Oh, I imagine I can think of something suitable for them, Ms. Browning. I used to write a lot of action books.”

“Yes,” the schoolteacher replied. “And correct me if I'm wrong, sir, but didn't I read in some column that you had been a mercenary at one time?”

“I prefer ‘soldier of fortune,' ma'am.”

“Of course you do. As for your books . . . I so enjoyed your action stories, especially when your hero rid the world of thugs.”

“Well, we'll see if I can't make one of my heroes come to life and lend a hand here.”

“I imagine you can, Mr. Raines. And will. You don't look at all milksoppish to me.”

 

“Ben?” April asked.

“Umm?”

They lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take them.

“What type of ... slime would do something like what's been happening to these people here. I mean ... I just don't understand.”

Ben chuckled quietly. “What's the matter, little liberal? You finding that the real world is a little tough? I bet when you were in college you supported all the correct causes, liberal, of course, didn't you?” She stiffened beside him. “I bet you leaped to the defense of every lousy punk and shithead the state brought up for burning in the chair—or whatever they do—did—in Florida.”

“You going to rub it in?”

“No, I just wanted to bring it up, that's all. See if I was right in my assessment. I was. Well, Ms. Browning—and that's a tough old lady—said she thought they'd be back tomorrow. Then you can see what kind of slime would do such a thing. After I kill them.”

“Ben Raines, the one-man hand of retribution, huh?”

“Just doing what the courts should have done a long time ago. We should have never stopped public hangings.”

She shivered beside him. “You scare me when you talk like this, Ben. You sound as if you're going to enjoy ... doing it.”

“I am.”

 

Ben put away the light M-10 and carefully loaded his Thompson with a full drum. He hid that, along with a pouchful of clips and several grenades, behind sacks of feed he had stacked in an alley between the general store and a deserted shop. He buckled on both .45s, jacked a round in each chamber, and kept both of them on half-cock. Then, with a grenade in his hand, he sat down on the porch of the store and waited.

Homer Jacobs was guarding the women in the basement of the local Baptist Church. Ben had given him an automatic shotgun he had picked up at a police station in Florida: a riot gun, sawed-off barrel, eight rounds of three-inch magnums in the slot.

He heard them long before he saw them. They came in fancy vans, their loud mufflers roaring. Rock and roll music was pushed through straining speakers; it offended the quiet and the beauty of early spring.

But, Ben reckoned, anything these punks did would probably be offensive.

Everything fit according to what Homer and Nola and the others had told him, right down the mag wheels on the vans. Ben rose from the porch and stepped out into the street. He wanted them to come to him, even though he knew he was taking one large risk. If it had been only three or four of them he would have taken the 7-mm rifle and picked them off one by one. But with this many he couldn't take a chance of even one getting away, for that one would probably gather more scum and return, and the revenge on the elderly would be terrible.

No, he had to kill all the punks.

The lead van roared to a stop amid squalling tires. Four vans in all.

Ben did not know that Ms. Browning had slipped away from the church and made her way up the alley and into the general store. She sat behind the front counter, watching Ben. She was a good Christian lady, believing strongly in helping those who could not help themselves. She had never mistreated a human being or an animal in her life, and would rather bite her tongue than be rude to a civilized person.

When integration had come to her school, back in the sixties, she had not retired, as had so many of her friends. Instead, Nola had gone right on teaching—in the public schools. She had been raised, from a child, to hold “Nigras” just a cut beneath her (or a full one hundred eighty degrees, as the case may be), and while she did find many of their ways alien to her own way of life, she also found many exceptional Negro children with a genuine desire to learn and advance. Ms. Nola Browning concluded (and it was a horrendous decision for a Southern lady and a member of the D.A.R. and the Daughters of the Confederacy to make) that we are all God's children and to hell with the KKK and George Wallace. She had been booted out of the Daughters of the Confederacy, but that was all right with Nola; they had to live their lives and she hers.

But on this day, Ms. Nola Browning wished and hoped and prayed with all her might this young man (anyone under sixty was young to her), who had more guts than sense, would kill every one of those trashy bastards who had terrorized her town.

She hoped God would forgive her dark thoughts and slight profanity.

She felt He would.

“What's on your mind, hotshot?” The punk on the passenger side sneered at Ben.

Ben knew the only thing a person outnumbered can do is attack. And that's what he did. At the sound of the roaring mufflers, Ben had pulled the pin of the fragmentation grenade and held the spoon down. He smiled at the punk.

“You know anything about Constitutional rights?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, pops—we all got 'em.”

“Wrong,” Ben said, releasing the spoon. It pinged to the ground. “You just lost yours.”

He tossed the grenade inside the van.

He was leaping for the protection of the stacked feed bags before the punks could get the first scream of fright past their lips.

The grenade mushroomed the van, and Ben knew that was four shitheads out of it permanently. As he leaped for the protection of the feed bags, he rolled another grenade under the front of the third van: a high-explosive grenade. The grenade lifted the van off its front tires, setting the punk-wagon on fire.

On his belly, looking out the side of the stacks, Ben leveled the Thompson and pulled the trigger, holding it back, fighting the rise of the powerful SMG. He sprayed the remaining two vans.

If nothing else, Nola thought, he's stopped that damnable music.

Ben emptied the sixty-round drum into the vans, then pulled out both .45s, hauling them back to full cock. He waited, crouched on one knee.

“Oh, Jesus God!” The cry came from the rear van. “There's blood and shit ever'where. Ever'one's dead. God, don't shoot no more—please!”

Ben waited.

“We's a-comin' out. Don't shoot no more.”

“We's,” Ben muttered. More than one.

We's! Nola thought, a grimace on her face. Illiterate redneck trash. Forgive me, Lord, but a rose by any other name is still a rose. Thank you, William and Gertrude.

“Hands high in the air!” Ben shouted. “If I see anything except skin in your hands, you're dead, bastards!”

He could have phrased that a bit more eloquently, Nola thought. But it was firmly spoken with a great deal of conviction.

Two young men, apparently unhurt, slowly got out of the van. Their faces were pale with shock and disbelief. Only two minutes before they had been riding high—king of the territory. Now their kingdom was in smoking ruins. And worse, they had peed their jeans.

“You.” Ben spoke to a punk with a pimply face and what Ben assumed was a mustache under his nose. “Face-down in the street and don't even think about moving.” The punk obeyed instantly. The dark stain on the front of the other's jeans appeared darker.

The elderly of the town appeared, walking slowly up the street. Homer with the riot gun in his hands; another man with a rope. He was fashioning a noose.

The punk on his feet fainted. The would-be tough on his belly started blubbering and hollering.

“Y'all cain't do this to me! I got rights, man.”

Ben smiled, a grim warrior's baring of the teeth. “So do other people, punk. Violate theirs, and you lose yours.” He turned to face the man with the rope. A noose was made. “Do with them as you see fit.”

They did. And that problem was solved permanently.

 

The people of the town cried when Ben and April pulled out. They were tears not only of sadness, but of relief and gratitude, for Ben had removed a horror from their lives. Before leaving, Ben had driven into a nearby town, prowled the stores and homes, and taken a small arsenal back with him: rifles, pistol, shotguns, and plenty of ammunition.

“You're off the beaten path here,” Ben told them. “You shouldn't be bothered too much. But the next time a gang like that comes through—and there will be a next time, bet on it—don't let them get the upper hand on you. One or two of you go out into the street. The rest of you get behind cover and poke your weapons out the windows; let the bastards know you're armed and ready to shoot. And don't hesitate to fire. Your lives are on the line.

“I've brought you CBs and two base stations; I've set them up for you. You've got a long-range radio to monitor news. I don't know of anything else I can do. I've gotten you several new cars and a van; all the medicine you asked for. I guess that's about it.”

All of the elderly wanted to scream out to him: you could stay with us.