The Chardon Chronicles: Season One -- The Harvest Festival (4 page)

“I think my dad must be starting to wonder
where I am, first day and all. I should head home.”

“I’ll drop you off.”

Tracy pulled into a parking spot in front of
the Marte’s condo. MARTE was spelled out on the mailbox with some
gold and black block letters. The condos were all the same. They
were built on a small patch of ground evenly spaced around concrete
cul de sacs radiating from a main road. Each one was small, tidy,
white, and vinyl sided.

“Want to come in? I can’t offer you a beer,
but at least there’s some juice in the fridge… I think, or tap
water anyway.”

“I have to warn you most of the time, parents
hate me… In fact, let’s put it off for a while. I’m going to go
home and veg.”

“No problema. My dad’s cool. Sometime you
should meet him.”

The car pulled away and Chloe waved. Tracy
beeped the horn.

Her father was breaking down boxes. “Look
what I did!” the rest of their stuff was put away. The condo
started to look like a home.

“While you were busy with that, I fixed the
hair emergency and made some friends… A friend with a cool
car.”

“Nice. I saw it. We will definitely need to
look for one for you--probably not an Austin Healey, though. Not
too practical in the winter! Here, a car’s basically a
necessity.”

“Vroom.” she pretended to drive to a stool at
the kitchen counter. “That was Tracy Wells. She’s cool.
Very
adult. We also met a couple of her friends. The Northeast Ohio
version of brahs.”

“Wells? I wonder if she’s related to Matt
Wells. I knew him back in the day… They had a farm over on Sherman
Road.”

“Yeah, maybe. I didn’t pay any attention to
the roads. It was a big old white farmhouse, really nice inside,
fields, trees, and some cool rock formations in the woods. Her
parents are gone.”

“Yep, that’s it. Matt and his wife--her
parents--disappeared. I wonder how she keeps the place going…
That’s a lot for one person to take care of.”

“She mentioned an Uncle. I didn’t meet him
though. She seems very independent.”

“Independence is a nice quality in a young
lady.”

“How was your day?”

“Well, I got a job, so that’s good. Local
lawyer--actually I knew him in high school--wants me to look into a
hit and run case. Other than that, I started looking up some old
friends. Not many people stayed in town.”

“They all went off for adventures in the big
city, I suppose.”

“I’m the only one who got shot. Seems to
gives me some gravitas.”

Jerry’s black Mercedes SUV rumbled along a
rutted crushed limestone driveway. An old tow truck carcass with
grass growing out the wheel wells was rotting next to the drive.
“Pattie’s Tavern and Party Center” was painted on its door. A hand
written sign was staked into the ground “GOP FUNDRAISER”. The
gravel lot was full, so he had to park in the adjacent field.

The restaurant was in a cedar sided building
with a shake roof. A crowd was standing around on a deck that was
attached to the second floor of the building and people were just
starting to assemble on the patio. A band was setting up and he
could just hear the tinny sound of an electric guitar being
tuned.

He shut the engine off and checked his look
in the mirror. His black hair was slicked back, gray at the
temples. His face was still tight across his forehead and cheeks
but gravity was starting to work on his neck a little. He pulled
the knot of the tie a little tighter. He wondered if he should
start cultivating a “friend of the working man” facet of his
persona and go with rolled up shirtsleeves and open collar. He
watched a group of kids--probably college students--head into the
building. They were all wearing his “Here’s Jerry!” T-shirt. It was
a caricature of him chainsawing a door. The caricature was wearing
the same pinstripe suit and red tie, so he decided to keep it on
while he was working.

Jerry worked for the Brotherhood for a couple
of years before he even knew it, and before that he’d been groomed
for the job during college. He was in a frat and taking business
classes when he wasn’t partying. In spite of a solid “C-” grade
average, he got a sales job right after school when a professor
hooked him up at an industrial supply company in the outskirts of
Columbus.

He worked there for five years, traveling the
state, making contacts, and growing his network. The nature of the
work changed drastically when he got promoted to regional manager.
At first, he thought it was a step backward in his career. Instead
of managing the sales force or working clients, his boss asked him
to run little errands any day of the week and at any hour of the
day.

Jerry assumed it was all corporate
business--deliveries that were too delicate to trust to the post
office or UPS. But, finally, one morning he drove a few hours to
deliver a package to a run-down farmhouse in a remote corner of
Ashtabula County. A guy wearing biker leathers and carrying a
shotgun answered the door and took the package. He got a big flat
box in return. He could tell it was filled with bundles of cash. He
returned to the office with the box and just sat at his desk the
rest of the afternoon.

His boss came in his office and closed the
door. “Jerry, you must wonder what you’re doing for us, right?”

“I wonder, but not too much. I just do my
job.” His face didn’t give anything away.

“You and I both work for Black Box Diesel
Supply… but I
also
work for a big, old multi-national
company. The work you’ve been doing for me lately has really been
an interview with them.”

“So, is this a job offer, then? Are you
offering me a job?” He was curious, but a little angry.

“I’m not. In fact, there’s not much I can
tell you myself. If you’re interested, I’ll send you over to talk
to an old friend of mine who can advise you on some important
matters.”

“Hmmm…. so if I talk to him, can I say
no.”

“Absolutely. This is an offer you
can
refuse. Either way, that box is yours--no strings--our way of
saying thanks. There should be about two hundred and fifty grand in
there. If you say no, you’ll just need to resign here, and we’ll
help you get that money tucked away safely.”

He drove to a patent attorney’s office in
Cleveland. The ornately furnished office overlooked Lake Erie.
Jerry sank into a comfortable heavy chair and watched the sun shine
on rippling water. The attorney was bald and wore glasses with
thick black rims. His suit wasn’t flashy, but was well tailored and
he gave an overall impression of precision. He gave Jerry a
thorough, methodical explanation without much personal
interpretation. He set out the pros, cons and mechanics of working
for the organization. He made sure to explain what it meant to be
“let go”--at best, you just lost your job and spent years worrying
what might happen. At worst people important to you died, then you
did.

Jerry barely heard the cons, and was really
flattered, almost swept away that he was being selected for a life
beyond the norm. He nodded. “OK,” he said.

“You can think it over as long as you want.
This is not a choice that should be made on an impulse--you can’t
ever unmake it.”

“I get that. It won’t be necessary. I’ve been
ready for something like this for a long time.”

There was no ritual, no contract to sign. The
attorney took out a copied-and-recopied picture of an ink drawing
that depicted a few different handshakes. Jerry shook hands with
the attorney as instructed.

All these years later, he realized the
conversation was misleading in a key way. It was the only time
information about the organization was presented in a frank and
comprehensive manner. The rest of his career had been ridiculously
cloak and dagger secret. He rarely knew why he was doing something,
and sometimes didn’t even know what he was doing.

A few years ago, they moved him out of
Columbus to the boondocks of Ashtabula County. He bought a mansion
that used to be owned by a boxer. The place was set on about 100
acres of scrubby old farm fields. Behind the house were steel cages
where the boxer kept tigers and panthers as pets. Jerry started a
new career as a Libertarian firebrand AM radio host. He broadcast
from a studio in “The Compound” he called it, and his engineer
played a roar, “a sabre tooth cat” every time he said
“Compound”.

He had no prior interest in politics. He got
scripts emailed every day--written by god knows who, and he acted
them out. He launched campaigns on topics he didn’t care about at
all, and hammered a few key points and catch phrases every day. The
show really took off via the Internet when he got into a social
media feud with “that libtard Danny Fitzgerald”. Danny broadcast
the “progressive” version of Jerry’s show from Vermont from “The
Pasture”.

Both shows made it into the national
spotlight when Danny stopped at “The Compound” for an in-person
interview. To the audience, it appeared the two spontaneously got
into a heated argument, which then became a chaotic fistfight. At
first they pretended the footage would never be shown. He ran the
audio almost every day for a week, steadily building audience
interest. Then, they leaked the footage onto YouTube through a fake
account, and pretended to fire his engineer for the crime of
leaking it.

One still frame from the video, an image of
Jerry’s dazed expression, bloody nose, and bloody dress shirt
became a popular meme. After the incident, he and Danny made the
circuit of conservative or liberal mainstream media shows.

The whole incident was scripted and the blood
was fake. They had rehearsed the fight with a stunt coordinator
from LA that flew in for the week.

After the stunt, he spent a lot of time
traveling and glad handing at fund raisers and rallies for
red-meat, red state “conservatives”. He used the events to conduct
business for the Brotherhood.

Geauga County’s thorough allegiance to the
GOP went all the way back to the Civil War. Though factions and
squabbles inevitably arose from time to time, the ugliness of
politics, the struggle for dumb animal domination, hadn’t appeared
until recently. After the 2008 financial crisis, the county
establishment’s generic country club conservatism started to yield
to more radical strands of thought. New, angry, insistent faces
started showing up at fund raisers and party events.

Judge Ralph was one of those faces. Contrary
to the wishes of the local party establishment, Columbus installed
him after Marcus Rice died. The local party apparatchicks spent
months frozen in a state of disbelief and indignation. In the
meanwhile, Ralph hired friends and cronies for every patronage job
he could find or create.

He showed up Patty’s with his long time
friend, Skip, who was now employed as his aide. He shadowed the
Judge with his gun holstered under his arm and with his cell phone
camera rolling.

Wilma Barstow was one of the County’s Country
Club Republicans stalwarts. She clashed with the judge at every
opportunity. She saw him enter the building, downed her drink, then
sidled up to him and Skip.

“Hi Ralph, I see you trained your dog to work
a camera. Good boy!” She patted Skip’s head. He stepped back from
her to film, but made sure to let his jacket fall open to reveal a
holstered gun.

“That’s
Judge
Ralph to you, Wilma.”
Ralph said firmly.

She laughed hysterically. “Oh my god, you two
are such freaks.”

Skip filmed her picking up another drink from
a waiter’s tray. She toasted him and took a drink.

She asked, “Is this going on your YouTube
channel? Think it’ll go viral. Maybe reach number
one
.” She
held up her middle finger and shoved it toward the phone.

Jerry motioned to Ralph from across the room.
Ralph was relieved for an excuse to step away from her. “Stay
classy Wilma. Pardon me, but I have some business to attend to.
Stop filming Skip.” Skip put the phone in his jacket pocket and
just watched the room, looking for any security breaches.

“Jerry, good to see you. I was just
entertaining my biggest fan over there.” Ralph pointed at
Wilma.

“Well, if you get another one, you’ll double
the size of that club.” Jerry sneered. “But hey, I don’t have time
to shoot the shit. I’m here on business: You need to speed up the
progress on this farm job. Get it done ASAP.”

Ralph blanched, “Jesus Jerry. I was doing
exactly what they wanted, taking it really slow, getting ready to
turn the place into a museum. It would just take a few more
months.”

“Well, things changed. I don’t know why, but
they just did. Get it done.”

Ralph put his hand on his chin. “OK. Of
course, but it’s too big for the team out here. I need some
help.”

Jerry sighed. “Alright. I’ll call you later
and we’ll work something out.”

The next morning, Judge Ralph jogged up the
courthouse steps and went past the clerk’s office. He stepped
inside and rapped his knuckles on her desk. “Good morning, judge.”
she smiled at him.