Days later Mick stood in dress uniform before a table of several officers. A combat Colonel with deep lines of experience etched through his face and fierce eyes that had seen too much, spoke. “Look, Mick, you’ve been a helluva soldier. A helluva soldier. No denying that.” The Colonel paused, resituated a pen in his grip and wiped his brow before continuing, “but stunts like this, well shit, somebody’s got to be held to accounts. Not too much room to fuck up these days." The Colonel informed that the fellow soldiers involved, Lieutenant Anderson and Brent would each be given light sentence. Mick was the ranking soldier, and therefore would be held responsible. Mick knew that if there was one thing the military did it was to proceed in all things according to rank. Anderson and Brent would lose half their pay for forty-five days and be under certain restrictions during that time, while Mick would be discharged taking effect 1300 hour, with the case going before review committee as to specific ramifications.
Mick's response to the news was to feel a little numb and unfeeling as if he had taken a long fall and was as yet uncertain of injury. And then he looked at the situation as one would the purposeful elimination of a long annoyance. Say an old squeaky fan that ran at too low a speed to cool a room. And one day you take a baseball bat and smash it off the ceiling and throw it in the garbage can. Enough of the irritant, and it is gone with a few swipes. It was as if this had been his plan all along – to go as far as he wanted and no more. The same way he had quit his journalism job before joining the Navy. Simply write a story so far out bounds, and again, and again, and again, that he was removed. And he savored the rush to do what his gut told him to do. Not many get the feeling of living out of your heart. There are painful costs to not playing by the schoolmarm’s rules, especially when the schoolmarm had a buzz haircut and expected salutes.
He removed his trident and placed it on the table without plea and waited for his dismissal standing in a military posture, eyeing the officer in charge stoically. “You’re dismissed.” The senior officer said. Mick spun on his heel crisply and left the room. A friend intercepted him in the hall and slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Stunts like this are what made you the soldier you are Mick." Mick gave no reply. The friend continued the impromptu eulogy. “There ain’t much leeway these days, fucking system can’t absorb this kind of play Mick. But you never wanted a career did you? Came in on a lark, bored as hell with civilian life. When we first got in I remember you reciting the opening lines of The Whale to me, the summation of your reasons to enlist. Same reasons lesser men take up triathlons. Do you remember?” Mick looked over to his friend with a dry expression and recalled the words.
“Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” Mick said the words with little expression. “Is that all sir?” Mick said. “Yeah, that’s all.” Mick saluted the officer and turned his shoulder on military life and headed for the light of the exterior door at the end of the hallway.
……………………………………
Mick and Yeats were somewhere in the Nevada desert at dawn, the horizon looked as far in the distance as the stars in the sky, sagebrush and igneous rock the primary landscape. A land home to jack-rabbits, lizards, vultures and nuclear waste depositories. Mick pulled the Bronco into an empty dirt parking lot. A neon pink sign matching the sunrise in an embellished way flickered. The J swung back and forth in three sparkling neon pink stopping points between Swinging and Saloon. Lovelock, Nevada was lost between the Trinity and West Humboldt Range. This was USA ranch country. Things seemed a good might clearer for folks in this part of the world. There was right and there was wrong, and it was easy to know the difference. You just knew, because those before you knew, and so on. This was the school of common sense. If you didn’t know how to tie a double-hitch, you were a dumb ass and probably never would know much. Another school, the school of the via negativa might describe the place in and the honky-tonk in specific, as certainly not a place for a man wearing a twenty dollar haircut, nor a Ralph Lauren shirt, nor tasseled loafers. It looked to be the sort of place where if one looked enough out of place they were liable to be Shepardized. Yeats claimed to have coined the term after Matthew Shepard had been beaten and left for dead hanging on a barb-wire fence in Laramie, Wyoming. Yeats had his own encounters with Better be red or gonna be dead-salute the flag-and load your weapon-no need for school-thinking has gotten pretty dangerous and overrated-you better not be a queer-America.
Mick and Yeats entered through swinging doors and straddled worn barstools and leaned in against the smooth elbow worn wood. Yeats noticed a bullet hole cracked horizontal across the mirror of the century old bar glass and the elderly woman bartend sweeping up from the previous night’s revelry. Except for the early morning news broadcast on the television, not a word was spoken between the brothers and the gray haired woman who eventually leaned the broom up and attended to them. “How can I help you boys?” “Coffee.” Mick said. “You got a pot of coffee on?” Yeats said. “Sure thing hon.” “Oh, and a plate of eggs and home fries.” Mick pulled out a four day old crossword from the newspaper folded into thirds and went to work. Yeats watched the weatherman gesture at the incoming low patterns on the television. “Yeats. Lakota Sioux holy man, eight letters." "Black Elk." Yeats said, off-handedly and continued, “Mick, I’ve got to tell you something.” Mick kept his head in the paper and muttered, "Yeah". “Danielle’s engaged. Guy named Chad. Played football at B.Y.U. – split end I think, had a brief stint in the pros.” Yeats said that from what he could tell, the guy was a regular asshole, and he didn't know what the hell she was thinking and wondered what Hirem and Abigail thought. He speculated the answer was that Danielle was 27, gorgeous, single, and childless. Not exactly the textbook life for an LDS woman. Mick said that put that way it did seem as if she were on the fast track to hell. No goddess status for her if she kept it up. But, with this news it sounded like she was sure enough working on getting it figured out. Mick said so with the same detached emotion with which he had given up his trident. He kept his eyes fixed on the puzzle.
Yeats persisted that the two of them ought to get down to Salt Lake and get an eyes-on the situation, reasoning that a gem of a woman like Danielle is in rare supply, and besides, they couldn't in good conscience let her make the mistake of a lifetime with this bimbo without at least an honest effort. On top of all this, Yeats figured he could use another field-trip to the LDS Temple. He described it as being like the ancient Greek temples: stocked with beautiful women who were nothing more than prostitutes of old, women who could appease the gods, give salvation through heavenly coitus, paving the way to the promise land. Coitus was a fertility offering, the hopes and pleas for a bountiful harvest, plenty of rain and the like. Sex drives the faithful. Yeats explained that while the Mormon Temple wasn't quite as explicit as all that, it was all the same thing really. “Humanity doesn't differ that much, just different variations on a few themes with all of the same struggles, temptations, needs and desires.” Yeats said.
Mick didn't reply, his face was still buried in the crossword, as were his feelings, cordoned deep within as he feigned disinterest. “Mick, you’ve been all over the Middle-East, Kandahar, Lahore, Medina, Al-Jawf, Beirut and places besides, but you’ve never been to Temple Square. It’s time we get your ignorant ass to the North American Mecca. I'm telling you what brother, drop dead gorgeous tour guides, from the standard tall blond-hair, blue-eyed locals to the dark exotics of Polynesia. Mick, you haven’t done your tour of duty until you’ve done the Temple tour.” Mick looked up from his preoccupation. “Yeah, what we need to do is get up and see Floyd and Mom. You see them recently?” Yeats admitted that it had been a long time.
After an hour rest at the Swingin’ J the brothers were back on the highway driving north towards the family home in the Snake River Valley. Music they liked, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, REM, Rolling Stones, played on the radio as the scenery changed from desert to mountain plateau, and after several hours the brothers had made it back into familiar territory in the Snake River drainage. They pulled into the parking lot of The Grouse Hollow Café a favorite local diner that Yeats had talked of a hundred miles out, just a truck-stop diner off the highway with good pie and open face sandwiches. As they came to a stop an incredulous look swept over Mick’s face.
“What the fuck?” He said, barely audible, surveying the Café exterior. He pounded the flat of his hand on the dash dusting the air and jumped out slamming the door behind him.
“What in the hell have they done to the Grouse Hollow?” Mick said with halting words and stalked towards the door. “Can’t they leave well enough alone? Shit.” Mick said with foment. The building was clearly under significant renovation. The door Mick approached had a hand-scrawled note in black magic marker that redirected patrons to an alternate entrance. Inside plastic sheets shielded the vacant hostess desk.
“I go away for a few years, and damn, place was perfect as was.” Mick stood in agitation before the sign that read: Please wait to be seated. Within moments the hostess appeared, looking overwhelmed by the explosion that had just blown through the door. She grabbed two menus and said, “Sir, is it going to be just the two of you?” She gestured at Mick and Yeats with her painted nails scattered with silver glitter.
“Yep.” Mick said.
“Booth or table?”
“Oh hell.” Mick considered the options. “Still have counter-service?”
“Two at the counter? Right over here.”
She pointed cheerily to two stools at a horse-shoe shaped counter, the only item preserved from the vintage 50’s diner, token acknowledgement of what was. The rest was what looked to be cheap new fixtures that imparted the same sterilized, standardized atmosphere common to most every newly built establishment in America. The two sat down at the counter and left a stool between themselves. An old man sipped on a cup of coffee down the counter. Mick looked around and said, “Where the hell are we? Perkins?”
“Hauling a load somewhere?” The old man said.
“Headed home.” Mick said.
The old man named Merle lit a cigarette. There was silence as Mick and Yeats looked over the menu.
“At least they still allow smoking. That’s a throwback.” Yeats said.
“Nope. Smoking’s banned. I’ve got special dispensation.” Merle said.
“A pocket of preservation, like McTavish and the NHL helmet rule.” Yeats said, ruminating approval.
“Yes, I spend a good part of my day sitting here in this truck-stop drinking coffee, passing the time. Used to be part diner part feed and seed store. New expansion is slated to accommodate the increase in tractor-trailers, showers, merchandising, parking spaces, fill ‘er up spots. Becoming a regular trucker’s paradise. I’ve lived in and around this area for the better part of my life, save when I was away at the wars. Things have changed more in the past three years than in the previous thirty put together. What’d you say your names was?” The old man said.
“Didn’t say. Fitzgerald. Mick Fitzgerald.”
“Yeats Fitzgerald.” Yeats said before shouting down the waitress, “Could we get a couple of coffees over here?” He pointed between himself and Mick.
“Fitzgeralds huh? They live out on County Road 7.” Merle said. “Farm I grew up on was gobbled up by developers, two decades or more ago.” Merle settled back from the counter and folded his thick forearms across his chest just beneath the pack of cigarettes stowed in the breast pocket. He continued, “Swooped in on all of us farmers unable to make a go of it in an era of monster agribusiness. These developers have eaten their way into this community like hyenas. They’ve circled us over the years, picked us off one by one, taking the most vulnerable first. Taken the best bottom lands too – now home to what I call clone neighborhoods – shameful.”
“Hits pretty close to home.” Yeats said.
“Our system runs on this make money move faster model of industry where more is actually less. Get yours today!” Merle imitated a pitchman, his face animated as if he were mad. “Would you like that biggie sized – only ten cents more – but thirty percent bigger!” He said, and then resumed his own flat voice, “Is it any wonder a huge number of Americans are overweight?”
“Fat as shit.” Yeats affirmed.
Merle self-indicted admitting that he’d biggie-sized in the past month, admitting that he can’t hardly get a pop without going big. “Most truckers wouldn’t think of commanding the Eisenhower-efficient-military-transport-interstate without a biggie in hand. It’s simply part and parcel of the American landscape.” Merle said.
Yeats laughed.
Mick had lost interest in the verbosity of his brother and new found, half-senile friend, and was engrossed in his crossword. Merle continued the tirade, “Tell you what I’d like to do. I’d like to send an airborne assault campaign against the subdivisions that have decimated the ground I call home. We’d run it like a military operation. Operation Rolling Suburban Gawdamn Thunder. Carpet bomb these lousy developers into submission. Course, we’d drop leaflets to warn the citizenry.”
“You really are a crazy man Merle. I like your style.” Yeats said, in contradiction to his nouveau Tolstoyian aspirations.
“Is this any less justified than some of the reasons our government has used to prop puppet dictators and wage war and bombing campaigns overseas?” Merle said.
“Well, I don’t know, depends who you’re asking I guess.” Yeats said.
“Oil barons propping fascist regimes in the developing world, where coincidentally there is profit to be made and the American Way is under threat.” Merle said, and paused. “Save for a few good documents early on, that sustain remarkably well given the duress - the American Way has chiefly been about profit at all costs – people and land be damned.” Merle took momentary respite with a drink from his coffee. “Same motives for the powers throughout the ages. At times it may be in the guise of altruism, as the Bolsheviks professed, but it seems to always return to the greedy motives of power hungry individuals. Jesus H. Christ.” He took another pause, this time longer and finished his coffee. Merle eyed Yeats as if he were looking for an answer and then said, “Jesus didn’t speak against greed more than anything else because he was trying to get press coverage – he knew greed was at the center of evil.” Merle accentuated the e in greed with a drawn out grin. “Buddha didn’t renounce because it fit with his emerging yoga lifestyle. He knew something. Most the rest of these religious phonies are quite motivated by greed. Take your local mega-church leader, always after another buck and more influence.” He emphasized the last word disdainfully and looked Yeats in the eye. “Hell, carpet bomb after the leaflets are dropped – and maybe a smart bomb or two for the developer trailers.”
After of few moments of silence, Merle followed his pontificating with a hearty laugh. Yeats got up off his stool and gave Merle a hug, pushing the old-man’s glasses cock-eyed.
It was late afternoon in Idaho and Yeats and Mick were back on the road with only a short drive remaining to the family farm. Floyd Fitzgerald came out of the house and the screen door slammed shut behind him. He clinched a gunny-sack in one hand and held a double-barrel shotgun over his left shoulder. He made his way across the yard to a fence rail and dropped the sack to the ground and began snatching out plastic, battery-operated, Chinese made toys, placing each one on the top fence rail. The toys sat silhouetted against the sky like plastic idols.
The farmhouse windows were lit up and looked to be the wholesome home everyone should be American-gilded-fortunate to grow up in. Old man Fitzgerald paced off from the fence putting distance between he and the sentenced toys. He turned and leveled the two barrels and muttered to himself, “Execution by firing squad still on the books in Idaho,” with a squint down the barrel the gun exploded once and then a second time. Gun-smoke drifted skyward and with a lift of the brow Floyd took accuracy appraisal. The toy line-up revealed two conspicuous gaps. Floyd broke the neck of the shot-gun and retrieved the two spent shells and grabbed two more pheasant load shells from the barn jacket pocket. As he plugged the shells into the barrel he glanced up at the sound of an approaching vehicle. Mick and Yeats had arrived. They felt the assurance of being home as they passed a sign that swung from two rusty chains: Fitzgerald Farm and Vineyard – Huckleberries, Vines, & So Forth. A trail of sunlit dust filled the yard as the Bronco pulled in. Floyd snapped the action of the shot-gun together thinking he’d have a little fun. “Off my property miscreants.” Floyd shouted. He held the shotgun in one hand, the butt resting off his upper thigh angled. The boys didn’t make out what was said, but they knew their old man well enough. Mick opened his door and as his foot made contact with gravel Floyd fired off a shot. Mick jerked his foot up and shouted out the crack in the door.
“Only got one more old man, better make it count. We’ll be coming for ya’.”
Yeats volunteered to draw out the second shot before they bum rushed their old man. Yeats opened his door and put his foot out cautiously. Dust scattered inches away.
“Shit almighty.” Reflexively, Yeats slammed the door shut. As he did Mick flew at old Floyd and they tangled in a heap, the headlights of the truck spotlighting the tussle.
Sue-Ellen stepped through the screen-door onto the porch to see what the ruckus was about. She had a kitchen apron on and keen intuition. Yeats walked past his brother and father and bypassing the stairs he leapt onto the wooden porch and gave his mother a hello kiss on the cheek and disappeared into the house. Mick and Floyd wrestled up off the dirt in playful aggression. The grappling and words made it amply apparent that Mick took after his dad. “Insolent boy. That anyway to greet your old man? Startle me by driving reckless into the yard, then break my damn back on the way to see your mother? Anything that comes in or out of that drive is on my order.” Floyd pointed down the drive tracing his way back and said, “And you’re allowed in,” his face broke to a grin. The two dusted themselves off and Floyd grabbed Mick around the neck and steered him to the house.“Hey you two!” Sue Ellen hollered from the porch with tauthority. “Supper’s ready. Get yourselves to the table – it’s hot.”
Mick jumped on the railing-less porch and engulfed his mother in a bear hug swinging her around in the light of the open door. Sue Ellen gave out a laugh of delight.
For the first time in several years the Fitzgerald’s gathered around the family dinner table with their boys. Visible from the table was a line-up of wooden toys perched on a shelf overlooking the kitchen table and just as all heads had bowed and the perfunctory supper prayer was to be said Yeats’ head popped up and he pointed, “What’s with the toys?” He said.
Sue Ellen spoke for her husband, “Your father has lost his patience.”
“Not dad. Lose his patience?” Yeats said.
Floyd stepped in to defend himself, “I got fed up with the grandkid’s Chinese made toys – only kind you can buy anymore. My gripe is not so much the fact they’re made in China, but the quality – plastic junk, and the noise, hell, intolerable.”
“So what’s the plan dad?” Yeats asked.
“Plan is to execute every last one of the plastic imposters on the property, replace ‘em with this handmade cadre of beauts.” Floyd grabbed one of his handmade toys off the shelf and inspected it with commentary. “This one here serves two purposes. Winds up and walks, kids’ll like that and doubles as a bottle opener.” He walked to the refrigerator, retrieved a beer, cracked it open and handed it to Mick. He then wound up the toy and set it walking down the middle of the table before getting blocked by the gravy boat.
“Pretty clever dad. Think the kids’ll go for it? Might take ‘till they’re twenty to appreciate spruce-wood, Floyd-made toys.”
“They’ll manage.” Floyd said.
In the midst of discussion Yeats had managed to consume a chicken wing and lick his fingers and compliment the cook. “Ma, this fried chicken is delicious.”
“Better than that vegan shit they serve down at the Berkeley commune?” Mick chided. Yeats’s mouth was too full to defend himself.
“Michael your mouth! This isn’t the Navy mess hall.” Sue Ellen scolded.
“How’s Mer?” Mick asked his mother, and cleverly changed the subject.
“Oh, you know Meredith, busy. Armful of kiddos. She and Jim have expanded the music store to include an on-line business. Meredith runs it from home.”
“Jim still teaching music at the college?”
“Yes, still doing that. But the music store downtown is taking more and more of his time.”
Floyd interrupted the catch-up conversation. “Listen boys, tomorrow, a little work to be done around the farm.”
“You going to take the offer for the south 40, Dad?” Yeats said.
“What’s that got to do with tomorrow?”
“What offer?” Mick was curious and out of the loop.
“Oh hell, some developer’d like to get a hold of the South 40 and put in god knows what.” Floyd was clearly not enthused by the conversation.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this, Yeats?” Mick said looking to his brother. “You’re not going to do it are you Dad?”
“Son, I’d rather not. You know what my stance has always been. Nothing we can’t talk about tomorrow. Your Mother and I want to know about you. You still have your wits about you after daily threat of being blown to kingdom come?” Floyd said. He had a controlled disposition despite all the inconveniences and threats the world offered in every season and aspect of life, a trait he had passed on to his son Mick.
Morning broke with color over the Fitzgerald farm. Mick skipped breakfast, stopping long enough to set Mr. Coffee to brew and read a few lines from the previous morning’s paper. He poured himself a cup to go before heading for the barn. He sat atop the cab-less, much used, John Deere tractor, trying in vein to get the engine to turn-over when he saw his father striding across the yard towards him. He wished the tractor would cooperate so that he would not have to receive advice from Floyd, preferring to have the morning alone in his thoughts, wheeling up and down the field leaving serpentine rows of planting furrows.
“Eh! Mick.” Floyd shouted twenty paces off. “We’re going to use Mr. Manassas. That things outta’ gas. I pretty well get by using him anymore.” Floyd waved from the elbow at the mule standing at the corral fence.
“The mule?” Mick said.
“Hell yes the mule. I’ll show you how to rig him up, case you forgot.”
“Get outta’ here. I haven’t been away that long.” Mick said.
Floyd said he thought the war might have robbed him of common sense and Mick rebuffed this accusation by harnessing the old mule unassisted and led Manassas out to the ankle deep loamy soil and followed in the wake of the trudging work animal.
“Haw!” Mick shouted at the mule and they made a left turn and started up another row. At the edge of the field a billboard loomed, facing towards the road, it told of the coming development: “Hoot Owl Hollow. Where life is a hoot! A Planned Community by CB builders. From the 200’s.” Mick cursed the deleterious sign and continued down several long rows as the sun rose to summer equinox heights.
Noon hour found Mick, Yeats and Floyd in the shade of the porch drinking lemonade poured from a large thumb print patterned glass pitcher. They sipped and waited for Sue Ellen’s lunch platter.
“What the hell is that billboard doing out on the east property line?” Mick asked with a riffle edging the words.
“Attempted encroachment.” Floyd said.
“County approached me about it, wanted to know if I’d mind it being planted on the property – for ‘fair’ compensation. I said ‘hell no’ in no uncertain terms. They went around me, as politicians do, slicker ’n snakes in water. Planted the damn thing right in the middle of the ditch, not two foot from the property line. Called it immanent domain, never mind the damn thing redirects the ditch water. Typical work of ignoramus bureaucrats.”
“Attempted encroachment? Sounds like straight forward encroachment to me. Let’s pull the damn thing out. To hell with those fuckers.” Sue Ellen came through the door just as Mick’s colored opinion came out. Her face went ungentle.
“Mick, unless you clean-up that mouth of yours, you can dig grub worms for lunch.” Sue Ellen levied what the three men knew was not an idle threat given her track record.
“Sorry ma, I’m a danged sailor. What can I do?” He said, throwing up his hands, looking every bit the on-duty sailor with his closely cropped hair.
“Either throw that mouth of yours overboard or go hungry, that’s what.” His mother said.
Later that evening Mick and Yeats got Mr. Manassas rigged up in the open barn door guided by the yard light. The moon took over as guiding light as they trudged out into the freshly plowed field towards the billboard on the east end of the Fitzgerald property. Once there they hitched Mr. Manassas to the billboard with intent to pull it down but underestimated the pole and the strength of one mule.
“Fuck this thing is stout. Metal pole’s half a foot in diameter.” Mick said with annoyance. The two continued working even though common sense told them they had no prayer with mule strength.
“O.K. She’s ready to go on my end.” Yeats said, holding the reigns up for his brother to grab. Mick took the reins of Manassas and exhorted the mule against the static resistance of metal and concrete. “Walk!” Mick gave the command to the mule more than once.
Mr. Manassas strained with his belly to the dirt but nothing moved except for Mick’s face first fall into the soft dirt. He came up cursing and threw a hunk of mud at the billboard that stuck for a few moments before falling, leaving a smudge on the white as if a period on the end of the night mission.
The next morning Mick’s determination for un-planting the billboard had not changed but his course of strategy had. By nine a.m. he was standing at the counter of the local hardware store waiting to place an order for ordinary items that a farmer is always in need of. A gaunt faced, flat-eyed clerk with slicked back hair arrived from the back to take Mick’s order and Mick, without hello waded into the list of needed items.
“Forty pounds of ammonium nitrate. A good ten pounds of potassium sulfate. You have a powdered form of zinc, by chance?” The clerk said he would check in the back, his nervous demeanor showed suspicion, as if he knew that any one of the items purchased alone would not be a thing out of the ordinary, simply commonplace items for fertilizing and so forth. But, all the items together certainly made for an explosive cocktail, and while the clerk knew he would never know how to do it himself, he had been around long enough, including a stint in the first Iraq, to know something about what was explosive and what wasn’t. Fortunately for Mick the clerk was a devout libertarian - a man who believed that a citizen could buy what he liked and it was just as well that a few of our citizenry knew enough to protect the country, should there ever be a red dawn.
“Oh, and a couple of bags of chicken feed.”
“You say this is for fertilizing the fields?”
“Yeah, not the bag of chicken feed though, that’s for the chickens.”
Yeats rejoined Mick at the counter after wandering the store. He was carrying a large hack-saw, admiring its sharp teeth with his thumb.
“This sucker would cut right through that pole, huh?” Yeats said.
“Right through ‘till dawn. They got a two handled one back there? We could slave all night together.” Mick slapped his brother with sarcasm as the clerk returned with the ordered items. “Interesting mix of things son. Explode if you put it all together. Your operation is safe with me.” The clerk said with a look about him that conjured creepy images of Lee Harvey Oswald. Mick didn’t entertain the strange vibe from the clerk and paid for the material, conveying his appreciation for the man’s cooperation. The bells that hung from the door jangled as they went out.
They waited until evening before attempting the re-assault of the billboard as the moon came up over the trees to the east and Mick and Yeats again trudged across the field leading Mr. Manassas who pulled a cart stacked with four barrels of ordnance. Mick carried a spool of detonation wire and Yeats carried a bushel worth of trigger pipe bombs in a rounded wicker fruit basket.
“How volatile are these things? If I dropped the basket I mean, what’d happen?” Concern bordered Yeats’ voice.
“Oh, the ground out here is soft enough, probably would just thud on the dirt, unless it hit a rock.”
“Probably thud? Shit. You mean they could blow – what if I trip?”
“Relax, you’re not going to trip. Do you normally trip for no apparent reason walking across flat ground?”
“Well yeah, sometimes I do.”
“Just carry the basket.”
Mick carefully lifted each of the four wooden barrels filled with explosive and set them in a clover-leaf around the pole and then pulled a roll of tape from his jacket pocket and gestured to Yeats for ordnance. Yeats handed him each pipe bomb in turn and each was strategically attached to the barrels. When the all-go was given, Yeats grabbed the spool of detonation wire by each handle and climbed up the ditch and through the tree line into the middle of the field paying out wire as he went. Mick put the finishing touches on the devices before retreating to the safety of the open field and gave a few last instructions to his brother before giving him the honors of manual detonation.
The anticipation that filled the air was wiped clear with the surprising boom of the detonated bomb. The explosion provided the same feeling of being caught off-guard that a high-powered rifle gives when shot for the first time. Yeats and Mick watched with satisfaction as the billboard wavered and fell, and great was its fall as it whomped with a crack and a bang half into the watery ditch and half onto the dry wash board county road. With glowing satisfaction the brothers headed for bed.
Morning brought a large breakfast courtesy of Sue Ellen. Floyd sat at the head of the table reading the morning paper with Yeats seated in the chair next to him reading section E. “Morning.” Sue Ellen said. “Morning Ma.” Yeats returned.
After pouring a mug of coffee from the carafe Mick found his spot at the table and stole a page from Yeats’ already thin section. Sue Ellen eyed her two boys knowingly. Mick read his scant portion of the paper and sipped from his mug decorated with a sailboat on waves and the name Mystic, Connecticut in white lettering within the blue water. Sue Ellen put the food down on the table and all began to eat without word until Floyd spoke. “Scare those developers away did you?” Floyd asked with an unimpressed tone. Yeats looked up from his eating and Mick kept his eyes on the paper he held in his left hand while taking bites from his fork that seemed to move on back and forth from plate to mouth on its own. Both remained silent.
“Things’ll be stirred up pretty good. Thought it through did you?” Floyd allowed for silence and neither Mick nor Yeats wanted to answer.
“I don’t know where they get it from Floyd.” Sue Ellen said with a subtle smirk that danced in her eyes.
“Well, Pops, we were clearing the ditch of obstructions. We’ve been in charge of that since we were kids. Tried to pull that billboard out with Mr. Manassas – but it wouldn’t budge. Like trying to bring down a Canadian with dove shot. Had to gauge up.” Yeats said.
Floyd brushed off Yeats’ humor wanting to get to the source of things. “Mick?” Mick was still reading the paper taking bites of food and without looking up he said in with usual brevity, “Yeats is right. Clearing the ditch.”
“I see.” Floyd said. “Authorities won’t exactly be startled. Not the first time a battle’s been waged from Fitz Farm. Ditch needed clearing.” Floyd repeated to himself and chuckled. “Did you haul it out, or is it still laying where it fell?”
“Laying right where it dropped.” Yeats said.
“Job won’t be done ‘till the ditch is cleared. Gas up the Deere.” Floyd said.
Floyd was behind the wheel of the tractor as Mick and Yeats secured chains to the billboard and jumped onto the tractor as it lurched forward and the chains were pulled taut. The three chugged down the dirt road with the billboard dragging behind leaving a gouge the width of a shoe in the gravel road.
Having disposed of the wreckage at an unofficial dump-site common to area farmers, the three Fitzgerald men sat on the porch and discussed things. They decided at the suggestion of Floyd, that it would be best for the two boys to get lost for a while and let things “blow over” as Floyd put it. Floyd insisted that he would handle things, convinced that it would all go much cleaner if he dealt alone with whoever it was that needed to be dealt with. The county already knew he wasn’t pleased with the damn billboard anyway. He pointed out that it hadn’t even been a week since Yeats got out of jail and the Navy Brass was still sorting out Mick’s case. A couple of jail birds wouldn’t make things any easier for a situation that he should have done himself. Floyd advised that they get out of town and maybe Mick should take the time to rescue back that sweet girl Danielle if he was so inclined, noting that he and his mother had always particularly liked her.
