Ashes - Fire In The Ashes Part 9

Pal nodded. "Yes. Several times during the past few months. People are being forced to relocate, many of them against their will."

"You were going to tour the country, write about it?" Valerie asked.

"Was," Ben said. "You people?"

"The kids have to have schooling," Pal replied, giving voice to both their thoughts. "And I'm told a man named Cecil Jefferys and his wife, Lila, are really doing some fantastic things down in Louisiana."

"I just told you what Logan plans to do about New Africa," Ben reminded them.

"Maybe it won't happen."

"You can't believe that."

"No," Pal said quietly. "I suppose not. White people have always been fearful of an all-black nation, whether you will admit it or not. But I suppose we have to try. I have a master's in science; Valerie, a master's in business. They are going to need teachers."

"But I just told you-"

"I know-I know," Pal waved him silent. "But after all that's happened ... all the horror, I thought perhaps the government would ... let us alone, let us rebuild."

"You know they won't."

Pal and Valerie said nothing in reb.u.t.tal.

After talking of small things for a few moments, Ben said, "I'd like to see a nation-a state, if you will-where we teach truth, as supported by fact; the arts, the sciences, English, other languages, fine music-the whole bag. I have this theory-very controversial-that we are, should have to start from scratch. Gather up a group of people who are colorblind and as free of hates and prejudices as possible, and say, 'All right, folks, here it is; we, all of us, are going to wash everything clean and begin anew. Here will be our laws, as we choose them. We will live by these laws, and they will be enforcedto the letter ...

equally. Always. This is what we will teach in our schools-andonly this. This is what will happen when a student gets out of line. Everything will be in plain simple English, easy to understand and, I would hope, easy to follow.' The speech would have to end with this: 'Those of you who feel you can live in a society such as we advocate, please stay. Work with us in eradicating prejudices, hatred, hunger, bad housing, bad laws, crime, etc. But those of you who don't feel you could live under such a system of open fairness-then get the h.e.l.l out!'"

Both Pal and Valerie were silent for a few seconds after Ben finished. Pal finally said, "That, my friend, would be some society, if it would work."

"It would work," Ben defended his theory. "If the government-the central government-would leave the people alone. It would work because everyone there would be working toward that goal. There would be no dissension."

"Don't you feel that concept rather idealistic?" Valerie asked.

"No, Valerie, I don't. But I will say it would take a lot of bending and adjusting for the people who choose to live in that type of society."

"Ben Raines?" Pal looked at him. "Let's keep in touch."

As he drove away the next morning, Ben thought: Now there are the types of people I'd like to have for neighbors, friends. Good people, educated people, knowledgeable people, with dreams and hopes and an eye toward the future...

"Yeah," Ben said, bringing himself back to the present. "But we can't live in the past, can we, Ike?"

"It doesn't hurt to remember, though. As long as someone is around to remember the dead, they'll always be alive." He grinned. "Some wise dude said that."

"You had some good news for me..."

"Tommy Levant, senior agent with the FBI. He's fed up with Cody and what the man has done with the Bureau. Word is, he wants to work with us."

"Trap?"

"I don't think so, Ben. Levant is one of the old breed of agent: straight and narrow. The Hoover type of Bureau man. One of the few older hands left."

"I wonder if he realizes the risk involved?"

Ike shrugged. "His a.s.s."

"That's what I like about you, Ike," Ben laughed. "You..."

Ben's remark fell unfinished as Dawn walked past them. Ike watched his friend's eyes follow the movement of her hips and the sway of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He grinned as Ben shook his head.

"Prime stuff there, El Presidente. You wanna tell me what happened 'tween you and Jerre?"

"I'll be honest with you, Ike: I just don't know. It's been ... cooling between us for several months. I think she'd like somebody closer to her own age."

"Umm," Ike said.

"Does that mean yes or no?"

"Means: Umm," Ike replied. "Ben ... do we have a chance in this thing? You think we have a chance of pulling this off?"

Ben sighed. "A slim one." He knew Ike, despite his intentional butchering of the English, had a mind that closed like a trap around information he felt was necessary to retain. "Of the 7,200 new people, how many can we field as fighting personnel?"

"Six thousand," the ex-Navy SEAL replied without hesitation. "That gives us just a tad over ten thousand personnel to field as fighters." Ike looked closely at Ben. The man seemed deep in thought.

"What's on your mind, Ben?"

"We do it one town at a time," Ben said softly. "So easy it escaped me for a time."

"What is so easy?"

"Giving the nation back to the people. We do it one town at a time." He grabbed Ike's arm. "Get on the horn to our field commanders. Tell them to start hitting deserted bases and stripping them of weapons.

When they've done that, have them begin hitting National Guard and reserve armories; I want every weapon they can get in their hands. Call our intelligence people and get them working; find out where the government is storing the weapons it takes from civilians. Then hit it."

Ike's eyes lit up with comprehension. "We arm the people-one town at a time."

"Yes, and we start with the towns around the Great Smokies."

Both men turned to watch a black girl walk across the camp area. She was small, pet.i.te would be the word, and if one wished to be chauvinistic in describing a lady, stacked.

"Steady, Ike," Ben grinned. "Remember, you're a Mississippi boy."

"I bet my ol' granddaddy is jist a-spinnin' in his grave," Ike said. "Lord have mercy, would you look at that action at the fantail."

"Ike-you're impossible!" Ben laughed. "What's her name?"

"Carla Fisher. Great b.a.l.l.s of fire."

Over his chuckling, Ben asked, "What's her story?"

"I don't know; but I sh.o.r.e intend to find out."

Carla found herself in a South Carolina jail, charged with the murder of a man she'd never seen, nor heard of. The police used a dozen different methods to break her story, but they could not, and Carla held on.

She was degraded, cursed, browbeaten, and humiliated. She was also treated to the standard search procedure used for suspected female narcotics users and pushers-at least that is what it started out at its inception. In many big city jails,all females are subjected to this search. One of the more Dachau-type tactics many police departments utilize.

Stripped naked and either showered or hosed down-dependent entirely upon the department and the time of day or night-one is forcibly held down and then bent over by police matrons-if they are handy-and then the female is searched in every conceivable place a woman might elect to hide a small packet of drugs. It is anything but pleasant, and if the matrons happen to have a s.a.d.i.s.tic streak, it can not only be cruel, but painful-not to mention extremely humiliating.

If this tactic is thought to be helpful, in any way, toward breaking a prisoner's story, it will be used.

Narcotics sometimes has nothing to do with it. It is but a legal variation of Hartline's tactics.

Carla spent weeks in jail. No bail. Her trial was long and staggeringly expensive. Her mother and father borrowed and mortgaged to pay for the best legal defense they could get. Carla was found not guilty-after the police found the real murderer. She was cleared of all but the stigma.

And the press can be as culpable as the police in the failure to remove that.

Ten days after Carla was released from jail, with a rather lame "Gee, we sure are sorry," from the DA and the judge, Carla's father lost his job.

Unable to pay his debts, unable to mortgage anything else, his creditors turned everything over to the collection agencies and they came s...o...b..ring and threatening into Mr. and Mrs. Fisher's lives.

Then the vicious circle began to revolve.

Mr. Fisher could not get a job because of the bad reports the local credit bureau gave to any prospective employer; he could not pay his bills because he had no job; he could not borrow the money to pay his bills because he had no job with which to repay the borrowed money ... if he could have borrowed any.

Nasty letters from the collection bureaus; abusive phone calls from the collection bureaus; threats at all hours of the day and night-over and over.

Five months after their daughter was freed from a charge that should never have been hung on her, with the only utility still operating being the gas, they elected to use that. They locked themselves in the kitchen and turned on the stove and went to sleep.

They never woke up.

A day after she buried her parents, Carla took her father's shotgun, waited in the DA's garage until he came home from work, and shot him four times in the chest and once in the face.

Then she joined the Rebels.

None of that could have happened in Ben Raines's Tri-States.

There were many things different, unique, and quite experimental about Tri-States. One visiting reporter called it right-wing socialism, and to a degree, he was correct. But yet, as another reporter put it, "It is a state for all the people who wish to live here, and who have the ability to live together."

In the Tri-States, if a family fell behind in their bills, they could go to a state-operated counseling service for help. The people there were friendly, courteous, and openly and honestly sympathetic, if that family could not pay their bills because of some unforeseen emergency, and if that family was making a genuine effort to pay their bills, utilities could not be disconnected, automobiles could not be taken from them, furniture could not be repossessed. A system of payment would be worked out. There were no collection agencies in the Tri-States.

As Ben once told a group of visiting tourists, "It is theduty and the moral and legal obligation of the government-in this case-state government, to be of service and of help to its citizens. When a citizen calls for help, that person wants and needs help instantly, not in a month or in three months. And in the Tri-States, that is when it is provided-instantly. Without citizens, the state cannot exist. The state is not here to hara.s.s, or to allow hara.s.sment, in any form. And it will not be tolerated."

Within a week's time, all towns within a fifty-mile radius of the shadows of the Great Smokies were shut down tight. Every person over the age of eighteen-if they so desired, and most did-were armed. With those weapons, the people were making their first real start in a hundred years in establishing some control over their lives.

A Tennessee federal highway patrolman almost messed in his underwear shorts when he drove through a small town and all the adults were armed-and not just with squirrel rifles, either. Many had M-14s, M-15s, and M-16s. A few carried old BARS, Grease Guns, Thompson, and M-11s and 10s.

"Hey!" he shouted at one young woman. She was pushing a baby stroller and had a .30-caliber carbine over one shoulder. "What the h.e.l.l is going on around here?"

"You want something, trooper?" she replied.

"Ah ... yeah. Where are the ... I mean ... what happened to Chief Bennett and his men? The police station is empty."

"They all quit."

"Quit!" The trooper was uncomfortably aware of a crowd of people gathering around his patrol car.

They were all armed. Well armed. "Possession of any type of automatic weapon is illegal," he spoke from rote. "The possession of any shotgun larger than a 20-gauge is also against the law. No one may own a hunting rifle in a caliber larger than a .22. If you people..."

"Shut up," he was told.

He shut up.

"Times have changed," a man spoke. "If you don't believe it, just move your head a bit to the left."

The trooper turned his head, slowly, and found himself looking down the bore of a 9-mm SMG. "I believe, I believe," he said. "Man ... Mister, put that thing on safety. Please?"

The 9-mm was lowered.

"Burt," a woman said, "you've been a decent sort of trooper. I don't think you ever liked all this high-handed business coming out of Richmond. Did you, Burt?"

Burt knew if he uttered the wrong answer someone would soon be picking him up with a shovel and a spoon. He told the truth. "No, ma'am-I haven't liked it."

"I reckon the government will be sending in federal lawmen to take our guns, don't you, Burt?"

"I reckon that is the truth."

"They are not going to make it this time, Burt."

"I kinda figured that, too, Miss Ida," Burt said. "I sure did."

"We wouldn't want to see you among that crowd of feds, Burt."

"Miss Ida, you ain'tgonna see me in that crowd. Now you can just bet on that."

"Burt," a man said, "you tell your commanding officer that the people in the towns around the mountains are law-abiding folks. We're not vigilantes and no one has been hanged by mob law and no one is going to be. But anyone who tries to come in here and take our guns will be met with gunfire. You tell your commanding officer that, Burt, now, you hear?"

"Yes, sir."

"You go on, now, Burt. And, Burt..."

The trooper looked at the man.