The Prairie Chicken Kill Page 4

  "What I want to talk about is the New World Order. Y'all know about it. It's no big secret."

  It might not be a secret to Ralph Evans' regular listeners, but I didn't know about it. I turned up the volume a little so I could hear better over the noise of the air rushing by.

  "Yessir," Ralph Evans said, "the United States government, the one that pretends to represent you and me up there in Washington, DC, would like for all of us in this country to be a part of the New World Order, right in there with China and Russia and a lot of other Godless places like that. One big world government, that's what they want. And you all know what your part would be in something like that."

  Evans paused, as if waiting for his invisible audience to answer. I would have answered, but I didn't know what to say.

  Apparently I was the only one because Evans said, "That's right! Diddly squat. That's what your part would be. They're gonna take away your car and your land and your house and make it all a part of their big socialist scheme."

  Evans paused again, and all I could hear was the air and the hum of my tires on the highway.

  "But you think you're not gonna let that happen, don't you? You think you've got your guns cleaned and oiled and your places all picked out where you can make a stand. You think you know what's comin' down the road, and you think you can do something about it. Well, I'm here to tell you, friends, you're as wrong as you can be about that."

  There was a second of silence, and I could imagine Evans shaking his head sadly as he looked at his microphone.

  "You're wrong," he went on, "because you don't know the whole story. Sure, you know all about how they want to take away your guns and even your right to own guns. And if they can't do that, they durn sure want to make sure you register every one you got so they can come and get it in the dark of night. You know all that.

  "But what you don't know is what I've just had reported to me today. It comes from a good source, one that I trust and one that's had good information before. It's the one that told me about the left-over leg in the Murrah Federal Building up there in Oklahoma City, the leg the government didn't want you to know about and never would've told you about if it hadn't been for broadcasters like me, people who aren't afraid to tell the stories the left-wing-dominated media won't tell you, people who want to keep this country free and out of the hands of the one-worlders up there in Washington.”

  "What I'm sayin' is that this is a source we can trust. And what he tells me is that right now, even while I'm talkin' to you on the radio here, right now this very minute, the so-called government of the people is buildin' concentration camps right here in Texas!

  "Where are they? Out in West Texas, out in that godforsaken Big Bend area, out there where you can drive for about a day and a half and not see anything except a goat and a rock, that's where. I can't give you the exact location over the air, if you call in to the station and talk to old Larry, who's workin' the phones tonight, he'll tell you. He's got the coordinates.

  "And what are these concentration camps for? Now that's the scary part, folks, because those camps are for you and me. That's right. You and me, people who believe that we not only have a right to keep and bear arms but who actually have weapons in our homes. We're the ones they're afraid of. We're the ones they're after.

  "They've got our names down in their book if we've ever registered one of our weapons. They know where we live, and they know they can come after us when we least expect 'em. If you don't think they can, ask Mr. Randy Weaver. Or ask Mr. David Koresh."

  There was another pause. The Chevy's tires hummed and the air rushed by.

  "On second thought, I don't guess you can ask Mr. Koresh, can you? You all know what happened to him. You don't need me to repeat it for you.

  "And it can happen to you if you don't go along peacefully when they ring your doorbell in the dead of night and ask you to come quietly so they can put you in one of their camps and use you for slave labor for the rest of your life. You and your wife and your kids, too, believe me. Unless they take them off somewhere for breeding stock. They might stoop to that, too. They've done just about everything else.”

  "I know you're shocked. I know you're surprised. Even with everything else the government's done to you, this is hard for you to believe. But it's the truth, every last word of it, and I'm gonna take your calls about it right after you listen to these messages."

  "Stars and Stripes Forever" faded in again, and then there was a commercial for Bud's Surplus Store, followed by one for Wadle's Feed and Seed. The one after that was for a car dealer in Houston.

  After that people started calling in. The first caller, Mike, who didn't give his last name and didn't want to say where he lived so as not to make it any easier for the feds to find him, said that Ralph was one hundred percent correct about the concentration camps. Mike had already heard about them from a buddy who was as trustworthy as Ralph's own source.

  "He's seen those big black DOD helicopters flyin' around out there in West Texas," Mike said, "but when you ask about 'em, you don't get any answers. We know what they're for, though. They're keepin' watch over the area to make sure nobody gets in. And later on, after those camps are finished, they'll make just as sure nobody gets out."

  "So what are we gonna do, Mike?" Ralph asked. "Are we gonna just sit idly by and let them come in and take us right out of our houses and put us in the humvees and haul us off to the camps?"

  "Hell, no," Mike said. "You know better than that, Ralph. I'm ready for the bastards. I've got my guns, and I've bought me some of those frangible rounds, and I've tried 'em out. Let me tell you somethin', boy, those suckers will get the job done."

  "I just bet they will, but aren't they pretty expensive, Mike?"

  "Hell, what does that matter when it's your future at stake, Ralph? Sure, some of 'em go for maybe four bucks a round, but there's some for about two-fifty, and even those'll put a four-and-a-half-inch hole in anybody that walks."

  "The question is," Ralph said, "how do they work against bullet-proof vests? They'll all be wearing vests when they come for you, Mike."

  "Head shot," Mike said. "Either that or go for the groin area. The way those frangible rounds tear you up, you sure wouldn't want to be shot in the groin."

  I didn't know about anyone else who was listening, but I didn't want to be shot in the groin with anything, frangible or not. I wondered how Evans would follow up on Mike's idea, but it was time for more messages from the sponsors. This time the first message was a gag commercial for "the essential emergency ration for every survivalist's backpack," something called "Spotted Owl in a Can." At least I think it was a gag.

  When Evans came back, Mike was gone and someone named Tom was on the line. Tom wanted to talk about how to covert his AR-15 to full automatic, but Ralph said they didn't talk about things like that over the air. There was, however, a book he could recommend.

  I listened to the program for another half hour as I headed toward Picketville, and the more I heard, the more I realized how important it was for Lance to dissociate himself from the views expressed by some of the hosts on his station. I suspected that at least some of Lance's friends might have been a little put off by Ralph Evans, though I might have been wrong. I didn't know any of Lance's friends.

  I didn't want to know any of them, either, other than Anne. Lance's friends didn't concern me, and neither did his radio station. When I pulled into the parking lot of the Picketville Inn, I turned off the radio. I was there to find out who killed a Prairie Chicken, not to worry about Lance Garrison.

  Seven

  Picketville was a little town that was a long way from anywhere. It had been founded by cotton farmers, but now the gin was deserted, not much more than a home for rats and spiders; there wasn't enough cotton grown in the area to justify keeping it in operation. There was, however, a grain elevator about the size of the Trump Tower standing by the railroad tracks a half mile from town, making it clear what the economic mainstay of the area was
.

  The highway ran right through the center of town and became its main street. I drove past Wadle's Feed and Seed just before I came to the City Limits sign, and Bud's Surplus Store was just a little farther along. After going by Bud's, I passed a hardware store, a barbershop, a jewelry store, two department stores, a furniture store, two drug stores, a video rental shop, a couple of fried chicken and hamburger stands, a restaurant, and two supermarkets, along with a couple of convenience stores that sold everything from gasoline to groceries. After that I was out of town, and the road bent back to the left in a long curve.

  The Picketville Inn was just around the curve, a genuine relic of the 1950s, when it had probably been called a tourist court. There were ten or twelve separate stuccoed buildings, each one a separate unit, and they all glowed a uniform shade of pale green in the light shed by the giant neon sign sitting high on a pole in front of the office, a building only a little larger than the others.

  The sign said that this was the Picketville Inn and that there was a vacancy. I wasn't surprised. I hadn't seen anything in the vicinity that looked like a major tourist attraction, not unless you were into grain elevators.

  I saw only two cars at the Inn. One was parked in front of one of the units and one was at the office. The one at the office was an old Ford with a bumper sticker that said, "My Safety's Off, Ralph," an obvious reference to what I assumed to be one of Ralph Evans' taglines, "When they knock on your door, be sure your safety's off." He'd repeated it several times while I was listening to his show.

  I parked near the office and got out of the Chevy, stretching my legs and back. When I opened the office door, I could hear a radio tuned to KLWG. Ralph Evans was still holding forth.

  The night clerk was a young man not more than twenty-five. He was resting his elbows on the counter and reading a magazine. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to the radio. His complexion was bad and a toothpick jutted from the corner of his mouth. He was wearing a camo cap and a T-shirt that had a slogan on it. I couldn't read the slogan.

  He looked up from the magazine and said, "He'p you?"

  "I'd like to check in," I said. "My name is Truman Smith; I'm working for Lance Garrison."

  He straightened up and I could read the words printed on his T-shirt: "Fear the Government that Fears your Guns."

  The toothpick jiggled and he said, "Oh. Yeah. He called and said you'd be comin' in. You can take Number Two, second on the right."

  He reached under the counter and brought out a heavy brass key and plastic tag attached to a silver chain. He plunked the key down on the counter.

  "There ya go," he said, and looked back down at his magazine.

  I picked up the key, tossed it on the air, and caught it in my right hand. The old reflexes were still in great shape. "Don't I have to sign anything?" I asked, closing my fingers over the key.

  He didn't look up. "Nah. It's all taken care of."

  Apparently the management of the Picketville Inn took a pretty casual approach to the formalities. That was fine with me. I went out and got in the truck. Number Two wasn't far, but each unit had a separate covered parking place. I figured I might as well take advantage of it.

  I parked the truck and unlocked the door to my room. There was a light switch on the left of the door, and I flipped it up. There was a ceiling light, something you don't see in many motels these days, and the furniture was as obsolete as the motel itself. There was a real bed, not just a headboard attached to the wall with a bed frame extending out from it, and the dresser, table, and chairs were solid wood. Everything was a little worn and scratched, and the rug was thin as an old man's undershirt. The only modern furnishings in the room were the clock radio on the end table and the TV set on the dresser. Even the telephone was a solid black desk model with a dial. I hadn't seen one like it in years.

  I threw my bag in the middle of the bed. It was too late to call Red Lindeman, but I thought Anne might call me. She knew I'd be here.

  I unzipped the bag and took out Tobacco Road. Then I plumped up the pillows on the bed, put them behind my back, and started reading.

  An hour passed and no one called. I realized that I'd been indulging in a silly little romantic fantasy. I hadn't seen Anne for a very long time, and there was no reason to think that she had been especially glad to see me when we'd met at Lance's. She apparently visited Lance every so often, but she'd never made an attempt to get in touch with me.

  And she was married, probably very happily. I'd be seeing her in the course of finding out what had happened to the Prairie Chicken, I supposed, but there was no reason to think my seeing her would lead to anything more. It wasn't going to be like some sentimental novel in which old sweethearts find each other after years apart and realize that they're destined to spend the rest of their lives together.

  I read a few more pages in the novel and then went to bed.

  I dreamed about birds.

  I don't know what kind of birds I dreamed about. They certainly weren't Prairie Chickens, and they probably weren't real birds at all. They were black, and there were a lot of them, and they soared up out of a grain field, rising and falling in a dark cloud against a lead-colored sky.

  I'm not especially fond of birds; on the whole I like cats much better. I was glad when the dream ended.

  The next morning I ate breakfast at the restaurant I'd passed in town. It was a blue building with "The Toole Shed" painted on it in black letters. Under the name there was another line that said, "Try Our Blue Plate Special or Our Famous Jalapeno Burger."

  I decided that jalapeno burgers might be fine for some other time, but not so early in the morning.

  The interior of the restaurant was filled with formica-topped tables and booths upholstered with some kind of imitation leather. Antlers of all sizes hung from the walls and ceilings, and in the midst of them on one wall was a stuffed alligator. Near the door was a sign that said, "Please seat yourself."

  There were plenty of customers, most of them men and most of them wearing gimme caps or straw cowboy hats. They were reading newspapers or talking in low tones. It was a small town, and everyone in the restaurant probably knew everyone else. As a stranger, I didn't create much of a stir. Several people looked up as I came in and then looked back at their food or their newspaper or whoever was sitting at the table with them.

  I sat at one of the tables and took a menu from between a bottle of ketchup and the napkin holder. I could get two eggs, toast, and bacon, and coffee for a buck and a half.

  A woman came over to take my order. She had a name tag that said she was "Linda." She was slim and professional and looked more like a nurse than a waitress.

  "Good morning," she said. "What can I get you?"

  I gave her my order.

  "How do you want those eggs?"

  "Scrambled," I said.

  "Whole wheat toast, or white?"

  "Whole wheat." I might as well be healthy.

  "Dry or buttered?"

  "Dry." Healthier still.

  "This is the first time I've waited on you. Next time you come in, I'll remember."

  I believed her. She probably knew everyone in town, so I decided to test her.

  "Do you know a man named Red Lindeman?" I asked.

  "I know just about everybody in Picketville, honey," she said. "I've owned this place for twenty years, and everybody in town's eaten her at least once in that time. Red comes in nearly every day."

  "Is he here now?"

  She looked over the crowd. "He sure is, honey." She tilted her head to her left. "He's sittin' right over there in that booth by the wall."

  I looked over and saw a big man wearing an Astros cap and a blue cotton work shirt. He had a plate of poached eggs and sausage in front of him, and he was eating steadily.

  "I think I'll join him," I said.

  "Are you right sure about that, honey?"

  "You can bring my eggs over there, can't you?"

  "Sure enough. If you want to sit wit
h Red, you go ahead and do it."

  I pushed back my chair, but no one paid me much attention, not until I slid into the booth. Then it seemed to me that conversations all over the restaurant died down and all eyes turned to look in my direction for about half a second before sliding away.

  Lindeman looked up from his sausage and eggs, but he didn't put down his fork. His weathered face was slightly freckled, and gray hair that still had a slight reddish tinge stuck out around the bottom of the cap.

  "Who the hell are you?" he said.

  "Truman Smith. Lance Garrison sent me."

  He looked me over. "How do I know you're really Smith?"

  I reached in my back pocket and pulled out my wallet. "Want to see my driver's license?"

  "Hell, no."

  I showed it to him anyway.

  "Damn sorry picture," he said.

  I agreed with him and slipped the wallet back into my pocket.

  "You helped Fred Benton with that alligator business," he said.

  I admitted that I had. "But I don't specialize in animals."

  "Didn't figure you did. But I guess you don't mind helpin' with this one, you bein' a friend of Lance's and all."

  "I wouldn't say we were friends."

  "Don't matter. You know him."

  I admitted that, too. Reluctantly. "Why don't you tell me about the Prairie Chicken?" I asked.

  "Will when I finish my breakfast," he said. "Eggs are gettin' cold." He shoved a forkful of poached egg into his mouth.

  Watching people chew food isn't one of my favorite ways to kill time, so I looked around the restaurant. No one was looking back.

  Linda came with my food soon enough, and I dug in. My usual breakfast was a bowl of Cheerios, so I enjoyed the change.

  Linda kept returning to fill my coffee cup. "You and Red gettin' along all right?" she asked on the third or fourth trip.

  "Just fine," I said, and Red grunted.

  "Red's not the most popular fella in town these days," Linda said. "Or did you notice?"