On a Tuesday, without warning, agents acting with malice and contempt, with intent beyond the simple purpose of their charter by a newly minted President, began shutting down government systems, sending workers home, and taking control.
On a Tuesday, without warning, people woke across the country to find that they couldn’t get their food stamps, their healthcare, or the approved funding for the programs they used to help people in their communities.
On a Tuesday, without warning, some people were awakened by rough hands pulling them from beds, from townhomes and from mansions, from single story ranch homes and from apartments, and marched into black vans.
On a Tuesday, without warning, in the pre-dawn light of an otherwise ordinary April morning, they rolled into a small town somewhere in Middle America. Their heavy black tires splashing through the deep puddles left by the night’s rain, their heavy beige truck bodies silencing the crickets as they passed through the outskirts and onto Main Street, the rumble of diesel engines drowning out the occasional rooster as it announced the coming of the morning, waking people to their chores and peaceful lives.
The town might be any town, tens or hundreds of miles from a big city, tucked in a rural enclave of Normal Rockwell idealism scattered throughout the American Heartland. Quaint two-story houses and barns dotted the thousands of acres of farmland and forest surrounding a simple crossroads they called their town. Two dozen or so small businesses—a general store, a post office, a diner, just to name a few—lined the two streets on either side where they intersected. 500 feet North, South, East, and West from where the two roads intersected marked the only hustle and bustle the residents of the town knew on any given day.
And there those military Humvees stopped, a train of six imposing and intimidating war-time vehicles, bumper to bumper, lining up in front of Mel’s Diner, and Martha’s Antiques, and the Post Office, their presence ominous, their business unknown but none-the-less a stark contrast to the softness of a town full of people who just want to live their lives.
******
Rob and Alice Harper’s home wasn’t much different than the dozens around them, separated by corn fields and birch trees. It was painted a light blue that Alice insisted be refreshed every few years to keep the house looking warm and inviting. A big red barn held two horses, Eleanor and Brittni, when they were put up for the night, as well as stalls for a few cows, when they needed to be milked, bails of hay, and other important tools for a farming life. Like the house, the red pain was applied every other year to keep it bright and welcoming. The big equipment, though, like tractors, threshers, and even a riding mower Alice bought for Rob two Christmases ago, were homed in a huge metal shed along with everything Rob might need to tend their corn. A wrap around, screened porch, to fend off the mosquitoes during hot summer nights, was an inviting place for them to host the occasional neighbor or friend with some lemonade or beer; although, it was more likely than not that Rob was out with there with Ed Shockley, their closest neighbor and Rob’s childhood friend, sipping moonshine during the evening hours. Looking at the house from a distance, one could almost hear the kindness and soak in the inviting hospitality of a pastoral American life.
“So what do you think they are here for?” Alice asked as she put the plate in front of her husband, Rob. He mumbled a thank you and immediately began to dig into the scrambled eggs and sausages.
“I have no idea,” he answered, taking a drink of his coffee as Alice sat down with her own plate and began to eat. “But I plan to find out today, you a bet on that.”
Rob was about as Middle American farmer as you could get. Rough, calloused hands and a strong jaw, he’d been raised to be a farmer and that’s all he had ever wanted to do. Some of his friends felt different, racing off to the Big City as soon as they graduated high school; some returned, others didn’t. Wearing his favorite overalls and a John Deere t-shirt, he cut an imposing shadow to those that weren’t familiar with his gentle nature. He wanted nothing more than to be left in peace to farm his land and live his life. His shaggy brown hair, sprinkled with an early dusting of gray, was stuffed under a sweaty and worn Budweiser cap, the bill curved and faded from countless hours underneath the sun.
Alice was about as opposite looking from Rob as you could imagine. Petite and slim to his big and swarthy, she had the build of a dancer. But many had been fooled by what seemed like a demure appearance. She was side-by-side with Rob many days in the fields, tending to their crops, on their farm. Dressed in jeans, the legs and pockets worn close to threadbare, and a white t-shirt, her long blond hair was messily pulled into a pony tail. While she wouldn’t hit the fields until later in the season, when the corn needed to be harvested, she had plenty to do with the livestock and tending all the other aspects of running a commercial farming operation. Smart, honest, and full of a no-bullshit attitude, everyone thought that she and Rob balanced each other out perfectly.
A little bell rang as the front door opened and closed.
“Rob, you there?” A voice asked.
“In the kitchen Ed,” Rob replied as he gently put his hand over his wife’s. He looked at her and squeezed. She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding in.
“So, did you go into town and see them?” Rob asked as he motioned for Ed to sit down at the small round table in the kitchen nook and poured coffee into the mug waiting for him.
If they weren’t outside sitting on the front porch, Rob and Ed were at the kitchen table. A white, round wooden table crafted in the Shaker tradition, it was well worn and well loved, holding a history of countless conversations, debates, poker games, intimate dinners, and raucous gatherings. It was the same table that Rob had grown up with, the same table where Ed, his best friend since grade school, had told him he was leaving to go to college; while Rob had wished him the best, he’d never told his friend how much it had broken his heart.
“Yeah,” Ed said, blowing on the coffee before taking a sip. “Six Humvees looking like straight out of Desert Storm. I wasn’t the only one there. Sam and his brother were standing on the corner looking at them too. And Mel was watching them out of the diner window. I mean they are parked right in front of his diner.”
“Did they say anything?” Alice asked, continuing to peck at the breakfast she’d prepared, moving the food around on the plate more than she was eating it.
“No, they wouldn’t get out of the vehicles,” Ed said. “But they are all clearly full of troops looking like they are ready to go to battle. Little Rickie, you know Paul’s boy, even knocked on the window of one but they ignored him.”
“Are they here to protect us against something?” Alice asked. “Is there anything on the news or the internet?”
“No,” Ed said. “I watched the news from the city this morning, the early morning edition, and nothing. But here’s the even weirder thing.” Rob took a deep breath before sipping coffee, his steely blue eyes piercing expectantly, the same eyes that Alice said made her fall in love with Rob the first time she met him; eyes that could either melt hearts or crumble resolve.
Ed cleared his throat.
“So the internet is down,” he said, pulling away from Rob’s stare and looking down into his mug. “And my phone is down too. The landline and my cell. It’s like we are under quarantine or something. Almost like some scene out of a crazy Hollywood movie.”
Alice pulled her phone from her pocket, looked at it, and then at Rob, shaking her head.
“What the hell?” Rob whispered. “I’m going to go down there and find out what the hell is going on.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Ed said as Alice grabbed her husband’s hand.
“Don’t, Rob, just don’t,” she whispered. “Maybe this will just be for a few days. Maybe there’s a good reason for it…”
Rob opened his mouth to speak, to reply quickly out of a rising anger, but stopped himself. There were still things to do in the morning. Animals needed to be fed, the thresher still needed him to look at one of the fuel lines, a part of the West fence needed to be repaired so that the horses didn’t break out.
“Okay, so we don’t do anything yet,” he said, taking a deep breath to steady himself, “but, Ed, I want you to visit all the neighbors you can. Ask people what they know. Tell them what you know. This is strange, no doubt, but maybe there’s a good reason. I know we all voted for the President because he said he was going to be tough and fix the government, fix all the corruption. Maybe this is part of that. I don’t know…”
Ed looked at him like a little brother might look up to his older sibling, unwilling to admit that he hadn’t voted for him, unwilling to disappoint.
“You got it, Rob. I’ll meet you all here later this afternoon?”
“Thanks, Ed. And,” Alice said, grabbing his shoulder and squeezing, “be careful.”
******
On that Tuesday, without warning, more soldiers arrived. More men with fake friendly smiles, with assurances that they were there because a credible source put someone on the President’s List in their town. They didn’t quite know who it was yet, but they believed he meant harm to everyone in the town and the President swore that he’d let nothing happen to such upstanding, hard working Americans as we were. When those same people asked about the list, to see the names, they were told it was confidential, a matter of national security.
On that Tuesday, without warning, they began to knock on doors waving a piece of paper that read United States District Court, Search and Seizure Warrant, signed by some judge in Florida but providing no names of any particular person nor property in question. But people in a small Middle American town weren’t accustomed to such requests backed by such legality and, as law-abiding citizens, invited those soldiers into their homes for whatever reason they saw fit to be there.
******
When Ed walked in later that afternoon, Rob and Alice were at the table again, with their coffee, lunch sitting untouched on the plates in front of them.
Rob half-heartedly motioned for Ed to sit and suddenly realized he hadn’t put a mug down for his friend. Shaking his head, surprised at his forgetfulness, he got up, grabbed on from the cupboard above the cooktop, and then sat back down. He poured Ed a cup and slid it to him. Ed nodded once and blew before taking a drink.
Dogs barked outside and Rob half-heartedly looked out the kitchen window, remarking with realizing it how peaceful and calm it seemed outside, the early May sun shining brightly, soft puffy clouds wandering across the sky in the distance as a cool breeze ruffled the tops of the corn stalks and the birch trees beyond that; it was a day that spoke of when he grew up, of days without worries, without concerns of Humvees or gender politics or things that happened in big cities so far away. He wondered if the lab pup, Suzie, was terrorizing the chickens again.
“You eating that?” Ed asked, pointing at the ham sandwich in front of Rob, snapping his gaze from the window, where he was looking out for more than just Suzie, and half-smirked, pushing the plate towards his friend.
“Man there’s nothing that beats ham raised at home,” Ed mumbled as he stuffed his face. “We didn’t have anything like this when I was in college. Anyway, sorry for talking with my mouth full, but I haven’t eaten at all since this morning. They came to my house.”
Both Rob and Alice looked at him.
“Who? Who came?” Alice asked. Ed could see the lines around her eyes and her forehead, lines made deeper by a concern that was for people living in big cities, not in the little town like theirs.
“Who do you think?” Rob asked before Ed could respond. “The soldiers, right?”
“Yup. Two of them, rifles carried in the ready position, dark sunglasses. They didn’t even pretend to have any reason. I saw them walk down the lane. No way was I going to wait around for whatever they wanted. Grabbed my pistol and headed down to the creek. I’m sure they probably just waltzed through my house.”
“You haven’t been back yet?” Rob asked. He poured himself more coffee.
“No. I hid in the blind we put up last year. Remember, about a half mile into the woods?”
Rob nodded and Alice reached across, laying her hand on his.
“But that’s not the worst of it,” Ed said, leaning down now, his voice quieting. “I guess they been going to everyone’s house, waving some paper about, a warrant, that gave them the right to search the house. Have they been here yet?”
Alice’s eyes were wide as she shook her head.
“But we don’t have anything to hide, Rob,” she said, gripping Rob’s hand as he held hers back. “They wouldn’t come here, would they?”
Rob didn’t answer at first and just stared at his wife, noticing the worry in her face that wasn’t there this morning, the worry that was never there. He remembered their vow to each other when they finally decided that kids weren’t in their future—they would just enjoy each other and the peace of a simple life.
Not so simple now, he thought as he squeezed her hand and tried to smile with more than his lips.
“No, we don’t have anything to hide. They can come here. But I don’t like it, not one bit. It’s not right that they can just invade our town and disrupt our lives.”
Rob turned to Ed.
“You have any idea how long they are staying?”
Ed shrugged as he stuffed the last bite of the sandwich into his mouth. Chewing fast and swallowing quickly, he replied after, “So Fred and his boys apparently asked them just that. They intercepted the soldiers on the road to their farm, demanded they tell them what they were doing there. Not sure if all four of the Marshalls were carrying any guns, but as Donnie puts it, the soldiers put their hands up and said they weren’t there to cause trouble and backed away.”
“Well that’s good…” Alice started to say, the relief releasing in her shoulders, her face, the small smile she gave Rob, when she stopped as she caught Ed’s reaction.
“Oh, sorry, no, it wasn’t good. See, that’s why I heard it from Donnie because his dad sent him out the back when the rest of the soldiers came. I saw him from the blind and called him over. Ten or twelve of them Donnie said. He couldn’t quite count when he was running out the back. He hasn’t been back home either but he thinks they took his dad and brothers.”
“Took them?” Alice asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Where? Where would they have taken them? They weren’t doing anything wrong,” Alice said, her eyes pleading as she looked between her husband and their friend. “They were just concerned and protecting their land. They just wanted to understand. They couldn’t possibly hold them for anything…”
But Rob just continued to look at Ed until, finally, Rob turned his gaze back to the scene outside the window.
I’ve still got a few Chores to do, he thought. Fred should have known better. Should have known not to make waves. Should have known that to protect his family, he should have let them come through the house and look for whatever they needed. I should get to work.
“Let’s just stay calm about this,” Rob finally said, still staring out the kitchen window at the closely cut grass that filled out that side of the house, the corner of the red barn, the well, the edge of his corn field. “We don’t know everything yet.”
He turned to look at Ed and then at Alice, stopping at her face and grimacing at how distraught she looked. He’d only seen her that worried once before, when one of their cows, Ginger, was having trouble birthing a breached calf.
“I voted for that man,” Rob said. “I have to believe that he won’t let us down, won’t let us working folk down who believe that he can make America like it once was. Great.”
Ed, sipping his coffee, just shrugged.
******
On that Tuesday, without warning, loud speakers boomed through the town telling people that it would be better if they remained inside their homes, that phone service was temporarily down, that internet would be restored as soon as possible, that the President wanted to assure them that they were safe and that his great military would make sure nothing bad happened to them, that none of those dangerous Liberals would hurt average Americans.
On that Tuesday, they announced that they were looking for Deep State operatives, that they had good intelligence that there was one in the town, that if anyone knew anything they should immediately make it known.
On that Tuesday, cameras began to appear. One was at the top of the telephone pole at the corner of Main and Turnbull, the two main streets through town. Another at the road leading into town. And others that people could neither see directly nor point to as a camera.
On that Tuesday, for the first time, no one sat at Mel’s Diner and talked about the upcoming harvest or the high school football team or Fred Marshall’s 52’ Ford pickup. No one dropped off letters or stood in front of the hardware store and discussed which cordless drill was the best for fixing a backyard deck. It was only the Humvees, and the soldiers, and the announcements.
******
When Ed walked in that evening, the sun long since down, he looked liked he’d been through a war himself. His clothes were caked with dried mud, the once bright blue flannel he’d worn into their home just earlier than morning, now dingy and torn, hung from him like rags on a corpse.
“Jesus Ed, what the hell happened?” Rob asked getting up and helping his friend to the kitchen chair.
Alice, a beer at her lips as their friend walked in, let it drop, the sudden sound of the bottle hitting the kitchen table, the cold liquid splashing everywhere, snapping her out of a slack jawed stare at Ed.
“Oh my gosh, I am so clumsy,” she mumbled as she got up to get a rag all the while glancing at Ed as Rob helped him into the chair.
Rob hadn’t even noticed the spilled beer.
“I’d offer you something to eat but we are a little short right now,” Rob said, motioning to Alice for a wet towel. “Some of those soldiers showed up a few hours after you left this afternoon. I let them in and they looked around, poked through all the bedrooms. While they were in here, I saw more of them heading into the barn and the storage shed. I think a few even headed into the corn fields. We tried to be hospitable, even served them dinner…”
Alice handed Ed a wet dish towel and then sat back down.
Ed nodded his thanks as he took the towel and wiped his face. With shaking hands, he put the towel down and picked up the mug of coffee that Alice had poured for him.
“They’ve been chasing me through the woods for the past few hours,” Ed finally whispered.
“Did they know you came here?” Alice suddenly asked, looking frantically at Rob and then back at Ed.
“No, no, no,” Ed said, shaking his head. “Listen I lost them by the creek. I doubled back, mixing up my trail, and then I made my way over here. I wanted to make sure you guys knew what was really going. Wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Rob put his hand across the table and found Alice’s. He then put his hand on Rob’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Ed. We’ve got you. Just tell us what’s going on.”
Ed looked at Rob, appreciating the sentiment but feeling less that reassured. It might have been because Ed never felt the same after going to college and coming back to work the farm after his dad passed. With his mom already gone, he could have sold the farm, probably for a good amount of money but it just didn’t sit right, even though he felt like a stranger, even though it took him a number of years to earn the trust and respect of people he’d grown up with. Even Rob. Ed knew he was like them but not like them, maybe a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thought that might have made him smile a little on any other night. He knew that he looked like them, talked like them, knew how to run a plow and milk a cow and keep the insects off his crops like them. But he’d left and gone to college, mixed with the folk that everyone in town felt were the real problem, the reason that America was doing so badly in the world, was so full of violence and poverty; he’d mixed with the folk that was the reason they had voted for this President: to show those Liberals, those college grads, this city folk, that they weren’t any better than them.
“Thanks, Rob, thanks.”
Alice put her other hand on Ed’s forearm and Ed smiled in return.
“I don’t know much else to tell you that you probably haven’t already heard through the announcements or guessed. Like I said this afternoon, soldiers are visiting everyone, taking more people away than Fred and his boys. And they are telling everyone that if they see anything suspicious, they need to let them know immediately. I guess they’ve set up some type of tent in the high school football field. They closed the school, closed the post office. And of course, you know that the phones and the internet are still down. They keep saying that someone on one of the President’s List is still here.”
All while Rob and Alice just stared at him, the worry lines in Alice’s face seeming to deepen, the hardness in Rob’s eyes growing, with every word.
“They asked us about you,” Alice said softly, trying to calm her shaking hands. “And they asked us about the Hendricks and they spent a lot of time asking us about Julio Martinez and his family. They live a bit further away from town. They asked us if we knew anything about where they came from, how long they’ve been there.”
“They’ve been here for generations,” Rob mumbled, turning from the window to sit back down. “They are as American as we are.”
“Do you have any 9 mili shells?” Ed asked suddenly. “I didn’t grab any extra clips when I raced out of the house.”
Rob shook his head, perhaps thinking that Ed was over-reacting; perhaps hoping that Ed was over-reacting.
“They took everything, Ed,” Rob said. “When they were here, they asked to see all of our guns. They said they just needed to check them out, to take them to their command post and run them through the computer. They said they needed an ammo count. They said it would just take a few hours…”
“But they never came back,” Alice finished.
“No guns, no ammo,” Rob whispered and then suddenly stood up, slamming his hands down on the table.
“We voted for him dammit. He promised us that this is what they wanted to do. The Liberals. They wanted to take our guns and take our rights and force us to live the way they wanted to live.”
Alice choked a sob and Ed just shook his head.
“This isn’t supposed to happen here, in our small town,” Rob continued. “It’s supposed to be in the cities. It’s supposed to happen to them!”
Ed just looked up at his friend, a great sadness filling his heart, a sadness about how much his friends had believed all the lies about us versus them, at how much lies can seem like truth when they are easy answers to uncertainty and match what you want to believe.
“Well,” Ed said, the weight of that sadness threatening to overwhelm him. “I think it is, Rob. I think it’s already happened there.”
They were all quiet for a moment and none of them really looked at each other. Alice was staring at her hands on the table, cradling a new coffee mug, thinking that being clear headed was probably better than another beer to replace the one she didn’t drink, that maybe her dropping it had been a reminder from God to stay focused. She remarked to herself how she needed to feed the chickens with the new grain tomorrow and then wondered when she was going to be able to get into town again to stock up, wondered if there would even be anything left at the general store. Rob turned back to look out the window as if something might happen there that would provide him the answers, as if, in reality, it was his livestock who had been plotting this the entire time, and thought again about the West fence that he hadn’t gotten today. Ed was dreading what he had to say next.
“So there’s something else,” Ed said, looking first at Alice and then at Rob. “I visited the Hendricks just before sunset. They didn’t want to let me in, said that the soldiers might be watching, so Frank followed me out to the tree line.”
It was as if the entire house held its breath.
“The Hendricks said the soldiers asked them about you.”
And the breath that Alice and Rob were holding grew bigger, grew deeper.
For a while, they all sat there in the lee of that pregnant breath, as big as a mountain, as vast as the open sky, as if, for a moment, they weren’t in the kitchen sitting around the kitchen table they had so many times before, on so many mornings before Ed went back to his own farm, but, rather, they were all underwater, sinking ever deeper, looking up at the dwindling sunlight as they dropped further into the unknown darkness below.
“You know when I was at college,” Ed suddenly said, his voice breaking that pause, and Rob popped up in reply, as if he’d just been waiting for something to pop the bubble. He stomped to the kitchen window, placing his hands on the glass, looking at the puddle of light from the spotlight just above the kitchen window. Out where they lived, there was no light pollution. The darkness was absolute dispelled only by spotlights hanging from eaves, its secrets revealed by light they chose to shine on it. It was comforting to know what was already out there—the crops, the livestock, the trees, the barn; the things they already knew.
But what happens when the darkness hides something else, Rob thought.
“We learned about this idea,” Ed went on, “that people, like a crowd of people living in a prison or an apartment, would be more compliant if they always felt they were being watched. I think it was called the panopticon. Some strange prison design.”
Ed’s voice trailed away and he finally whispered, “Focat or Foulcut or something like that. A French guy.”
“Jesus, Ed, what does that mean about anything?” Rob asked, still facing the window. “How does that solve the problem we have right now? The soldiers in our town, in our houses!” He almost spat the last word out and looked like he was about to say something else, but just shut his mouth. Alice watched him as she worried the coffee mug in her hands, rubbing it as if it was a magic lamp, waiting for the genie to appear and make sense of everything.
“Well, if we are all worried about being watched, about our neighbors watching each other, then we are more likely to fall into line because we are always afraid that someone will rat us out, even if it’s just to gain favor, even if it’s not true. Because if you point the finger at someone else, they aren’t looking at you.”
Ed knew that Rob wanted to say something. He could almost read his mind, see the words flashing across his friend’s iron gaze, across the tautness of his jaw and neck.
He didn’t need to say it.
Ed already knew those words because he’d already asked them dozens of times today.
Is it too late to do anything?
******
On that Tuesday, without warning, most of them left. Four Humvees rolling out under the cover of night, like they were never there to begin with. The command center tent was moved to the Martinez’s farm. People could use their phones again. They could access the internet, send email, meet at Mel’s.
But on that Tuesday, no one talked about what had happened. No one tried to make eye contact with each other or the few soldiers that still loitered around town. No one pointed out the cameras that were still there, or the two Humvees still parked on Main, or that some people just weren’t around anymore. No one suggested that the soldiers had taken the Martinez family away so they could set up in their home.
No one even thought it.