INTERLUDE I
With Vermont behind him, it took him nearly a week, but he finally made it to this isolated farmhouse on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River. Standing in the trees at dusk, he had watched the place for almost an hour before reaching a decision. Sweet wood smoke rose and eddied up from a metal smokestack set in the sagging roof of the one-story home next to an empty barn. He rubbed his hands. It was probably warm in that snug old farmhouse. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d last been warm. Only when it was dark, and someone lit a kerosene lamp from inside, did he make his move.
He walked up to the rear door, going as fast as he could, limping from last winter’s injury, when a pine tree he’d cut down had fallen the wrong way. When he got to the door, he gave it a good thump with his fist.
No answer.
His breath snagged as he thought, A trap? When he thumped again, the door creaked open an inch.
“Yeah?” came a voice from inside.
“Just passing through,” he said.
“So?”
He hesitated, knowing it would sound silly, but still, it had to be said. “Give me liberty …” He waited for the countersign, wondering if he could run fast enough back to the woods if it went wrong.
The man on the other side of the door replied, “Or give me liberty.”
His tight chest relaxed. Only someone he could trust would have the correct countersign. Only then did he recognize how tense he had been. There were two men inside, the one answering the door, another sitting at a wooden table, where the kerosene lamp flickered. Both wore faded flannel shirts and denim overalls grubby with grease and dirt. The man at the table held a sawed-off shotgun pointing at his gut. He stopped on the threshold, and the man put the shotgun down on the table. The armed man was in his thirties, the other man—who walked over to an icebox, opened it, and came back holding a plate with two chicken legs and a mug of milk—was in his fifties. His face was scarred on the right, and the eye on that side drooped. A lit woodstove in the other corner warmed the small room.
“Thanks,” he said, sitting down, picking up a chicken leg and starting to eat. “Been a long time.”
The older man sat across from to him. “You can spend the night, but Zach here”—he gestured in the armed man’s direction—“will get you into Keene tomorrow. From there, someone will get you to the coast.”
Amazing how quick it was to finish off one chicken leg, and it seemed he was even hungrier when he picked up the other. “Fair enough.”
Zach asked, “How’s things where you came from?”
“Tough,” he replied. “How’s things here?”
Zach laughed. “Used to have the best dairy herd in this county before milk prices turned to shit. Lost money on each gallon of milk I sold, so I slaughtered my herd and make do where I can. Still, not as bad as Phil here.”
“True?” he asked Phil.
Phil rubbed at stubble on his chin. “I went out to the Midwest back in ’28, got a job at Republic Steel. A tough place. Management treated us like shit, got worse after the Crash. Then we went on strike in ’37.”
He nodded, remembering. “Yeah. The Memorial Day massacre. You were there?”
“Sure was. Hundreds of us strikers marching peacefully, lookin’ for better conditions and wages, then reachin’ a line of Chicago cops. More than twenty were shot dead by those bastards, whole bunch of others were wounded, the rest got gassed. I got hit in the face by a tear gas canister. My wife … didn’t make it. So I came back here … found … something else to do.”
He didn’t know what to say. He finished his milk. Phil studied him and said, “You know what you got ahold of, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“You’re settin’ to kill one of the most guarded men in the world. You think you can do it?”
“I wasn’t picked for my damn charming personality, was I?”
Zach laughed again, softly, but Phil didn’t. “Understand you might got family issues. That going to be a problem?”
He shook his head. “No, it’ll all work out.”
Outside, he thought he saw a light flicker, and his hands tensed on the mug. He said, “What the hell do you mean by that?”
Zach was silent and so was Phil. A floorboard creaked. Phil said, “Not sure if you’re goin’ to be tough enough to do what has to be done. I know you heard all the plans. Most likely, damn thing is goin’ to be a suicide mission when it all gets wrapped up and the shootin’ stops. So. I got to know. Are you tough enough?”
Another flicker of light. He leaped up, grabbed the shotgun from the table, and burst out the rear door, with shouts and the sounds of chairs being upended behind him. Even with his bum leg, he could move quick, and he was around the other side of the farmhouse, yelling out, “Don’t you move again, you son of a bitch!”
The light jiggled and someone was crashing through the brush. He raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger. There was a loud boom that tore at his ears, a kick to his right shoulder, a flare of light, and a scream. Zach and Phil were behind him, Zach holding up the kerosene lamp. The three of them tore through the underbrush. A man lay on his back near the trunk of a pine tree, moaning, his pant legs torn from the shotgun pellets.
He went up to the man, kicked at his torn legs. Blood was oozing through the shredded dungarees, and the man jerked. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?”
From the yellow light of the lamp Zach held, he saw that the injured man was clean-shaven and young, wearing a brown jacket over a buttoned white shirt. He looked up, eyes brittle as glass, and said, “Screw you.”
“Bring the lamp down here,” he said, and Zach reached down. Hidden behind the lapel was a Confederate-flag pin.
“I’ll be damned,” Phil whispered.
He stood up, shotgun firm in both hands, and in three sudden, hard, vicious jabs, brought the stock of the gun down against the man’s throat, crushing it. The man spasmed, then was still.
Breathing hard, he passed the emptied shotgun with the bloodied stock over to Phil. “You were saying something about how tough I was?”
Phil took the shotgun, looked to the other man. “All right, then. Everything gets moved up. Zach, get the truck. Our man goes to Keene now. And take a good last look about this place. Me and you, we can’t come back.”
“Won’t miss it much,” Zach said.
Phil looked down at the murdered man, then at him. “Sorry about what I said back there. You got a tough job ahead of you, sure enough.”
Thinking of his family, such as it was, he answered, “We all do.”