Chapter 16, Coming of Age

"Ok, when ya wanna do it?" Ed Jr. asked brightly.

Willie looked at the boy askance and trembled at the Tate glint that animated the eyes. "Did you hear me correctly?" Willie asked. "It aint like shootin' some deer, Jr. We're talkin' about a human here."

"Same difference, get ta do somethin' different. Tired of all this sneakin' around an' do piddly shit. Want ta do somethin' that'll really make a stir," Jr. said with a grin.

Willie shook his head in wonder. "You enjoy this too much Jr. Don't know how you even got through the law enforcement course in Charleston."

"Weren't hard, as long as I wasn't workin' fer them, they had no problem training me. Besides, I get to carry this around and mean it," Ed Jr. said as he fingered his holster and the cold burnished steel of the .45 revolver at his side.

"And I s'ppose they also taught you some ethics an' responsible use of force," Willie said wryly.

"They tried," Ed Jr. grinned.

"Well wipe that silly grin off yer face, this aint no game, not any more."

"I got the gun, I kin grin all I wants to now," Ed. Jr. sneered.

"Not as long as I'm still in charge of yer carcass!" Willie snapped.

"I'll enjoy what I wants."

"Well, just don't enjoy it around me! It's 'nuff that I gotst ta hang around you so often fer yer paw, that I gotta look at ya enjoyin' it is more than I wants." Willie spat.

"What you think Pembrook was doin' in at the grocer?" Ed Jr. asked.

"Dun' know. Bastard was spyin' on us mebbe," Willie said.

"How could he know?"

"Does it matter? Mebbe he was jus' there watchin' fer anythin'," Willie spat. "Bastard."

"Well, what if he does know? Mebbe we should do a lil' extra on the assignment."

"No! The assignment is disturbin' enough without you goin' hog wild!" Willie spat and glared at Jr. "Jus' stick to the assingment and wash my hands of it after this."

"Ok, but what should we do 'bout Pembrook?"

"Nothin', he don' know from squatt. Jus' fergit 'im an' let's figger out who."

"Anybody from the valley really, it all jus' gotta look a certin' way is all. That's the easy part."

"Not just anybody, it's gotta be someone who's been in league with the hill toppers, an' not a hill topper," Willie spat.

"Well, let's jus' decide an be on with it. As long as I gits ta do it is all I cares about." Ed Jr. nodded.

"B'live me, you'll be the one ta do it, had 'nuff of that stuff in the war. You like this stuff too much." Willie spat and pursed his lips. The little miscreant had been attached to his side for too long. The need to satisfy his old man had produced in Willie a loathing of the Ed Jr. and his constant agitating to take things further and further afield. It wasn't enough to steal the chemicals from the plant but it had to be dumped in old man Hilcock's land, it wasn't enough to break into Hubener's store one last time, but he had to kill the dog and drag him off into the fields. Now it was down to the ultimate violence and Jr. wasn't batting an eye or pausing for thought. Instead he was more eager than Willie had seen him previously, like he had been waiting for this like a chained dog waits for its prey to enter into its range. It was sickening to him, but at the same time he was eager to get it over with, and be paid back for his debt to the elder Tate.

"I got a gun, jus' want ta use it, an this kinda gun aint no use fer killin' deer, this is fer a bigger animal."

"Don't remind me that the good people of Bumpersville gave you that opportunity!" Willie screwed his face into a pucker and shook his head.

"Who should we frame fer it? How 'bout that Pembrook?" Ed asked.

"Who'd b'lieve it?" Willie thought for a moment. "Hubener, he's been the one that's been the most brazen in his weilding of his own gun, let's make it look like he did it."

"Mebbe I'll get another crack at Sally then, if ole Hube is outta the way," Ed Jr. said as he rubbed his hands together hungrily.

"Yeah, get another crack at that. So what if he does? I got the gun an' the badge, 'sides, she won't tell no one."

"Who would admit to bein' with you?"

Ed Jr. looked at Willie for a moment then grinned and winked. The glint flashed in his eyes and it suddenly came to Willie what Ed had really meant and done. He didn't pretend to like nor delve too deeply into what the man did when he bragged or when he heard from someone else that thier daughter had been treated roughly by him, he always assumed it was innocence in dating and the prediliction for a young man to go to far and the forbidden but inevitable world of a man's desire for sex. To him, this still meant something of the propriety of conduct and the actions of one to another in a comprimising position. If it came to the rough treatment, there was usually something of the mutual consent that governed the relationship. That Tate Jr. was taking it instead of sharing it horrified Willie and a moment that he should have seen coming long ago about the man's character came to him like an unwanted epiphany.

"Bastard!" Willie shouted as he decked Ed. Jr. Ed, caught unawares took it in the cheek and staggard backwards. "Next time I'll cut it off! I don't want to hear that you ever do that again! I don't care who it is, Ed. You don't take it, you hear me? You don't take it!"

Ed Jr. regained his balance and rubbed his cheeck with that hurt, pouty look that he always gave his father when he was being scolded, but at the same time the glint was there, flaring brightly behind the eyes with a fire that told Willie he had better not push his luck with the man. "Yes, captain my captain," Ed said derisively.

****

"Martha took Sally to the hospital in Charleston last night," Steven Hubener said as he picked at his cuticals. "She call this morning, baby was still born."

"Sorry to hear that, but you were going to put it up for adoption anyway, right?" George asked. The two men sat on the front couch in the front of Steven's store. Since the late unpleasantness, none of the valley folk stayed to pass the time any longer save for Jim and occasionally Robert. The others came and went as they had need to purchase something, but the days of the summer jaw session were ended.

"That bastard child, Lord forgive me, but that child wasn't spawned but from the evil that was in the man that did this to our little girl. It was fortunate that the child died before it was born, would have been nothing but bad news to anyone who ended up with it."

"How is Sally?"

"She's resting and torn up about it, she knew from whence it came, but carried it all these months and I think wanted to even keep it. I don't know what I would have done, I told Martha I wouldn't have it under any roof of mine, but I prolly would have caved," Steven said as he studied his rough hewn fingers, dry and cracked.

"Theresa Shields is due any time now from what Benton tells me. It'll be thier first."

"Good for them," Steven said with a forced smile.

"Hattie, Michael Strood's sister-in-law says that it's a girl from the way Theresa's been carrying. I don't know, it always seems to me to be a fifty fifty propisition until the plumbing is pulled out, if you know what I mean."

Steven grinned, "Yes, Beatrice knew Sally was a girl though I had my hopes for a boy."

"Well, we been watchin' Tate for a week now and nothings been going on with him. That's either good news or bad news, I can't figure which," Steven said. "If he knows we're watching him, he's being sly about anything he's going to do."

"Well, perhaps it is working, no one on the hill has reported anything unusual," George said. After his first night of watching Tate and Willie in the parking lot, Tate had patroled his usual route by car and had passed his time alone. George had remained just in the shadows and if Tate knew George was there, he hadn't let on. George wasn't sure it was working exactly, but it gave them all a sense of taking some action towards thier families' security. It could all have been wasted effort, but the effort itself made them feel good. When they compared notes at the next committee meeting up in Steven's living room above the store, Willie Shank had also been seen with Tate late at night by Benton and Micheal Strood and in each occasion the two had split off suddenly and dissappeared down the road and into the valley.

Willie's involvement was even more of a mystery to the group but not to surprising given Willie's attempt at the meeting at the county highschool. Thus far thier sheriff appointee, Pete Middlebrook, had proven to be a non-participant in anything of consequence as far as his position allowed him to retain control over his deputy employees, the one attempt George made to bring up the actions of Tate to him ended in a brusque wave of Middlebrook's hand. Middlebrook was a good buisnessman but a poor law man in George's opinion and his time spent between his store, the post office, and his position as sheriff ensured that Tate and the other two deputies could act with impunity.

With hindsight, George pieced together the puzzle pieces that had brought whole village to the point of it's most pressing and climactic beginnings. Although Willie Shank had been the instigator at that meeting now going on two years hence, he wasn't the one pulling the strings but the senior Tate, culminating in his sudden assumption of the reigns of power such as they where. It wasn't just power struggle at the last of the committee meetings, but the manipulation behind the scenes that seemed to George to have surpassed any of his own politicking. But now the question was what would Tate do next? He had the position, had somehow put valley boys into the deputy positions, a valley man as Sheriff, and valley men into each seat of authority in the village governance. All of it while he himself had been working towards the same goals and his own feathered bed; feathered with now empty plans and promises.

The only thing left for him to do was to politic amongst the hill topper new comers and his own buisness associates, both realty and at the plant to un-seat Tate, and yet that sounded hollow and unsatisfying to him. It was as if he where having to plan a peaceful takeover of something that was by all rights his own, like bartering with kidnappers for something that never ceased to belong to him. He would not pay the ransom for what was rightly his. The principle of it, regardless of his own unprincipaled bullying that got him his seat in the plant notwithstanding, he would truck only on what was right in his own understanding, and that was not being handed a defeat without a fight. He would be loathe to admit it to himself or anyone else, but principals only went as far as they did not impede his goals. Nonplussed by these nagging doubts, George decided that he would indeed reclaim his rightful place in village politics and thus be at the helm of the building of a greater Bumpersville, the valley folks be damned.

"Tate's behind all of this," George said aloud suddenly. "Senior that is, he's been behind all of it since that county meeting."

"Huh," Steven returned. "but I suppose it does make a bit of sense."

"And right under our noses all this time." George released a long and whistling breath and narrowed his eyes as he looked out of the store window. "We'll have to beat him at his own game."

"I don't know how," Steven replied. "He's got everything done and legally per our charter.

"But he's doing it as a lame duck, he won't really have control until he's elected next year. All we have to do is prevent him from doing any real damage to the system before then.

"But what could he do?" Steven asked. "He can't pass any village ordinance nor can the council do anything but maintain the provisions of the charter until they are all elected."

"Well, he can for starters still fire the committee members and anyone now serving the village like the sheriff and the deputies, or the clerk. So far he's been stacking the deck," George pondered.

"So what's Willie been up to then if you don't think he's been drivin' all of this?" Steven asked.

"Search me, who knows what half of them valley folk do, they seem to have thier own society an keep to themselves mostly, just like we do I suppose."

"Weren't 'till that meeting that some of them used to hang out here, I thought that things were coming together well then. We were new and the farmers were nice enough. Who really knows what goes through peoples minds?"

"Obviously not us."

"Perhaps we should make sure we don't let Tate ignore the committee, we're all still a part of that and that will have some influence until the election," Steven added.

"Well, if his majesty doesn't call for a meeting, then what are we supposed to do? He's in charge of the committee now and can call or not call for a meeting if he chooses to, which is what I think he has been doing, getting by with just controlling the others," George said. "No, we'll have to do something else in order to rectify the problems."

"He can't have that tight of control over all those folks, someone's gotta be reachable when the time comes." Steven responded.

"I wouldn't count on it, he seems to have done pretty well and these folks have known each other for years and maybe even generations. You don't side step that kind of clout easily."

"We'll just have to do some things of our own," George said as he stood and stretched. "I'd better get back home then."