Michael Palmer - Oath of Office

“So, Welcome, where do you think they’re headed?” Cap asked.

“No idea,” Lou replied.

“Is this the way to John Meacham’s house?”

“No. We’d be headed in the opposite direction if that’s where they were going. It looks like all there is out here is farmland.”

Notso pointed out the window. “Zat wheat?” he asked.

“Is wheat green, Notso?” George answered. “Do you even know what wheat looks like?”

“I know what wheat look like,” Notso said, folding his arms across his chest in a pout. “Look, man, it’s dark outside. Quit ridin’ me.”

“Well, it’s corn , you big goof. Acres and acres of fuckin’ corn.”

Lou glanced out at the stalks on both sides of the road, rippling in the light night breeze like a vast emerald ocean.

Cap decelerated. “I think they’ve turned left,” he said.

He waited a few seconds before catching a flicker of the sedan’s taillights through a path cleared in the corn. A minute later, he made the same turn. Tailing the Caddy was becoming more challenging.

“All this corn is making me hungry,” Notso said, rubbing his ample belly.

George turned around. “Seriously, Brite,” he said. “Could you please talk about somethin’ other than food.”

“Jes sayin’ I’m hungry is all,” Notso answered. “Why y’all buggin’ me so bad? Can’t a man want to eat?”

“No!” Cap and George said in unison.

For a few minutes, they rode in silence.

“Anyone ever hear the expression ‘knee high by the Fourth of July’?” Lou asked.

“I have,” Cap said. “It has to do with corn. My gramps used to grow it in a corner of the backyard of his place in North Carolina. It means something like if the stalks weren’t knee high by July fourth, the crop would be bad.”

“Exactly,” Lou said. “That’s what I remember, although I have no idea who I heard it from. Well, it isn’t July yet, but that corn is certainly way higher than my knees.”

Cap turned left again, this time onto a gravelly dirt road. The stalks on each side towered upward like a ghostly army. Rocks, coupled with potholes and the gathering darkness made driving without headlights tricky. Lou felt every jolt of the low-riding Prizm as it struggled to negotiate the uneven terrain.

George pointed up ahead. “They’re turning again,” he said.

“I got ’em,” Cap replied, swinging the car onto an even narrower dirt road that was carved into a seemingly endless expanse of corn.

“You sure you can find your way out of here?” Notso asked, looking around anxiously.

“There’s always a way out,” Lou said, patting the hefty man’s shoulder.

Notso was rubbing the gold handcuffs pendant he wore as if the miniature manacles were rosary beads.

Again, the car jostled from side to side as the wheels found more ruts.

“Shit,” Notso said.

“What is it?” Lou felt a tingle of alarm.

“I dropped my gun.”

Before anyone could comment, he reached above his head and flicked on the car’s interior light.

“Notso!” Lou yelled, covering the light cap with his hand and quickly flicking the switch off. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry, man,” he said, “but I got to find my gun.”

“We told you to leave it in your holster.”

“I got nervous, so I wanted to be sure I could get at it.”

Lou glanced up just in time to see the sedan’s taillights, perhaps a quarter mile ahead, go dark. Cap pulled over to the edge of the narrow road, car wheels crunching corn stalks underneath, and shut off the engine. Save for the white noise of insects and the swishing of the corn, the silence was heavy. After a minute, his window open, Cap restarted the engine and inched forward. Ahead, the blackness intensified.

“Stop, Cap,” Notso said with authority.

“Why?”

“’Cause I’m gettin’ out to walk on ahead of you. They might call me Notso Brite, but that don’t mean I make the same mistake twice. I got hearing like a shark.”

“What in the hell are you talkin’ about?” George said. “Sharks live in the fuckin’-”

Notso was already out on the road, gun in hand, lumbering ahead through the night.

Cap followed for a few minutes, then pulled to the side and cut the engine. He, Lou, and George joined Notso in front of the Prizm and moved cautiously ahead.

“Will you put that gun away?” George snapped at his cousin. “Who do you think you are, Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

Cap shushed them harshly. “Stop talking and listen.”

Insects and corn. Nothing else. Insects and corn.

Notso did not stay silent for long. “It sure is quiet out here,” he said in a reasonably hushed tone. “Spooky quiet. Man, I couldn’t sleep a wink if I didn’t hear sirens and car horns all night.”

Lou grinned. Over the years, the urban theater had taken up residency in his soul, and he often said as much to Renee when she suggested that he move to a neighborhood more conducive to raising Emily.

Cap had wandered over to the corn. He snapped off an ear and inspected it. Then he pulled back the leaves and held it up to capture what little bit of light existed where they were. “Weird,” he mused.

“What?” Lou asked.

“I remember my grandpa telling me that each corn stalk makes one ear, but this one has four and-”

There was no chance for him to say more.

Two gunshots pierced the blackness.

Lou looked ahead at Notso, thinking the big man had mistakenly fired his weapon, but Notso was looking around, confused.

Three more gunshots rang out.

“Run! Scatter!” Cap cried.

Another shot.

Notso groaned loudly, doubled over and clutching his stomach, and stumbled into the corn, Cap following. Lou and George thrashed into the jungle on the opposite side of the road. Stalks lashed at Lou’s face and arms as he plunged into the blackness.

There were more shots, coming from not far away.

Then, from somewhere across the road, Lou heard Notso Bright’s voice. A single, grunting, agonized word. “Shit!”

Lou stumbled into the dense corn, quickly losing his footing and falling hard. Air exploded from his lungs. Thick stalks snapped in half with a sound like breaking bones as jagged edges sliced his face and arms. Dust coated his mouth and throat.

Gunfire seemed to be erupting from all directions, piercing the darkness with flashes of light. Crawling deeper into the corn, Lou had become separated from George. Movement of the stalks tipped the gunmen as to where he was, and instantly, bullets snapped through the leaves overhead and slammed into the ground close enough to spray clumps of dirt into his face.

Pivoting his body, Lou flattened himself in a deep furrow between two rows. Then, lying motionless in the dark, he listened.

“One’s down,” a gravelly voice called out from somewhere behind him.

“Stay cool!” The angry warning emanated from just a few feet to Lou’s right.

“We’re closing in on two of them!” the first man yelled back.

Lou kept still and forced his breathing to slow. He sensed movement. The man was on the move.

Moments later, Lou heard Notso Bright groaning in pain and crying out.

“I’m shot … Cap, help me … Ca-!”

Two quick shots cut him off, and then there was silence.

“Got him for real, this time,” the gravelly voice cried out.

Lou’s heart sank.

“Let’s get some light on this situation.”

Floodlights affixed to widely spaced poles flashed on, creating a shadowy, artificial day. Lou could see almost everything around him. He was readying himself for a dash deeper into the corn, when he heard three quick pops of gunfire from his right, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass. The two spots nearest him went out instantly.