John Barnes - The Last President

Finally, though, Pat O’Grainne took Leo down to the other end of the terrace to play, and it was time for adult business.

“Just to begin with,” Heather said, “you guys should know how grateful I am.”

“How grateful we are,” Bambi said. “And I can’t imagine what you’re going through and won’t pretend to understand; you all were career FBI with decades of experience, and now… there’s not only no job, there’s no Federal Bureau of Investigation, there’s not even a Federal. So we wanted to make you a special offer, in two parts.

“One, Heather has graciously agreed to be the Countess of Laguna Beach, and we’ll start construction of Castle O’Grainne or Castle Laguna or whatever she decides to call it this summer, and probably she’ll move in next summer, because the weathermen say that was our last really cold winter after the disaster; most of the soot is out of the air now, so we won’t have snow next year, and only a normal volume of rain.

“Heather will need all of your skills—not just Dave and Terry’s guns, but your experience with small-scale firefights, and Arlene’s nursing experience. Any of you can have a job there, and the job will start well before the castle is built, since you’ll be putting together a team. Carlucci, that also means that any of your local deputies that are interested will be first in line with Heather—or with me.

“Two may be more interesting, or less. I need a freehold to anchor your end of the coast; that’s a very vulnerable area in my county, and therefore in my duchy, right now. So you guys could freehold together, set up two small freeholds, or one could freehold and the other could hire him. Any combination you like.”

Carlucci said, “Could I just… man.” He was wiping his eyes. “Bambi, I’m sorry, but I just feel like I lost the argument with your father, and him on the other side of the grave. I mean… no more America, you know? And I was a pretty rah-rah go-America U!S!A! kind of person—embarrassed my kids with super-patriot names and all”—he saw their glares—“which I won’t explain right now, but anyway, it’s a lot to give up. And you both know, we’ve been through a lot together, it might take me some days to make up my mind.”

Terry Bolton sat back and said, “You know, I guess I feel differently. If I could get the whole, old, back-before world back in one big swoop, sure, I’d do that in a heartbeat. But in this new world… well, I don’t know about being a freeholder. But, uh, if you need a chief of arms, Heather—is it okay to call you Heather?”

“I’ll insist. Especially if you work for me. And I like ‘Chief of Arms.’ Can I ask, since you seem to be baby-experienced, to judge by how you get along with Leo, what you’ll need for quarters?”

“Space for me and three kids, girl ten, boy eight, and boy six.”

“Caucasians, with any identifying tattoos or scars?” Heather was smiling.

“Yeah, well, we all get that way after a decade or two of filling out reports, don’t we? My online dating profile had things presented pretty much the way they would be on a handbill in the post office. Anyway, I’m a single dad, now. My wife divorced me and she and her new husband were honeymooning in Hawaii on Daybreak day. Haven’t heard from her since, not even in the first days when the hams were still up and operating. But if there’d be room for a little family at Castle O’Grainne? Even if the older boy is sort of ADD and aspy?”

“There would be. Start looking for guys you’d like to have serve under you, Terry.” Heather gazed at Carlucci thoughtfully. “Dave, I know you a little better, and just to point this out: you’d make a good freeholder.”

“That’s what worries me,” Carlucci said. He nodded at his son. “Paley already tells me my politics are medieval.”

When Larry Mensche and Dave McWaine met up again after combing through the town in opposite spirals, they still had not found Freddie Pranger. Pale Bluff had been his home town; he’d known who lived in most houses, climbed most of the apple trees in the orchards, and recognized most of the names in the town cemetery. The Army officers had asked him to identify bodies but he’d darted into the town and vanished as soon as they’d arrived.

Larry and Dave finally found him by giving up; he was saying goodbye to Roger Jackson, who was hobbling on crutches, but whose leg seemed to be healing straight, at least so far. “Just wanted to make sure I said bye-bye to all my old scout buddies before I took off for good,” Freddie said. “I’ll do their body identification, though it makes me sick, but then I’m resigned and off on my own.”

“What will you do, then?” Larry asked.

“Well,” Freddie said. “You, uh, ever hear of a guy named John Johnson? That’s kind of how I feel about those Castle Earthstone assholes. Haven’t quite figured out what my trademark is going to be, but I’ll have one soon enough.”

Larry considered for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I have. Going to make a career of that?”

“Well, Johnson didn’t. He did lots of things afterward, mined and ranched and was a lawman. So maybe not forever. Maybe just till I catch up with Lord Robert and give him my personal payback, after paying back some of his men. But for right now, that’s the project that I’ll be undertaking. So I’m out of the army, out of the scouts, and off to take care of that.”

He very solemnly shook hands with each of them, slung up his gear, and walked off to the chief of scouting to tender his resignation.

Roger Jackson said, “Okay, so who is John Johnson, and I’m betting his trademark wasn’t on baby shampoo?”

“Well, he was a mountain man who had a real big vendetta against the Crow, which is why one of his nicknames was ‘The Crow Killer.’ And as for his trademark, they called him ‘Liver-Eating Johnson.’” Mensche looked around at the many carts hauling bodies and the soldiers with clipboards compiling lists, and said, “Mind you, looking at this town, if I were from here like Freddie is, I’d be seeing his point of view very clearly.”

No one recognized Neville Jawarah on the walk from the railroad station; maybe they hadn’t seen much of this uniform before they all went east, maybe they didn’t want to see anyone in this uniform because so many had not come back, maybe it didn’t occur to them that Neville might be inside this uniform. Didn’t matter, he didn’t want to talk in the street. There was one place he wanted to be.

When he came through the door, his mother virtually pinned him to the wall with her hug, hanging onto him and crying. “I don’t even know how to ask how it was,” she said, rubbing her face with her apron. “We heard such horrible, horrible things.”

“They were mostly true,” Neville said.

“Did you see any bad things?”

“More than I’m going to tell you about.”

“And… did you do anything… ah—”

“I survived and I did everything they asked. That was a lot.”

“And… Jimmy?”

“He didn’t make it, Maj’. Something big and sharp got him in the face, I wasn’t there when it happened, but I saw him laid out afterward, there were long rows of bodies, I never… aw, shit.”

Neville hung on to his mother and cried until she pried him off and gave him a bowl of soup and some warm bread. That night, he looked up at the old dog-eared Lord of the Rings on his bookshelf, thought Well, I’m home , and felt the tears begin to flow just before he fell asleep.