Diana Palmer - Courageous

Peg barely noticed the potatoes until water splashed out onto the stove. She tested them with a clean fork and moved the pan off the burner. She was going to the ball. She felt like Cinderella. She’d fix up her face and hair and make Grange proud. It would be the happiest night of her entire life. She felt as if she were walking on air as she started to mash the potatoes in a big ceramic bowl.

“I hear you’re going to the ball,” Ed Larson teased after they’d shared supper with Grange.

She blushed. She’d been doing that all through the meal. It was almost a relief when Grange went out to check the livestock.

“Yes,” she said. “I was shocked that he asked me. I’ll bet Gracie had her husband goad him into it, though,” she added sadly. “I’m sure he said already that he wasn’t going.”

“I’m glad he is,” Ed said. His face was solemn as he took a sip of coffee. “Rumor is that his group is leaving with Emilio Machado very soon. Revolution is never pretty.”

“So soon?” she blurted out. She knew about the mission. There were no secrets in small towns. Besides, Rick Marquez, whose adopted mother Barbara ran the Jacobsville café, had turned out to be General Machado’s son.

“Yes,” her father replied.

“He’ll die.”

“No, he won’t,” he said, and smiled. “Winslow was a major in the army. He served in spec ops in Iraq and he came home. He’ll be fine.”

“You think so. Really?”

“Really.”

She sighed. “Why do people fight?”

His eyes had a faraway expression. “Sometimes for stupid reasons. Sometimes for really patriotic ones. In this case,” he added, glancing at her, “to stop a dictator from having people shot in their own homes for questioning his policies.”

“Good heavens!”

He nodded. “General Machado had a democratic government, with handpicked heads of departments. He toured his country, talked to his people to see what their needs were. He set up committees, had representatives from indigenous groups on his council, even worked with neighboring countries to set up free-trade agreements that would benefit the region.” He shook his head. “So he goes to another country to talk about one of those agreements, and while he’s away, this serpent brings in his political cronies, has them put in charge of the military and overthrows the government.”

“Nice guy,” she said sarcastically.

“The general’s right-hand man, too, his political chief, Arturo Sapara,” Ed continued. “Sapara takes over the government then he closes down the television and radio stations and puts a representative in each newspaper office to report directly to him. He controls all the mass media. He puts cameras everywhere and spies on the people. Somebody says, anyone he doesn’t like … they disappear, like two internationally known college professors disappeared a few months ago.”

“Ouch.”

“People think things like that can’t happen to them.” He sighed. “They can happen anywhere that the public turns a blind eye to injustice.”

“I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“Machado says he’s not going to stand by and let the work he put into that democracy go down the drain. It’s taken him months to mount a counteroffensive, but he’s got the men and the money now, and he’s going to act.”

“I hope he wins.” She grimaced. “I just don’t want Grange to die.”

He chuckled. “You underestimate that young man,” he assured her. “He’s like a cat. He’s got nine lives. And he thinks outside the box, which is what makes him so invaluable to Machado. Example,” he added, his eyes twinkling as he warmed to his subject, “North Africa in the early days of the North African campaign in World War II. The commanding German field marshal, Rommel, had only a handful of troops compared to the British. But he wanted them to think he had more. So he had his men march through town in a parade, go around the corner and march through again several times to give the appearance of numbers. He also had huge fans, aircraft engines, hooked up behind trucks to blow up the desert sand and make his column appear larger than it really was. By using such tricks, he psyched out the opposition for a long time. That’s what I call thinking outside the box.”

“Wow. I never heard of that German officer.”

He gave her a blank stare. “Excuse me? Didn’t you study about World War II in school?”

“Sure. We learned about this general called Eisenhower who later became president. Oh, and this guy Churchill who was the leader in England.”

“What about Montgomery? Patton?”

She blinked. “Who were they?”

He finished his coffee and got up from the table. “I’ll quote George Santayana, a Harvard professor. ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ And for the record, high school history needs retooling!”

“Modern history.” She made a face. “A lot of dates and insignificant facts.”

“The stuff of legends.”

“If you say so.”

He glared at her, grimaced and gave up. “We’re leaving the world in the hands of shallow thinkers when we old ones die.”

“I am not a shallow thinker,” she protested. “I just don’t like history.”

He cocked his head. “Grange does.”

She averted her eyes. “Does he?”

“Military history, especially. We have running debates on it.”

She shrugged. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check it out on Google.”

“There are books in the bookcase,” he said, aghast. “Real, honest to goodness books!”

“Dead trees,” she muttered. “Kill a tree to make a book, when there are perfectly good ebooks for sale all over the web.”

He threw up his hands. “I’m leaving. Next you’ll be telling me that you agree with all the bookstore and library closings all over the country.”

She hesitated. “I think it’s very sad,” she said unexpectedly. “A lot of people can’t afford to buy books, even used ones. So the library has all that knowledge available for free. What are people going to do when they don’t have any way to learn things except in school?”

He came back and hugged her. “Now I know you’re really my daughter.” He chuckled.

She grinned. “Aw, shucks.” She lowered her head and scuffed her toe on the floor. “Twarn’t nothing,” she drawled.

He laughed and went away.

“Pie?” she called after him.

“Wait an hour or so until dinner has time to settle!” he called back.

“Okay.”

She heated up a cup of coffee and carried it through the house, out the back door and into the barn. Grange was sitting out there in an old cane-bottom wooden chair with a prize heifer that was calving for the first time. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was attached to the Santa Gertrudis first-time mother, whom he called Bossie. She was having a hard time.

“Damned big bull that sired this calf,” he muttered, accepting the coffee with a grateful smile. “If I’d known who the sire was, I’d never have let Tom Hayes sell me this pregnant heifer.”

She grimaced. She knew about birth weight ratios. A first-time mother needed a small calf. The herd sire who bred this one was huge, which meant a much higher birth weight than was recommended. It would endanger the mother.

“I hope she’ll do okay.”

“She will, if I have to have the vet come out here and sit with her all night and pay him.”

She laughed. “Dr. Bentley Rydel would do it for free. He loves animals.”

“Good thing. His brother-in-law sure is one. An animal, I mean.”

“You really have it in for mercenaries, don’t you?” she asked, curious.

“Not all of them,” he replied. “Eb Scott’s bunch is a notch above the rest. But Kell Drake, Rydel’s brother-in-law, was a career military man and he threw it all up to go off searching for adventure in, of all places, Africa!”