Glenn Beck - The Eye of Moloch

“Y’all leave me and Mr. Simmons alone now.”

When they’d gone George Pierce let it stay quiet between the two of them, waiting until the other man spoke.

“That was a damn good shot.”

“That was three damn good shots,” Pierce replied.

“Yeah.”

“Take a team out this afternoon and you dump that body by the highway, thirty miles or so down the road. We’ll call it in next week if the dumb-ass cops take too long to find it. And then you’re going to leave here tomorrow with that rifle, and go raise some hell, isn’t that right? You’re going to go out and terrorize the sheep, get ’em all so scared they’ll be begging for the police state to come in and save them?”

“That’s the plan.”

Pierce nodded thoughtfully. “I noticed you were spending a lot of quality time with that snake-in-the-grass Warren Landers while he was here.”

“Just keeping an eye on him for you.”

“Uh huh.” Pierce took a cigar from his breast pocket, bit a sliver from the cap, and then leaned slightly forward and spit over the rail. “It wouldn’t be like you to forget where you came from, would it? And what you’ve sworn to me?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t forget.”

“You know,” Pierce said, “they spent a whole lotta energy over the years asking who killed JFK, with not near enough of them asking why. If they’d ever had the guts to get an answer to that one question—why?—then they would have known who it was a long time ago.”

“So why’d they do it?” Simmons asked.

Pierce didn’t answer right away. He lit up his stogie and let the pause stretch out until the other man turned his head and looked him in the eyes.

“Oldest reason in the world,” Pierce said. “Those men in high places, the ones who made him what he was? They killed John Kennedy because he was disloyal.”

Chapter 16

With a last ceremonial stroke of the sanding block, Thom Hollis pulled his work light nearer to examine the dovetail joint he’d just completed. The two maple boards mated flush at a perfect right angle.

He gathered and then dry-fit the sides, front, and floor with their fresh cedar liners and brass hardware. The drawer knit together so well it would almost seem an insult to smear it with glue and stain. There sat a work of art, if he did say so himself, sculpted as it was with only a fret saw and hand chisels.

As the old saying goes, you can judge a rich man by his shoes, a salesman by his necktie, and a tailor by his inside seams—but to size up a carpenter, you really need to look inside his drawers.

Some would see it as a waste of time, such obsessive attention paid to a humble household repair. Old and treasured things, though, deserve to be restored with all the care and patience shown by their creators, or so he’d been told by his teachers.

A strenuous yawn came from the direction of the doorway and he turned to see that the young man Tyler had arrived on time to retrieve his phone. They exchanged a polite good-morning and Hollis pointed out the reassembled gadget waiting on the far end of the bench. The boy came over and picked it up, but he only slipped it into his pocket without turning it on.

“Now you need to use that thing just like normal,” Hollis said, “like we talked about.”

“I know. Nobody would ever believe I actually got up this early, so I’ll wait till later to sign on.”

“That’s good thinking,” Hollis said. “Say, do you like spiders?”

The boy’s sleepy eyes grew wide. “Don’t say it. There’s one on me, isn’t there?”

“I’m just asking.”

He shuddered a bit. “I hate spiders.”

“That’s bad news for you, Tyler, because they’re everywhere. Throughout your whole life, city or country, every minute you’re almost never more than six feet away from a spider. You don’t see ’em most of the time, but they’re seeing you, with all those shiny black eyes. They’re thinking about you, too, if you can call what they do thinking. Mainly they’re just wondering what sort of a web they’d need to spin to catch you.”

Hollis turned back to the bench and set about cleaning the work surface with a hand brush and dustpan. “I’m not saying they’re all bad. There’s some deadly ones out there to be sure, but some can be very helpful little creatures. You shouldn’t ever forget, though, they don’t care what’s good for you, not for a minute. They’ve always got their own best interests in mind.”

“Okay, okay, jeez, I get it.”

“I’m sorry, you get what?”

“You’re saying Big Brother’s watching, and even when he’s not, the phone, the computer, and Facebook, and Google, and Skype, and Twitter, and Pinterest, and Instagram, and all the games and the apps, whatever, even if they say they’re free, they’re not really, and I need to be careful, yadda yadda yadda—”

Hollis frowned and pointed to the boy’s shoulder. “No, I’m saying there’s a gigantic spider on your shoulder.”

The frantic clog-dance of swats, stomps, and curses that ensued got Hollis to laughing like he hadn’t laughed in months. When he realized he’d been fooled the boy laughed, too, despite himself, though in the course of it he did refer to his elder by a few choice names that wouldn’t bear repeating in polite company.

“Really, thanks a lot for freaking me out,” Tyler said. “Very mature.”

“Any time.”

Hollis went on with his cleanup, replacing tools and storing unused stock. After a few minutes of this he noticed that the boy hadn’t yet gone.

“This ain’t a punishment detail,” he said. “Go on, now. You’re a free man.”

“Yeah, I know.” Still, he didn’t move to leave. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“My cousin said you fainted the other day, when they found you guys out in the woods. Is that true?”

“Am I the only subject of loose conversation around here? Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” Tyler said. “It’s just that you’re this big strong guy, and I guess I never heard of a grown man fainting before.”

“If you must know, I’ve had a bit of a condition, and since I got back from the service it’s been known to flare up on me from time to time. I hadn’t slept or eaten much for a week or so, and I suppose it all must have built up and got the better of me.”

“What, like post-traumatic stress whatever?”

“Yeah. Something like that, I guess. Maybe we should put it up on the bulletin board to save the others the trouble of asking.”

“And why’s your voice sound that way? It’s kind of, I don’t know, kind of wheezy.”

Hollis took an extended look at the worn edge of one of the chisels, then put it aside for later sharpening. “Bring me a Coke from the fridge over there, and I’ll tell you.”

The young man went to the corner and brought back the bottle as requested. “So?”

“So, I took a piece of shrapnel in the throat one time. I was out to cover an allied patrol, nothing special about the mission, just an afternoon milk run in year five of a sixty-day war. We got hit outside of Sangin, total surprise, by some local warlord who’d switched hats and took a better bribe than what we’d offered. I was lucky with what I got, compared to some.” He touched the scars; they were easier to trace without his beard. “Like the other thing, it comes and goes. Believe me, I’ve sounded worse.”

“Sangin. Where’s that, like Vietnam?”

“It’s in Afghanistan.” Hollis hooked the bottle cap on the metal lip of the workbench, popped it smartly with the heel of his hand, and took a drink. “And you know something? I understand it’s not top-of-mind for a lot of folks these days, but for all the people who’re still dying in service to this country, whether or not you believe in the wisdom of these perpetual wars, I think it would be a pretty damn good thing if we all at least knew the names of the places where they’re giving their lives.”