âWhat?â I asked. Not waiting for an answer, I went back to eating and they went back to talking.
Night slipped into the kitchen to talk to Donna. She came back, grabbed her pack and went upstairs without looking back. I was torn for a second. What to do: Eat pancakes with syrup or join Night for a shower?
The pancakes won.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I tuned back in when Tommy started talking about what was going on around the new homestead. He was having problems. I listened for a bit and realized that Tommy couldnât handle his neighbors.
Then again, from the sound of it, neither could anyone else in town. Oh, there were exceptions. Apparently there were a couple of guys in town who had been let go from the army when they did the great downsize.
I didnât quite understand what he was saying here. Something about it not just being them; it was the family network they were born into. Apparently they had a shitload of homicidal kinfolk that they could call upon somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. Or nearby trailer parks. Or the next town.
Yet it didnât ring true. If so, where were they? I didnât hear any mention of these kinfolk actually being spotted. I could picture them easily enough: white trash tweaker heads who needed to call going to a wedding by its real nameâa family reunion.
I had run across a few of those peckerheads in my time. Never any obvious muscle to them, but, just like Juan from tortilla land, they could work all day. Forget fist fighting with them. You had to kill them. They were smart in a sly way. If prison or drugs didnât get them, then the Lord did. We got along well together the few times I had to hang with them. Usually it was because Mother had landed us in a neighborhood infested with them.
Tommyâs neighbors, the McKinleys, were trying to fill the power vacuum left by the resignation of the local police. Funny how if you didnât pay them and provide health benefits, the police just didnât want to die protecting your F-150 from part strippers.
The evil McKinleys consisted of Ma, Pa, and two boys. One boy was a bit âslowâ and the other was a nut job with issues. Supposedly he was married, but his wife had fled with their three kids two months ago. So the boys were living at home, probably back in the same rooms they had grown up in. I wouldnât be surprised if they had the same posters on the wall. My guess was Nut Job had one of Pamela Anderson. She was probably still considered hot around here.
The family also had heavy equipment that still worked. The old man was the only way people got snow removed from the side roads and the main road in town. There were locals with plows on their trucks or tractors. As long as they stuck to their driveways and service roads, then the McKinley family left them alone.
But try to plow a road in what Pa McKinley called âthe Franchiseâ and you would come out one morning and find your vehicle didnât run anymore. Push the issue and
somebody would find your body slumped over the wheel. They only had to go that far once. It was enough.
The McKinleys got their franchise because folks couldnât be sure the county and state would show up anymore. The county crews would still plow, but they wanted cash or something of equal value before they showed up. Little towns with out-of-the-way roads were especially vulnerable to this. Tommyâs little town had had all of its snow removing equipment repossessed three years ago.
Every year the McKinleys got a little more out of control, so people tried to tread lightly around them. If not for the reason that they liked driving on plowed roads, then because Pa and the boys would beat the crap out of you, given the right incentive. Nowadays, not kissing their ass correctly was incentive enough.
It was typical small-town politics played out in the absence of any organized and armed authority to put a to stop it. A few frayed threads of morality
Night slipped into the kitchen to talk to Donna. She came back, grabbed her pack and went upstairs without looking back. I was torn for a second. What to do: Eat pancakes with syrup or join Night for a shower?
The pancakes won.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I tuned back in when Tommy started talking about what was going on around the new homestead. He was having problems. I listened for a bit and realized that Tommy couldnât handle his neighbors.
Then again, from the sound of it, neither could anyone else in town. Oh, there were exceptions. Apparently there were a couple of guys in town who had been let go from the army when they did the great downsize.
I didnât quite understand what he was saying here. Something about it not just being them; it was the family network they were born into. Apparently they had a shitload of homicidal kinfolk that they could call upon somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. Or nearby trailer parks. Or the next town.
Yet it didnât ring true. If so, where were they? I didnât hear any mention of these kinfolk actually being spotted. I could picture them easily enough: white trash tweaker heads who needed to call going to a wedding by its real nameâa family reunion.
I had run across a few of those peckerheads in my time. Never any obvious muscle to them, but, just like Juan from tortilla land, they could work all day. Forget fist fighting with them. You had to kill them. They were smart in a sly way. If prison or drugs didnât get them, then the Lord did. We got along well together the few times I had to hang with them. Usually it was because Mother had landed us in a neighborhood infested with them.
Tommyâs neighbors, the McKinleys, were trying to fill the power vacuum left by the resignation of the local police. Funny how if you didnât pay them and provide health benefits, the police just didnât want to die protecting your F-150 from part strippers.
The evil McKinleys consisted of Ma, Pa, and two boys. One boy was a bit âslowâ and the other was a nut job with issues. Supposedly he was married, but his wife had fled with their three kids two months ago. So the boys were living at home, probably back in the same rooms they had grown up in. I wouldnât be surprised if they had the same posters on the wall. My guess was Nut Job had one of Pamela Anderson. She was probably still considered hot around here.
The family also had heavy equipment that still worked. The old man was the only way people got snow removed from the side roads and the main road in town. There were locals with plows on their trucks or tractors. As long as they stuck to their driveways and service roads, then the McKinley family left them alone.
But try to plow a road in what Pa McKinley called âthe Franchiseâ and you would come out one morning and find your vehicle didnât run anymore. Push the issue and
somebody would find your body slumped over the wheel. They only had to go that far once. It was enough.
The McKinleys got their franchise because folks couldnât be sure the county and state would show up anymore. The county crews would still plow, but they wanted cash or something of equal value before they showed up. Little towns with out-of-the-way roads were especially vulnerable to this. Tommyâs little town had had all of its snow removing equipment repossessed three years ago.
Every year the McKinleys got a little more out of control, so people tried to tread lightly around them. If not for the reason that they liked driving on plowed roads, then because Pa and the boys would beat the crap out of you, given the right incentive. Nowadays, not kissing their ass correctly was incentive enough.
It was typical small-town politics played out in the absence of any organized and armed authority to put a to stop it. A few frayed threads of morality
Similar Books
