“Should we… uh… DISCUSS this now?”
Alderman Cosko wasn’t usually so demure; but he was uncomfortable with being the de facto head of Town Council. He was in charge because the mayor was running late and the usual second in command – a wizened old codger named Fowler who predated every building in town except the barber shop – was stuck at a church function and couldn’t break away. And when that was the case – which happened more often than anyone in the town of Mt. Arliss was aware of since no one came out to the bi-monthly meetings – that meant Tom Cosko was in charge. And somewhere between the sudden rush of power, the fear of inevitable retribution – either from the mayor, his wife, or his constituency – and the concern over having a quorum, the portly, smiling, usually confident man shrank. Just a little.
“Well,” Alderman Rita Boflofsky said, sitting back in her chair. When she sat back in the chair the old wooden chair creaked like ancient bones and the sound of it made her visibly wince. She winced like it was her own bony frame making the noise. She winced the way fat people wince when they sit on chairs that won’t support them. Rita Boflofsky looked older than she was; she looked like a woman who had spent her entire life counting and keeping track of the number of M&M she ate. Her skin was taut and stretched like leather that had been left out in the sun too long and semi-salvaged from the rain. No one touched her on the shoulders for fear of being skewered by the bony protuberances. Small children had lost eyes because they wandered too close to her sharp swinging elbows when she walked. The tightness of her skin made her jaw look more prominent than it would have otherwise, and her dark beady eyes peered out from behind small librarian spectacles that sat neatly on the bridge of her narrow, short, nose.
“Well,” she repeated, looking around. “We might as well.”
The other three aldermen – Lena Linko from Ward 2, Cloris Hinkle from Ward 1, and Mackinaw Wojehovicz from Ward 4 – simply nodded their heads and said nothing. That was what they did most of the time, unless it was required by Robert’s Rules of Parliamentary Procedure.
Tom Cosko looked behind his left shoulder at the Chief of Police like he was asking for permission to speak, and the Chief nodded solemnly. Chief Dolarhyde was an old football buddy of the mayor’s, and also the mayor’s long arm. Dolarhyde was the star quarterback in the 80’s – that was before Mt. Arliss High was consolidated into the Arliss County school district and the school building itself was demolished to make space for an industrial park that was never built. Mayor Leslie Bane was the water boy. He was too short and too wide to play football. In fact, he was probably a midget; but his temper far exceeded his stature and while no one really liked him and none of the girls would date him for fear of ending up having midget babies, no one gave him a difficult time. He and Jeff Dolarhyde had been friends their entire lives because they grew up living next door to one another – until Dolarhyde joined the Marines and went off to the first Gulf War. He’d come back a hero of sorts, married a past Corn Harvest Beauty Queen, and had been a deputy Sheriff in Iowa until Old Man Cleary was forced into retirement.
By that time, little Leslie Bane had lucked into marrying the pretty daughter of a local big wig who had more or less financed his run for the mayor’s office – mostly, it was thought, to ensure that his youngest daughter would be able to hold her head up as the mayor’s wife instead of being that poor girl who married a midget. It was also thought that Bane would make the local tax code more favorable for his father-in-law’s business interests. But because he refused to be under anyone’s thumb, Bane did the exact opposite and instituted so many nitpicky taxes that his by the time his father-in-law and political backer died from prostate cancer, he near broke and had to declare bankruptcy just to pay the extensive medical bills. There wouldn’t have been money to bury him if the entire community hadn’t kicked in; his grave would be unmarked if the headstone maker Mr. Feany hadn’t donated a small rectangle plot marker with his name, birth, and death date. Since then, his terms as mayor ran concurrently because no one wanted to mess with a midget who would bankrupt his father-in-law simply because God had made him a midget.
“Uh… okay.” Cosko looked into the audience. The dozen or so chairs were unusually crowded. All of the faces were familiar. All but one. The rest were a group of concerned citizens who had approached the Town Council demanding something be done to stem the tide of outsiders, malingerers, and illegal aliens that had descended upon the town in recent months. They wanted form the Arliss County Citizen’s Committee (ACC) – which they proposed would be a kind of community watch group that would keep an eye on things and report anything suspicious to the police. They wanted money from the Town Council and they wanted the Council’s stamp of approval. The topic had been brought up before, and was currently on the agenda for the Finance Committee –which happened to include everyone on Town Council – and typically, such matters were discussed before the official bell ringing that meant the regular council meeting had begun.
The ACCC agenda was fairly simple. The corporate farm had brought in workers for harvest, rather than hiring local people, or even the farmers whose land they bought, seized, or acquired. These migrants were Mexicans, and not a one of the spoke a word of English. ACCC was convinced that they were all border jumpers that were bringing drugs across the border in addition to taking jobs that rightfully belonged to good, upstanding, native born Americans. Parents were worried about their children – particularly their daughters, who were surely targets for rape, gang sodomy, and possible sale into white slavery – and the Police Chief, while sympathetic, was short staffed as it was. Cosko didn’t know how he felt about it, but he was sure that he’d seen something like this in a movie. The only thing that was missing was the lit torches and pitch forks.
When they first approached the council, they intended to form a militia, and they went after the council in public when they were told no. After numerous phones calls, threats, and prolific letters to the editors of area newspapers, as well as letters of support from several conservative political action committees and grass roots organizations like the Tea Leaf Brigade and the Southern Knights of The Republic, they approached the town council again – this time calling themselves a Committee.
The unofficial leader of ACCC was Don Breeble. Tom had known Don for years because the man had antagonized him from the moment he moved into town fifteen years ago. Don was a farmer, a gun owner, and Christian – when it suited him. He was also former President of the local chapter of the John Birch Society, until he broke with them because he thought they were too wishy-washy. His farm was five miles from the Lake Pilot Campground and Resort; that hadn’t been a problem for him until Tom and Rosie Kendle decided to convert their general store into a cantine. Now, according to Don, it was just a place for “queers and border jumpers” to hang out, spreading their societal disease like those mosquitoes that carry the West Nile Virus. He’d written letters to the editors of every county paper every week for months, speaking out against the roaming hordes, the town council, and Cosko in particular. Cosko’s wife was being harassed by her friends and threatened by anonymous phone calls. Cosko remembered one call word for word:
“If your husband doesn’t care about protecting our wives and daughters from being attacked, maybe we ought to come for YOU. After ten or twenty of us are done with you, maybe your dumbass of a husband will see the light. What do you think honey? Ever wonder what it would be like to have a REAL MAN between your legs?”
Naturally Cosko reported these call to Chief Dolarhyde; but the calls didn’t stop.
He took a deep breath and looked at the face he didn’t know. He’d seen the guy around and had heard he was a reporter for one of the papers, The Illinois Advocate. No one knew anything about him, other than he was new in town and spent a lot of time at the Moose Head. Then he turned his attention back to Don Breeble. “Okay Don,” he said. “What have you got for us tonight?”
Don Breeble stood up smiling. His teeth were yellow, like the hair of his scouring pad beard. The people he brought with him –the other prominent members of ACCC – applauded. Don handed a stack of papers to the Clerk of Court, Mandy Calumny, and she passed them round to each council member. “What I have here,” Don spoke loudly, “is an outline – as the council requested – discussing what our aims are, why we’re a service to the community, and how much money we need and why. Everything’s specific and defined. There’s no malfeasance or new math accounting.” He laughed and the rest of the ACCCers laughed too.
“Have you approached other communities in the county?” Rita Boflofsky asked. “Seems to me that if you’re a county-wide organization that the county and other communities should shoulder the burden too. It’s not just on us because you happen to live here.”
“We’ve gone to the county board,” Don answered like he was anticipating the question, and to nearly every community in county.”
“And?”
“And we’re waiting on word from the county board. And every town except one has agreed.”
“And what do you need money for?” Cosko asked.
“To help cover the cost of patrols,” Don answered. “Upkeep of vehicles. We’ve been doing it on our own for some time, and we’ll keep on doing it that way if we have to. But we’re just trying to help protect what’s good and godly in our communities,” he turned and looked at his fellow ACCCers, all of whom nodded and grunted their agreement “and we’re just asking for a little help.”
Tom had heard stories about them doing it on their own. No one had died yet. Chief Dolarhyde and the County Sheriff were getting reports of threatening calls, rocks in windows, small brush fires, trucks and cars ran off the road. Of course, no one named Don Breeble and the ACCC; but no one had to. Everyone knew what was going on.
Don talked on for a few more minutes and was roundly and loudly applauded by the ACCCers in the audience. Tom looked behind him at Chief Dolarhyde, who wasn’t looking back at him, but who was looking down at a sheet of paper, nodding his head. Then he looked at Don Breeble, who smiled and winked at him. He thought about the voice on the other end of the phone that night at two in the morning and remembered that it had sounded familiar. He looked at the reporter whose name he didn’t know. Then he looked over at Rita Boflofsky and the other members of the quorum. It was a bad business. But he also knew that the mayor would support a motion to fund the ACCC. And he also believed the voice on the other end of the phone.
Lena Linko spoke up as if she had just woke up from a deep sleep. “I’m requesting a motion that we fund the ACCC in the amount of $500.”
“Where will the money come from?” Cosko asked.
“The general fund,” Rita said. “We’ve got it.” She looked at Mandy Calumny. “Don’t we?”
Mandy nodded.
“We should talk about this during the regular meeting,” Cosko said. “You know we can’t offer motions in committee.” He looked over at Don, with his wide smiling yellow teeth, and he thought about how his wife was afraid to go anywhere at night or alone. Or with him. “We have to follow the rules,” Cosko insisted. “Or none of it means anything.”
Don nodded his approval. Cosko felt Dolarhyde nodding too. Cosko looked over at the clock on the wall. It was time to start the meeting.
