Tuskers. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Pederson was on his fourth trip back from town, loaded with lumber.  He’d cleaned out the hardware of shotgun shells.  On his third trip, there had been five other people in line.  All he had to do was say the word, “Javelinas?” out loud and the conversation had taken off.

They were all having trouble with aggressive bands of pigs.  He knew all the names of the people in line, though he doubted they knew who he was.  He’d made it his business to know who his neighbors were.

“My cat went missing,” Harvey Johansson said.  “I keep her inside most of the time, and she’s a scaredy cat.  It would take some doing to catch her off guard.  But…these skunk pigs, they’re getting way too aggressive.  And sneaky.”

“I think we need to clean them out,” said Jerry Olsen.  “Cut their numbers down.”

Fred Carter spoke up.  “I came around the corner of my house to change hoses and ran smack dab into one.  I swear it growled at me.  Pigs don’t growl, do they?”

The conversation inspired them all.  The entire shelf of ammunition was completely wiped out.

“Maybe we should leave some for others,” Anthony Lawrence said, doubtfully.

“Don’t worry,” the clerk said cheerfully.  “We have a whole warehouse full.”

But Pederson noticed on his fourth trip, the shelves were still empty.  He stared at the high-end bow and arrow set for a long time, and then reluctantly turned away.  He suspected he didn’t have time to learn even the rudiments of bow hunting.

Though how hard could it be? He asked himself.

He turned around and snagged it and took it to the counter.  The box was dusty.  The huge price tag meant that most people in this town could never afford it.  It was a showpiece.

The same clerk was there, no longer looking so cheerful.  He eyed the huge price of the bow and looked at Pederson doubtfully, but when he was handed a Black Card, he ran it through and it passed.

“What’s going on, Mr. Pederson?  Everyone is acting crazy.  I can’t raise anyone at the warehouse.  My boss hasn’t come in today.  Is there something I should know?”

“What’s your name, son?  Where you from?”

“Mark,” he said.  “Mark McCallister.  I’m from Idaho.”

“Idaho, good.  Did you live in the country?  Know how to handle a gun?”

“Yes, sir.  Everyone knows how to handle a gun where I come from.”

“Good,” Pederson said.  “Buy one of your fine wares, and take it home with a box of ammunition.  Don’t bother to come to work tomorrow.   Where are you living now, Mark?”

“In town, over the old Sweeny grocery store.”

“You should be safe.”

“What do you mean safe?  What the hell is going on?”

“Just stay indoors.  If you see any javelinas, get inside quick.”

Pederson left him there with his mouth open.  He didn’t know the clerk, which meant he was newly arrived in town.  The young man might not even know what a javelina was. 

But Pederson needed to get back to the farm.  When he was driving into town, he’d seen a huge pack of the javelinas coming down the road.  By the time he’d reached the turn in the road where they had been, they’d vanished into the underbrush.  The sight had disturbed him.  Before this week, he’d never seen more than twenty javelinas together.

He was headed out to the door of the hardware store when he saw Bart Hoskins, the head of the local United Way drive.  He was a banker and one of the few people in town who knew about Pederson’s wealth.  He was rotund man, originally from L.A., but who pretended to be one of the old-timers because he’d arrived a couple of years before most of the other Snowbirds.

The banker winked at Pederson, like he always did.  Pederson had made it clear that if word ever got out about his money, that the largesse he bestowed on the United Way would come to an end.  Even then, he sometimes wondered if Bart’s love of notoriety would overcome his better nature.

“Lyle, good to see you!” 

The big man looked askance at the bow and arrow.  Hoskins was against all guns, all hunting, and anything else that might pare back the wildlife.  If he had his way, all the animal species would be allowed to overpopulate and starve to death.

“Let me ask you something,” Pederson said, on the spur of the moment.  He never could resist pulling Hoskin’s chains.  “Have you been having trouble with the javelinas?”

A cloud passed over the banker’s face, and Pederson knew he’d hit a sore spot.

“Well, they were here before us.  Besides, I don’t believe in wasting water on lawns and gardens, so I got nothing to complain about.” 

There something in his voice.

“But?”

“They killed my cat!”

“Have you thought of getting a gun?”

“What?” the banker tried to act surprised, but Pederson saw the look of guilt in the man’s face.  The man had bought a gun.  Pederson would bet anything on it.

“They have as much right to existence on this land as we do,” Bart said, stubbornly.   “Maybe more so.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.  Meanwhile, be careful, Bart.  You hear?”

The banker nodded his head, and they exchanged a look -- man to man.

They passed each other without another word.

Pederson had more wood in the back of his pickup than he probably needed, but he had more money than he could ever spend.  The passenger seat and the compartment behind the front were filled with groceries.  For the first time in his life, Pederson had bought bottled water.  He’d tried to think of everything.

He shoved the bow and arrow on top of the rest.

It was probably all for nothing.  They’d call the state troopers in, or the National Guard.  A few more attacks and no one would be able to deny it.

But…there was that nagging feeling.  He’d had it the week before the stock market crashed.  He’d called his broker and told him -- no, ordered him, because he could tell the broker was going to lollygag -- to sell everything. 

The broker had called back a week later to thank him, because Pederson had been so adamant that the broker had sold a portion of his own portfolio.

The one thing Pederson had learned from his years in Silicon Valley -- trust your own instincts, even when everyone else disagreed with you, maybe especially when everyone disagreed with you.

He was probably traveling a little too fast on his way home.  He knew every turn in the road, every bump.  But what he didn’t expect was a javelina standing in the middle of the road.

If he’d had even one more second to think about, he would have run over the animal.  But his natural impulse took over and he swerved to miss the pig.  His right front tire went off the right side of the road, and seemed to want to jerk the pickup off the cliff.  He corrected.  He’d planned for this moment for years.  Most people overcorrected, sending them careening to the other side of the road, either smashing head on into coming traffic, or continuing down the other side, usually flipping the car.

So he tried to moderate his correction, but it was no use.  The momentums still sent him across the road.  Fortunately, the road was rarely traveled, so it was the bank on the other side that came barreling toward him.  He braced himself for impact.

The last thing he remembered was the air bag coming toward his head, as if in slow motion.  He was impossible he could have seen it, but he had a vision of the wood flying thrown the air over the pickup, impaling themselves on the sandy bank.

And then, darkness.