Free The Rift by Walter Jon Williams

the vehicles had been there so long they were covered by vines, and fire ants had piled conical mounds around the deflated tires. Cur dogs lolled in the shade, dozens of them. Laundry hung slack on lines. Old signs were still pegged on front lawns: Omar Paxton for Law and Decency. Confederate flags hung limp in the still air.
    Omar waved to everyone as he drove slowly through the neighborhood in his chief’s cruiser. People waved back, shouted out congratulations.
    These were the people who had turned out in droves to see him elected, who had overturned the local establishment and put him in office.
    Maybe now, he thought, we can get the roads resurfaced.
    He pulled into his carport and stepped from its air-conditioned interior into the Louisiana heat. The air was so sultry, and hung so listlessly in the still afternoon, that Omar thought he could absolutely feel the creases wilt on his uniform. He sagged.
    People used to work in this heat, he thought. He himself had spent one whole day chopping cotton when he was a teenager, and by the end of the day, when he’d quit, he knew he’d better finish high school and get a job fit for a white man.
    Sweat prickled his forehead as he walked the few paces from the carport to his front door. Inside, chill refrigerated air enveloped him, smelling of chopped onion and green pepper. He stopped inside the door and breathed it in.
    “Is that potato salad I smell?” he said cheerfully. He took off his gun belt— damned heavy thing— and crossed the room to hang it from the rack that held his .30-’06, his shotgun, his Kalashnikov, and the Enfield his multi-great grandfather had carried in the War Between the States.
    Wilona— who pronounced her name “Why-lona”— came from the kitchen, an apron over her housecoat. “Enough potato salad for twenty people,” she said. “There aren’t going to be more, are they?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t do the invitations.” He kissed her.
    Wilona’s expression brightened. “Look!” She almost danced to the coffee table, where she picked up a cream-colored envelope. “Look what else we got!”
    Omar saw the address engraved on the envelope and smiled. “I was wondering when this was going to come.”
    “Mrs. Ashenden invited me to tea on Wednesday!” Wilona’s eyes sparkled. She was happy as a child at Christmas.
    Omar took the envelope from her, slipped the card out of the envelope, opened it. Looked at the elegant handwriting. “Very nice,” he said. “Guess we’re among the quality now.”
    “It’s so exciting!” Wilona said. “We finally got an invitation to Miz LaGrande’s! It’s just what we’ve wanted!”
    What Omar wanted, actually, was for Mrs. LaGrande Davis Rildia Shelburne Ashenden to die, choke on one of her little color-coordinated petit fours maybe, and for her big white house, Clarendon, to burn to the ground. She was the last of the Shelburne family, and they’d been in charge of Spottswood Parish for too long.
    “I’ll have to find a new frock,” Wilona said. “Thank God I have Aunt Clover’s pearls.”
    “Your frocks are fine.” Omar put the invitation back into its envelope and frowned. “You’ll buy a new frock for old Miz LaGrande and you didn’t buy one for my swearing-in?”
    She snatched the invitation from his hand. “But I’ll be going to Clarendon! Clarendon is different!”
    “I wouldn’t buy a new frock for some old biddy who will never give us the vote,” Omar said. “Is there beer in the icebox?”
    “I bought a case yesterday. There was a sale at the Super-B.”
    Omar found some Coors Light in the icebox, twisted off the tops of two bottles, and returned to the living room to hand one to Wilona. She was sitting on the couch, paging through a copy of Southern Accents that she’d probably bought the second she’d received Miz LaGrande’s invitation.
    Wilona took the beer she handed him and sighed. He had neglected to bring her a glass.
    Wilona had always harbored