Free Wife-In-Law by Haywood Smith Page B

corruption,” she hollered. One side of her placard read GERALD FORD SUPPORTS CRIME, and the other, FORD WOULD PARDON HITLER.
    The other placards bore similar Democrat hysteria, interspersed with Carter signs.
    “Shame,” the picketers shouted to our approaching guests as they tried to come up the driveway. “Vote for Carter! Vote for change! Nixon was a criminal, and Ford pardoned him!”
    “Tommy,” Kat called to one of the men over their chanting. “Where’s the media?”
    The media! Spare me.
    “I called the paper and the TV,” he shouted back. “They were supposed to be here, but some guy got his legs caught in a ditch cave-in downtown, so they’re all down there covering that.”
    “Bummer,” another man weighed in as Kat made a face.
    Furious, I forced myself to conceal the anger and betrayal I felt as I hurried down the driveway as fast as my three-inch heels would allow. When I came alongside Kat, I said, “Kat, honey, I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on politics, and I’ll be the first to defend your right to free speech. But you and your people can’t go intimidating my guests. Or blocking their access to the house. So could you please just ask your people to back off?”
    Kat shot me a confrontational glare and kept right on marching as if I were just some annoying stranger, which hurt my feelings even more.
    I tried one more time to get her to listen to reason. “Nobody’s saying y’all can’t picket. You just need to leave my guests alone.”
    Without even looking at me, she returned fire with, “Oh, really? The way you and these reactionary so-called pro-lifers leave women alone when they’re trying to git a perfectly legal abortion?” Whoa. “’Scuse, me, but what’s sauce fer the goose is sauce fer the gander.” Her features congealed. “We’re only doin’ what we have to do to save this country from four more years of those criminals in Washington.”
    “Oh, please,” I said. “Like the Democrats didn’t have any criminals in Washington?”
    Kat scowled at me and picked up her pace.
    This was ridiculous. “Kat, honey,” I bit out, “I’m asking this as a favor, friend to friend: have your people leave my people alone. I don’t want any trouble here.”
    Her only response was to hold up her sign and holler, “Vote for the people, not the fat cats! God save democracy!”
    “I’ve told you a million times,” I snapped, “America is a democratic republic, not a democracy. Pure democracy is tyranny of the masses. It didn’t work for the Greeks, and it won’t work here.”
    She just smiled at me in challenge, then yelled to her cronies, “Sit-in for democracy!” In a blink, they broke ranks and sprinted for my front walk and the garage doors. Propelled by adrenaline, I ran after them, heels and all, and barely managed to get to the front porch before they formed a human blockade, then lay down, making it impossible for my guests to get in without climbing through my three-foot-tall azaleas.
    Buzzing with outrage, my guests surged up the driveway, then congregated on the other side of the demonstrators.
    Oh, Lord. What was I supposed to do now?
    Kat and her thugs were trespassing, but if I called the cops, they’d arrest her along with the others. Even after what she’d just done to me, I didn’t want that.
    At the forefront of the waiting guests, several members of my thrift shop committee from church stopped in consternation, looking to me as if I could wave my magic wand and make this go away.
    Think! There had to be some way to deal with this diplomatically.
    The last thing I wanted was to have my best friend hauled off to jail. No matter how betrayed I felt over what she’d done to me, I refused to stoop to her level.
    Then it occurred to me that Kat might want me to call the cops, so she could get some publicity. But friends don’t have friends arrested, in my book, even if they are rabid Democrats with no respect for private property.
    I had to think of