Free Liberty's Last Stand by Stephen Coonts

card.”
    â€œNot that much. I’ll limit myself to a small fraction of your inventory.”
    â€œHelp yourself. I’m gonna sit here and watch the riots. Put what you want on the counter and we’ll dicker. I’m easy, long as you’re not a convict or illegal chili-picker and you’ve stopped beatin’ your wife. Comrade Barry is gonna put me out of business pretty damn quick and I’ll need some money until the welfare checks start arrivin’ in the mailbox.”
    â€œYou have any black powder?”
    â€œSix or eight cans of the stuff. It’s on a shelf in the back. Help yourself.”
    â€œI have a cannon. Need some fuses for it, too.”
    â€œSame place. I supply the local pyro club, you know, the nutcases that make their own fireworks. Got all the stuff to make their rockets go up and pop. Take all you want. That asshole Soetoro will probably shut them down too and I can’t return that stuff or eat it. I’ll probably end up piling it up and setting it afire in my backyard.”
    â€œYou have a big backyard?”
    â€œCouple hundred acres. That’s where the pyro club does their thing.”
    An hour later when JR Hays paid for his purchases, the proprietor tossed in a couple of NRA bumper stickers into one bag and two that said “Fuck Soetoro.”
    â€œClassy,” JR said.
    â€œYeah. Kinda to the point. I’m all outta the ones that say ‘Soetoro Sucks.’”
    JR Hays loaded his purchases into his pickup and visited the local hardware store. While there he purchased four five-gallon cans for gasoline, among other things. At the supermarket he stocked up on canned goods, dry beans, two cured hams, bacon, and coffee. He hit theliquor store for two big bottles of bourbon and a case of beer. As people in this sparsely populated country normally did, he stopped at the filling station on the edge of town, topped off the truck, and filled his gas cans.
    He took his time getting back to the ranch. It was after eleven o’clock when he closed and locked the gate behind him, drove the half mile over the rutted dirt road to the ranch house, a low single-story with two bedrooms and a bath, with a telephone but no TV, and got busy carrying his purchases inside. After he had his food and hardware put away, he opened one of the bottles of bourbon and poured himself a drink, neat, just the way Joe Bob used to drink it. He turned out the lights and went out on the ramada to escape the heat of the house. Sitting there sipping whiskey, he could hear the whisper of the wind in the brush. Somewhere a coyote howled.
    Above him, the obsidian sky was full of stars.

    When Jack Hays got home from the state capitol, a Texas flag was stirring on the flagpole in the yard. It was always there, but tonight he paused to look at it. Inside, Nadine was watching television. He flopped on the couch and watched a little in silence. The “ghetto rats,” as he called them when reporters weren’t around, were burning and looting in Houston, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Screaming about the right-wing white conspiracy.
    â€œHow do they know it’s whites?” he asked Nadine.
    â€œAll right-wingers are white Republicans. Ninety-eight percent of blacks are Soetoro Democrats. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. Soetoro lit the fuse and it’s burning.”
    When the television people began a commercial, Nadine killed the savage beast. In the silence that followed, he told her about more of the federal government’s demands. And about his talk with Ben Steiner.
    Nadine listened in silence and sipped Chardonnay. When he ran out of words, he went to the bar and poured himself a drink, vodka over ice. God knows, he needed it. What a hell of a day!
    Seated again near Nadine, he sipped the liquor. “I feel like I’m chained to a railroad track with locomotives coming fast from both directions.