The community, Grant thought. Yes, the community was taking care of Sandy and Eli and Josh. Was this the socialism that Grant hated? Not at all. People helping people wasn’t socialism; it was merely a reflection of a healthy society. People privately helping other people, without coercion, was a humanitarian society. The government forcibly taking money from people, wasting it on their politically connected buddies, and giving people the scraps from the spending, like Desyrel, was socialism. Grant had to admit that a constant supply of Desyrel would help, and at some level the former government did manage to make that happen, but Pierce Point would do a pretty good job of helping Sandy. Eli and Josh were young enough that they might not remember when they stayed with the nice people.
Sandy showed her appreciation by doing all the work she could for the community. She came up with a brilliant idea: the battery bank. She organized a drive where people took out all the batteries from things they no longer used, like the remote control for the TV, and sent them to the Grange. Sandy sorted them and put them in tubs. She put sheets of cloth between rows so the contacts didn’t touch and drain them. People who were working for the community and needed batteries could come in and get them. Plus, the battery bank gave Sandy a chance to talk to people and feel like she had a job.
The second commitment trial, for an old man named Walter Winces, was not a sad story. No one really knew much about Walter; he was a bit of a hermit. One day, Walter’s neighbor’s dogs started barking, like they always did. Walter told them to shut up. He came over with a rifle and said he was going to shoot the dogs if they didn’t quiet down.
He wouldn’t stop screaming at them. The neighbors got their own guns out and Walter ran away. Then he went, with his rifle, to the other neighbors’ houses in his area and started screaming. He started smashing their mailboxes with his rifle. A neighbor used his CB to call the Grange, but before the Grange could get anyone there, Walter dropped to the ground and started crying. A brave neighbor girl ran up and kicked his rifle out of the way and another girl grabbed it. Walter was in a fetal position wailing.
Rich came and handcuffed him, and then went into Walter’s house and found all the pictures of what appeared to be his wife on the kitchen table. She had died five years earlier. Walter wasn’t drunk and wasn’t on any medications. After he calmed down, which took over an hour, Walter told Rich that just couldn’t stand living like this anymore. The barking dogs sent him over the edge. Walter said he was sorry, but didn’t want to live anymore. When Rich asked if he thought he’d do it again, Walter said, “Yes.” Rory came out to Walter’s house and could not point to any apparent medical condition. It appeared that Walter had just decided he wanted to die and was going out kicking. He was a mean old bastard; pathetic but mean.
The jury, hearing all this evidence, decided to put Walter in the mental ward, at least for a while. He would get weekly evaluations by Rory and then Rory would report back. Walter didn’t seem to care. Whether he was locked up in the mental ward or stuck in his house with all those pictures of his late wife, he was just waiting to die either way. Walter later apologized to his neighbors, and then asked them to kill him.
Grant wondered whether Walter going nuts was from the Collapse. Maybe, maybe not. The stress of the Collapse was overwhelming. It felt like the world was ending. Some people could adapt to that mentality, that type of living. Some couldn’t and the stress impacted them in different ways.
Maybe, Grant thought, it just seemed like there were more people going crazy like Walter. That was probably part of it. In peacetime, the police, courts, and social workers just took care of the Walters of society. Most average people woke up the next day and had no idea that a man was screaming at his neighbors, except the people paid to deal with it. Now the whole community dealt with it, like the jurors sitting there listening to this.
It was lunch time. Grant ate lunch with the jurors since their cases were over and it would now be proper to interact socially with them. He loved meeting all these new people and learning how things were going with them, what they were eating, how things were being shared, and, in some cases, who wasn’t sharing. He gained an enormous amount of intelligence about the operations of the community from those informal visits.
Besides, Grant had to admit, he was an elected judge and had to take every opportunity to meet people voting for him.
It was time for Grant to talk to Al the immigrations guy.
Chapter 179
Undecideds
Grant hitched a ride down to the gate. There was usually a vehicle ferrying people every few hours between the Grange and the gate ferrying replacement guards and bringing them food.
Grant had originally planned on telling Al all about the Ted project because he assumed Rich and Dan would be on board by then, but they were still thinking about it. So, until they were on board, Grant couldn’t tell Al because that would be a little presumptuous. This delay was probably a blessing in disguise because Grant needed to get to know Al before he could trust him with life-and-death information, like the Ted project.
When Grant arrived, he was glad about what he saw. Ever since the false alarm attack on the gate, the guards were even more organized and disciplined. They looked like a real army, except for the lack of uniforms and standardized weapons. But other than that, they looked like a formidable force. They weren’t the average Bubba guards; Dan had whipped these good ole’ boys and country girls into a very professional force.
While Grant was unloading the food on the truck he had ridden in on, Dan came up to him.
“To what can we attribute your visit, your Honor?” Dan asked Grant. He knew Grant was working on his goal of getting the Ted project going and that Dan was not yet on board. He was a little pissed that Grant was down there; probably trying to poach Dan’s best guards for the Ted project.
“I’d like to talk to Al,” Grant said, “about how things are going with people coming in and out of the community. Find out what’s going on here on the ground.”
Al heard his name and came over.
“Judge Matson,” Al said as he extended his hand to shake Grant’s. Al, like just about everyone else, had lost a little weight in the past few weeks. He was tan, too, which was new. When Grant first met him, it looked like Al’s sixty or so year-old balding self hadn’t been outdoors too much in the past few decades.
“Oh, please, Al. ‘Grant’ is fine,” Grant said.
“OK, Grant,” Al said. “What can I do for you? This isn’t about all the hitchhikers I killed, is it?” He said with a smile. Grant liked to see a sense of humor.
“Well, yeah, it is. You’re coming with me,” Grant said with a smile, too. “No, I just want to find out what you’re doing down here. How everything is going for you. What kind of people are coming to the gate.”
“Sure,” Al said, a little flattered that the “big wigs” wanted to see what he was doing out there. He had been doing this for several weeks and no one had shown any interest in it. Now he felt important. Al motioned for Grant to follow him into the fire station and the little table Al used as his desk.