Charlie Henry harrumphed and then replied, “Overdo it?” His smug grin made Patton want to climb onto the stage and smack it off his face.
Instead, Patton took a deep breath and said, “Yes. Overdo it,” pronouncing every syllable deliberately. There was a small scattering of laughter at his sarcasm. “If you look at the American government before we all came here, they were overtaxing, overspending, over-regulating, and over-promising. Basically, they overstepped their bounds on every front.”
“Every front?” Henry said, exasperated. “I believe you’re exaggerating a little bit here, young man.”
“Well,” Patton said, feeling the blood rush to his face, “when I say every front I mean every front. Taxes, spending, regulations, programs, executive orders. The Supreme Court overruling on almost every case that comes before them. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt if that was part of the reason many of you are here now.” Patton looked at the crowd and was glad to see more than a few heads nod. “Why would we allow ourselves to follow that bad example?”
The emcee stood and tried to cut Patton off, but Henry indicated that he wanted Patton to continue. Patton acknowledged the gesture with a nod.
“First of all, let’s talk about why we’re here tonight. Yes, those murders were tragic, but will forming a government solve this problem? And not only that, governments have shown that once they’re formed, they quickly get out of control.”
Henry, now enraged, turned away from the audience so they couldn’t his red face. Patton noticed the expression and smiled inwardly. He pressed on.
“I have one more question and then I’ll be done, I guess.”
Henry gestured for him to continue.
“Let’s assume we need a government. That’s a stretch, but let’s assume. Why should it be you people that puts it together?”
An earthy-looking woman stood and said, “Sir, we don’t appreciate your sarcasm, but I’ll answer your question as best I can,” she said condescendingly. “Apparently we are the ones most concerned about what has happened in our community recently and we want to do something about it—”
“—but,” Patton said, trying to cut her off, but she went on.
“—And…” she said, giving Patton an imperious look. “…We have taken the time to organize this meeting.”
Patton glared at her as she returned to her seat.
“If I may,” he said, exasperated. “Your answer was… well, how should I put this… total bullshit.” He ignored the murmurs and continued. “There are less than a dozen of you and there are over thirty thousand people in our community here. Are you telling me you’re going to be able to establish a government without the consent of the people?”
Henry rose to respond.
“We already have the signatures of over five hundred people and are working towards getting a thousand.”
Patton tried to interrupt again, but Henry stopped his potential interjection with his hand.
“Let me finish please. Now, I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a significant amount. We’ll work on getting a majority of the people to form a government but until then, we need to answer some of these problems.”
“One thousand is less than three percent of the people!” Patton complained. “Even if you had a majority to agree to a government, that doesn’t mean that they agree on the form of government you propose. You can’t just create a government and assume that people agree with it if you have a bare majority of the people.”
The old man nodded in agreement, as did a couple others on the stage, and quite a few in the audience. Patton continued.
“I’d like to make a motion now that we base whatever government we make on the Constitution of the United States.”
“That’s a given, Mister…”
“Larsen,” Patton said, not knowing he had just made himself a future target.
“We thank you Mr. Larsen for your input. Are there any more questions?” he asked, looking at the rest of the crowd.
A middle-aged woman stood and Jennifer saw her chance.
“Let’s go,” Jennifer said, grabbing Patton’s arm.
He nodded and she stood. Patton glared back behind him as they walked out. He met the old man’s violent gaze. The future adversaries glared at one another with contempt. Finally, Patton turned to Jennifer and smiled before taking a final glimpse at Charlie Henry’s rage.
“That son of a bitch is going to be trouble,” Charlie said, nearly frantic. He’d been griping about “that Larsen bastard” ever since they left the meeting. Anna had never seen Charlie like this.
“Charlie, it’s okay,” she said, rolling her eyes at him. He was acting like a young teenaged girl who found out her crush didn’t like her in return. “Did you think we wouldn’t have any opposition to this thing? Who’s being naive now?”
Charlie stopped and looked at her. He wanted to be angry but she was right. She continued.
“People like him are going to make this harder than we thought. We’re going to have to escalate. It’s like the Tea Party all over again.”
He cringed when she mentioned the group’s name. Charlie shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought out of his mind. There were some flag-waving, brain-dead “patriots” here in Blue Creek, but if the population of this town was truly a microcosm of the United States, a majority of the people could be easily manipulated. They would just have to take advantage of that fact. If worse came to worse, they could get the teams out for some more mayhem. The community was on edge and needed only one more push. The only question was, how hard did that push need to be?
Bao watched the two men exchange verbal daggers while the crowd grew nervous. He thought the younger guy was going to rush the stage and beat the older guy down. Instead, the younger guy seemed satisfied with getting the other’s goat. Bao had to hide his face so others wouldn’t see his grin. He hated politics, and worse, he hated watching people talk about politics. It was his job to be here, though. If he had his druthers he’d be playing Call of Duty online with Carl. However, Nate, his boss, had basically ordered him to attend and to report his findings by the next day.
By Bao’s estimation, nothing had really been done. Just a bunch of people talking. He reported that formation of a government was being considered. He also reported that the meeting had gotten pretty intense. However, he did not report that two of the people on stage were behind the recent crime wave. And he did not report that those crimes were committed to force the townspeople to form a government that they would then seize control of. Had Bao known their intentions, he would have reported them. However, there was no guarantee that anyone reading it would do anything about it. The directive had been to let things play out unless things got really out of hand.
For almost a week after the meeting, Patton was still fuming “that old bastard.” At times, Jennifer had to stay away from him or he was going to drive her crazy. Fortunately for Jennifer, she knew how to bring him out of his moods. Tonight she was going to distract him with serious business. She grabbed her iPad and sat by him on the couch. She opened the calendar app and scrolled through the coming months.
“So when are we going to do this?”
At first he didn’t know what she was referring to. It finally dawned on him that she was talking about their wedding. They’d narrowed their wedding day to a two-week window in October, but she wanted to nail down the specifics. There were too many details to plan and the summer was bleeding away. Like all men having this conversation, Patton wanted to say “I don’t give a damn,” but he fought the urge.