Scorched Earth (Book 1): Good Fences Read online

  Good Fences

  Boyd Craven III

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2015 Boyd Craven III

  Neighbors, a Scorched Earth Novel

  By Boyd Craven

  Many thanks to friends and family for keeping me writing! Special thanks to Jenn, who has helped me with my covers from day one and keeps me accountable!!!!!

  All rights reserved.

  1

  The last hymn ended, and I grabbed my hat and headed out of church before the huge line up of people boxed me in. I was in almost the very last pew and was therefore one of the first to shake hands with the pastor.

  “Brian, are you coming back later on for the potluck?”

  “No sir, I’ve got a ton of work to do around my place before I can even think about it. If I get done early, I’ll try,” Brian said smiling, but regretting not being able to attend.

  “Well, I heard McKayla’s niece is attending…”

  I felt my cheeks burn and Pastor White smiled and smacked me on the shoulder. I put my straw hat on, tipped it to him and left before I could make an ass of myself. Stepping outside of the church, the heat of the day hit me like a physical blow. It was eighty five degrees with almost one hundred percent humidity. The normally blue Michigan skies were hazy. I wiped the sweat off my brow and immediately went to my old Chevy and climbed in, proud to have the restoration finally finished. It was a ’68 step side, the only flashy thing I owned now.

  * * *

  I used to be like everyone else, I had a wife, expensive cars and a condo right inside of town. I’d totally been what I’d grown to hate back then. Too much money, too fast. No appreciation in life. It all changed in a thirty second incident that would forever re-shape my life.

  Cathy and I were headed across town to go get some Chinese takeout when, in a flash of lights, a squealing of tires, and a horrible crunch, my world got turned upside down, in a literal fashion. I lost consciousness. When I came to, the car was on its side. Cathy wasn’t moving and her head was at a funny angle. I checked for a pulse and found none. I started to scream and blacked out again.

  I remember them carrying me up the embankment we’d rolled down, on a back board, the sky shockingly beautiful for such an ugly day. I caught a glimpse of a kid sitting on the back of an ambulance being questioned by two uniformed police. I recognized that kid, but I was too grief stricken to call out, to ask him if he was ok. I may have even hit that kid in my cartwheel that ended Cathy’s life. A bolt of pain shot through my ribs as the paramedics rolled me into an ambulance and shut the door.

  I spent a long time in the hospital, probably longer than I should have. I didn’t want to talk to anybody and, with Cathy gone, I had a lot of dark thoughts. I’d broken my ribs from bouncing off the steering column and the police had failed to mention that I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt. Probably because if I had been like Cathy all buckled in, the crumpled roof would have killed me too. This oversight on their part was probably an act of kindness, but it was one I appreciated. It would have been a reminder that she was gone and I wasn’t.

  It turned out that the kid was the one who had caused the accident. He was texting and driving and blew through the stop sign at the intersection, t-boning my car. The result was pretty predictable, but what wasn’t was his father’s reaction. His father was my boss, and ran the largest construction business in the Tri-County area. I had started working for Landry construction when I was eighteen, and stayed for almost fifteen years - until they let me go after the accident.

  Mr. Landry had a lot of connections at the city and state level; he had to. When the prosecuting attorney was insistent on bringing his son up on vehicular manslaughter, George Landry had that quashed and the attorney removed from the case. The DA then assigned somebody else, who offered George Jr. a sweetheart of a deal, where he’d relinquish his license until his eighteenth birthday, take driver’s education all over again and then re-apply for his license. No charges as an adult, no acknowledgement that he killed my wife.

  I was almost insane with rage when I heard the news. I was trying to get my wife buried, and one thing you never think about in your early thirties is what to do when a loved one dies. I was in absolute shock at how much things were costing, and I had the money to do it, but I needed to fill out the forms for her life insurance. Nobody was surprised when my life insurance policy showed up as having been canceled a month before the accident. Landry was good at cooking up the paperwork like that, the cheap bastard. So I bore out my grief almost alone; Cathy’s family was larger than mine, but not by a lot. There were ten of us there for her service.

  The final straw was when I sued the insurance company for damages and injuries. Nothing was going to get my wife back, but it’d taken me over a month without a paycheck to heal up, arrange the funeral and have the service. The day the suit was filed, I was served my termination papers within the hour. No severance package and, just like my wife’s life insurance, my short term and long term insurance had been cancelled a month back as well. Not by me of course, and I knew the paperwork had been forged and back dated. All he had to do was tell me no, and fax it to the insurance company and it could have been legit. Typical George.

  I survived with help from some of the members of the church, and moved back to my parents’ old farmstead on the outskirts of town. A couple of the church moms would stop by every couple days with casseroles and side dishes, and check to see if I had empty booze or beer bottles lying about. I wasn’t a drinker by any means, but in those days it was tempting. With the love and support of my church family I was able to open up the once shuttered farmhouse and get it livable again, one room at a time. I’d inherited it and paid to have it looked after, but I didn’t want to do much with it at the time I had inherited it.

  Now that I didn’t have a job and nothing to do, I walked the property that had once been much, much larger as a kid. Slowly, my body and mind healed. I bought the ’68 step side pickup and started repairs. I read a lot of my father’s books, some of them on hunting, trapping and homesteading. That had gotten me re-interested in things, and was a great diversion in my grief. I decided to re-open part of the farm up for me to get a few chickens or pigs and goats. Grow a garden. Things I hated 20 years ago, but it was all I could think about now.

  I found construction work at a new company, and life went on. When the insurance companies sent me a settlement offer, I took it. It’d taken a year, but I was ready to not have any more reminders.

  Those long walks and solitary moments on the farm had reminded me why I wanted to flee the countryside and move into the city. But it had all changed. I couldn’t have stayed in the condo, so I donated all of Cathy’s things to the church and one of the members sold it for me at about what I owed on it. That hurt too. The market wasn’t good and I kept waiting on Murphy to kick me in the balls again, before I reminded myself that not everything was about me. Two years on, life was moving on and so was I.

  * * *

  McKayla was the Pastor’s kin somehow. She had been tryin
g to play matchmaker with me for almost a year now, after waiting a respectable amount of time for me to grieve. The only problem was that I wasn’t interested. She was pretty enough, but both Kristen and I were embarrassed by everyone trying to push us together. We’d talk on the phone about once a week, even went out to dinner and a movie. She was a great gal, but she wasn’t for me and neither of us had the heart to tell our families that the platonic feelings were mutual.

  I’d figured I’d call her in an hour or so, that way I could share the embarrassment and ask her if she was ready to break the news to her family. I downshifted the truck as I turned the corner and groaned as I saw a state police cruiser and a township police cruiser waiting in the driveway. Not again.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, turning the truck off and getting out, “what can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Cartwright, we’ve got a nuisance complaint and we figured since both township and ours got a different one, we’d come out together,” the Statie said.

  “Oh, and what’s the complaint?” I asked, looking to see which cop was going to answer.

  It was the township cop who answered, “Well, there’s a complaint about the smell on the western end of your property and, well, a noise complaint.”

  “And what do you have?” I asked the state trooper.

  “Cruelty to animals, insufficient housing. Also on the western side of the property,” he said, and it was all I could do not to start cursing aloud.

  “Oh, you mean the parcel where my barn sits, the parcel that I denied selling to George Landry, the parcel where I keep the goats and the pigs? The parcel next to the new housing development of McMansions? The subdivision they built on the west side of the farm where the complaints are?” I tried to keep the hate and anger out of my voice, but it was difficult.

  For his part, the township cop looked embarrassed, but the state trooper hadn’t been out here before on one of the calls and had no idea what was going on.

  “Yes sir,” he said, pulling out a sheaf of papers and handed them to me, “and the entire Home Owners’ Association signed it.”

  I almost went through the roof when I saw a friend’s name on it. It was Randy; he’d been out to the farm numerous times, and was the guy who got me interested in prepping in the first place. My best friend. WTF?

  “Well gentlemen,” I said, trying and failing to keep the anger out of my voice, “let’s go take a walk.”

  Reluctantly, they followed me towards the barn. I knew I was going to make a mess of my shoes and slacks I wore to church, but I was pissed. If I hadn’t wanted to get rid of these two cops and call Randy, I might have changed first. Instead, I was walking the dirt path from the house to the barn in my fancy loafers. I paused and then pushed the big roll up door open, letting them inside the barn where I had a door on the opposite side where we could get to the goat and pig runs.

  “Oh... That stinks,” the state cop said.

  “Yeah, that’s manure. People take a shit, pigs make manure,” I snarked, walking across the room to the smaller door where we could enter the fenced in field.

  “Oh I know, I just didn’t think it’d be that strong of a smell. It’s no problem,” the state cop said.

  I caught the township guys’ eyes and he shrugged in a noncommittal fashion.

  “Well, here’s housing when they aren’t outside. They all have indoor runs about four times the size of what’s required. Then they have about forty acres apiece to run and play about in,” I said calming down.

  “What about water?” The township cop asked.

  “It comes from a well,” I told them, annoyed.

  “There’s no power in here, unless you ran it underground,” the state cop said, turning on a hose I used to spray out the cement.

  The water turned on to his surprise and he quickly shut it off.

  “I don’t need power out here in the barn,” I told him.

  “Oh, so the water is run from the house?”

  “Oh for the love of Pete, why does it matter?” I nearly shouted, startling both of them.

  “So that’s a yes?” The trooper said, checking off something on his metal clipboard.

  “No, it’s a no.”

  “Then how do you get water?”

  “I told you, from a well. Now, can we finish this up guys?” I asked, my face burning with anger.

  “How do you power a well if there’s no water?” The township cop asked, curious.

  “See that windmill out there?” I asked him, pointing out the window set into the side of the barn.

  “Yes?”

  “It draws water up into a holding tank that keeps things pressurized. When the tank is full, the overflow goes to two ponds out back.” I told him.

  “Ok, got it. My grandparents had something like that when I was a kid,” the local said.

  “Now, you want to go check out the animals so I can finally change out of my church clothes?”

  They both looked at me and had the good grace to not mention anything else. I opened the door for them and they walked out first, so I could close and shutter the door against it popping back open. I showed them the goats, who were happily climbing on a stack of pallets I’d put back there for that purpose, and then we walked in search of the pigs and found them in their favorite wallow for the hot part of the day.

  “So, are you satisfied guys?” I asked them as we were walking back.

  “I don’t see anything here actionable,” the state boy said, “Me neither, though the windmill is what they were complaining about,” the township cop said.

  “Thanks guys, and I’m sorry. I’ve been dealing with that HOA and Landry for two years now. They built up all those houses right on the edge of the fields and then complain that a farm actually farms. This has got to be what, my fourth visit by you guys?”

  “Fifth,” the local cop said.

  “Fifth. Landry is pissed I won’t sell off my parents’ property and he hates me anyways,” which was very true, his name was the first one from the HOA to be signed on the complaint.

  He’d built his large house on the hill overlooking my western 40 acres. That’s why I moved the pigs over one pen. In hindsight, it was a jerk move but I had been planning on rotating them that way in two years when I had more grow outs. The pigs would have been there sooner or later as I rotated the land use, and next spring they would go where the goats were.

  “Ok, well, I’m sorry to have bothered you,” they told me, before getting into their cruisers and leaving.

  I stalked into the house to change and then I was going to call Randy. I was opening the screen door when the sound of crunching gravel caught my attention. It sounded like the police were coming back up the long driveway. I turned, exasperated, only to see a cube van, with Randy’s Plumbing monogrammed all over it.

  “Well, shit,” I spat and waited.

  2

  I must have worked my anger out talking with the cops, because my conversation with Randy started off civil and remained so. I showed him the complaint the HOA had sent the cops, and the copy they had handed to me and his expression went from bewildered to pissed off.

  “Hold on a sec.” Randy pulled out his cell phone and hit a couple buttons.

  “Hey hun, did you sign a complaint for me from the HOA? No? Ok, thanks hun, bye.” Randy hung up the phone and turned to me.

  “Somebody forged my signature.”

  I believed him. He lived two houses away from George Landry, and his house had also butted up to the fields, but his was closer to the goats and his twin daughters would often try to coax some of the goat babies close with carrots. It’s how I became friends with him to begin with.

  “I bet you he’s trying to force me to sell him the property,” I muttered.

  “You’re still zoned agricultural here, right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, “but I’m sure he can get the zoning changed once he gets it. He’s a vampire around these parts. It’s bad enough that his bastard of a son lives right next
to me.”

  “Easy now,” Randy patted me on the shoulder and I looked up to see him smiling, “don’t work yourself into a heart attack over it. And really man, I’m kinda hurt you’d think I’d sign the bullshit paperwork like this.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. But it didn’t even occur to me that they forged signatures. I wonder how many of these are forged?” I wondered aloud.

  “Probably a lot of them. Listen, they didn’t fine you or write you a ticket right?”

  “No,” I admitted, “Not this time.”

  “Don’t talk like that, man. Besides, I was here to see if you wanted to go to the Saginaw Civic Center with me?” Randy asked, his voice excited once again.

  “I don’t know man. It’s Sunday and I still have a ton of work to do—“

  “It’s the big gun and knife show,” Randy reminded me, probably not believing I’d forgotten about it.

  The truth was, I had. It’d been a long week, and I’d been writing quotes and doing a ton of housing take offs in order to meet my weekly quota. More and more business had been going to Landry’s Construction, so it time for me to generate more business or look at a new line of work.

  “You know what? I totally forgot. Let me go inside and change real quick.” I told him.

  “Good deal, I’ll drive if you want,” he offered.

  * * *

  The gun and knife show took place once a year and, as long as you had your CCW, which I did, you could buy handguns there. I’d already gotten a couple of handguns, but with the recent shortage of AR-15s, there had been a surge in manufacturing. You could buy them almost cheaper than you could before Obama took office. People were worried about him taking their guns, and all he did was create a market where things were snatched up. Heck, ammunition was still hard to come by in Michigan.

  Randy talked a mile a minute the entire way up I-75, his cube van much more comfortable than it looked and I just zoned out. I often did this when we took long trips. I wasn’t ignoring him per se, but it allowed me to think about the situation that seemed to be getting worse with the HOA next to the farm. Obviously I knew Landry had to be behind it, but did he really just want to ruin my life? First his son, now his dad? Sitting on top of the hill in his four million dollar home…