Chapter 46: Barbecue

We slept in the next morning, and I informed Kelly that she needed to pass an audition like I had done with her. How was I to know that she wasn’t a demanding wife? What if she was only interested in me for my body, and not my mind? That got me a smart-ass comment from her, “Really? You want to go there? Grim, you need to stick with your body! Your mind ain’t going to cut it!” That earned her a sharp smack on the ass, and I tickled her until she shrieked and begged me to stop. That led to her being a lot kinder for a bit, after which she smacked me and ran to the bathroom, which she locked behind her.

By the time we were both fully awake, my grandparents had gone to church. We made some bacon and eggs and then left, going over to my house. By now I had a key, so I wasn’t going to be arrested again. We let ourselves in and sat down. My folks and Bobbie Joe were at church, and we’d see everybody later. Until then I started browsing through the Help Wanted ads in the Matucket Times-Dispatch, though Kelly also suggested I go online and Google for local jobs. That was going to be trickier, since I didn’t own a computer - yet another thing to add to the Things To Do list.

The first one home was Jack, who drove in shortly after Kelly and I arrived. Kelly noticed him first, as she glanced out the picture window. “Looks like Jack is here.”

I looked up and saw a small blue Toyota Corolla parking. “Is that what he got?” I tossed the paper aside.

“Mmm, hmmm.”

“How’s he fit into it? Has he stopped growing yet?”

Kelly laughed at that, and then said, “He’s got his girlfriend with him. You’ll like her.”

“You’ve met her?” I asked.

A small Latin-looking girl got out of the passenger seat. Compared to my brother she looked like a midget. Damn cute, though. She was wearing tight jeans and a tank top and seemed to have some nice curves. Kelly waved at them through the window and the girl smiled and waved back. “That’s Teresa. Now, behave. Your brother has been dating her since the start of the semester. Longer, since the start of training.”

“What’s that, seven weeks, eight?”

“Longer!”

“No, I am sure you are mistaken. My brother has never dated anybody longer than two weeks. He has an attention span shorter than Rex’s,” I answered. “She must have clones and you’re being confused by them.”

“Behave!”

Jack led the way inside, followed by Teresa, and it was obvious he had fallen hard for this girl. More than once I looked over at Kelly and rolled my eyes. Kelly had already met her at a football team party she had been invited to. Teresa Hispano was Cuban-American from Miami, and a junior like Jack, only studying marketing. My primary comment to them was, “What in the world does she see in you?” Teresa blushed and Jack flipped me off.

The rest of the family came home about a half hour later. Rex climbed off Teresa’s lap to welcome them and do his business outside. Everybody greeted Teresa by name, which simply confirmed what Kelly had told me. Jack must have introduced her to them already, which was something new and mysterious in his relations with women. He had rarely, if ever, brought girlfriends home when he was in high school. I was further astonished when Grandma and Grandpa showed up, and they had met her already!

“I still have to ask - what in the world is a nice girl like Teresa doing with you?” I said loudly.

Jack laughed again, as did Teresa, but Jack subtly held his hands about a foot apart. It wasn’t subtle enough, though, because she whirled around and started in on him, sputtering out some rapid-fire Spanish and shaking a finger in his face. I caught some of it and turned to Kelly, a smile on my face.

“Don’t get me started on you!” she warned.

“No, I don’t think so. She’s speaking pretty fast, so I’m just catching bits and pieces, but she’s really laying into him!” I laughed.

“Oh?”

“Let’s just say that this...” I held my hands apart like Jack had. “ ... is about to become this!” I brought my hands together, so they were almost touching.

“Good!”

“When did you learn Spanish?” asked Jack after Teresa had run out of steam.

I shrugged. “I had some from high school, but more in the Army. Lots of Latinos in the service. I had two in my fire team and a third in my rifle squad. For some of the guys it was their primary language growing up.” Teresa was looking at me curiously as I said that. “I suspect that some of the recruiting sergeants weren’t all that picky about legal documentation. Besides, when we were around the Iraqis and didn’t trust them to overhear us, a lot of the guys would speak Spanish.”

“You were in the Army?” asked Teresa.

I nodded. “Two tours in Iraq, and if I never go back there again, it will still be too soon!”

“Huh. I knew some guys back home who went into the Army, but I don’t know where they are serving.”

“If it’s not Iraq, it’s probably Afghanistan. From everything I’ve heard, it’s just as miserable.”

Throughout the afternoon the rest of my family showed up. Aunt Laurie and Uncle Dave showed up in the early afternoon, but not my cousins Dave and Jerry. They were both off at college and couldn’t get home. They promised to call, though. Uncle Joe and his family spent the day driving up from Savannah, which was nice. That was about a five-hour trip, so they were staying the night at a hotel. Uncle Bob and crew came over also.

Nana and Papa, Mom’s parents, came by also though something seemed a bit off about them. They lived in Buckhead, north of Atlanta, so they didn’t get down here to West Georgia all that often. I hadn’t seen most of these folks in a couple of years, but Nana really seemed out of it. She didn’t say much, but twice she asked me who Kelly was, and then replied, “Oh, yes, I remember now.”

It was enough to make me wonder. I cornered Dad in the kitchen the second time and quietly asked, “What’s with Nana? Is something wrong?”

He glanced around to see if anybody could hear, but nobody was in earshot. Still, he kept his voice low. “Don’t say anything. Your grandmother is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. She’s getting pretty forgetful.”

My eyes popped open at that. “Oh, shit!” I cursed quietly. “How bad?”

He shrugged. “It’s still early, but it’s not good. She can still take care of herself, mostly, but your grandfather has to watch over her constantly. She’s not in a home, not yet anyway.”

“Mom?”

“Don’t say anything to her. She knows, but she starts crying. Don’t let on that you know.”

“I’ll let Kelly know,” I told him.

He nodded and I went back to the living room.

The big topic of the day was yours truly - was I back for good, how bad was it over there, and what was I going to do now? (“ Yes, really bad, no idea!”) Uncle Dave suggested there might be an opening on the line at the mill, but he would have to think about it some more. If I really wanted to work there, I should look him up during the week. I thanked him but told him I wasn’t sure yet.

The most interesting conversation occurred late in the afternoon, sitting outside on the deck as Dad began to work on the grill. It was mostly Dad, Grandpa, Uncle Dave, and me, with Mom, Grandma, Aunt Laurie, and Kelly flitting in and out. Most of the others were out in the yard playing whiffle ball and getting chased by Rex. Uncle Dave started it, simply saying, “So let me get this straight. First the cops arrest you and beat you up, and then they gave you a job offer? Do I have that right?”

“Pretty much. Crazy, huh? Hey, what’s this I hear about a riot? When was that?”

He nodded. “A couple of years ago. It was probably right after you went back to Iraq. It made the national news, but you must have been out of touch.”

“We didn’t really get a lot of television out on the front lines, Uncle Dave. Mostly it was whatever AFN put out.”

“Well, it wasn’t good. A white cop shot and killed an unarmed black teenager down on Bleecker Street and then tried to cover it up. Another couple of cops helped, and then arrested a black mother who was videotaping it. Mind you, this was all being taped by a second person, so the whole thing ended up being played on the news,” he explained.

“Ouch! No, never heard about this,” I commented. “Is that what caused the riot?”

He shook his head. Dad answered, saying, “No, there were a couple of days of protest marches, but they were fairly peaceful. Your grandmother was marching. That was something to see!”

I looked over at Grandpa, who looked very sheepish. I remembered him telling me that Grandma used to be a protester when she was young. “Please, please, tell me we have photos!”

“Smart ass!” he replied.

“Anyway, the cops tried to bury it all under a rug, but the protests made the District Attorney take it to a Grand Jury, who refused to indict. That’s what led to the riot!”

“Oh, shit!”

“It got better. It was so outrageous that the Justice Department got involved. The Feds started digging and they dug up a lot! They started handing down federal indictments over civil rights violations and other stuff. A lot of stuff got leaked to the press, too, nasty stuff.”

“Oh?” This didn’t sound at all like the Matucket I had grown up in.

Uncle Dave chimed in. “They had all sorts of statistics about how African-Americans were being arrested and jailed way above the level they should have. It even extended to simple things like traffic violations and parking fines. Then they ripped through the emails at the police department. It was pretty disgusting, too. Don’t mention it around your grandmother because she’ll just go off on a tirade.”

“Hey! Watch it. We’re talking about your mother,” protested Grandpa.

Uncle Dave just held his hands up. “I’m just saying, she gets real sensitive about this. You had a whole bunch of police officers, the high-ranking ones, calling the blacks names you don’t use in polite society, or even impolite society. Meanwhile, they found a bunch of emails out of the County Executive’s office praising the police for the aggressive fund raising going on and saying how it was helping to fund the county government.”

I didn’t understand that. “I’m not following you. Fund raising? What’s that?”

Grandpa answered that. “In some ways that was the most disgusting part of it all. African-Americans, all minorities actually, were being specifically targeted for aggressive ticketing and fines. For instance, if a white guy got pulled over for a speeding ticket, he got a ticket and was let go. The fine might be at the low end of the range, and maybe he could get his lawyer to bargain it down to something else. A black guy, however, not only gets the ticket, but the cop does a vehicle safety inspection, and then writes up the driver for as many items as possible. The white guy gets away with a fifty-dollar ticket and the black guy gets nailed for three or four hundred. It was basically considered a tax by the county government, who shared the money with the police department.”

“Oh, brother!” I mumbled.

“You didn’t mention the best part,” said my father. We all looked at him. “You ever heard of civil forfeiture?”

“Oh, shit!” mumbled Grandpa.

“I forgot about that,” tossed in my uncle.

“No, what’s that?”

“When the Feds declared a war on drugs, they wanted a way to seize the assets of drug lords. You know, not just arrest the drug lord, but take away everything he bought with his drug money. Confiscate the boats and sports cars and fancy houses, all that stuff.”

I nodded and shrugged. “I’m following you.”

“Well, these programs raked in a lot of cash, a lot! It got to the point where simply being caught with a lot of cash meant that you were buying drugs, because everything else was going on credit cards or checks that the banks could follow. So, the Matucket Police Department began seizing cash, mostly from minorities, but occasionally from out-of-staters they pulled over. If they did a search and you had over five hundred bucks in cash, they would haul you in on a drug warrant. The warrant was bogus, but it allowed them to file civil forfeiture proceedings and keep the cash.”

“Wait a minute! You mean the cops can just arrest you and take your money because you carry cash and not a credit card?” I asked. “They can steal from you?”

“The legal theory is that even if you aren’t committing a crime, your possessions are. You’re right, though, it’s legal stealing.”

“Grim, after 9-11 the government and the courts have gone overboard. All they have to do is say the magic words ‘national security’ and they can do pretty much anything they want to,” said Grandpa.

“Again, they found a lot of this stuff in the emails. Worse, the County Executive’s office knew about it and used the money, which they split with the police department, as part of their budget process. They gave the police chief goals for the money to be confiscated.”

“All of this came out from about the time you went overseas to when you came back,” explained Uncle Dave.

“Well, forget that job! I’ll run the idiot stick first!” No way did I want to become a thief with a badge!

The others all laughed at this, since Grandpa owned the idiot stick and both Dad and Uncle Dave had operated it at one time or another. “It all came out in the wash,” said my grandfather. “The Justice Department hammered the MPD and the county. The County Exec and the Police Chief were forced to resign, and some of the Captains and Lieutenants took early retirement. The county and the police had to enter a federal consent decree. They hired a new chief and have been trying to clean up their act. Your buddy, Captain Crowley, is one of the guys who got promoted to replace one of the previous captains.”

“Huh.” I shrugged. “Does the Matucket Police Department handle just the city or the entire county? Just curious.”

“They’re the same thing,” answered my father.

“The city and the county are the same?”

He nodded. “Yeah. You didn’t know that?” I shook my head, but before I could answer, he asked, “Don’t they teach you any local history in school?”

I laughed at that. “Sure, they do! Way back at Matucket Plains we all learned how the mighty Captain Matthew Matucket led a group of intrepid and courageous pioneers on a trailblazing and pathfinding journey into the Godforsaken wilderness of West Georgia, bringing civilization with them. It wasn’t until many years later that we learned that none of this was done with any sort of consent from the locals who were already living here.”

Uncle Dave snorted. “You mean the Cherokee?”

“Bingo!”

“Yeah, we’re pretty close to where the Trail of Tears started. It wasn’t exactly a monument to multicultural diversity.”

Grandpa added, “That’s a very sanitized history. If you start looking into it, you’ll find most of those intrepid pioneers, including Captain Matucket, were simply trying to stay one step ahead of the law. A bunch of scalawags and crooks, mostly. Civilization was the last thing they wanted to bring to the wilderness!” That got us all to laughing.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked my father.

“Just curious how much you knew. In any case, this was the end of the line for them, and civilization eventually caught up. By the early 1800s, Matucket was both a county and a city in the county. The borders were a bit fluid in those days, with land being traded around between Matucket, Haralson, and Carroll Counties. That pretty much ended after the Civil War. The borders were fixed, and everybody was too busy rebuilding and too poor to take it to court anyway.”