[h1]Kansas[/h1] [h2]Wichita[/h2] Lean sandwiches were laid out on the coffee table in the middle of the suit. A soft afternoon light fell lazily through the windows as electric lights burned softly behind ornate fixtures from the ceiling. A nearby gramophone played soft horn-laden music in the corner by a door. An inviting atmosphere was tenderly coxed out of the suit of the occupied hotel as the setting was set to make for an inviting meeting. Raissa Browder, Earl's wife moved about gingerly as she set out drinks and snacks for the two men about to eat. Standing tall in the corner Earl stood like a statue, pensively watching the final touches laid out by his homely wife. Her face was worn and tired. And although powdered stress lines were beginning to wear into her cheeks and brow like any other woman in the states here. She held her curly light sandy hair back in a bun. Exchanging glances, the couple looked at each other and nodded affirmatively to each other. As she put down the last tin dish of treats on the coffee table, careful to not disturb the map in the middle she walked to her husband. “I think we're ready.” she said in a soft voice. Browder looked, and nodded. He looked across the room to a clock hanging on the wall. It was near time. “Yea.” he said with a dry cracked voice. He made his way to the couches in the middle of the high hotel suite and sat down as a dry knock rapped on the door. “Let him in.” Earl asked Ms. Browder. She obliged quickly and went to the door with a homely gait. As the door open, she immediately lit up with the charm of any house wife. Standing in the door way a stout man of just under five-foot four stood. He wore a polite smile on his face and on his head a tattered and beaten cap of the American Legion. He removed his hat out of respect and spoke in a rough grizzled voice, “Pleased t' meet you Ms. Browder.” he said smiling. Clemmfield, John Clemmfield was an aging man clear over the hill. But he was an old soldier, who though being short in stature next to other men retained a muscular physique and firm voice that hung on like a dry, browning carapace to an old insect. He wore a beard and mustache with broad chops which looked out of place and a generation removed from the contemporary khaki shirt he wore with the red-trimmed epaulets on his shoulders. He was broad, with a pot-belly gut that swung as he walked. A medal of service from the Spanish-American war hung from his breast pocket and glimmered in the lighting. Discolored hands rung the cap he had removed from his head as he stepped to Browder, with an expecting and calculating look in his bright eyes. “Mr. Browder.” he nodded with respect, “Ya wantin' to see me?” he asked. “I think the situation was more you wanted to talk to me.” Browder said with a smile, holding out a hand to invite the stout wide man to sit, “After all, job isn't done.” “No, sure isn't.” Clemmfield beguiled, placing the old dusty cap back onto his balding head as he took a seat. Earl laughed gently. But he couldn't shake the bit of doubt in his gut. With a heavy voice he turned to his wife and said: “My dear, could you go home and see to the children? I have some private matters to discuss with the commander here.” “Certainly” Raissa complied knowingly. Curtly bowing out the door. Pausing briefly she turned around and said, “In case you wanted to know, there is a chicken in the oven. If you two men feel you want a better lunch than sandwiches help yourself. It should be ready.” “That'll be nice Ms. Browder, thank you.” Clemmfield said agreeably. Ms. Browder smiled nervously, and turning stiffly headed down the hall. The door shuttered shut behind her and the two sat silent for a moment. Clemmfield broke conversation before as he reached for a small sandwich. “So you decided it should finally happen. When are you taking this to Congress?” he asked, leaning over the table. The map of the former country was laid on the table with its crisp lines and tight type labeling the states and cities that comprised the former United States. On either side plates of coffee and a jug of coffee with cups was laid out. “When we're done.” Browder said with a sigh, “I've been thinking long and hard about this, and I don't take any kindness from the idea.” he grumbled, holding his hands out on his knees palms up. He wore the face of a resigned man and his expression sank to dourness. “But, the way things are in the country there's no possibility any one will simply agree to merge into a new, uniform nation. Even the confederates, I don't know where we stand with those 'confederates'.” he moaned bitterly, and with sadness, “I don't think anyone does really.” “Just sort of acknowledging this is the way things are.” Clemmfield admitted. “Whichever the way, we'll prove out way I'm sure. What'll be the agenda?” “You see, that's why I wanted to bring you in.” Browder said, “I'm not a military man Mr. Clemmfield, I'm a Party and Statesman. I can turn the helm of state but I can't turn the tires of war. I've been looking at the map, trying to figure it out. You've a mind for this sort of thing: so help a fellow out.” Clemmfield nodded stiffly, looking down at the table. Numbly he placed his hands down on the paper and began walking his fingers about. Reading the upside down writing as he went. “The only real option for a first campaign would be north, sir.” Clemmfield admitted, “Both sides of us we're penned in from too strong an adversary. We can fight them on a defensive war maybe if it comes to it, we'd certainly get enough time to mobilize. But the opportunity to go either way may as well depend on us massing up north to the Canadian line. Bringing our revolution there. “From that point, we can make a decision on whether or not we turn the ideas of that Trostky fella either way. But a lotta people will be wantin' to go west. That's for sure. West has always been a big thing.” “To California?” Browder said, seeking for affirmation. Clemmfield nodded, “I've been in the fields with the rest of the workin' men here and we were all catchin' the green promises of California before Hoover signed the country over into madness. But things busted down and went to shit before anything could be done. May be the cleanest and most productive food land in the region there, we can put a lot of people back on track there.” “That'd be what we need.” Browder admitted. “Certainly, I don't know what you have planned there in that regard. Food I mean. We can limp along well enough on what we got, but it's anger towards the rest of the country that's fueling my men. Don't turn that anger at anger at the revolution or they're liable to leave. “God knows I let too many of them hang each other from time to time.” Clemmfield admitted with distress. “I understand how you feel.” Browder said, offering him his comfort, “So you really think we should go north then?” “If I said otherwise I wouldn't have been an officer!” Clemmfield admitted with a heavy laugh, “Every other direction is more dangerous than the other or suicide. War in general is dangerous, but who learn to live with that fact. Me and the men learn to live with that. We prop ourselves up on ideas. I once heard somewhere a man is immortal so long as he believes in something, that's what we got: something to believe in. “Browder, we will die for whatever you want in the end. But we ain't pigs going to the slaughter.” “I understand, I don't want to see that.” Browder nodded. He looked up from the map to Clemmfield. The small man's eyes burned with a passionate and furious energy. It was clear it was whipped up in a passionate hunger. Clemmfield smiled, “If I have your confidence, I will offer you my own.” “I'll send it to the Congressional Secretary before sundown.” “I imagine you would. I'll put the word out for the motors to be whipped up into a fury and all faces turned north.” [h2]Eastern Kansas[/h2] The truck, covered everywhere the sun-dried and dirt-blasted coyote pelts barreled south down the highway. The engine grumbled and hummed under the hood as it carried the truck. A Ford 1929 Ford Model Double-A. The pelts that covered the chasis were trophies and reminders strapped down to the body, or tacked and nailed. But they also served as an unintended cover and whenever the wind blew just right and picked up a mummified corner of the wind-dried skin the black paint underneath showed; not as bright and sharp as it once was, but it hadn't be stripped completely naked from driving in the hearty, windy, and dry wasteland that made up the plains to the further west. And although they were far from those dry arid reaches of plains, the land here was still flat. The road stretched for miles into the horizon without a hill to crest. It rode the Earth straight as an arrow into the heart of oblivion with only bushes and trees in distant patches in the distance to gauge progress by. The land here was green, and farms and ranches were maintained by local communes of farmers and ranchers who worked to raise the crops to support those families still living in the Dustbowl quarters themselves. But even despite all the green, there was a faded layer of gray, red, or a beige-brown from the foreign dirt deposited here by the northerly winds that turned east. But this land was at least green, and arable still. It straddled the borders where cold dry winds from Central Canada came south to meet the wet hot winds that blew off the Gulf of Mexico some nearly five-hundred seventy miles away. This made for ill-tempered weather, and as the humid southerly air met the dust laden dry air of the north and west the sky was already growing to fill with mild thunder-heads that broke the peaceable emptiness of the blue sky. The men in the truck looked up unimpressed by the growing storms, and tipped their brown and black ranch hats to the sky above, turning their attentions to the matter at hand, and the issue of traveling south. They were on their way to Lola, on the way to the closest breadcrumb that they suspected would lead them all over high-hell. They suspected there would be no reward in it, but it was the best they got and could do as the mission spread out. “Reckon she do when we find her?” asked McKenzie, a gaunt awkwardly built man. Of typical Irish stock, his hair was a burnt ginger and his skin hardly ever tanned enough. In the place of a sun tanned skin, freckles covered his cheek and face in wild random places from forehead to chin, where they hid underneath a sorely thin stubbly beard. The sun flashed briefly off of his wide coke-bottle glasses and he looked at each of the three men in the car with him from the rear passenger side with wide eyes. A bookworm by practice, he was irritably probing and awkward around fire-arms; he knew them well enough however to not point them the wrong way, but he never aimed good enough. No one answered his question immediately and the same silence that had long filled the cramped cab reigned for just a bit longer. And while the truck fit an extra row of seats, it was perhaps because the Ford was a hackjob, sawed apart and stitched back together with extra parts. These vehicles were not uncommon as they passed a wrecker of a Hudson super-six passing them on the highway from the other-direction, the entire rear end cut out and replaced with a rickety wagon bed laden down with empty chicken cages. The man in the seat in front of him shifted. The tall skinny man who had the day before given his report to Duke, their informal commander on this mission. His hat brushed the roof of the car as he turned and shifted to look out the window. “Dunno.” he said, “What did you even read about this woman?” “Well, she gots kids.” McKenzie blurted out. “Then she's not going to raise hell.” the tall man answered him, Alms Chambers. “She won't want her kids in the way.” “She may not want that, but woman are still hella fighters.” laughed the man in the driver's seat. A larger man going on into his forties with a deep sun-basked face and a thick beard of oil black. His voice was heavy and almost Santa like. His ears wide and hung out like that of an elephant's, giving him a face that was a cross between one and a big red gorilla. “I would hate to show you my ma, Neville.” the figure next to McKinzie said. Also big, he was a boarish man with small beady eyes and a heavy mustache that looked like it was from a photo of a man from the California gold rush. “She woulds shot you sooner than you could get out of your seat. Pa too, both of 'em were cold parents.” “Well it couldn't have been that bad!” Neville pleaded falsely, smiling a little in his words, “You lived!” The boarish man laughed, it was a dry rattling laugh that shook in his throat like rocks, “Yea, right. I think I must have gone to bed too often and woke up with a beating headache from a rolling pin all too often. “McKinzie, what you think about that? What'd your 'books' say?” the boarish man said again, teasing, turning to his partner in the narrow back seats. McKinzie looked up at him for a moment, lost. He thought for a second and returned his answer, “Gee, I dunno.” he admitted. He cackled. “Al, I think they would have said you had parental problems.” Alms said flatly, “Or that'd be what the old insane-asylum doctors would've said before frying your brains with an electrode.” “Oh, and you would know that, how?” Al asked, perhaps a bit stung by the remark. Alms turned from the front passenger seat and gave Al a low had look, “I was a guard at one for a few years after the war, what do you think?” he said in a low voice, “Seen doctors do all sorts of things with patients. Seen all sorts of patients. Left when I saw enough.” “And some woman tried t' bite yer tit off.” Neville said smartly, “But not like you could any, wouldn't you say?” he laughed as Alms smacked him in the arm. “Shut up about that now, ok? I regret I ever said anything about that.” “Sure ya do.” grinned Neville, “Sure. Just tell us again the next time you feel like telling us and I'll try to find us some corn whiskey. Looks like we got plenty in this country.” he pointed out, nodding to the fields of corn just barely discolored from gray soil that hadn't yet washed off. “Isn't whiskey still supposedly banned?” McKinzie asked. “Who th' hell knows.” Neville answered him, “Seems we can do a lot, or seems Wichita allows us to get away with a lot. But they say we shouldn't, but some boys still just like to hang others.” “We can hardly get involved.” Alms reminded, a little depressed, “We got better fish to fry anyways.” “Yea, sure.” he responded, and the cab fell to silence again.