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  “That’s right. In law enforcement we see this all the time, even if most cops never put all of these philosophical thoughts together into a coherent concept. We still see incrementally the best and worst in society.”

  The conversation was moving at a brisk pace and Megan was fully engaged now. She asked, “That is what some would call the creep of ‘positive law.’ When the government becomes the guarantor of all things, then they must enforce law positively; that is to say, ‘The Constitution is a living document, the law is whatever we say it is, subject to change at any time.’ When that happens, there is no other end result but that the haves are systematically robbed by degree until wealth redistribution becomes ‘economic justice’ and legitimate civil rights are exchanged for ‘social justice.’”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Joshua replied. “Sounds like you and I have been reading the same books! Then, in times of relative peace, we hardly notice the thin veneer of cordial civil conduct, and all it takes is one natural disaster like an ice storm and fights break out over disposable diapers, flashlights, or bottled water.”

  Joshua continued. “Here’s a better question: How many cops does society need when we reject God’s law? I liked the term that you mentioned, ‘positive law’; I think that it explains a lot. We are all trading away our legitimate rights for what the government claims that they can provide for us—security. This is false and it preys upon man’s deepest fear of the unknown, and I consider myself a hawk. There is no way to have just law outside of God’s revelation, but modern society is way too enlightened to be bothered with ‘thou shalts and thou shalt nots,’ so we degrade into what we want. The trouble is that there is no referee to decide whose wants are correct and it inevitably deteriorates to a power struggle. So in the Congo, six million people have died over the inability to agree, tens of thousands in the Darfur region, and yet our callous government could care less. All the while our government is more concerned with the Facebook posts of Americans than Iran’s nuclear weapons development.”

  Megan nodded. “I agree; the legitimate offensive parts of our government seem to be shifting focus from international to domestic.”

  After letting that sink in, Megan continued. “Take your example of who is defined as good and bad according to the law: Heck, you and I are probably guilty of violating a dozen laws every day that we don’t even know about. And what if someday my Christian homeschooling resource web search—all permanently archived on some server—is classified as a ‘hate search’ because it’s Christian and outside of the liberal public fool system? They can reach back in time and start to use the force of law to prosecute me because the ‘moving target,’ as you put it, shifted to make the ‘Christian Right’ into Public Enemy Number One. You think that I’m kidding?”

  “No, I don’t,” Joshua said. “I did read that article, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys. So far this ‘Global War on a Noun’ has only proved how much money we can spend; I don’t believe that it has solved anything other than to manage crises by in-box, spin up the abhorrent DHS, and put tens of thousands more people on the government payroll.”

  “Right! And the deterioration of society is marked with waypoints like Nanny Bloomberg wanting to ban salt, oversize sodas, and trans fats, all the while presiding over a city government that’s bankrupt financially and morally.”

  Megan shifted in her chair and glanced around the room, just now realizing that her enthrallment with Joshua and the animated conversation had left her completely unaware of her surroundings—who was sitting where, who might be listening. In her line of work, her peripheral vision was like a sixth sense, and she realized at this moment just how much she liked Joshua, to have ignored the world around her with such abandonment.

  “Joshua, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation, but it’s almost time for me to get back to work.”

  “Sure,” Joshua said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t get to hear more from you. I kinda felt like I was doing all of the talking there. May I take your tray?”

  As Megan stood up she said, “Yes, thank you. I really enjoyed this, can we do it again?”

  “Of course! How about next Tuesday?” Joshua wanted to try out his new developing sense of sarcasm as he held the door open for Megan. “If you like chicken, how about we try eating at ‘Cluck U’?”

  • • •

  Joshua and Megan had decided to continue meeting for lunch a few times a week. After a month of this Joshua phoned his “brother” Dustin Hodges in Kentucky to tell him about Megan. After going through their usual list of topics of sports scores and getting ready for bow season this year, Joshua broached the subject of Megan and described her circumstances, personality, and worldview.

  “Sounds like she has her head on straight. You obviously have a deep interest in her. What are your thoughts?”

  Joshua knew that he could fool a lot of people, but Dustin was not one of them. He paused before saying, “That’s just it. She is not like most of the ladies at work. We’ve been having lunch together now for a while, and I can sense that there is some real hurt under the surface. I’m not sure if I am man enough to help her. I mean, the ex-husband, the two boys, her sister . . .”

  “Little bit of advice, partner: Never think that you can help a woman deal with something like that. If she has not taken up smoking or some other addiction, she likely already has a line on how to fix it herself. Women tend to talk about the thing for the sake of the thing, where you and I as guys are talking about this to try and find a solution. Women are weird that way. Has she told you about her ex?”

  “No.”

  “I’m guessing that you are gentleman enough to not bring up the subject.” Joshua grunted an affirmation and Dustin let out a long exhalation. “Then I think that you’re going about this the right way. Two points of observation: She is not going to expose the most vulnerable part of her life, that being her sons, unless she’s really sure that you are worthy of that level of trust. Secondly, you had better not burn that bridge if she is a keeper. Is she a keeper?”

  “I really believe that she is. I know that it seems too soon to tell, and that there is this rule somewhere that you have to date for longer than we’ve been seeing each other, but to be honest with you, Dustin—”

  Dustin interrupted. “You’d better be honest with more than just me, Josh! Are you being honest with yourself?”

  “Honestly, I love her. At least the version of her that I have in my head. When I’m brought into the rest of her story, then I might feel different or perhaps stronger—but I really think that she is the one.”

  Dustin knew Joshua very well, and he wanted to give him the assurance that he heard every word that he said, and to give him an out if he wanted to end the conversation. So Dustin ended with, “Brother, I’m really glad that we had this talk. Seriously.”

  7

  THE CROSSING

  How complacent we become when we sit secure, hedged round by laws and protections a government may provide! How soon we forget that but for these governments and laws there would be naught but savagery, brutality and starvation!

  For our age-old enemies await us always, just beyond our thin walls. Hunger, thirst, and cold lie waiting there, and forever among us are those who would loot, rape, and maim rather than behave as civilized men.

  If we sit secure this hour, this day, it is because the thin walls of the law stand between us and evil. A jolt of the earth, a revolution, an invasion or even a violent upset in our own government can reduce all to chaos, leaving civilized man naked and exposed.

  —Louis L’Amour, Fair Blows the Wind

  East of Seattle, Washington—October, the First Year

  Phil’s drive across the Snoqualmie Pass was nerve-racking. Though the pass was clear of ice and snow, there was heavy traffic, of all descriptions, heading east. Overloaded vehicles were the norm. He noticed that many drivers were hunched up close to their steering wheels, loo
king tense.

  Although it would have been far more direct to take Interstate 5 north to British Columbia, he knew from AM radio reports that the border crossings had at least a three-hour delay. And of course the guns that he was carrying would have put him in handcuffs immediately, given Canada’s draconian gun laws.

  He was heading for the town of Oroville, Washington. Normally a five-hour drive via the Snoqualmie Pass and Highway 97, it took him nearly seven hours with the heavy traffic in the first stretch. The traffic had lightened up considerably north of Wenatchee, and it was almost normal when he got north of Omak.

  As he drove, he punched the radio’s Seek button regularly and often switched from AM to FM, trying to catch as much news as possible. Reports were filled with frightening incidents of galloping inflation, large-scale street protests and riots in most major American cities, emergency executive orders, bank closures, and a full-scale panic on Wall Street.

  He knew that Oroville was along a “porous” stretch of the border that had often been used by narcotics smugglers. Four years earlier, he had investigated an industrial espionage case where a set of mil-spec composite aircraft wing tooling had been smuggled across that stretch of border, destined for mainland China. The perpetrators were never caught, but Phil had filed the border crossing location away in his memory as a useful tidbit.

  He arrived in Oroville late in the day, and low on fuel.

  As he waited his turn in the long queue at the Cenex gas station, he removed his Garmin GPS receiver from its dashboard bracket. He programmed the leftmost loop of Meadowlark Road into the GPS. After twenty minutes in line, he reached the pump and was horrified to see gasoline priced at twenty-eight dollars per gallon and CASH ONLY. Despite the high cost, he filled his tank completely. The 26.5 gallons cost him $742. There were police officers responding to some sort of scuffle inside the station’s convenience store, so he didn’t dare go in.

  The new routine at the station was interesting: Gasoline was no longer self-serve. Since the digits on the pump’s display couldn’t accommodate more than $9.99 per gallon, they had it marked “$2.80,” with a handwritten sign above that read: MULTIPLIED BY 10. An attendant carrying an FRS walkie-talkie would approach each car near the head of the line to preapprove it to buy gas or diesel, which meant showing him at least five hundred dollars in cash. Then, once at the pump, payment was demanded in advance. Meanwhile, an armed security guard stood by, holding a Mossberg shotgun and watching the proceedings closely.

  Phil timed his arrival at the border for precisely 5:00 P.M. He hoped this would coincide with a shift change for border patrol agents on both sides of the border, so there would be a lower chance of encountering a patrol vehicle. All that stood between him and Canada was one hundred yards of grassy meadow and a three-strand barbed-wire fence in the middle of it.

  Across the border was a web of roads that had been punched in and graveled for a housing development that never happened because of the economic downturn that began in 2008.

  Phil’s hands were shaking as he walked to the fence, holding a pair of compound aircraft snips. These high-leverage cutters made quick work of the fence wire. Heavily tensioned, the wires whipped back as they were cut just to the right of a cedar pole H-brace. (He realized that someone would eventually have to repair the fence to prevent cattle from becoming illegal aliens. Cutting it there would make retensioning the fence wires much easier for whoever did the repair.) The T-posts were spaced twelve feet apart, so it wasn’t difficult to fit his pickup through the gap in the fence. He eased the pickup forward and across the uneven pasture ground, whistling nervously. He wondered about cameras and sensors but trusted that the law of averages was on his side.

  Only ten minutes later he was driving through Osoyoos, British Columbia. He didn’t dawdle, but he was careful to observe the speed limit signs. He wanted to be outside of the fifty-mile-wide border enforcement zone as soon as possible.

  His GPS trip planner estimated a 630-mile drive to reach his destination of Bella Coola, which would take about thirteen hours in normal driving conditions.

  Reaching the point of exhaustion, he pulled onto a small road that went into Crown land. He followed the road for several hundred yards and then pulled off on a logging road, where his pickup could not be seen.

  Shutting down the engine, he assessed his situation: He’d apparently made his border crossing undetected. The gas gauge read just over a half tank. He didn’t have any Canadian currency, but he did have a handful of pre-1965 U.S. silver quarters and dimes, as well as one half-ounce Canadian Maple Leaf gold coin that he’d bought during a dip in precious metals prices in late 2013. He prayed that it would be enough to get him to the McGregors’ ranch.

  Phil spent a fitful night trying to sleep in the cramped cab of his pickup, with his sleeping bag draped around him. He was still feeling tense from his journey, and it was also chilly. Worried about wasting precious fuel, he didn’t start the engine to run the pickup’s heater. In the end, he got only about four hours of sleep. At first light, he stepped out of the cab and relieved his bladder.

  As he continued west of Kamloops, it was obvious that he was in an Indian tribal region. The local Indians, called “Aboriginal,” “Indigenous First People,” or “First Nations Peoples” in British Columbia, were hardworking and fairly self-sufficient. But the same signs of neglect that characterized tribal housing in U.S. reservations were obvious here. Many houses had wrecked cars up on blocks in their front yards.

  On an empty stretch of Highway 97, he spotted a GMC pickup abandoned by the side of the road. He backed up and stopped to look at it. The truck had obviously been stripped. An orange adhesive Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) MOTOR VEHICLE ACT DERELICT NOTICE sticker was on the windshield, with a July date, and two initialed updates in August and September. The pickup was missing its passenger-side door, tailgate, spare tire, and two wheels. The hood was raised. Phil walked over to it and leaned in to see that the radiator, fan, and water pump had also been stripped from the engine.

  Walking around to the back of the truck, he saw that the license plate was still there, and that its inspection sticker was valid for another seven months. That sticker, he surmised, was what had kept the truck from being towed away, to date. He used his Leatherman tool and removed the screws from the license plates. Carrying the plates to his truck, he debated whether it would be safer for him to continue to travel with his Washington plates or to switch to the BC plates.

  Just before reaching the town of Cache Creek, he pulled onto a quiet side road and switched the plates. He continued on, and then stopped at a Shell Canada gas station. His GPS travel planner told him that gas stations would be few and far between for the rest of his drive to the Bella Coola region. A large hand-painted sign declared: NO GAS—SORRY.

  He pulled up to the pump and was greeted by an elderly First Nations man, who was wearing jeans and a stained Edmonton Oilers logo sweatshirt with frayed cuffs.

  The man said, “We’re closed.”

  “How about if I pay you in gold?”

  “Nuggets? Some of them is fakes.”

  “No, this.” He held up the half-ounce gold coin, tilting it intentionally to reflect the glint of the rising sun. He had it turned so that the Maple Leaf logo side of the coin faced the man.

  The old man smiled and came over to examine the coin. He exclaimed in the Chinook jargon, “Skookum!” (This was one Chinook word that reached deep into the interior of Canada.)

  Phil nodded and said, “I only need half a tank, but this is a half-ouncer, so that’s enough gold for at least a couple of fifty-five-gallon drums.”

  “I’ll trade you that half tank, plus thirty-five gallons in cans.”

  Phil shook his head, still smiling, and said, “A half a tank, plus thirty-five gallons in cans, plus ten silver quarters in change would make it square. Have you got any Caribous minted between 1952 and 1967—the eighty percent silver kind?”

  The old man scratched his
chin and said, “Yeah, but do you know what five-gallon cans—empty cans—are selling for these days? They’re plenty scarce. Right now I’d rather trade you more silver Caribous than I would gas cans.”

  Phil grinned and said, “That’s my offer—I’m sticking to it.”

  The old man laughed and said, “Okay. Huy-huy. You got yourself a trade.”

  The odd assortment of gas cans fit in the bed of the pickup only after some gear was moved to the rear driver’s-side seat. There simply wasn’t room for one bin, so Phil unpacked it and wedged all of its contents into nooks and crannies both in the cab and in the bed of the pickup. As Phil did so, the old man noticeably ogled the ammo cans and gun cases but didn’t say anything about them.

  Of the seven fuel cans, no two were alike. Some of the gas cans looked ancient, while others were fairly new plastic containers. One of them had the annoying CARB-compliant nozzle, which had been mandated in recent years, but the station owner assured him that none of them were “leakers.” In a separate transaction, by trading back one of the silver Canadian quarters, Phil got an assortment of nozzles so that he’d have one for each type of can.

  Now confident that he’d have more than enough gas to get him to the ranch, Phil set off again. The old man waved good-bye with his right hand, while his left hand was thrust into his front pocket, clasping the gold coin.

  8

  CUP OF JOE

  A mighty fortress is our God,

  A bulwark never failing;

  Our helper He amid the flood

  Of mortal ills prevailing.

  For still our ancient foe

  Doth seek to work us woe;

  His craft and power are great;

  And armed with cruel hate,

  On earth is not his equal.

  Did we in our own strength confide,

  Our striving would be losing,—

  Were not the right man on our side,