Chapter 2 #3
Don't shoot. I'm just here with the paperwork.
And somehow that clipboard, held up over a man's head in a dead field at the end of the world, was the most frightening thing Francis had seen in weeks.
Because it meant a system. It meant routine. It meant this had happened before, many times, enough times that there was a form for it.
The man with the clipboard cleared his throat and called out toward the house. His voice was pleasant. Reasonable. The kind of voice that read your policy back to you and explained, kindly, why you weren't covered.
"Good morning," the man called. "No need for anybody to do anything they'd regret. We're not here for trouble. We're not here to take anything today. We're just here to talk. To register. That's all. A conversation."
Francis said nothing. He watched from the corner of the house. He counted. Two men out. Was there a third still in the cab? He couldn't tell.
"I know somebody's there," the man called, patient. "The smoke, the stock, the tracks on the road. It's a nice operation. Real nice. Best I've registered in a while, and I've registered a lot." A pause. "I'd rather do this face to face, neighbor. It goes better face to face. It always does."
Francis weighed it.
Every instinct he had said stay hidden, give them nothing, make them talk to an empty house. But an empty house was its own answer. It told them there were people worth hiding. And a man who wouldn't come out was a man they'd come back for, with more than one truck.
Grey wasn't hiding. Grey was being the wrong answer to the fast math. And the wrong answer here wasn't a coward behind a wall. The wrong answer was a dull, tired, cooperative man with nothing much worth the trouble.
He'd played that hand in a stairwell once, with three men and a pipe, and walked away.
Francis stepped out from the corner of the house.
He came out slow, hands open and visible, and he walked a little way into the yard and stopped. Not too close. He made his shoulders sag a little. Made his face tired and dull and cooperative. Made himself a middling man on a middling farm, more worried than dangerous.
Grey. The exact grey middle.
"That's better," the clipboard man said, and smiled. "That's a lot better. See? Civilized."
He was ordinary looking. That was the thing. Middle aged, soft in the middle himself, glasses, a knit cap. He looked like a man who'd managed a store. He held the clipboard against his chest now and clicked a pen, an actual pen, and the small businesslike click of it carried across the yard.
"My name's Pell," he said. "I'm an assessor. I work for the Combine. You've maybe heard of us. You've maybe not, all the way out here, but you will." He said it without menace, which was how Francis knew it was a threat. "You alone up here, friend?"
"Family," Francis said. He made his voice small. Tired. "Just family. We keep to ourselves."
"Course you do. Everybody does now." Pell nodded, agreeable, and clicked his pen and made a mark. Made a mark. On a form. About Francis's home. "Big fields back there. You planting this spring?"
"Trying to," Francis said. "Don't know much about farming. Figuring it out."
"Everybody's figuring it out." Pell smiled again.
"That's what we're for. See, the Combine, what we do, we bring order to all this. Organization. It's chaos out here otherwise, neighbor, it truly is, people killing each other over a can of beans. We put a stop to that. In our territory, and this is our territory now, you should know that,
in our territory people don't get raided. People don't get burned out. People plant, and they harvest, and they're protected while they do it."
"Protected," Francis said.
"Protected," Pell agreed warmly. "From the bad element. There's a lot of bad element out here. You've got no idea."
He clicked the pen. "All the Combine asks, in return for that protection, is a fair share of the harvest. Come the fall. A fair share. That's all. You keep enough to winter on, enough to seed the spring, and the Combine takes the rest, and everybody's happy, and everybody's alive,
and everybody plants again next year."
He spread his hands, the clipboard swinging.
"It's a good system. It's the only thing keeping anybody fed out here. You'll come to be grateful for it. They always do."
Francis stood in the yard and made himself keep the dull tired face while the cold thing turned over in his gut.
There it was. Exactly as Ruth had laid it out at the fence, not one hour ago. Word for word, near enough. Plant, and work, and hand it over, and live weak and hungry and afraid, forever.
Harvesting farmers. A man who never picked up a hoe.
"And if a man says no," Francis said. Careful. Still small. Just a tired farmer asking a tired question. "Just supposing. If a man wanted to keep what he grew."
Something changed in Pell's pleasant face. Not much. A small thing. But Francis was watching for it, and he saw it, the way you see the bottom drop out of a claim.
"Nobody says no," Pell said gently. "That's the thing, neighbor. I want you to hear me on this, because I like you, I do, you seem like a reasonable man and I don't get many of those."
He clicked the pen, slow. "Nobody says no. Or, they do, once. And then there's a visit that isn't me and a clipboard. And after that visit, there's a farm nobody says no at anymore, because there's nobody left at it to say anything."
He smiled again, and it was terrible now, precisely because it was still so pleasant.