Let’s Make A Deal

“There’s a fire in the woods, Matt.”

“So, call the fire department.”

“It’s not that kinda fire. It’s a bonfire. Disengage your lips from your can of beer for five seconds and come take a look. Someone’s trespassing on our property.”

                                               ***

“This is cool, Bo.”

“It’s gonna get cooler, Bobby. Repeat after me, ‘Audi nos dominum, da vota nostra.’”

“…I hear something…”

“Just repeat the words, Bobby.”

 “Audi nos dominum, da vota nostra.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Della.”

“Hi, Dad.”

“Don’t hi Dad, me, Bo Buntz. Speaking in Quell is forbidden. Why are you speaking their language?”

“We’re just havin’ some fun.”

“They were pagans. You call offering yourself to a demon fun? Who taught you those words? Don’t look at Bobby, answer me!”

“The garbage man.”

                                               ***

“Do you understand the charge against you, LaSuer?”

“Yes, your honor. I’m being accused of breaking the Pact by using and teaching dark magic.”

“We could have had you exterminated after the war with the rest of the Quell war criminals, but we taught you our language, clothed you, fed you, and gave you a job. And this is how you repay us? By teaching our children how to communicate with demons? You know it was illegal to teach the Buntz brothers your religion.”

“I renounced dark magic when you spared my life five years ago.”

“And now you’ve made me regret saving you.”

“I didn’t teach them anything, Judge Lynch. I’ve never spoken to them.”

“Do you expect me to believe two eight-year-olds learned Quell on their own? How do you plead, LaSuer?”

“I’m innocent.”

“Fine. Does the prosecution wish to call any witnesses?”

“Yes, your honor. Bo Buntz, please take the stand… Do you swear to the Great Maker and Judge Loman Lynch that your statements will be factual?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Who taught you dark magic?”

“LaSuer.”

“Did you sign a pact with LaSuer?”

“A pack of what?”

“No, Bo, a pact. An agreement.”

“Oh yeah. Me and my brother Bobby signed our names in blood on a piece of paper. LaSuer ate it. At first, everything was cool. LaSuer gave us the power to read minds. Heck, we could fly!”

“What did you give him in return?”

“Our souls. Oh yeah, and Mrs. O’Leary’s poodle.”

“Quiet in the court! Order! Someone, please make sure Mrs. O’Leary is all right.”

“Thank you, your honor. And thank you, Bo.”

“He’s lying, your honor!”

“Sit down, LaSuer, or we’ll try you in absentia!”

“Diabolum vincere non potes!”

“What did you say, Bo?”

“It’s LaSuer’s doing! He’s making me speak in his language! Diabolum vincere non potes!”

“What does that mean, Bo?”

“You can’t defeat the devil!”

“I’ve heard enough. I’m ready to render my verdict. You may step down, Bo.”

“Wait! Don’t I get to call any witnesses?”

“I told you to be quiet, LaSuer. Do you have any witnesses?”

“Well, no. But the prosecutor can question me.”

“I see no reason to, your honor.”

“Neither do I. LaSuer, you’ve broken the 2105 Pact between the victors, the sovereign nation of Joliffe, and the vanquished, the former province of Quell. You’ll be sent to the county prison and vaporized a week from today.”

“Wait, your honor! What if I were to tell you the names of other people, your own kind, who have broken the Pact?”

“Quiet in the court, please… I’d be inclined to reduce your sentence, providing you’re telling the truth.”

“I want that in writing.”

“There are over a hundred people in this room. They’re your guarantee. Court is adjourned. Take LaSuer to a holding cell.”

                                               ***

“I had you brought to my chambers, Giles, to refute or confirm a charge of treason levied against you by LaSuer. You and I have known each other since high school. I presided over your marriage. But I can tell by the way you’re shaking that there’s some truth in LaSuer’s claim.”

“I saw so many horrible things during the war. There was a village that surrendered to us. The only inhabitants there were the old, the sick, and the lame. Our commander insisted Quell soldiers were hiding there. We burned the village to the ground with their people still in their homes...”

“If things were so horrific and your commander’s orders were so barbaric, why wasn’t he held accountable?”

“What you’re saying Loman, sounds like code for why did you follow such ludicrous orders? It’s human nature to hope things can get better, but we’re also taught to follow orders, even you. I answered to a commander. You answer to the law… Our commander’s favorite pastime was hunting prisoners. One time, he planned to kill a dozen families. Something inside of me told me I had to stop this monster. I stole a truck and managed to sneak four of the families back across the Quell border.”

“…Oh, Giles…”

“They had children, three, four years old. The children were so broken, so horrified. They couldn’t understand why someone who looked like them was mistreating them. If you’d seen their sad, dirty faces…”

“Many of our men did, Giles, just before some Quell kid threw a grenade at them. I’m sorry, old friend. You know what the penalty for treason is.”

“Please don’t let the government take away our house. I don’t want my wife and two girls left homeless because I was weak. Let’s make a deal…”

                                               ***

“I don’t understand this, Diane. I’ve been a judge here for twenty years, and I’ve never seen anything like this epidemic of whistleblowing. Since LaSuer’s trial two days ago, three other people have confessed to dabbling in dark magic. Worse, four others have come to me connecting their friends and relatives to war crimes.”

“They’re afraid. Small towns have plenty of secrets, your honor.”

“Are you my clerk or my conscience?"

“Both. You know Joliffe soldiers committed as many atrocities as the Quell during the war. We get to display righteous indignation because we won.”

“It was so much easier to adjudicate cases during the war. The Quell were always guilty. They’d started the war by gassing twenty thousand of our men. But in the end, democracy triumphed over tyranny. Why are you looking at me like that?” 

“The Quell didn’t gas those twenty thousand men. We did it. The Quell didn’t even know we’d massed an army at their border. We released the gas as a thunderstorm was coming in. The wind blew the gas back at our soldiers. The president’s cabinet spun the army’s blunder to look like the Quell had started the war.”

“You just revealed a highly classified military secret, Diane. I could bring you up on charges.”

“How? The men in charge took their last breaths that day, and there’s no record of what really happened in the Army’s archives. The government told us the war was about patriotism, that the Quell were a threat to our freedom. Joliffe imported nearly everything we use, including oil, cars, and food, from the Quell. Our government decided to take control of their factories and farmland. When they said no…”

“I never figured you for a bleeding heart.”

“I’m not. You know I worked for the Defense Department. My brother and two cousins died in that gas attack blunder. We won the war when we used a nuclear bomb that incinerated eighty percent of the Quell’s population and turned their country into an uninhabitable wasteland. Of the twenty percent of Quell who survived, ten percent died from radiation within a year. The remaining ten percent wound up homeless, wandering the Forbidden Zone, working low-paying jobs like LaSuer, or being railroaded into jail.”

“I resent that, Diane.”

“You’ve been a good judge, Loman. But you’re getting swept up in a witch hunt that got started because of two trouble-making little boys.”

“Are you saying the Buntz brothers made this up?”

“You know what the Buntzs are like. Della ditches the family whenever the bills or the beatings get to be too much. She has a sealed judgment against her…”

“You looked at it, didn’t you?”

“It was for embezzlement. Matt, the father, was on the front lines during the war. He saw his friends blown apart. He tried to drink the horrors away. He couldn’t hold a job and wound up driving a garbage truck part-time. As luck would have it, as a condition for LaSuer to live among us, you gave him a job as a garbageman. Matt had to look at a former enemy all day and couldn’t do anything about it. He blew off steam by getting into a lot of bar fights.”

“I don’t recall arraigning Matt for assault.”

“Probably because he lost most of his fights. I guess the guys who beat him up were happy to kick the crap out of him instead of trying to settle things in court. Over time, Matt assaulted Chevas Regal more than people. As for our two little instigators… Like father like son. Bo and Bobby have been suspended from school repeatedly for fighting.”

“Are you suggesting they lack character?”

“No. I’m saying they’re lying. You should have challenged them to read your mind or fly around the room. That would have nipped all this madness in the bud.”

“You’ve made your point, Diane.”

“Have I? We’re pitting neighbor against neighbor. They’re telling lies about each other to get even for some sleight or just to survive.”

“I’m following the rule of the law. If it means hundreds of people end up in jail, they have themselves to blame, not me. These laws have been on the books since the war’s end.”

“Maybe it's time we changed some of our laws.”

                                              ***

“As you know, many allegations have been leveled against a large portion of the population. I’m alarmed by the overwhelming number of cases involving citizens breaking the Joliffe/Quell Peace Pact. Order must be restored. To that end, I have called all of you to my court to offer amnesty for anyone who admits they’ve practiced dark magic, illegally harbored or aided a Quell, or broken any of the other laws in the Pact. My clerk, Diane, will set up the appointments.”

“And you promise nothing will happen to us?”

“I swear by the oath I’ve taken as a judge. Any and all offenses will be forgiven.”

                                               ***

“I’m glad I ran into you, LaSuer. I see your car is full. Are you going somewhere?”

“I’m putting a whole lot of gone between me and this country.”

“Why? Joliffe is a wonderful place to live.”

“Sure, if you’re a Joliffe. I appreciate that you released me, your honor. But do you know what life’s been like for me the past few weeks since I was accused of practicing dark magic? I lost my job as a garbageman. It’s almost impossible to get fired from being a garbageman. My cottage was vandalized while I was in jail. The night I returned home, someone set fire to it. A group of teenagers spat on me, chased me down, and beat me.”

“Do you still maintain that the Buntz brothers lied?”

“Like I said before, I’ve never spoken to them. They saw me yelling at their daddy one day when he fell asleep drunk behind the wheel of the truck. I guess they had it in for me from that point on. Sure, their home life sucked, but they got to play with the computer games they’d stolen while I was sitting in a cell ankle-deep in rats.”

“Are you going back to Quell?”

“Yeah, as fast as this beat-up gas guzzler can take me.”

“Then I’m not so sure I did you a favor by setting you free. Even after five years, the fallout from the bomb is pretty strong in most areas. Most people die from cancer within six months… Why are you smiling at me like the village idiot?”

“You referred to the Quell as people.”

“Don’t get misty-eyed thinking I’ve seen the light of brotherhood. I also called you a village idiot.”

                                               ***

“How many people have accepted my offer of amnesty, Diane?”

“Two hundred fifty-three, your honor.”

“That’s two hundred more than I expected… Wipe that smirk off your face. You were right. I shouldn’t have offered amnesty. Our little town has a lot of buried secrets. Perhaps they should have stayed buried.”

“I took the liberty of turning away a few hundred more people who wanted amnesty for parking tickets, petit theft, and D.U.I.s. The others, well, I’m ashamed of some of the things they’ve done.”

“Such as?”

“One man claims he has the shrunken heads of three Quell soldiers.”

                                               ***

“You’re the Mayor, Martin… You know it’s illegal to have photos of Quell women.”

“They’re not suggestive. They’re pictures of Barbara Breck. So, what if she was a Quell? She was a great actress and a beauty. Heck, you and I used to go to the movies and drool over her.”

“That was before the war. You gave Andy Newmark a few pictures, so now he’s involved. You could get five years for possessing and trading contraband. But your worst offense is having a Quell book of incantations in your possession.”

“It’s just another curio, more memorabilia. I don’t even speak Quell. You know I’d never get involved in casting spells, and I’d never pray to a demon.”

“I know it, Martin. But getting everyone else in town to understand...”

“My daughter, your godchild, is getting ready for college. My boy, who I named after you, is fifteen and just got a patent for a revolutionary computer program. Do you really want to ruin my kid's futures over some twenty-year-old cheesecake photos?”

“It’s the law, Martin.”

“Burn the book, the pictures, everything. In turn, I can help you bring some real criminals to justice.”

                                               ***

“The Mayor turned me in, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“We had an argument over how much I’d charged him to build a deck on his house. Looks like I should have reduced my price.”

“A vigilante, Roger? I never would have guessed it. Squat, bald, Roger Proctor, the town’s unassuming contractor.”

“This town and every village and hamlet in Joliffe should thank me for what I’ve done.”

“How many Quell did you kill?”

“Eight. The war was over. Everyone got to go home except me. They picked me and a few others in our company to guard a group of snot-nosed Quell kids at a detention camp until the government could decide what to do with them. I got an e-mail from my wife, Hannah, saying she was pregnant with our first child. I asked to go on leave but was denied because I’d been on leave a few months before. I figured I could still get home before the baby was born. Seven months later, I was still listening to those brats cursing me as I handed them their breakfast trays through the bars of their cells. Then, I got an e-mail from Hannah saying she was having complications. I asked to go on leave again but was denied. The boys escaped that night, and we were forced to kill them.”

“Did you allow them to escape before you killed them?”

“I’d rather not answer that… I was processed out of the army a few days later. By the time I got back here, Hannah and our baby were dead. I went insane. I remembered the joy I felt when we killed those eight boys. It drove me to stalk and avenge myself against two Quell day workers who cut grass for Jorge Salazar’s landscaping company. One of them looked like that brat in the detention camp who used to cuss at me.”

“Jorge told everyone that they’d left town… That they’d rather try to survive in the Forbidden Zone where the nuke hit than live here.”

“I asked him to say that. I buried the pair of them in the floorboards of a house I was building.”

“You realize this stretches my concept of amnesty.”

“You said we’d be forgiven for any crime, Loman.”

“Don’t throw my mistake back in my face, Roger. I can’t overlook murder.”

“I know someone who married a Quell woman before the war. Marriage to a Quell became illegal the day war was declared. It still is.”

“Yes, Roger. It’s punishable by death.”

“This man, whether intentionally or not, broke another law of the Pact. He had a child with her.”

“By law, that child must either be banished to the Forbidden Zone or be executed. Who is this man?”

“Promise me you’ll set me free if I tell you.”

“You’re a mass murderer!”

“No, I’m a hero.”

“Who is it, Roger?”

“You.”