Baker still isn’t over Ruby Ridge. Don’t even get him going on Waco—Bake will chew your ear off. He wasn’t even born, but he stores them as memories. He’s my best friend, always has been, but I don’t think I’ll miss him.

For the past few years, Baker’s been busy building an arsenal. “Jack, you wanna get caught flat footed with a thumb in your ass when the Revolution comes?” “What Revolution?” I’d say. Baker would grin. “A paradigm-shifting event is coming—don’t be a fool.” 

Lately, he’s been communicating with these groups on social media. I never should have shown him how to use any of that shit. They are all out west, places like Colorado, Utah. He messages back and forth with them from his grandma’s ancient computer. Baker doesn’t believe in smart phones, instead he keeps his flip model clipped to his belt like a weapon. 

His grandma is a wreck worrying over him. Since I’ve never met a grandparent of my own, I consider her mine too—I think a thousand peanut butter sandwiches over two decades entitles her to that. Since all this talk with the militia groups out west, Baker no longer has time for hanging out in the traditional sense. He’s gearing up to go somewhere. We used to mostly drink beer and listen to stoner metal in his grandma’s basement, beer he brewed himself. It tastes like socks and pine but much like Bake, it grows on you. When I call him today he tells me he can’t hangout, but if I really want to, I can tag along on a mission.

“Mission?” I say. I’m a little surprised, until now he’s kept his whole patriot thing pretty private. Whenever I ask about it—mostly making sure he’s not going too far out on the margins—he tells me I’m not ready, that he’s not sure I’ll ever be. 

“Not over the phone,” Baker says. 

“Bake, listen, I think we should talk.”

“Later,” he says. “Be here at 1200 hours or I’m leaving without you.”

  *

I don’t live a few houses down from his grandma’s like I once did, but it doesn’t take me long to get there. Mom still lives in the house, but I moved out a few years ago. I found an apartment in a nice family’s basement just outside out town. Sometimes they invite me up for dinner, and even though I never want to go, I feel awkward declining. They eat big family meals, talk about goings on in each other’s lives—truly disturbing stuff. I still stop home once in a while, but less and less. The only thing mom wants to talk about when I stop by is why I never stop by. 

I park my Accord in front of Baker’s grandmas. A loud banging echoes from the other side of the house so I follow it. 

Baker is hammering something, fashioning a pipe maybe. Sweat streaks down his sinewy arms. A bandana is tied around his head, holding up a mess of red hair.

“The hell you doing?” 

Baker stops, cranes his neck toward me. “Modifying these barrels.”

“For what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Baker says, eyeing me seriously. “It’s not street legal, so keep your shit tight.”

“Great,” I say. “Off to a good start.”

“It will be great, once I get up to Harriman and make the exchange.”

“Exchange?”

“I’ll tell you on the way. Met this guy on the Facebook, he’s got something I need. Bartered the fucker down, giving him these.” Baker holds up the barrels, smiling now, like he holds all the cards. “Also, can you drive? My car is making this fucked up sound.”

I want to tell him no way, but it’ll take us at least a half hour to get to Harriman State Park, giving me some time. Plus, he’s not too savvy, I wouldn’t be shocked if the guy he’s communicating with is a cop. “Alright,” I say. “But I need to be back by five.”

“Work? I thought you quit.” Baker packs the barrels into a duffel and hoists them over his skinny shoulders, brushing past me roughly as he sways toward my car. 

  *

The real reason I wanted to see Baker today is to tell him in all likelihood we won’t be seeing much of each other anymore. I’m leaving, maybe Canada. My dad’s brother got out of prison up there a while back, and since dad is no longer around, he reached out to me. Him and a buddy started a carpentry business; they live in Spartan quarters but answer to nobody. Uncle Terry thinks it’ll give me some direction, he’s always saying over the phone, “Well Hell, Jack, you can’t just sleepwalk through your life. Listen to me buddy, if you’re serious, take what you need and leave the rest.” While it’s not exactly Europe, they do have healthcare. He says he can teach me, and I think it’s time I learned a real skill, to make a living that’s mine. If I can come up with the money to get there he says I can crash with him. 

*

Baker’s grandma thinks he’s destined for prison. She doesn’t snoop around his stuff, but she’s seen enough. “He’s had a hard go,” she’s fond of saying. And it’s hard to argue he hasn’t. He never met his dad, his mom overdosed when he was two. He likes to say his dad was killed in combat, Desert Storm, but, in his more sober moments, he admits the asshole simply took off. Bake and I bonded over bad dads. 

“So what do you really know about this guy?” I say. 

“Enough,” Baker says. “But the code is not to trust anyone till verified.” He lifts his shirt, exposing the handle of a surely unlicensed gun. 

Baker says the unrest in inevitable. There will be massive shortages of all essentials, system wide failures, blanket censorship, some shit about the power grid. Find a group of like-minded individuals and make your stand. The communists, the globalists, the black activists, hell, even the feminists are coming for what is yours. I won’ lie and say I don’t find it all interesting up to a point—who doesn’t occasionally dream of it all burning down? 

His grandma keeps urging me to help him see the real world, but it’s getting harder and harder. “Can you at least tell me how long you’ve been talking with this cop?”

“Fuck you,” Baker says. “He’s no cop—believe me I’d know.” 

“How’s that?” In truth, I’m sort of jealous Baker has a plan, a cause injecting some momentum into his life. It seems my sole purpose this last year is monitoring Baker, relaying reports to his grandma.

“There are certain things the law just doesn’t understand. You wouldn’t get it,” Baker says.

“I’ll take your word for it.” 

“I’m glad you’re here though, thanks for coming,” Baker says.

“You’re driving my car.”

Baker shrugs, turns up the radio. 

As we cross over the New Jersey state line and enter New York, my spirits begin to lift. Maybe this guy isn’t a cop or some wing nut that’s going to blow both our brains out. It would be nice for Baker to have another friend, some kindred spirit to keep him out of the news headlines when I’m gone. Most of Frog Town finds Baker a bit troubling; he’s always hanging out in the Bowling Alley or in front of QuickCheck, smoking cigarettes and burning through scratchers. It’s safe to say he’s been written off. To his credit, Bake is the most loyal person I’d ever known, and his heart is true and childlike. Never mind the vibe he’s usually giving off, like a school shooter who’d show up on a Saturday. Back in high school, when my acne was particularly bad, the upperclassmen were relentless. It only stopped when Bake bravely intervened, threatened to make each on of their faces look even worse. His grandma has long tried to get him on some pills, but they didn’t take, Bake wasn’t interested in being under the thumb of anything or anyone. 

We take the Harriman exit and suddenly we’re going up, climbing the pavement as the world turns green. I roll my window down all the way, suck in air that seems cleaner than it did seconds ago. I’m not sure I’ll make it in to work today. After the incident, I’ve been using the vacation days I’ve stored over the years. 

“Hey, Jack,” Baker says, “you with me?”

I shake the thought and straighten up in my seat. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Better be, I need your shit sharp.” Baker turns off the main road, steers the car up a sharply inclined auxiliary road. At the top of the road there’s a gate. Baker stops, throws on the emergency break and jumps out. He shakes the lock before going back to the car to retrieve something. Where the hell are we meeting this guy? Baker jogs back over to the gate, clamps down on the lock, springs it, and swings the gate wide. 

“This part of the plan?” I say to Baker when he’s back in the car. I see this nut waiting, his gun trained on us while we wait in the car. I see us both dead, our bodies being picked apart by critters as we rot in shallow graves. 

“Relax,” Baker says, “the lock was test. Simple bike lock. It’s all part of it.” He drives on, the terrain rattling the undercarriage and testing the suspension. 

  *

I’ve been working at the A&P Liquors nearly six years, and if it wasn’t for the incident, I don’t know what would’ve snapped me out of it. Even as the newly crowned assistant manger, I loathed every customer that walked into the store because that meant I had to act. Do you have this, why don’t you have that, can you get this for me. Fighting against the tide to keep the shelves full, the endless uphill battle of it all. Push, pull, push, pull, push, pull. Lou, my longtime co-worker is always saying, “It never ends.” Without what happened the other week, maybe it never would have. I still picture it when I close my eyes, but in the chaos I found opportunity. My own standard of living.

    *

The last time I saw Uncle Terry was the last time I saw dad. We were putting him in the ground, and Uncle Terry rode into town on his Triumph, knot of cash in his pocket he’d dole out liberally.

“Your old man loved you,” Uncle Terry said.

I wasn’t so sure. He rarely spoke after the job he worked his whole life spit him out and left him tired and terminal. I was only twelve, but when I asked him what he did at work he only said one thing: “Work is work, Jack.”

Uncle Terry was always on the move, and before whatever he was moving caught up to him, I wanted to be just like him. 

  *

We come to another sharp turnoff that empties into a clearing overlooking a valley of nothing but green. Baker parks the car and cuts the engine. 

“This it?” I say.

“Shit, not even close.” Baker goes to the trunk and grabs his bag before jumping back in the front. “Now, I don’t want to scare you, but these types first and foremost look out for number one.” He unzips the bag. “Here, take this. Now, let me run you through a quick scenario. ”

“No shot,” I say, “take this shit back.” I press the cold pistol back into his hands. 

“Jack, I don’t think you understand the weight of this thing.”

“I’m not carrying this.”

“Still messed up about what happen the other week?”

“No,” I say, spitting out the window. “Maybe…either way—I don’t want it.”

“You’ll need to learn how to use one eventually. Just take it. So, scenario,” Baker says. He runs me through a wicked plot: The guys brought backup—shit is a set up. He’s got some boot hitched up in a tree somewhere, has our flank. Bang, you go down. Bang, he puts one in my leg, I go down. I reach for my piece but he puts another one in my arm. They bury you right where you lay. Me, they take me to their hideout, torture me into handing over all my gear, this very car. Then, well, it’s anybody’s guess.

“Really?” I say, mouth agape. 

“You saw the thing happened in Oregon.”

“I thought you don’t watch the news anymore.”

“Dumb shit, I still watch it, I just don’t believe a goddamn thing those traitors say.”

“Right,” I say.

Baker claps me on the back. “You ready? We need to go the rest of the way on foot.”

“Semper Fi,” I say, but all the irony is lost.

      *

I was doing a pickup for one of my cashiers: it was fifteen minutes from closing. Then he was there, hand calmly folded over a gun he’d rested on the counter. He had a bandana pulled over his nose, a dirty Mets cap pulled down to bridge the gap, wide eyes like obsidian. I froze, couldn’t get my limbs to work. He lost patience and raked the butt of the gun across my face. I handed over the stacks I had but it wasn’t all he wanted. We had a safe in the manager’s room, a room not much bigger than a broom closet where I’d count the cash, make the coming week’s schedule. I led him there, shakily put in the combination. There were two envelopes, one meant for the armored trucks that came to collect once a week, and one to replenish cash during a rush. He banged on the wall behind me, said hurry or I’ll put one in your head. I won’t lie, I wet my pants a little. Even though my life wasn’t adding up to much, maybe it would. I grabbed one envelope of cash and slammed the safe. He threw a shoulder into me and ripped it from my hands. Then he was gone. I sat there until I heard sirens.

    *

Baker hikes up ahead of me, his head on a swivel. I trail fifty yards behind with the duffel and a gun tucked down the back of my jeans, the cold steel goose pimpling my flesh. Baker stops, signals for me to do the same. He points to a boulder, where I scurry and duck behind. Now Baker is running. I hear an ATV wheezing our way. 

“Stop!” Baker cries. He fires a shot that cracks and echoes over the valley. “Hands, show me your fucking hands!”

I peek over the boulder and see Baker patting the guy down, like he’s the law. I’m scared but also impressed—Bake moves with precision, a confidence I haven’t seen in other parts of his life. He has the guy on the ground and is flipping through his stuff. It all happens so fast. 

“Clear!” Baker calls out to me. 

I rise slowly, stunned. Late afternoon sun is baking down, causing the two of them ripple in my vision. 

“Sorry,” I say when I get there. “Bake comes on a little strong.”

“No need,” the guy says. “Smart fucker, I would’ve done the same thing.”

Now they are talking, things I can’t follow even if I had more of an interest. I drop the duffel at Baker’s feet.

“Jack, this is Grimes. Relax, he’s safe.” He’s smiling like I haven’t ever seen him. Grimes isn’t what I imagined, he’s small, bookish. 

“Can we go?”

“Go? Not before we fire off a few rounds, I need to show Grimes here what he’s getting.”

  *

One time Bake’s grandma had too much Carlo Rossi and hinted at what really happened to his dad. The guy had another family, somewhere out west. I never told Baker—I swore to her up and down I never would—but part of me thinks he knows. Part of me thinks, in his own way, he’s looking for him. The last year all’s he’s talked about is going west, joining this or that group, which seems to me something like family. Sometimes I wish my own dad’s whereabouts were shrouded in mystery—it might be easier to take than him simply not wanting to be there. I blame him but don’t I want exactly the same thing?

  *

Bake and Grimes are trekking ahead of me. I need to turn back, I’ve taken this as far as I can. They’re so involved in what they’re doing they don’t notice I’m not with them until they’re specks in the distance. “I’m leaving!” I yell. “Work!” I hold up my wrist like I’m wearing a watch.

“Go!” Baker says. “I’ll find my own way back!” And they keep going.

I hike back to the car, find my phone. Six missed calls from Bake’s grandma. I call her back. “What’s up?” 

“Have you seen him?”

“Earlier, why?”

“They are looking for him.”

I see them in her house, tearing apart the basement, rooting through the garage, men in navy windbreakers talking in code. And now I know: “I’m not sure he’s coming back.” Then the call cuts out, the service spotty in the deep woods. I should tell her I’m leaving but I don’t try calling back. Behind me, I hear shots going off, ringing down from the ridge. Maybe this is his way of saying goodbye. I close my eyes and see myself somewhere else. Maybe not Canada but definitely not here. I pop the glove box and the envelope falls out. I replace it with the gun before honking the horn, telling Bake goodbye whether he hears me or not.

---

Joe Farley’s fiction has been published in Bridge Eight, The McNeese Review, The South Carolina Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, among other places. He has a B.A. in Journalism and Literature from Ramapo College of New Jersey, and was selected as a Denver literacy fellow. joseph_farley5 (Instagram)