Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen; Christmas.
(Flyover Planet, SF, starts here, and that’s the teaser.)
Dutch the stablehand and a couple of others were opening the car doors before any of the feds had a chance to speak. The crowd went quiet — scary-quiet, not church-quiet — as Dutch carefully cradled the unconscious doctor in his arms. She looked awfully pale and her eyelids did not flutter one bit.
"She's alive," he said in a tense voice.
"Get Sarah the nurse," Uncle Mac barked, his eyes as bright and hard as the sheriff's star on his vest. The walkie-talkies crackled to life, but:
"Let me through!" It was Ben's mom and Sarah, Ben's friend and former nurse who had settled in the Valley. "Step aside!" and Sarah was on her knees next to the doctor and Dutch, probing deftly and checking her pulse. She was now unbuttoning the doctor's collar.
"What's wrong with her?" Ben asked. Sarah said grimly:
"Looks like she's been tased; bump on her head too."
There was an angry hum from the small crowd of Valley menfolk, everyone shifting a little closer to the feds, almost like they were a single giant muscle flexing. No one was making a move, but everyone was armed and ready. The feds were looking small, as if trying to squeeze themselves into a crack. They was a lot less bravado now.
"That was an unfortunate misunderstanding," the baseball cap captain said smoothly, as if that would make everything all right. The guy next to him shifted uncomfortably. The men were looking really angry now and there were shouts here and there:
"I'll give you a misunderstanding!"
"Think you feds are tough, huh?"
"Gonna shove that taser up —"
"She was asking for it!" a fed in sunglasses yelled out.
And that was when Dutch sprang up and punched him in the face.
Doc O'Malley opened her eyes. Her chest hurt, and her head. But she was in her own bed in the little room above her clinic, and that was good; and there was Sarah, smiling at her with obvious relief.
"What happened?" Doc asked, wincing. "Last thing I remember was a bunch of suits breaking down my door..." She felt the bump on her head. "Concussion?"
"Yep, and you got tased. I've got a friend coming to check you out," Sarah said, "and I will check your heart out in a bit, just in case."
"My heart's fine," the doctor said irritably. "And you can't check anything out because they took all my stuff. I remember now, they started grabbing things and carrying them out to the van. I got angry and that was when they tased me."
"Oh Doc," Sarah shook her head. "You of all people know —"
"Yeah, yeah, if you spot any feds coming up you call your big burly friends with guns over and you stay out of trouble till they get there, I know. But I just got so mad when they grabbed my medical case I yelled at them to show me a warrant and that must have been when they got me."
"Well, your friends came anyway," Sarah said with a little grin. "And guess what? Dutch got so mad that he punched a fed out for you!"
The doctor closed her eyes for a moment. She was either in pain or trying not to laugh.
"Did he get arrested?" she asked.
"Nope. Uncle Mac managed to get everybody calmed down in the end, though everyone was really angry about you."
"Well that would have made things worse," Doc O'Malley said, with almost her old manner. "And then? Yes, come in!" as a knock came on the door.
"Oh, they got all your things back, and the cash the feds had taken too," Sarah said, and Ben, who'd just come in with Susan (Susan was carrying some flowers and Ben had a thermos flask), said:
"I didn't know they could just take all your stuff and money without a warrant."
"Civil forfeiture, in this land of freedom and opportunity," the doctor said dryly. "I might never have gotten that back. That's what happens when it's seized without a warrant. I owe a lot of thanks to the people of the Valley."
"Ben first of all," Sarah said warmly. "He was the one who spotted the feds and found you in the backseat, and when they tried to say they were just carrying equipment he told them there were stickers with property of Doctor J.M. O'Malley stamped on the laptops!"
"You didn't tell me that," Susan said, and Doc O'Malley leaned forward, wincing again:
"Oh Ben... if it hadn't been for you..."
"It was nothing, Doc," Ben answered awkwardly. He hated to be thanked; it always made him feel like an idiot for some reason, especially when he hadn't really done anything, like this time. Ok, so he was up in a tree at the right moment, so what? To head the doctor off, he said:
"Did Sarah tell you what Dutch did?"
"Yes. Young fool," the doctor said, which struck Ben as really funny because Dutch was almost as old as the doctor probably, well, as old as Ben's parents anyway.
"... And then Uncle Mac had said, "Let's help these federal employees, whose salaries we're paying from our own earnings, put all that property where it belongs," and told them to bring your things back," Sarah went on, "and Ben's mom and a couple of others were filming it all, and took photos of the license plates and everything."
"That guy that Dutch had punched looked pretty banged up," Ben added, " and Uncle Mac told him: "Too bad we can't get you some first aid, some damn fool has gone and put our doctor out of commission. We do have a nurse, but she is looking after the doctor."
Doc O'Malley gave a laugh that ended in a gasp.
"Think I might have a cracked rib too," she said wryly. "So much for a quiet life."
"Can I come in, Doc?" it was Dutch. He had a big fresh bruise on his jaw but his eyes were bright and he was smiling too.
"That's a face," Doc O'Malley started to shake her head and thought better of it. "Though I am one to talk."
"You're still the best-looking doctor in the Valley, Doc!" Dutch laughed. The doctor smiled but ruefully:
"I'm not even a doctor in the Valley anymore."
"Maybe not," said a new voice, and Mr. Forrest, the farmer whose grandmother had been Cora Blackswan, strolled in, grinning from ear to ear. "But maybe you don't need to be!" and at the looks of astonishment on their faces he laughed out loud.
The next day there was an expectant feeling in the air, one of those days when you feel that something is going to happen and can't settle down to anything. Work got done — there is a lot of it in the summer and never enough hands to do it — but the doctor's home was never left completely unattended, and there were patrols around the outskirts of the Valley, and walkie-talkies crackled more often than usual. Ben and some of the other older kids biked around and climbed trees, keeping an eye on the roads into their home.
"What do you think is going to happen?" Ben asked his parents. "They won't take Doc O'Malley away, will they?"
His dad shook his head.
"Not if we have anything to say about it. But they will try; and maybe more than Doc."
"Will we have to move again?" one of Ben's little brothers asked, a little scared.
"No. This is our home," Ben's dad said, and his mom added, "for keeps."
About an hour before noon there was movement on the road. That was a regular police car, and the two cops in it were from town; Ben had seen them before. There was someone else in the back; and the patrol car was heading for the doctor's. So off he rode to the doctor's too, Susan following on her bike.
By the time Ben and Susan got there, the cops were outside, with a lady in a business suit and sneakers, and a clipboard. The doctor was sitting on the top step of her porch, looking a little paler than usual but otherwise all right. Two men with rifles (Dutch was one of them) were smoking nearby, with Mr. Forrest.
"...a misunderstanding," the woman in the power suit was saying. "It came to our attention that you are practicing medicine without a license—"
"That's a lie," Doc O'Malley said calmly. "My license is suspended only. As for your accusation, I demand to see the full document and the name of the accuser."
"I'm afraid we cannot do that," the woman said. "However, as I said before, I am a government inspector, and if I examine your office I will be able to ascertain—"
"And I told you before, you have no right to do this. As for any practicing I may or may not be doing, the federal government has no say in the matter."
The inspector opened her eyes very wide.
"Are you saying you are above the law?"
Ben could see Martin Forrest grinning, and he could hardly keep from grinning himself.
"I am saying the law does not apply in the present case. You may not be aware of it, but I am a medicine woman."
The inspector gave a tight smile.
"What a romantic title for an illegal practice."
"Perfectly legal," Mr. Forrest said, moving forward. "The elders of the Night Fires Nation have spoken. Doctor O'Malley Healing Shadow is our medicine woman, and a member of the tribe. And this, as you realize, means that any practice she may have is not subject to federal law, but is a tribal matter." He jerked his head at the office. "So that's an Indian lady's property, and you can tell your friends that."
"The preferred term is Native American," the inspector said nastily.
"I will be sure to prefer it then," Doc O'Malley said, rising. "Now, daylight's a-wasting, so..." She went inside; the inspector stood there for a moment, then huffily got into the cops' car again.
"That was a seriously cool idea," Susan said to Ben as the patrol car pulled away. "Now they can't stop her from treating folks, right?"
Mr. Forrest said: "Well, it's like this, Susan. On the one hand there is nothing they can do about it: the Night Fires Nation is a recognized tribe, and what that means is they can add to their own members, whether they have got any Indian blood in them or not; and the feds can't tell them how to run their own business or medicine. And if newly minted tribe member Doc O'Malley Healing Shadow goes on as before, there is diddly-squat they can do about it."
"But..." Susan prompted.
"But... I think it's not the Doc they got it in for, it's all of us in the Valley. We are too free. Folks grow what they want, do their own schooling, hunt and shoot... And if the government wants to lean on us, they can go on doing it again and again and again. We have got to work our fields, to make a living, and they are living off our taxes, so they can harass us any amount of time."
"Taxes!" Ben snorted. "Yeah, my dad told me. So we are basically paying them to harass us!"
"So what do we do?" Susan asked. But Mr. Forrest shook his head and did not say anything.
"Did you hear about Martin Forrest's farm?"
It was several days later, and Ben and Susan had stopped by Judge Joe's place for a chat.
"No!" Ben got off his bike. "What happened?"
"Well, you know he joined a farming co-op of ours recently with his son. And these inspectors," Judge Joe spat on the ground as he often did when the subject of any red tape rangers came up, "they came and wanted to arrest his milk and dairy."
"You can't arrest milk! You'd think even a Fed would know that!"
"No-no, he means like when they tried to take away the doctor's equipment and everything, right, Mr. Judge? There was a funny name for it, makes you think of playing Monopoly or something like that..."
"Right you are, young Susan," said Judge Joe. "They got it in for Martin Forrest, because of the co-op but also because it's clear he was the one who got the Night Fires Nation to take Doc O'Malley on as their medicine woman."
"What's their beef with the co-op?" Ben asked. "I mean, what's wrong with selling eggs and milk and cheese, for crying out loud? And that funny sour sort of drink mom makes pancakes with?"
"Put it together, Ben. Lots of folks are signing up to buy from the farm, no chemicals in the butter, no bugs in the sausages, it's all fresh from God's own earth. Now what does that mean for the supermarkets? For the food big producers who just dump some sludge into water and powdered milk and call it food?"
"Fewer customers," Ben and Susan replied promptly, and then Ben said, "oh... Oh! I got it! Hey that's a shakedown!"
"You been watching old gangster movies again? But yeah, that's what it is. And what happens if the shakedown doesn't work?"
"Most of the time they just come back with more guys and bigger guns," Ben said. "But why didn't it work for Mr. Forrest's farm, the shakedown I mean?"
"More guys with bigger guns," Judge Joe grinned. "Your Dad happened to be there, and a few other men, buying for their wives; and there were only four or five inspectors," he spat again, "so that one did not go bad on us. But don't forget about Dutch and his little dustup... it's only a matter of time before things get serious."
"I'm not sure I want to see what that looks like, when things get serious, it's already been scary enough," Susan said as she and Ben were riding their bikes home in the afternoon. Ben said:
"Don't you worry, Sue, I'll take care of you." He wasn't sure why he said it but it felt right when he did.
"I believe you," Susan said without a trace of a smile. "Wanna come inside?" they were at the gate of her house. Ben shook his head regretfully: the windows were open and he could smell something baking in the kitchen.
"Another time, ok? Got something I need to do first."
He jumped back on his bike and shot off, riding hard in the direction of Mr. Forrest's farm.
This is interesting 🤨