Donny drove through the town talking the whole time. "Here it is. You'll notice that there are two churches sitting side by side. One is a Baptist church, and the other is a Lutheran church. You might think the preacher and the pastor wouldn't be friends, but they are except when it comes to horseshoes; then watch out."
"Horse shoes?" Pepper asked.
He looked at Donny out of the corner of his eye. Donny ignored his question.
"Over there is the gas station, general store, and post office all in one. It opens at six and closes at six. If you need bread and you aren't there by six, you're out of luck. Next to it is the diner. They are open for breakfast and lunch. It opens at six and closes at two. The nearest place for dinner is sixty miles from here at the truck stop."
"Truck stop?" Pepper asked.
"That big building is the school. We've got fifty six kids in it. Most of them live within thirty miles of here. Just about everyone you'll meet around here went to school there. My graduating class was six kids."
"Six?" Pepper asked staring openly at Donny.
"Over there is Doc Taylor's office. He's our doctor. Rose works for him."
Rose said, "He's got an x-ray machine. He also has a defibrillator, in case you make it to him alive while having a heart attack. He can also do some surgery. You know, take out an appendix, set a broken bone, sew together a cut, and take out your tonsils."
"Oh boy," Pepper said rolling his eyes. He asked, "Where's the nearest hospital?"
"It is only seventy miles away as the crow flies, but you have to drive nearly a hundred and fifty miles to get to it," Donny answered. "We're all worried about what is going to happen when old Doc Taylor retires."
"He's been trying to bring in a doctor for years," Rose said.
"I can't imagine why you would have a problem bringing in a doctor," Pepper said sarcastically.
"We'll probably end up having to visit the vet once Doc Taylor retires," Vincent said.
Thinking about waiting in an office full of dogs, Pepper said, "No thanks."
Donny continued being a tour guide. "That building over there with the silos is the feed and grain store. If you need seed, that's the place to get it. They also sell tractor parts over there. If you want to buy a new tractor, you have to drive sixty miles to the nearest place that sells them. That area over there is where we hold the monthly swap meet. You can get just about anything there, particularly if you let folks know that you need it."
"Swap meet?" Pepper asked.
"That house over there with the two cars parked in front of it is basically our only car repair place around. Although Hal doesn't have a real tow truck, he can tow your car in case it breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He does all of his work out of the garage. The house next to it is where the Baptist preacher lives. The house next to that is where the Lutheran pastor lives. The family that owns the gas station lives across the street there. The principal of the school lives next to them. About four miles down that road is one of the three vets in the area."
Incredulous, Pepper asked, "You have more vets than doctors?"
"We've got more patients for a vet than we have for doctors. There are only a thousand two hundred people within thirty miles of here," Donny answered.
Rose smiled and said, "Don't worry. None of the vets around here would shoot you if you broke your leg."
"That's reassuring," Pepper said thinking he was now in Hicksville.
Donny said, "That is our home town. What do you think?"
"You don't even have a traffic light," Pepper said.
He was more than a little underwhelmed by the town.
"We don't need one," Donny said in a very serious tone of voice. "We do have a stop sign."
"I didn't notice," Pepper said.
He was thinking that if you looked up hell in the dictionary that they would have a picture of this place next to it.
Donny said, "We'll be driving along this road for another fifteen minutes."
They hadn't gone more than a mile when Rose said, "There's Uncle Charles."
Donny stopped in the middle of the road. Rose stuck her head out the window, and waved to the truck that was approaching them. The truck slowed down, and came to stop beside them.
The man inside said, "I see you guys are back. How was Los Angeles?"
Donny said, "Things are really messed up there."
"Ugly," Rose answered.
Charles said, "I always hate going into big cities. Those people are crazy."
"You can say that again," Donny said.
"Speak for yourself," Pepper muttered.
He couldn't believe that they stopped in the middle of the road to talk. He looked around but no other cars were approaching.
Charles said, "I'm glad to see you back."
"It is good to be back," Rose answered.
"I was watching the whole thing on the news after Sonny took out those three guys in the hospital. That was a real mess," Charles said. "Did Dan or Joe kill the guy that told the gang where Sonny was?"
"No," Donny said. He gestured to his passenger and said, "We brought him back with us."
Charles laughed and said, "I couldn't believe it when I heard what you were going to do. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard anyone doing."
"I'm sure we're going hear that a lot," Donny said with a laugh. "I'm sure that folks are going to look at Rose and think she can do better than me."
"Boy, I've been meaning to ask you a serious question," Charles said.
"What?"
"Are you ever going to propose to my beautiful loving niece?" Charles asked with a grin.
"One of these days," Donny answered.
Rose gave him a love tap on the top of his head and said, "By one of these days, you can assume that he means tomorrow or the next day."
Charles suddenly got very serious and said, "Don't wait too long, Donny. I'm sure that Hank will want to know she's finally gotten engaged. I've got a feeling that Hank and your uncles are going to create a big stir there in Los Angeles. It may be a long time before we see them again."
"Why do you say that?" Donny asked.
"Sonny got a lawyer and turned himself over to the police this morning. The news folks have been having field day with this. The way they are talking, it is like Sonny and the gang are going to have it out some kind of shootout," Charles said.
"Did they put him in jail?" Donny asked.
That had been the one thing they were worried about. There was no telling what kind of connections the gang had inside the jail.
"The police arrested him, but they took him to a secure hospital room instead of jail, since he is still healing from his wounds. His lawyer was all over the television making it sound like he was a death's door as a result of the ordeal that he had been through," Charles said.
Donny had a feeling that the police were going to arrest Sonny. Dan and Joe had talked a lot about letting the police have their chance to do right by the Daniels family. He didn't have the same faith in the police that his uncles did.
He said, "That's better than a jail cell."
"I figured Hank and your uncles wanted him out of the way when things hit the fan. They are giving him an alibi," Charles said.
No one had to tell him their plans. He knew how all of the principals involved in this situation thought. He would let the law take its course, but he'd protect the kids as much as possible.
"What about Calvin?" Vincent asked worried about his brother.
"I don't know anything about what's happening with Calvin," Charles said.
"Thanks for letting us know," Donny said.
He had a feeling that Calvin was busy watching over Sonny. He would make sure that no gang member made it close to him.
"I'm sure your Mom is worried about you, Rose. You might want to get on over there," Charles said.
"I'll see you later Uncle Charles," Rose said.
Vincent ducked down so that he could see his uncle and said, "See you later, Uncle Charles."
"Take it easy," Charles said before heading on down the road.
When they were finally driving off, Pepper asked, "Doesn't anyone care that you kidnapped me?"
"We didn't kidnap you," Donny said. "You were given a choice to work for us or to die."
"That's no choice," Pepper said.
"Sure it is," Donny said.
Pepper didn't want to argue the matter anymore. He shook his head and looked out the window at the country side. His personal opinion was that the view would have been nice on a post card, but he didn't want to be there looking at it in person.
"This is our road. We're almost home," Donny said before turning onto the tree lined one lane dirt road.
Barbed wire ran along the road, offset from it by five feet. There were occasional signs to the effect that there were buried cables. Brush and weeds bordered the road.
Donny drove slowly along the road. There were places where rains had destroyed the level surface, leaving sections that were rough. It wasn't the kind of road that was meant for a sedan.
After a particularly bad bump, Vincent said, "We're going to have to get out the dozer, and work on the road some. It will be two years before the county comes out to grade it."
"It's not that bad. The truck wouldn't have a problem with it," Donny said.
Pepper had never been on a road this rough. It was throwing him from side to side. If he had been able to move his hands more than an inch away from his waist, he would have been grabbing the dashboard with both hands.
He said, "This isn't a road. Roads are made of concrete or asphalt. This is dirt."
"Your powers of observation have increased dramatically in the past couple of days. Your intelligence has not improved at all," Donny said.
"You're all a bunch of stupid hicks," Pepper said shaking his head.
Vincent said, "I wish he'd change his mind, and we could dump his body out here in the woods."
Pepper got angry and said, "You're the most blood thirsty bastards I've ever met. How many people have you killed?"
Surprised by the question, Donny answered, "None. I don't even know anyone who's killed someone, except in the service of our country."
"Why does everyone talk about killing me?" Pepper said.
Slowing down so that he could take a good look at Pepper, Donny said, "You really don't get it, do you?"
Pepper said, "Quite frankly, no."
"I told you that he's the dumbest person in the world," Vincent said shaking his head sadly. "We're even explained it to him before."
Donny said, "Because you screwed Sonny in a way that can't be forgiven."
"What exactly did I do?" Pepper asked.
"Did you ever once tell Sonny that if he was being robbed to hand over the cash?" Donny asked.
"No," Pepper answered.
It was obvious to him that is exactly what someone was supposed to do when getting robbed.
"That was your first mistake," Donny said. "You should have told him."
"Why? He should have known that," Pepper replied.
Donny said, "You entrusted him with your business. He wouldn't have been worthy of your trust, if he just gave your money away to anyone who asked for it."
"That's stupid," Pepper said.
Donny said, "By putting that gun under the counter, you effectively told Sonny that he was to defend the store against robbers!"
"The gun was just there to scare off people," Pepper said.
"What people? Customers? You had that gun there to scare off robbers, and that's exactly how Sonny saw it. Any man raised out here would have done the same thing as Sonny. That brings me to your second mistake," Donny said.
"What?" Pepper asked not quite believing that he had made the first mistake.
"You put a gun that doesn't work under the counter without telling him that it had been disabled," Donny said. He looked at Pepper and said, "That is wrong on so many counts that I can't even begin to tell you."
"I didn't want anyone to get hurt," Pepper said.
He really didn't understand why Donny didn't get it.
Donny said, "You got Sonny hurt. He picked up that gun thinking he had a fighting chance, and he didn't. If you had told him it didn't work, things would have turned out a lot differently. He would have known that you didn't really expect him to protect the money, but that he only had to give the appearance of protecting it. You took that choice away from him."
"I guess I could have told him," Pepper said.
"Your third mistake was exaggerating what Dan had told you. You gave the gang a reason to want to kill Sonny when he was in the hospital. My uncles could have grabbed those two guys and delivered them to the police before they even suspected that anyone was looking for them. Instead you go blabbing your mouth that our family has sworn revenge," Donny said.
Pepper said, "Your uncle came into my store and started talking about how he wouldn't let someone steal from him. He was talking like a lunatic. You don't talk about grabbing two gang members and taking them to the police. It just isn't done. I didn't want them coming after me."
"So you sold out Sonny," Donny said in disgust.
"Just shoot him," Vincent said shaking his head.
Pepper said, "I didn't sell him out. I just told Taco that Sonny's family was looking for him."
Knowing exactly how anyone who had any testosterone at all would interpret that statement, Rose said, "He's hopeless. Just give up."
Donny wasn't even going to reply to the last comment of Pepper. If the guy didn't see the truth of the matter, then he wasn't going to ever get it.
He said, "Your fourth mistake was telling them where Sonny was. We checked. There were three hospitals that Sonny could have been taken to that night. Everyone in the store knew where Sonny had been taken, and they all said that you told them."
"So, I talked about where he was. Big deal. People asked, and I told them," Pepper said.
"You told the gang where he was," Donny said.
"They asked and I answered," Pepper said thinking that they didn't understand what it meant to live around the gang all of the time.
Vincent said, "They showed up there ready to kill him. You might as well have hung a sign saying kill occupant on the door to his room."
Pepper said, "You don't know that. They could have been there to intimidate Sonny."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but a Daniels isn't all that easy to intimidate," Donny said. He said, "Do you know what I do to help bring in some money to our place?"
"No," Pepper answered.
"I ride bulls in rodeos," Donny said. "You try sitting on the back of the meanest angriest two thousand pounds of animal for eight seconds, and you'll find that mixing it up with a scrawny two hundred pound guy just isn't that scary."
"Bulls? You ride bulls?" Pepper said.
If he needed any proof that Donny was crazy, he had just been handed it by the bucketful.
"You might say it is a family tradition. My Dad rode bulls. Both of my uncles used to ride bulls, when they were younger," Donny said.
"You're insane," Pepper said.
Donny said, "I'm just letting you know that Sonny isn't the kind of guy to be intimidated very easily. Even without a gun, he would have taken them on."
Vincent said, "Now Sonny has been arrested because he didn't let three jerks kill him."
Donny said, "Sonny is an A student at the university. He was going to be in a position to make a lot of money when he graduated. We were thinking about having him come back to our area, and setting up an internet company. Because of this mess, he might not be alive to do that."
Pepper shouted, "It is not my fault."
Rose said, "You keep acting like you did nothing wrong. If you really believe that, then you really don't understand right from wrong."
Donny pulled into a driveway and said, "We're here."
A woman came out of the house carrying a shotgun. The way she was carrying it left no doubts about her ability to use it. Pepper looked at the woman and asked, "Who is the crazy woman with the gun?"
"That's my mother," Rose said slapping him on the side of the head.
Vincent hit him on the other side of his head, and then said, "If you ever call her crazy again, I'll show you what crazy is."
"Why is she carrying a shotgun?" Pepper asked as if that was sufficient proof of mental state.
Vincent said, "She doesn't recognize our car, you idiot. What is a woman alone out in the country supposed to do when a strange car pulls up in front of her house? Do you expect her to invite them in for lemonade?"
"It doesn't call for a gun. She could look out the peephole and call 911 if the people look threatening," Pepper said.
"The Sheriff could be two hundred miles away. It could take him and his deputy three hours to get here," Donny said shaking his head.