"What's wrong, hon?" his wife asked when he came home from work and she saw the troubled look on his face. She was giving Samuel reading lessons, her finger moving down the lines of the book as he read them out loud monotonously. He could read fine, but could never understand what he was reading at the same time. You could read it to him, and he'd understand perfectly. Sandy was tearing this morning's newspaper into slim ribbons and diligently rolled those up into tight cylinders.
"I got a call at work," Otis said and walked straight to the kitchen. He knew his wife would follow him shortly. This was how they managed to get private moments away from the ever present twins. He loved his sons dearly, but they were a handful. He had always been grateful his daughter was very capable to navigate her own way through life. Up until recently, that was.
He had opened a beer and thirstily gulped down half of it, when his wife joined him.
"Who called?"
Her husband looked at her with tired eyes.
"John, from John and Joan, called. He told me he had just had a call from Richmond Taylor, one of the Taylor brothers, and it sounded to John as if he was being recruited to join a posse..!"
"A posse? What, did someone steal a horse?"
"No," said Otis, not smiling, "it seems they was some ruckus in the shantytown today, and Marge Knickerbocker's oldest kid got badly beaten by a gang of lemurians led by a half-breed called Johnny."
"Oh, shit."
"What? What do you know about it? You know something..."
"I'm not sure, but I got a call earlier, too. From school. It appears our daughter skipped school again today..."
"She what? Where is she?!"
"She's in her room, calm down. She's locked herself in. I heard her coming home, in the middle of the day. She ran up the stairs like lightning and slammed her door shut. She wouldn't answer me through the door, so I threatened to take an axe to it, and I heard her sniffling something that sounded like, 'go ahead, I don't care about anything.' She's clearly very upset about something, so I suppose it's related to what happened at the shantytown. Sandy got her to open the door to him, and they talked for a while, but he won't say what about. All he said was, 'Faye's fine, but the world is mean.'"
"This just gets worse and worse."
"Well, it seems our problem is being taken care of, doesn't it? If Johnny's taken care of, we won't have to send her to boarding school either."
"You can't be serious."
"What?" She took the bottle of beer from his hand, took a sip and gave it back. "They won't kill him, will they? If they beat him up some and sent him running with his tail between his legs, that's fine with me. I'm not a fan of mob justice, but this is our daughter we're talking about!"
"You didn't let me finish. John didn't call me because he'd thought I'd like to join some posse. He called me to tell me this half-breed Johnny was suspected of diddling with a human girl—that's supposedly why Marge's boy went to have a word with him. John had heard that that human girl was our daughter Faye."
"Oh, god. So everyone knows! That's why she's locked herself up. I'd almost pity her, that damn fool!"
"So what I'm saying is, since he's believed to be diddling—"
"Stop using that word."
"All I'm saying is, people have been killed in these parts for looking at a white girl. We know people can turn savage at the drop of a hat..."
"Did you call the police?"
"I doubt that would do much good. The police in this town are the brothers and fathers of the people forming the posse. No, I didn't call the police, but I called a policeman. I called my old buddy Elroy."
"Oh, now he's your buddy again? And the two of you are going to stop a posse?"
"Have some faith. I'm going to take care of it."
"If you take care of the posse, we'll still have the Johnny-problem. I swear, any moment now he and Faye will get the bright idea to run away together!"
"I'm going to take care of Johnny, too."
