Michael Fine 8825 words

348 Gleaner Chapel Road

Scituate, Rhode Island 02857
401.617.4780
M1fine@aol.com

THERE IS PROOF OF GOD

By

Michael Fine

Hank thought they would never come to his farm but they came anyway. His brain knew

they were coming but the rest of him only half believed it. That was what the boys at the truck

stop said when he pulled over for a break. That them terrorists and them black dope addicts

would bubble up out of the cities, out of places like Queens and Mount Vernon and Paterson and

Elizabeth and come and take his guns, his property and his freedom.

That was why Hank moved up to Devans from Lodi after his wife left him. Devans is

way up in the northwest corner of the state, near the Delaware Water Gap, and ten miles from the

nearest superhighway. Hanks place was so far back that you cant hear the endless grind of
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 2

trucks on I84 in the middle of the night unless you listened hard. The farm was near an

abandoned boys camp two miles down a dirt road in a state forest nobody remembered. True,

there was a light haze from the city in the eastern sky when there was no moon, but you can still

see most of the stars and you didnt see that haze at all when the moon was up and almost full.

The City was maybe forty-five miles away as the crow flies. Somehow no one in New

York knew that this little pocket of wilderness existed. No one had come to turn the fields and

woods into parking lots and tract houses or hotels and casinos and strip malls and more parking

lots. There were rattlesnakes that sunned themselves on the black pavement of deserted roads in

the springtime before the ground warmed. There was bear. Hank saw some mountain lion track

near his barn from time to time, and once or twice in the winter he heard the baying of a dying

deer that the coyotes grabbed deep in the woods behind his house where the land fell into a deep

valley and the snow might get four feet deep after a big storm.

Hank drove short haul truck most days to pay the rent and that left him a free man, more

or less. Hed rise at dawn to feed the beasts and then head off. The trucking company was in

Milford Pa. The house was pretty ramshackle. It was a converted trailer with a porch that

somebody had built on the front and painted white and it had a big old barn behind it. Must have

been a farm house here once, Hank thought. Must have burned down and somebody stuck this

double-wide out front of the barn because the barn was worth something but the ground was set

so far back that no one would pay to build a proper house here once the world changed, maybe

fifty, maybe a hundred years ago. No one farmed in Devans anymore, once people started living

in tract houses and working in offices on computers and having air conditioning and once they

started to get up at five am to go to the gym to work out. Thats what life is now, Hank thought.

People and their things. Their cell-phones and their computers and their air-conditioning and
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 3

their cars that all look alike. Hank remembered cars that a man could fix and that would go when

you said go, zero to sixty in 5.8 seconds. Now the cars go alright, but they all look alike and they

are made of plastic and composites not steel and chrome and no human being could ever fix

them when they broke.

Hank had guns. He had an Anschutz Model 1710 D 22 Gauge rifle with Kahles 2-

7x36mm rim-fire scope, a .50-caliber black powder muzzleloader, a Traditions .50-caliber

shotgun with scope, a 12-gauge semiautomatic Remington 1100 shotgun, a 12-gauge Browning

over-and-under, a New England Firearms 28 gauge shotgun, an 1858 New Army stainless steel

.44 Caliper black powder revolver, a black powder Buckskinner pistol, and a Colt SAA .357

Magnum NKL revolver with a 5.5 inch barrel. He kept the 12 gauge and the black powder long

guns on a rack near the front door, the .357 Magnum in his glove compartment, the 28 gauge in

the corner next to his bed and the Traditions in the kitchen. The black powder handguns lived in

a case in the living room, but they werent much good in an emergency. That emergency, that

was what the other weapons were for. He would be ready for them people when they came.

After they shot the cops in Baton Rouge, Hank knew he would be next. He made a trip to

the K-mart in Stockton and bought all the ammunition he was going to need and plenty of black

powder and balls at the same time. Good thing K-mart carries powder and ammunition and stays

open until 9:30. Chance favors the prepared mind. It was pretty clear that the invasion of the

United States of America had begun.

The blue car with one white fender bounced up Thunder Mountain Road, bottoming out

in the ruts because the springs were shot. All Kalil wanted was to get out of the city for a couple
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 4

of hours. You get tired of hearing peoples problems all night long. They had Kalil working 11 to

7 on the crisis line so he was pretty buzzed from the night. There had been some crazy woman

from East Orange who stopped taking her meds and was trying to give away her furniture so the

housing authority lady called to say Kalil needed to do something because the crazy woman was

throwing chairs out the window. There was the junkie, no excuse me, the person with substance

use disorder who called to yell at Kalil because the emergency department doctor wouldnt give

him percs and he had sold off his suboxone and now he was getting sick. There was an eight year

old whose mother was a diabetic, an undocumented Guatemalan, blind, and on dialysis and

wasnt waking up and the emergency number refrigerator magnet was the one phone number the

kid could find when she was trying to call her father who had walked out on them six weeks ago.

All Kalil wanted right then was to find a hayfield and a tree growing in a hedgerow

where no one could find him so he could lay out with a book, maybe stream some sounds across

the iPhone through his very cool portable speaker, maybe have a glass of wine and sample some

of the very nice scamorza he bought at the Italian Market in Paterson, and maybe fall asleep for a

couple of hours until he woke from the sweat of sleeping in the sunshine after the sun moved in

the sky and fell on him in the later afternoon, or until he had slept enough so the buzzing of flies

around his sweaty head finally woke him.

When Kalil was a kid growing up in Garfield they used to bring his boy-scout troop up

for overnights in Stokes State Forest and they used to freeze their nuts off, because theyd bring

them up in March or November when no reasonable person would go camping, and Kalil thought

about what they must have looked like, intent little kids in green uniforms with red patches on

their sleeves, black and Latino and scruffy little white Polish kids who didnt know anything

about tents or camp fires or jack knives or fishing, but just ran around the woods and gathered
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 5

soggy firewood and sat next to smoky fires, ragging on one another. The boys were dumb but the

memories were decent. So Kalil drove up here now once in a while, remembering, just because

he knew there were trees here and it was a good place to get lost on the back-roads.

We exist on the knife edge of evolution, Kalil thought as he drove. We are constantly

learning, developing new things and those things change our culture so the lives we lead exist in

alienation from the lives we had and the selves we knew.

But we shouldnt even be here. The atoms and molecules out of which our world appears

to be built should not exist, Kalil was thinking. Atoms and molecules matter are each the

product of the infinitesimal chance that energy might form itself into matter instead of

dissipating. Each element is an accident, the product of the infinitesimal chance that moments of

energy might form themselves into atoms. Each molecule is an accident, the product of the

infinitesimal chance that atoms might associate with atoms of different kinds and the similarly

infinitesimal chance that their electrons and protons and neutrons might form bonds to create

new substances. Cosmic gas is an accident. The big bang was an accident. Space debris was an

accident. Planets, comets, stars, and nuclear fission are each accidental, each an entirely unlikely

event, and the fact that each object exists in a universe of other objects which has a certain order

is so unlikely that such an order makes no logical sense. Except, of course that such a universe

appears to exist and you and I seem to exist within it. Of course God doesnt play dice with the

universe. That anything exists at all is a profound daily miracle, the exceptionally unlikely

miracle of existence and any time you want to have an experience of God all you have to do is

open your eyes and look around you because that you have eyes to open at all and that there is

anything at all for you to see is evidence of Gods presence and grace.
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 6

The natural chaos of the universe denies the logic we exist but here we are anyway, the

miracle that proves God exists or perhaps that we exist despite the odds is the expression or

evidence of God, and that evidence is present in our every moment, the unlikely and almost

impossible coherence of radical and fundamental improbability.

Luis Almeida was in roll-call one morning when he heard the bullshit about Black Lives

Matter and it pissed him off just like it pissed off everybody else. A part of his brain had heard

this bullshit before. After Ferguson that shit came and went on the news as the talking heads on

CNN and Fox yammered about it but that was then and this is now and things are different now.

All Luis ever wanted to do was to get on the force. He had spent his whole life preparing

to be a cop. He played football in high school instead of soccer because football was cop

training. He went into a MP unit in Iraq as a volunteer because the military was cop training. He

took an AA in Criminal Justice at Stockton State because even though they called that college

everybody knew it was cop training. And then Luis applied to every little town force in New

Jersey. They got a zillion little towns in New Jersey, and everybody in every town is related, old

Irish and Italian people and they got the Union all locked up, so for the longest time all Luis did

was security at Target and he worked out every day for two hours and he applied at every little

town in the state.

Maybe he didnt listen to the Ferguson bullshit because he wasnt in yet and didnt really

see himself as a cop then. Maybe he didnt listen to Ferguson because he was working so hard on

finding himself a job that nothing else mattered. Luis had seen the talking heads when he was
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 7

working out but then being a cop was still a distant dream and so Ferguson was not about him.

Yeah he had brown skin and yeah he had been hassled on the street, pulled over when they didnt

need to pull him over but that was just the way it was, just cops doing their jobs and that was

your life on the street and you wouldnt catch Luis Almeida bellyaching. Rite of passage, thats

what it was. You be a black or brown person in America and you learn to live with it. What

doesnt kill you makes you stronger.

But this time he was in and this time it mattered. Where the hell is Branchville? Some

little hick town in the middle of nowhere. Like, almost to Pennsylvania. It could have been in

West Virginia or in Indiana or in Iowa, one of those I states out west. It could have been

halfway around the world. It was hard to believe they had ever seen anybody who spoke Spanish

in Branchville and harder to believe there were and Spanish people in that little berg. But there

they were. Maybe thirty, maybe forty families, Guatemalans and Dominicans mostly, who had

found their way out to Branchville from Newark and Paterson because there was work on the

gentleman farms and old fashioned farm work on a couple of the remaining real farms and

domestic work in the bigger houses and places to live over the stores and in the houses on the

side streets that passed for a downtown. In this Branchville, this little hick town, someone had

finally taught them how to spell the words Affirmative Action like forty years after the fact,

though they sure didnt know what those words meant. Even so when an application with the

name Luis Almeida crossed the Chiefs desk Luis got a call because his was the first application

with a Spanish name the Chief had ever seen. Luiss grandfather came from PR and his father

grew up in the Bronx and Luiss mother was mixed Jamaican and Irish and Luis spoke a little

Spanglish yeah but he wasnt super Spanish but what did the Chief know. Luis got himself a job

as a cop and he got to go to the Academy. Branchville got Diversity even if they couldnt even
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 8

spell the word. And the Chief kinda got the idea that maybe there were different kinds of cops

and that was okay too as long as you stayed in shape and pulled enough people over to meet your

quota that didnt really exist and you knew how to let the local kids go after stopping them and

reading them the riot act but youd ticket the out-of-towners so you keep the peace, meet the

quota and nobodys kid on the town council who doesnt need one gets a record.

But the Dallas shit and the Baton Rouge shit, now that was different. Now Luis was

inside and in blue and the last thing anybody needed was some asshole with military training

shooting up the brothers and sisters in blue. Its hard enough to remember the laws about

probable cause and to keep your eyes out for expired inspection stickers and to write up police

reports every time some college girls car gets broken into or theres a fender bender on 206 all

while you are trying to meet a damned quota that doesnt exist. But Dallas and Baton Rouge, that

was bad shit. They teach the brothers how to shoot in the military now and they teach them how

to think, how to plan and execute, how to survive an ambush and how to plan one. It was bad

enough in Iraq. You dont want to be up against that shit in New Jersey and you sure as hell

dont want to be getting incoming from your own people.

But even so, this is middle of nowhere Branchville New Jersey. It pissed Luis off and he

knew that the chief was right that they needed to drill procedure in case that shit ever came to

Branchville but that shit was just never coming here. Until it did. Unless it did. Everybody was

going to work a double over the weekend so they could drill on Sunday. That sucked, but Luis

got it and maybe the chief was smarter than he looked. You couldnt tell who was driving on I80

or on Route 46 and who might get off the highway and drive all the way out to Branchville New

Jersey just to shoot cops. You couldnt tell anything about anybody any more.
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 9

So Luis was pissed but he was okay with it when he got into his squad car and headed

north on 206. Black Lives Matter. Right. Brown people driving blue cars matter. I have a job to

do, Luis thought. It aint easy and the last thing I need is for my brown and black brothers

shooting at me as Im driving a squad car from place to place. Im a goddamn sitting duck in this

car. The whole fucking world can see me. You get enough shit from the hick other cops in

Branchville and their goddamn racist Chief, Luis thought. I just dont need any more shit from

crazy people from the ghetto, ex military or no, terrorist, militant, nobody. Dont you tread on

me.

Kalil could have sworn that the old white guy dressed in a Dickies dark green mechanics

shirt and pants sitting on a porch swing in front of a white double-wide trailer that had a porch

and a garage built on to it and a big old red barn that needed to be painted was cleaning a gun as

he drove by. Cleaning a gun on the porch? Camouflage colored ATV in the front yard? A

picture out of book from Appalachia, right? They dont make them like that anymore. Rural

poverty. Right here in New Jersey. Pretty quaint, if it didnt look so pathetic. Hard to imagine

how some people live.

There was a long strip of straight dirt road overhung by huge trees that looked like

nobody ever drove on it and like nobody lived here anymore, though the road was good enough

to make you think that somebody lived here once. Then there were a cluster of abandoned wood

buildings a deserted farm-house, and old barn with its roof falling in, and a long flat-roofed

building with broken windows that looked like it had once been a motel or a bunkhouse. There
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 10

was a field behind the barn that had some fence posts still standing, with rusty barbed wire curled

next to the posts.

Kalil parked the car. He checked the time on his cell. 1:23 in the afternoon. Zero bars. No

service. Out of range. Out of touch. Off the grid. Pretty sweet.

Kalil walked through a gate into a field that lay on an uphill slope and walked up the

slope to where a line of trees marked the crest of the hill. The grass was ankle and knee high but

not chest high, and the pasture wasnt overgrown with weeds. Somebody mows this pasture once

or twice a year, Kalil thought. This must have been a beautiful place once. He imagined horses

and cows pastured on this hill, grazing peacefully in the sunshine, the work noises of the farm

drifting up from the barn, chickens and barn cats scurrying around the barnyard. He could picture

the barn when it was new and painted, when the stalls were filled with milk-cows and there were

tractors under a tractor shed, driving in an out, just back from spreading manure or cutting hay.

You could see that it was a big, efficient barn, well laid out for dairying, on two levels, with a

place for the cows to stand out of the sun and a big hayloft above the milking parlor. I wonder if

the old milking machinery is still there inside under the fallen roof, Kalil thought. There was a

rusted manure spreader and an old horse drawn hay-rake in the old tractor shed and the roof of

that shed had collapsed around both. Bet there is a bunch of old tools still in the barn, Kalil

thought, but youd have to pick your way through rubble to find them. If the roof is bad the floor

might be bad as well. Dangerous as hell in there, he thought.

Kalil settled himself under a huge gnarled maple at the crest of the hill, took a book and

The New York Times out of his daypack and leaned back against the tree. The crusted bark of

the tree pressed into his skin as he stretched his legs out and for a moment the roughness of the
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 11

bark seemed like it was going to hurt. But then his muscles relaxed and the bark massaged his

back instead of sticking into it and he rubbed his back against the tree, as if he was scratching an

itch he didnt know he had. He took a half-empty bottle of wine out of his pack and popped the

cork and took a swig from the bottle. The hell with a glass. Life is good, Kalil thought. The sun

fell on his legs but his torso was in the shade. The air was sweet. It smelled of maple and of pine,

smells delicate and strong enough that he could taste them as well as smell them. There was a

light breeze.

Hank took note when the blue car with one white front fender drove by. He was sitting on

the porch, cleaning the 28 gauge. Not very many cars drive by anymore. There was nothing to

drive to. The road was still okay as far as that old camp, but just beyond the camp it rose to climb

a hill and then it got pretty rough, narrow and rutted and washed out in places and it had weeds

growing in the middle and some downed trees across it so no one could drive on it any more.

The county had stopped maintaining the road after the camp closed. You could get through to

Dingmans Ferry on that road if you had a four wheel drive and were willing to stop along the

way, but it wasnt worth the risk so anyone local who wanted to go to Dingmans Ferry just took

the long way around. Anyone who drove down the road just got as far as the old camp and had

to turn around and drive back. No one had any business being up the road, so every time a car

drove by when Hank was home he listened out for that car to come back. Five or ten minutes,

that was all it took. No one had any business messing around in that old boys camp. It was

private property and had closed forty years ago.

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 12

Hank cleaned one gun a day, in rotation. Just takes a few minutes. You maintain your

property if you want it there when you need it. The 28 gauge had its uses in hunting season. It

wasnt a bad defensive weapon at close range if push came to shove. But it wouldnt be Hanks

first choice if he had to defend himself, not by a long shot. That would be the Anschutz over his

shoulder and the .357 in his belt. He probably needed to get himself an AR-15 or a Sig Sauer

MCX with a couple of 30 round magazines and a sweet little 9 mm semi-automatic pistol like the

guy in Orlando used. Lots of firepower. Very little weight. You could take down a whole platoon

of cops with that kind of firepower. Got to respect that mans choice of weaponry, Hank thought.

He finished with the 28 gauge and tried the pump. Very smooth. He clicked the safety off

and pulled the trigger. Oiled and perfect. It feels good when mechanical parts mesh and click into

place and do what they were designed to do.

The driver of that blue car could have been black, Hank thought. Could have been a

Muslim. Could have been a terrorist. Half hour or so had passed. Then another half-hour passed.

Mostly cars that passed the house drive up to the old boys camp figure out there is no outlet,

turn around and drive out again ten or fifteen minutes later. Dont know what a terrorist would

want with that old boys camp, but it could be used as a terrorist base, now that he thought about

it. The terrorists are starting sleeper cells all over the country. Thats what they said on the radio

and on the TV. Maybe Hank would hop on the four wheeler and run up and take a look.
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 13

Bees and yellow and orange butterflies nosed in and out of a clump of wild roses that

bloomed a few yards away from Kalils spot, and then a hummingbird darted in to join them.

This is heaven, Kalil thought.

Then he heard the rumble and hiss of an engine and the wheels of the ATV spitting along the

dirt and gravel road.

The ATV came into view on the road at the foot of the pasture, and then parked next to

Kalils car. The guy had a rifle with a scope riding in the gun-holder on the front of the ATV,

and he had a pistol stuck in his belt. Goddamn hunters, Kalil thought. So much for a quiet

afternoon.

Hank dismounted and looked into Kalils car. He tried the front door, which Kalil had

locked, and he looked around, looking for something or someone, and it was pretty clear that he

hadnt seen Kalil yet.

Holy shit, Kalil thought. That cracker is looking for me.

Kalil watched Hank notice the path his legs had cut through the pasture grass and start to

follow it up the hill with his eyes.

Kalil slipped behind the tree, leaving the wine bottle and the book and the New York

Times on the ground. He wasnt sure if Hank saw him or not.

Then Hank took the rifle off the gun mount on the ATV and came into the pasture,

walking where Kalil had walked an hour and a half before.

What the fuck do I do first? Kalil thought. Phones no good, he thought before he looked

at it, remembering zero bars. Get the hell out of Dodge. Keep low. Stay out of sight.
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 14

There was a gradual down slope on the other side of the hill, another pasture that was

bordered by a line of trees and brush which had a stream inching in and out of the trees as it

made a boundary for the field. Im a sitting duck if I try to cut across the field, Kalil thought,

though those trees would be good cover if I can get to them. The pasture sloped down to the barn

and there was a tree every twenty or thirty yards on the crest of the hill, but most of those trees

were saplings and too small to hide behind. Nice to be in the barn, though, Kalil thought. It

would be hard to follow me in there and probably hard to find me. But Kalil took off to his right,

away from the barn, keeping low. There were bigger trees on the crest of the hill that way. He

ran from tree to tree and didnt look back until he was behind a tree and then only looked back

for an instant. This direction was taking him higher, away from the barn, and above but behind

the ruins of the main house and the bunkhouse. Holy shit, Kalil thought. Holy shit.

Hank thought he saw movement on the crest of the hill. He walked toward a big tree,

picking his way through the high grass. The sun was hot and strong enough to burn the skin on

his arms and the back of his neck. Hank found Kalils book and bottle of wine and his copy of

The New York Times.

Hes on private property, this trespasser with a blue car. You know its bad when they

even find their way to Devans, which is in the middle of no place, and really bad when they drive

on Hanks road. Enough is enough. Time to make America great again.

The trespasser had skedaddled. The ground at the top of the hill was dry and there were

weeds and clumps of brush but no grass for the trespasser to leave his track in. Im head for the

barn if I was him. Good place to hide.

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 15

Then Hank pulled out the .357, raised it straight up and pulled the trigger, just for the

pleasure of it, just to hear the gunshot in the pastures and echo off the buildings. A little like

thunder, Hank thought. Im the man with the plan for your pie in the sky, Hank said to himself.

Look out you hills and mountains. Im coming.

Kalil couldnt see Hank from the place he stopped to rest, which was a few hundred yards

back from the tree hed been reading under. For a few moments he thought hed lost the guy. If

the guy comes toward me I go deeper into the woods, he thought. Lets see if I can wait him out.

Then he heard the gunshot.

Holy shit, Kalil thought. This character means business. Hes coming after me and hes

playing for keeps. Holy shit.

Hank began picking his way toward the barn. Lets see if I can flush him out of there and

teach him a lesson hell never forget, Hank thought.

Kalil peered around the tree he stood behind and saw movement in the brush. The guy

was headed down the hill, away from him. Kalil could see the .357 in his belt, and could see how

the shooter carried his rifle out in front of him, cradled over one arm, a hunter. Holy shit, Kalil

thought. He grabbed his cell phone from his pocket, more from habit than because he thought it

could help. One bar. He was higher on the hill.

Kalil dialed 911.

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 16

Luis got the shots fired call when he was sitting in his cruiser on the south side of 206

near the auto parts store where the road jogs right after a straight-away and the drivers coming

down from Pennsylvania cant really see you behind the truck that is always parked there until

they are on you, so you can pick off them without really trying because everyone speeds up on

that straightway. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

As soon as the call came through, Luis cranked the location on his GPS, flipped on the

lights and sirens, and headed south. He was twelve minutes away. Backup was moving toward

his position but it was only McAllister and she was up at High Point sorting out a car break-in so

she would be a while. Use your head, the dispatcher said. Dont do anything stupid.

Hank heard the siren when he was behind the barn. He had stopped to listen, to try to hear

the trespasser moving around inside. Now isnt this pretty, Hank thought. They invade America.

Then they send in their police. I have these guns legally, but Obama is coming to take our guns.

Our guns are our freedom. The cops arent going to like seeing me armed like this. They want to

be the only armed force.

What kind of a place has America become? Hank thought. Trespassers and terrorists and

Muslims on one side. Big government bureaucrat police on the other. How is a man supposed to

live?
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 17

The barn was dark inside but there was light at the other end, where the big door used to

be before it fell off its guiderail. Some of the roof joists had collapsed into the passage between

the stalls with black asphalt shingles still attached, but the floor seemed solid. Hank picked his

way toward the light and settled himself behind two old bales of hay that were dusty on the

outside and rotting on the inside, the hay-strings hanging loose on the sides of each bale.

I can wait, Hank thought, as the propped the Anschutz on one of the hay-bales and set

himself up prone. He had a good clean shot at the ATV and the blue car. Man is born free and

lives forever in chains, he thought. Dont you tread on me.

What Luis saw when he came barreling down the road hot was just a ATV standing next

to a car in front of an abandoned barn that was falling in on itself. His cruiser skidded to a stop in

the gravel and Luis jumped out into the cloud of dust he had stirred up by driving fast on the dirt

road. Maybe he should have run the plates but he wanted to check things out first. He was still

pissed about Dallas and Baton Rouge and he wasnt in the mood to go slow. No shooter. No one

standing outside waiting for him to roll up. Probably just hunters or a car exhaust. But you never

know. He looked into the blue car. Nothing. He did a quick three-sixty. No sign of life. At least

no one down.

That old barn first, Luis thought and he turned towards the barn.

Then something grabbed Luis by the right shoulder, spun him around and dropped him

between the cruiser and the blue car, and his right shoulder was wet and searing like someone

had cracked it open with an axe. There was a second shot that missed, that cracked into his

windshield, and a third shot that plunked into the car door of the blue car, close enough and with
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 18

enough force that Luis could feel the shock wave as a puff of wind on his face and a rumble up

from the ground. Luis reached around for his service revolver with his left hand, and used the

butt of his hand to activate his shoulder radio and ask for back-up. Now. Officer down. Funny

thing to say when you are the officer down, when the shooter is hunting you, and all you have to

defend yourself with is a service revolver in your left hand that never was your shooting hand

anyway. But Luis was now ever more pissed and if it was kill or be killed he was happy to be the

man to do the killing. You dont fuck with Luis Almeida.

Then it occurred to him. After Dallas and Baton Rouge, he didnt know if he was up

against one shooter or five, if this was one crazy or a military ambush, if the force he was up

against was black or white, if they were shooting at him because he was a cop or just because he

was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Look at me, he wanted to say. Im black too. Just like

you. We are in this together, brothers and sisters. Except of course they were shooting at him,

whoever they were, and if he was going to survive and they came at him the only thing he could

do was to shoot first and be goddamn accurate, left hand or not.

None of that mattered. The shooter got off two more quick shots, which hit the cruiser

and the blue car in turn. The shooter was in the barn and could only see the ATV and the cars

and not the space between where Luis lay on the ground. Luis went prone, reached around the

tire of the cruise and got off two quick shots at the barn door, using his left hand with no

stabilization, but that didnt matter because he had no target anyway. He just wanted to keep the

shooter pinned down, because all the shooter had to do was move about fifty yards and then hed

have a clear shot. He. Or she. Or they.

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 19

The shoulder was wet but it wasnt sopping wet. Right shoulder, not left. Lucky. Still he

didnt really know how much he was bleeding, and the trick is not to bleed out before help

arrived. Assuming help arrived in time.

Kalil stepped out of the bushes in the ridge above the abandoned house and bunkhouse

when he heard the sirens and saw the lights flashing as the police cruiser pulled up to the barn.

He saw the cop looking into his car. He heard the gunfire and saw the cop drop but he didnt see

where the shooter was. Holy shit, Kalil thought. Then he heard more shots and he thought he

could make out flashes of light from the barn.

Kalil could see the cop moving between the cars. He ran along the ridge-top back towards

the tree he had been laying under and then ran back towards the barn. He had made the call that

started all this. Somebody had to do something. Looked at the moment like that somebody was

him.

The shooter was in the barn and the cop was between the cars and they were firing at

each other and no one was thinking about Kalil which was fine with him. He kept low and went

from tree to tree, using brush as cover as he moved as quickly as he could across the downhill

side of the ridge, keeping out of sight. They werent thinking about him and he didnt want them

thinking about him. Then he tracked down the hill on a rutted pasture road that must have been

used by the cows as they came into the barn and by the tractors as they went to mow the hilltop

field and bring in the baled hay on hay-wagons.

Kalil stopped when he got to a big tree at the bottom of the hill where that pasture road

opened into a paddock next to the barn, where the cows used to stand at milking time and where
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 20

the farmer could throw down hay from the loft to feed in the winter. He was a right angle to and

behind the big barn door, so if in fact the shooter was in that part of the barn looking out at the

cars, the shooter couldnt see him where he was. But he could see the cars and the ATV and the

cops legs between the car, and the cop could see the paddock as well as he could see the barn

door if he was looking there.

Kalil didnt have a plan. The cop was down and Kalil didnt know for sure if he was

wounded or not but it looked like he was alive and was likely firing at the shooter and the cop

didnt know Kalil was there or that he was the guy who had called 911. The shooter had come

hunting Kalil so it was pretty clear that the shooter needed to be stopped. If the cop was still

alive he had probably radioed for back-up because that is what cops do but who knows how long

it would take for that back-up to arrive because they were deep in the middle of nowhere. The

shooter knew Kalil existed but the cop didnt. There were two men who lay about a hundred and

fifty feet apart, shooting at one another but not talking. No one was talking. They were pretty

close to one another and could have talked and heard each other easily if they each raised their

voices a little. Instead they were shooting, not talking. How weird was that?

Then a squirrely little black guy came out of nowhere and made a dash for the barn. It

was a fucking ambush. These fucking people are everywhere and they aint got no respect. Luis

got off three shots at the black perp and the shooter in the barn shot back twice in return, hitting

the cruiser twice and shattering its windshield. The guy in the barn couldnt see the paddock so

he thought Luis was shooting at him. The perp in the paddock was hiding behind a collapsed

barn door and Luis couldnt see him either now but Luis knew he was there, and at least that one
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 21

didnt have a clean shot at Luis either. That one wasnt shooting but Luis knew he was there.

But Luis didnt know if there were others and if so how many and where they were, so now he

had to be thinking three-sixty, so every few seconds he scanned around the places he could see.

Under the cars. Out to the pasture. Down the road to the old farmhouse and bunkhouse. You

never know where it is coming from next and you cant take anything for granted.

Luis reloaded. It was goddamn hard to do with one hand but he was able to use his right

hand to hold the gun while his left hand popped cartridges off his belt and into the chambers.

Is everyone alright? Kalil yelled a minute or two after the firing stopped. Maybe

people who talk to each other will quit trying to kill each other, Kalil thought. Never hurts to try.

Fuck you, Hank said, and fired another shot at the squad car, thinking it was Luis

talking.

Whos asking? Luis said. I need all the information I can get for the police report and

the FBI and all the other paperwork that is coming next, Luis thought. Everyone in the world is

going to want to talk to me about the goddamn militants or the goddamn terrorist threat, so we

and they can uncover the network and root out the coconspirators and accomplices who make up

the terrorist threat. Or the militant threat. Or somebody. Because none of these goddamned

people act alone.

Im Kalil, Kalil said. Im nobody important.

Fucking Muslim, Hank said.Fucking immigrant.

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 22

I was born in St. Joes in Paterson and I grew up in Garfield. Where you from? Kalil

said.

Lodi, Hank said. But youre still a fucking Muslim.

The guy in the barn was talking. That was good, Kalil thought. The cop in the car hadnt

said anything more yet though.

Hank was trying to put the pieces together in his head. You had a Muslim immigrant

outside the barn talking at him. And the cop between the cars who hadnt said anything much

yet, shooting at him. The Muslim from the blue car and the cop who had taken the first round but

was clearly still alive were both black. That made them similar but different. Made Hanks head

spin, thinking about it. Whoever the hell they were, there were too god damn many of them in

the country and too god damn many of them on his road, in his town, and near his house.

You play football? Kalil said. Garfield plays Lodi every year on Thanksgiving.

I know that, Hank said. We used to whip your Polack ass every single year.

Im not a Polack, Kalil said. He had the shooter engaged. How about you? Officer

under the car?

The damn Muslim had just outed Luis, which pissed him off. Fuck them. You dont fuck

with my head, Luis thought.

He got off three shots one at voice behind the barn door, one into the barn to keep the

shooter down, and then one more at the barn.

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 23

East Orange, Luis said, after a pause. I played football. And everybody in Bergen

County is a wuss. In Essex County, man, we play real ball. Bergen aint nothing.

Fuck you, Hank said, and got off three quick shots, this time shattering the windshield

of the blue car.

That was my goddamned car you just shot up, Kalil said. Thanks for nothing.

That was when Kalil noticed he was wet around his belly on the left side. For half a

second he thought hes pissed himself. He touched the place, which was warm and sticky. Hard

to believe he hadnt noticed getting shot but there is was. He half remembered stumbling when

he ran across the paddock, and maybe that was when.

So we got a situation here, Kalil said.

Dont fuck with me, Hank said.

Nobodys fucking with nobody, Kalil said. We just have a situation. And Id like it if

no one else got hurt.

Who the hell are you? Luis said. He was going to waste both of these bastards and he

wanted to know as much as he could about them before he did that.

Im Kalil, Kalil said. Im a social worker at the mental health center in Irvington.

Who wants to know?

Dont give me any of that touchy feely shit, Luis said. What do you want? Why do

you keep shooting cops?

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 24

Im not shooting cops, Kalil said. That would be the guy in the barn. I just came up

here to read a book. Im trying to get us all out of this mess alive. Hey you in the barn. Why are

you shooting cops? Whats your name? Kalil said, and he noticed that his mouth was dry.

Im not shooting cops, Hank said. Im shooting Muslims. And cops who are Muslims.

And immigrants. Somebodys got to make America great again.

Kalil felt himself groan, and get a little dizzy and starting to sweat. He sat down on a flat

topped rock that had been chiseled square and had a depression cut out of its top surface, an old

watering trough.

But Im not a Muslim or an immigrant, Kalil said.

And Im not who is shooting at you, Hank said. That would be the cop under the

squad car. I never had a clean shot. Hey Mr. Cop. Whats your name?

Who wants to know? Luis said. His right shoulder was starting to pull on him hard, and

it was difficult to think of much else. He could see the headlines as breaking news, though, as

Rural NJ Cop Disrupts Terror Cell, or Rural NJ Cop Fights Back Against Cop Killers.

Just a patriot. Call me Paul Revere, Hank said.

Hey Mr. Paul Revere from Lodi, why dont you put down your guns and come out of

there. That way we all get to go home and nobody else gets hurt, Kalil said. They were talking

to each other, Kalil thought. Thats good. People who talk to you in a hostage situation, when it

gets interactive, they see you are a human being and not an object. Relationships matter, Kalil

thought, not that he had any experience with hostage negotiations. Kalil was really thirsty now.

He was feeling cold which surprised him because he knew it was a hot day.
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 25

Not in your lifetime, buddy, Hank said. You take away a mans guns you take away

his freedom. Freedom isnt free.

All at once Luis understood that the two men he was shooting at might not be in this

together, that he might have one shooter and one 911 caller, and that he might have been

shooting at the 911 caller and not at a hostile force. He realized that he didnt know anything

about the situation or condition of the caller whose name was Kalil. Luis didnt like his situation

before this realization. He didnt like his situation at all now, all of a sudden.

Yeah. This is Officer Luis Almeida of the Branchville PD. Lay down your weapons and

come out, Luis said. Maybe it was better to end this without wasting them both so Luis could

figure out who was who.

What do you need? Kalil said, and he coughed twice, his voice weakening. What do

you want, Mister Paul Revere from Lodi? Lets end this thing together. No one else needs to get

hurt.

I want my country back. I want my freedom, Hank said.

What do you want today? Kalil said. What do you need now so we can end this now?

I want to shoot the tax man, Hank said. I want to shoot those idiots who think they can

make me fill out insurance forms and the people at the bank who ask me too many questions. I

want to shoot the people at the DMV who make me wait on line for an eye test so I can get a

license to drive MY car. I want to shoot the people from the electric company who send me a bill

every month and the ladies behind the desk in the doctors office where they make me fill out
 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 26

stupid forms and then make me wait for hours while they sit behind a sliding glass window and

chew gum and gossip about the patients. All these people need to stop pulling at me. I just want

to be left alone.

Luis waited. That guy Kalil was pretty good at talking. At least Luis knew what kind of

crazy he was dealing with, that this was a right wing crazy and not a Black Lives Matter crazy

who was shooting at him. But fuck that guy, Mr. Paul Revere. Everybody has to deal with the

waiting on lines shit. Rite of Passage. You dont get to pick and choose. If you sit in a barn

shooting at me, Im going to hit you with everything Ive got. Tactical response. A zillion cops.

An armored personnel carrier and a bomb carrying robot. Just wait, Mr. Paul Revere, Luis was

thinking. You come out now or we are going to blow your fucking brains out the moment that

the cavalry arrives.

But Kalil wasnt talking now.

Hey Kalil, Luis said. You alright?

There was no answer. All of a sudden Luis realized that he might have shot Kalil, the 911

caller, and that Kalil might be dead and that Luis might just have gunned down an innocent man.

With his left hand. Without aiming and with no way to stabilize his shooting hand. That shit

was fucked up. Damn it to hell. Now there was going to be hell to pay.

You throw down your weapons right now and walk out of there with your hands up or

there is going to be hell to pay, Luis said.

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 27

An instant later Hank walked out of the barn with his .357 Magnum in his shooting hand,

firing at Luis as he was walking. Hank came out of the barn in a blaze of glory, out of the

darkness of the barn and into the brilliant sunlight which blinded him, his left hand stabilizing his

his shooting hand, firing at the voice he could not see.

Luis took Hank down with a single shot to the torso, left upper quadrant, just like he had

been trained to do. Left hand. Not stabilized. From behind the tire of his cruiser. Pretty good

shot left-handed, Luis thought, if he didnt say so himself. Very crazy shit.

Luis stood up slowly and dusted himself off. His right shoulder tore at him but there

wasnt really that much blood. Bet I took a bullet to a bone, Luis thought. But he missed all the

big blood vessels, that right wing bastard. So fuck you, Mr. Paul Revere.

The Luis heard the sirens in the distance. Theyd be turning into Thunder Mountain

Road, Luis thought, and putting the pedal to the metal. The road was dirt but it was wide and

straight. Help is on its way.

Luis walked out from behind his cruiser, his gun still in his left hand. He managed to

bend his right hand at the elbow without moving his shoulder, and could reach his left elbow

with his right hand to stabilize his left arm as best he could. Even so the weight of the gun shook

his left hand as he walked.

 THERE IS PROOF OF GOD, Michael Fine, 28

The shooter was laying in the dust on broken up concrete that had been poured a hundred

years before to make a dry and solid entryway for the barn. Mr. Paul Revere was a white guy,

old, balding, maybe sixty, wearing a dark green shirt and trousers, and there was a dark stain on

his left chest. You couldnt see the 911 caller Kalil from where the shooter lay. No way to

finesse this one. Forensics would pull a bullet from Luiss gun out of the 911 callers body.

Damn it to hell. This was Luis. His bad. There was no way around it. He kicked the body of the

shooter. It was gentle kick, half in anger, and half to see if the shooter was still alive. Nothing.

No response. Luis felt empty when he kicked the guy. The shooter was crazy but he was dead,

and all dead men take something of you with them when they die. All dead men take a piece of

you with them.

Luis turned to go find the Kalils body. The sirens were closer now. Maybe, just maybe,

the 911 guy was still breathing.

Hank opened his eyes, lifted the .357 and fired. He could see the cop clearly now. Left

back. Left upper quadrant. The cop dropped like a stone. The cop never knew what hit him.

Then Hank put the .357 in his mouth and fired again.