Henry screamed.
Momma-bear instincts I didn't even know I had reared up. "Stay away from him!" I shouted and swung my bag as hard as I could. It hit Payslee's head with athunk. Payslee fell, and the train, the conductor seeing the commotion, screeched to a halt a few feet away from where Payslee lay knocked out cold on the tracks.
68
Mace
Henry was clinging to Josie when I arrived at the train park. The train engineer milled around as Otis peppered him with questions.
Susie was on-site loading Payslee into the back of the police car. "The FBI's coming to take her into custody," Susie said, her mouth pursed.
"Are you all right?" I asked my brothers.
"Josie knocked her out,bam," Otis said, miming what had happened.
"I don't know what you have in that bag, ma'am," the train engineer said. "But I sure wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley."
"It's just candy jars," she said with a laugh. "They aren't even broken."
"We make good strong women out here in the rural areas," the engineer said. "You should count yourself lucky, Mr. Svensson." He shook my hand.
Susie gave him the go-ahead to continue on his route, and he climbed up into the cab, blowing the horn as Otis and Henry cheered.
The next few days were spent catching up on work, doing police reports, and trying to nail down the land deal.
"We have to move now," Greg said. "I don't want them to change their minds."
"That's part of why we're having this big Memorial Day cookout," Josie said as she loaded Greg up with boxes of ground beef, hot dogs, and condiments from the car.
"It will foster some goodwill," she said as she followed us into the house with several large boxes of buns.
"You're not going to cook all of this food by yourself, are you?" I asked Josie as I surveyed the boxes in the kitchen.
"Of course she's not!" someone sang out, coming into the kitchen.
"Oh, hey, Chloe," I said, greeting Jack's girlfriend.
"Hey, Chloe?" Josie looked at me, irate. "It's Chloe Barnard, my freaking idol, and you're just like, 'Hey, Chloe, what's up?'"
Chloe ran over to hug her, and Josie burst out crying. "Oh my God, I love you so much! You are an inspiration! I follow you religiously."
Jack walked into the kitchen after his girlfriend. "This is a regular occurrence," he said to me, putting down a huge box of what I assumed from the smell was desserts. "It'll calm down in a second."
"All right, big strong men, I have two carloads of food outside," Chloe said, clapping her hands. "And they're big vehicles, not those prancy little sportscars you boys like to drive. We drive trucks in the Midwest."
"Amen," Josie said.
The driver of the other car, Liam, was standing there, contemplating the packed trunk.
"We had to take out all the seats to fit everything in here," he said as I unwedged a box. It took us a few trips, but we brought everything inside.
"This seems like a lot of work for just two people," I said, surveying the towers of unloaded boxes in the kitchen.
"Wrong answer, dude," Jack said. "Wrong answer." He handed me an apron. "Best get to chopping. Knives are to the left."
"So is the land deal official?" Jack asked as he mixed onions, ground beef, and cheese for extra-special burger patties.
"The foundation is still being formed legally," Greg told him as he sliced onions with neat precision next to me.
