Invasion Day: An Oral History of the Veech War by Micah Gurley (good books for high schoolers .TXT) 📕

Oh yes, Well, okay, he didn't actually walk in. Randal and his boys carried him in. He was covered from head to foot in blood and mud. He had cuts from his face down to his legs. We laid him down and began to scrape away the dirt and blood to look for all the bleeders. There were a lot of them. Most were superficial, but he had a three-inch puncture wound in his back that nicked his kidney. We patched him up, like most of the others, but I couldn't just put him back out there. I arranged for him to lay down near our tent, and he recuperated a few days there. (She looks up at Joseph.) Now you may finish, Mr. Troubadour.

Joseph: Ah, what? Anyway, our trip out of camp didn't go as planned. We decided to head west, as we figured it was away from the fighting. We woke up early, trying to get a good head start on the day, and we walked for hours, dodging people and families. Most people didn't pay us any mind, but we finally ran into one of the gangs. There were five men, all wearing a red armband, standing between two groups and directly in our way.

I won't bore you with all details of the fight. To be honest, I don't remember all of it. Desperation, that's what it came down to, and we still would have lost if some of the surrounding people hadn't jumped in to help us. We weren't the only people that gang messed with. I remember coming to, like when you wake up suddenly. Yeah, that doesn't sound right... anyway, it was ugly. Death by blades isn't a pretty thing. I remember looking down at the man I fought with, his dead eyes staring at the sky. I still see them. Then, I only remember waking up and seeing the beautiful face of a nurse. I never did get her name.

Joseph exhales air as Carol punches him.

Joseph: I'm kidding. It was this passive lady, as you might have guessed. The war and this camp were terrible, but I found so much.

What happened with Randal?

Joseph: He's our neighbor and the godfather to our kids.

Poke Johnson

Oklahoma City

On 4th street in downtown Oklahoma City, across from the hospital, stands a three-floor parking garage. Once packed with commuters' vehicles, the garage now serves the last stable in the city, which just seven years ago had dozens.

Poke Johnson is a cowboy nearing his 79th birthday. Despite being shorter than average and thin of frame, Poke looks as if he walked right out of a western novel. He wears a worn-down cowboy hat that sits pushed up on his head as if standing at attention. His faded flannel shirt seems thin enough to be sold as linen, and his blue jeans are so caked in dirt that it looks like he's a walking dust storm. He has a gravelly voice that comes out like a whip.

Come to see a man about a horse? (He laughs, then coughs.) You get it, son? It's a classic. Come on over here while I rub down Shirley.

He walks to an Appaloosa that is black with large white spots all over. Poke picks up a brush and starts brushing her down.

She's an old girl, just as calm as a summer afternoon. She was a popular one on account of all those city folks not knowin' how to ride. She's going out to pasture soon. Her days are about over, and it's time for her to relax.

Where will she go?

She'll go over to the James Stewart golf course for the next little while, course it ain't no golf course no more. The grass is right over there, and its sprinklers still work, so we're able to water the grass, and the horses like it too. We've got a few hundred over there now, about full up. After that, well, I reckon we'll see.

I've heard there are too many horses now, and they don't know what to do with them all?

There ain't too many of nothin' ! Now that all the folks are getting their fancy flying machines and new technology, they forget about how they got around for all those years during the war. Bunch of ungrateful, no-account hard cases! And yeah, I've heard about some of their solutions. You come around here aimin' to put any of these beauties down, I'll put 'em in boot hill, and that's a fact.

How long have you been working in this stable?

It's a livery, son! But that's okay. I reckon one word is good as another. I've been here since the beginning, I guess. Them rascals came on down and started causing trouble. Course, OKC survived fine, except for the criminal sort that got ideas, but the locals put them down in no time. Oklahoma ain't no place to be actin' foolish and robbin' people and such. No sir.

Well, wasn't long before people ran out of gas 'cause the refineries stopped working. Even if they hadn't stopped working, weren't no truckers movin' around then, and then you got all the headquarter folks who died in them big cities. Nobody to do the books, nobody to tell the real workers where to go or what to do. Everything came to a stop. Oh, the army still had gas reserves somewhere, but they weren't about to pass 'em on to us.

I came to town to check up on a few supplies a few months after Invasion Day, and the city seemed deserted. The small problems – those yahoos causing trouble – were gone, and the town was quiet. I saw a few people walking here and there, but that was about it. I went to fill my tank, and nobody had gas. I had enough to get back to my ranch but just enough.

I got my hands on all I could, food that is, which really wasn't mu ch. I think I got a small bag of rice