How Beer Saved the World

Paco’s Home Brew ^{Nancy Jane Moore}

It was almost summer but a north wind blew in that afternoon, bringing a touch of chill. Paco Fernandez fired up his wood-burning stove, likely for the last time until fall. No matter how many times his daughter-in-law told him their solar panels provided cleaner heat, he still liked a wood fire.

Tonight his daughter-in-law and son had gone into Ontario for dinner and a movie, leaving his eleven-year-old grandson, Diego, in his care. Diego aimed his mobile at the stove to get vid to go with the interview of his grandfather he was doing for school. “Abuelo,” the boy said, “How come you like wood fires so much?”

“Just smell it, hijito. It smells like the forest, like the great outdoors.” The old man took a sip of his beer. Home brew, but as good as the best up in Portland or Seattle, his son always said.

“But Mama says…” the boy began.

“Your mama is right,” Paco said, “but a little fire every once in awhile won’t hurt anything much. This is a good stove and it doesn’t take much to heat this little place; it’s not so big as your house.”

Paco’s cabin was in back of the old farm house where Diego and his parents lived a few miles from town. They had enough acreage for good money crops of potatoes and onions and enough hops to keep them in home brew.

“Anyway, it takes me back.”

The boy remembered his assignment. “Tell me about how things were when you and Abuela first came to Cascadia,” he said.

“It wasn’t called Cascadia back then,” Paco said. “That was before the United States broke up. It was just Oregon. Your abuela—rest her soul—and I worked our way up through California, picking spinach, strawberries, whatever anyone wanted harvested.”

“Why didn’t you stay in Mexico?”

“More than once we asked ourselves that, mi hijo. Lots of people here didn’t want us. But people were starving….” He stopped suddenly. “Did you hear someone outside?”

“Just the wind, Abuelo.”

Something banged—a car door or maybe someone throwing something into the bed of a pickup. “There’s definitely someone out there. You sit here. I’m going to go look.”

Paco picked up his flashlight and stepped out of the front door. Several men in combat fatigues were standing in the driveway, each with some kind of weapon slung over his shoulder. He started to ask what they were doing, then thought the better of it and switched off the flashlight.

Too late. They had already seen him. “Hey old man,” one of them yelled. “We’ve come to take our property back.”

“It’s not your property,” Diego yelled. The boy had come to the door behind him, mobile still in hand.

“Ssh,” Paco said, but that was another thing that came too late.

The men were close to the cabin now, shining their own flashlights onto Paco and the child. “Shit, it’s more Mexicans. Them people took over all this country when they run us out.”

“We’re Cascadians,” Diego said.

“Quiet, child,” Paco said. He wanted to yell at the men himself, but unlike Diego, he knew they were trouble.”

“You’re Communist Mexicans is what you are and we’re here to get rid of the likes of you,” the man said. He raised his gun.

Paco dropped to the ground on top of Diego as the man started to fire. Bullets sprayed all of the room. Paco felt blood pouring down his face.

“Jesus Christ, Hank. You just killed an old man and a kid,” one of the other men said.

“Just Mexicans.” Hank shrugged. “We can move in now.” He stepped over Paco and walked over to the table. “Hey, they got beer here.” He picked up Paco’s glass and downed the rest of it. “Man, that’s good stuff. How come these Mexicans got good beer and all we get is rat piss?”

“Because we’re living in Mormon country now,” a third man said. “We move back up here, we can get good beer again.”

“Right on,” said Hank. “Let’s look around and see if they got more beer.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” the first man said. “We weren’t supposed to kill nobody. The colonel is going to be pissed.”

“The colonel can go fuck himself,” Hank said. “Aha. Beer” He pulled the small keg out of the refrigerator.

“Come on, Hank. We gotta get out of here,” the third man said.

Hank snorted again. But he let the others drag him to the truck.

Only after he had heard them peel out did Paco dare move. He sat up slowly, blinded by blood in his eyes. Scalp wound, he thought. “Diego? Hijito?”

“I’m here, Abuelo. But my arm hurts.”

The old man wiped the blood from his eyes with one hand and saw the hole in the child’s arm. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around the boy’s arm, for all the good it would do. And then he picked up the child’s mobile and called for help.

After he disconnected he realized the mobile had caught the whole thing on vid.

Verity Landsdottir, prime minister of Cascadia, closed her tablet and sighed.

“That vid is not going to get any better no matter how many times you look at it,” said her companion, a woman in her eighties who sat in a rocking chair near the window, knitting.

“I know, Mom,” Verity said. “It’s just so hard to believe people act like that.” She got up and walked over to the window. It was a sunny day, giving her a perfect view of Mt. Rainier to the southeast.

Her mother snorted. “At least the thug was a lousy shot and the people aren’t dead. It could be much worse.”

“It could be a whole lot better. There have been a dozen similar incidents near Ontario, and other people have been hurt, some badly. We’ve got to do something about it, but outside of sending soldiers out there to beef up border security, I can’t figure out what. I don’t even know if it’s some sneaky trick by the Deseret government or just a bunch of punks.”

“You’ll figure it out,” her mother said. The resemblance of the two women was obvious. Both had brown skin—Verity’s a shade lighter due to the genetic influence of her other mother—and thick hair, though the mother’s hair was almost white and cut very short, while the daughter’s was long and black. Verity’s mothers had been among the radicals that led Cascadia to secede when the United States began to fall apart. Landsdottir was an adopted name that reflected their politics more than their heritage; neither was Scandinavian.

A young man opened the office door. “Excuse me, ma’am. The public safety and defense ministers are here.”

The young man—Verity’s administrative assistant—smiled at the older woman. “Afternoon, Miss Jessica.”

Jessica Landsdottir nodded.

A lanky man and a petite woman—Rob Allen, the minister of public safety, and Emily Harrison, minister for defense—followed the aide into the room. They gave polite hellos to Jessica and arranged themselves around a conference table made from a highly polished cross section of a limb from an old-growth sequoia cut down by vandals during the shaky years when Cascadia first declared its independence. Another cross section from the trunk of the ancient tree was used in the official cabinet room.

“Well, we know who the shooter is,” Rob said. “We ran the DNA he obligingly left on the beer glass. Turns out he is from here, just like he said on the vid. Henry Dawson. He lived out near Ontario until he got arrested for a serious aggravated assault. His father bailed him out and they skipped out to Idaho, which was pretty much ungoverned back then. We didn’t have any luck trying to get him back.”

“We knew there were some disgruntled extremists out there, but that doesn’t explain why they decided to do these raids now, unless someone is stirring them up,” Verity said.

“Someone is stirring them up. I’ve got some more news, and while I’d like to take credit for it, it’s pure serendipity. About mid-morning, a woman came into the police station in Ontario seeking help. She’d been beaten badly.” He tapped the screen of his tablet to send copies of the picture to the others.

“Damn,” said Emily. “She looks like she was in a war.”

“She says she’s Mrs. Dawson.”

Both women made faces. “Mrs.” was not a title used in Cascadia.

“Well, that’s how they do things in Deseret and she seems to be happy enough with it. Anyway, this guy Dawson came back from his raid stinking drunk, woke her up for sex, and beat her when she resisted him. She slipped away when he passed out, said this time was the last straw. According to what she told our local authorities, some guy the men call the colonel has been coming around and giving them instructions on where to go and what to do. According to her, this colonel ‘wasn’t one of them’. From the interview notes”—he clicked on another file—“I gather he was probably somebody official from Deseret. She said he didn’t wear a uniform, despite the title.”

Jessica spoke up. “Those mountain men always liked to say they were independent, but it was always easy for someone outside to rouse them.”

“Mountain men?” Verity asked.

“That’s what we called them back in the day,” Jessica said. “The people who believed all that ultra-right crazy survivalist stuff. Homegrown terrorists. They were in these little militias and had hordes of guns and didn’t want anything to do with the cooperative society we were building in Cascadia.”

Emily read the transcript. “From this it sounds like there’s a whole community of Miss Jessica’s mountain men just across the border. A lot of them who lived in eastern Cascadia andv moved into the Idaho mountains after our independence. But Southern Idaho is part of Deseret now. I don’t see that kind of people being willing to act as pawns of the Deseret government, though.”

“Except that, according to Mrs. Dawson, Deseret has promised them some homesteads in our eastern territory if they’ll help to take it back,” Rob said.

“Oh. Do you suppose they mean it?” Emily asked.

“Maybe,” Verity said. “Or maybe they’ve got something else in mind. Either way, now we know we’re dealing with Deseret and not just a bunch of thugs.”

“It’s not enough for a declaration of war.” Emily had served in the military during Cascadia’s many battles to preserve its independence and was not inclined to go to war lightly.

“No,” said Verity. “War is not the answer, whatever some of the more excitable people in the Assembly have to say.” Several of the younger members had called for invasion of Deseret on the ground that they were harboring terrorists.

Rob nodded his head in agreement.

“Let’s not release this information just yet. We need to see what else we can find out.”

“Well, I’ve got one more piece of information from Mrs. Dawson that might be of use. She says her husband is planning to cross the border again and go back to the Fernandez home. She heard him talking to his friends about it when he first got back, before he beat her up. He figures there’s more good beer there and he should go get it. If we can nab him there, we might get some information out of him.”

“His taste for that beer is proving to be mighty useful,” Verity said. “I think we might be able to set a nice trap for him.”

Rob grinned. “I’ve got some folks who are just waiting for the chance.”

“Meanwhile, we need to call up the volunteers and increase the number of soldiers on the border up by Ontario.”

“I’ve already started on that,” Emily said. “Though it’s possible that they’re using that region as a blind and are planning something elsewhere.”

“Yes, but that’s the only place on our border with them that has significant population. And I don’t think they want an all-out war. My guess is they’re looking for some way to put us in a bad position, so that we’ll give in on their petition to let them transport stuff to Longview for shipping at very favorable rates. Being landlocked is killing their economy and they don’t like paying our truckers to take it to our port.”

“I hope you’re not going to agree to that,” Emily said. “They don’t just want access; they want the port. If we let them drive across our territory, they’ll find a way to take it—or at least, they’ll try to.”

“Which is why we’ve been saying no,” Verity said. “They must have a plan that will put us in a position where we have no choice but to say yes.” She paused a minute. “Emily, I want as many troops as we can get in the Ontario area, but I think it might be best if Deseret thinks we’ve only sent a few people down there. Can we do that?”

Emily grinned. “Leave it to me. We know who most of their spies are; we can feed them some juicy false info.”

Verity stood up. “We need to move fast. We can’t keep Ms.—um, Mrs.—Dawson under wraps for long. And it’s hard to keep troop movements quiet.”

As the two ministers stood to go, Jessica said, “And don’t forget the beer. It shows your mountain men aren’t real Deseret people. Real Deseret people don’t drink any alcohol, the more fools they. Two to one the terrorists are just pawns. You can use the beer.”

Verity walked over to the window as the door closed behind the others. “Mom, do you have any ideas on how we can use the beer?”

“Not yet. But if you’ll take me out for a pint of stout, I’ll try to think of a few.”

Verity hesitated. “Okay. But just one pint. You remember what the doctor said.”

“Doctors, bah.”

Verity raised her eyebrows.

“O.K. Just one. But take me to that new brew pub down near Elliot Bay. If I can’t have more than one, I want something very good.”

“Sure, you can use our place to set a trap,” Paco Fernandez told the Malheur County police officials. “We want that son of a bitch.”

His son nodded in agreement. Diego was still in the hospital—his mother with him—but they expected him home tomorrow. The bullet had broken two bones in his arm.

“I’d like to come with you, though,” Paco said.

The lieutenant in charge started to shake his head and Paco’s son put a hand on his arm. “Papi….”

“I don’t mean I want to be on the scene, dealing with those punks,” Paco said. “I’m too old for that and anyway my head still aches. But you’re going to have an observation post nearby, right? That’s where I want to be. I want to see you take those guys.”

His son threw up his hands in resignation, but the lieutenant said, “I guess you’ve earned the right to do that.”

Today there were clouds blocking the view of Mt. Rainer.

Verity liked the new vid at the Fernandez house so much she watched it twice straight through. Hank Dawson had shown up at the house about midnight with another man and a teenaged boy. The vid showed him breaking the lock on the front door of the main house and coming across a stash of beer in both small kegs and bottles in a couple of old refrigerators in a room off the kitchen.”

“We had to provide the beer and the extra refrigerator,” Rob explained. “The Fernandezes don’t make beer in that kind of quantity and anyway it seemed better to use crap beer than their good home brew.”

As the two men and the boy came out of the house, each one loaded down with beer, a half dozen police officers appeared with guns pointed at their heads. The boy dropped his load, but stopped midway toward reaching for the gun slung on his back and put his hands up. It was all over quickly.

“Well, they’re thugs, but not fools,” said Verity. “Have they revealed anything interesting?”

“Outside of a stream of abuse, the men aren’t saying anything. But the boy has had some interesting information.”

“Is he old enough to be interviewed?” Verity asked. She badly wanted information, but Cascadian law was adamant about protecting juveniles. It was one of the principles their founders had considered important.

“He’s Dawson’s son, meaning he’s also Mrs. Dawson’s son. Our people brought her in for the interview. She told him, ‘Tell them what your idiot father is up to,’ and after a bit of teenage posturing and face-saving, he started doing just that.” Rob clicked on his tablet. “Here’s the interview and the transcript. The most important information is toward the end.”

Both women skimmed down the transcript. “Fifteen mountain men squads?” Emily said. “And they’re all going to do raids on June 23?”

“Five nights from now, all in places in Malheur County, as near as we call tell. They figure the police can’t respond fast enough.”

“Well, except for this last raid, which we knew about, that’s been true. Of course, they’ve usually targeted rural areas. Are they going to do that again?”

“The boy didn’t know what the targets were, except that his dad’s group was going in near the Fernandez place, aiming at another homestead out there. Probably the colonel has kept the information on a need-to-know basis.”

Emily frowned. “That’s a lot of territory. It’s going to be hard to defend if we don’t know where they’re coming in, even if we know when.”

“True enough,” Rob said. “We certainly don’t have enough police officers out there.”

“I don’t see any alternative to putting troops all along the border,” Emily said. “That will protect the civilians.”

“But it will make it clear to Deseret that we know what’s going on,” Rob said. “They’ll just change their plans. And we can’t keep troops there forever.”

“Still, we can’t leave our people unprotected. Someone could get killed this time.”

“You’re right,” said Verity. “Much as I’d like to do something that lets us figure out the whole plan, we have to protect our citizens.”

Rob looked glum, but he nodded.

“Don’t forget about the beer.”

Verity jumped. In her focus on the situation, she had forgotten her mother was in her usual corner.

Jessica put down her knitting and got shakily to her feet. “Those mountain men love their beer. Why don’t you send them some?”

Verity stared at her mother. Send the thugs some beer? And then she smiled. “A jailbreak,” she said.

The other two looked as if they thought both she and her mother were crazy.

“We let Dawson and his friend break out of jail. Transfer them to another facility—maybe say they’re taking them to Portland or up here—and have the guards act either venal or stupid. And in the place where they escape, have a beer truck sitting there, just waiting to be stolen.”

Rob’s eyes lit up. “Put some GPS receivers on all the kegs. Figure Hank will want to sell them to the other mountain men.”

“We’ll be able to follow their every move, so we can have police and military in the right spots when they come across. Nab them quick.” Emily grinned. “We’ve got enough copters for some fast deployments out there. We’ll look all powerful.”

“It’ll stop it for now,” Verity said. “And we should be able to use it to embarrass Deseret sufficiently to keep anything else from happening for the foreseeable future. But I’d still like to know what they’re up to. I don’t think they’re encouraging mountain men to harass our people just for the fun of it.”

“Could be they’re trying to get rid of them. They must cause problems for their government, too. After all, those mountain men really don’t subscribe to the Mormon faith.”

Verity shook her head. “I think they’d just arrest them all, if that was the case. They’re bound to have grounds. No, there’s something else going on.”

“I was afraid even those punks would see through the plan,” Rob said. “It was one thing to have a guard pretend to sympathize with them—we decided that was the best way to let them ‘escape’ without anybody getting hurt—but having a beer truck up the block with the keys in it seemed awfully obvious. But apparently they just thanked their lucky stars.” He sent the vid to Verity and Emily.

“And has he been distributing the beer?” Verity asked as she watched the vid show the two men speed down the street, letting an empty keg and a ladder clatter to the street in their hurry to be off.

“He has. Kegs and cases have gone to 27 different households so far. We’ve got some voice transmitters as well as GPS on most of them, which is giving us some of the raid spots in advance.”

“I hope that’s all the raiders.”

“We’ll have some troops ready for fast deployment in case we don’t have them all,” Emily said.

“People living out there have been put on alert,” Rob said. “We’re getting quite a few false alarms, but it will help us make sure we get all the raiders.”

“There’s a bigger concern,” Emily said. “Deseret seems to be beefing up its military presence along our border. I just got the latest reports this morning. Most of them are up near Ontario, though they also have some along the more deserted regions to the south.”

“Do we have enough troops in all those areas if they decide to cross over?”

“Yes, but civilians could get caught in the cross-fire if there’s an actual invasion. I’d like to evacuate the area.”

Verity shook her head. “There isn’t time. And we can’t do it without putting them on the alert. If they figure out we’re expecting this raid, they’re going to postpone it. We need to catch them in the act if we’re going to put a stop to it.”

Emily sighed. “I thought of that, too, but I hate leaving the people there if we’re actually going to end up at war.”

“Hauling in their mountain men and bringing our soldiers up to the border should prevent an invasion,” Verity said, trying to sound more hopeful than she felt.

After the others were gone, she turned to her mother. “I never thought I’d put civilian lives in danger for strategic reasons. That’s not what you all wanted to see when you began the movement for Cascadia.”

“Leaders always have to make hard choices,” Jessica said. “When I was young, I thought they were all corrupt. Now, though, I know that sometimes the options are between bad and worse.”

“Mama Alice wouldn’t have done it,” Verity said.

“Alice was a thorough-going anarchist, much as I loved her. She wouldn’t have had your job for a minute. And if she’d been involved in this at all, she’d probably have poisoned the beer.”

Verity smiled, but she didn’t stop worrying.

The night of the 23rd, Verity sat in her office, accompanied by several aides. Rob and Emily were in Ontario, coordinating with the troops and local police. She missed them; all the aides were too deferential.

She missed her mother, too, but Jessica was too old for all night vigils.

A phone buzzed. One of the junior aides grabbed it. “Yes?” He handed it to her. “Mr. Allen, ma’am. With good news.”

“We just took custody of the last group, Verity. No casualties, though we’ve got seven people wounded—four invaders, three of our officers, none of them life-threatening. No civilians, thank all that’s holy. There were five shoot-outs, but we managed to grab the rest without a fight.”

Thank all that’s holy, Verity thought. “Excellent news. Are we sure there’s nobody else out there?”

“Nothing else is moving on the GPS, though we’ve still got patrols out looking for movement and we’re still fielding calls. The military has moved most of the troops up to the border. I don’t think… just a second.”

Verity heard him talking to someone else, but she couldn’t make out the words. She did hear a snort of laughter as he came back on the call. “This is our lucky night. One of the men we’ve rounded up appears to be the mysterious colonel. He’s not carrying papers, but one of the thugs we arrested called him by that title. If he’s who we think he is, that’s going to tie all this back to Deseret. We’re running a trace on him now.”

Verity clicked off only to have her aide hand her another phone. “The president of Deseret, ma’am.”

“Mr. President.”

“Miss Landsdottir. I hope you won’t think I’m meddling in things that are none of my business, but I understand you have some serious trouble down in your southeastern region, right along our expanded border. I’ve got a few troops in the area; we could send some people over to help you deal with the troublemakers.”

That was it, the purpose of the whole thing. Send the mountain men in to wreak havoc and then offer—as a “friendly” gesture—to get rid of them. And, probably, leave their troops in the region to protect against future raids.

“Why that’s very kind of you, Mr. President, but we’ve got the whole situation under control. I understand all the terrorists have been taken into custody. All.”

“Well that’s very fine, ma’am, very fine. If you’re sure. We could just run a sweep through the area, to make sure.”

“Not to offend you, sir, but if anyone else from Deseret steps across the border, I fear our citizens and our soldiers are going to assume bad intentions. These terrorists have upset quite a few people.”

“Of course, of course. But….”

“You should know, Mr. President, that we’ve also arrested a man who appears to be one of your military officers.”

“Nonsense.”

“Perhaps he’s a rogue, then. We’re investigating. But since the invasion came from your side of the border, we are understandably a little concerned about how it came about.”

“I can assure you we knew nothing about it,” the president said. “When the people of Idaho joined up with us, we ended up with a lot of these semi-civilized folks. I’m sure you’ve got some people like them. They’re hard to control.”

“And easy to stir up,” Verity said. “Mr. President, I regret that this episode is going to make any future negotiations between us more difficult. You must understand that my people are deeply suspicious of your country right now. I don’t think we’ll be able to hold any trade talks.”

“But Miss Landsdottir…”

“Thanks for your concern, sir.” She hung up.

The security division had an extensive file on the colonel. Deseret continued to call him a rogue in public, but through private channels they negotiated for his release. So far they hadn’t offered anything worthwhile, but Verity thought she might eventually get something useful. The colonel was a thorough professional, according to the military investigators who questioned him; it was unlikely that they’d get any valuable information from him.

Several weeks after the raid, Verity went down to Ontario for a ceremony honoring the officers who had captured the raiders. She pinned medals on those injured in the fights, warmly praised everyone, and honored the various citizens who had been attacked.

“We were most fortunate that the excellent beer brewed by the Fernandez family attracted the attention of these terrorists,” Verity said, “because that gave our police and military the information they needed to fight back effectively. Once we knew who they were, we were able to trace them and figure out where they would strike next.”

“My abuelo’s beer saved the world,” Diego yelled.

Everyone laughed.

“Well, it helped save our small piece of it,” Paco Fernandez said.