That night I didn’t sleep. I sat in Earl’s recliner with his old shotgun across my lap, listening to every creak in the house.
At 11:40, I heard motorcycles.
Not one. Six. Their headlights swept across my living room wall and then went dark, right in my driveway.
My hands shook so bad I could barely hold the gun. I thought this was it. I thought he’d brought friends.
But nobody came to the door. In the morning, I peeked through the curtain. Six men were asleep on bedrolls between their bikes. One was already awake, sitting on my porch steps, drinking coffee from a thermos.
He was big, maybe sixty, with a gray beard down to his chest. When I opened the door with that shotgun, he didn’t even flinch.
“Morning, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll be gone every day by sunup. And we’ll be back every night until it’s safe.”
