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Ed Parmalee, his wife Moira, his P.R. man Jim Oxendine, and other members of the Tall Tree County movement sat together in the Parmalee living room and watched election returns come in on a color set, hands hovering like fleshy helicopters over a brass tray of cookies and mints.

"I think we need a website," Oxendine offered.

"Yeah," Parmalee remarked. "Double-you, double-you, double-you we lost again by a wider margin dot com."

"Don't be cross, Ed," Moira chided. "It's not Jim's fault."

Well then, whose fault is it? Parmalee silently wondered. As leader of the secession movement, he was watching, for the second election in a row, numbers indicating that the referendum to create Tall Tree County would not make it to ballot, was, in fact, gaining anti-momentum, a term Oxendine often invoked to represent lack of success, a vague measurement of public disapproval or apathy--Parmalee wasn't sure which--an entropy of interest in an independent county that stood for the working farmer and the rural support structure and secession from the monolithic, bureaucratic, gone-soft Grogan County.

Then there he was on the screen, in a taped interview. He had driven home in his Ford pickup after driving clear into the city, the Grogan County seat, which he regarded as the home turf of the enemy--the Grogantuans, he called them all--and in the driving home, the long hour and a half, recalled with dissatisfaction the actual progression of the interview itself. He hated media people. Appreciated their power, but didn't understand it. These were the people who barfed up a never-ending stream of Storm of '97 headlines at the top of the hour. These were the people who distorted, cheated, and cultivated questionable sources then ran around as if they were morally, spiritually, ethically and intellectually superior. These were the people who printed, on the front page above the fold, TALL COUNTY WANNABE BRANDISHES 'MUSKET' in DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN-sized type! How could people read this crap, he marveled. The local papers were becoming more and more like the National Enquirer, and every night of the week there's entertainment programming masquerading as a news magazine.

He was working himself up again.

In the interview, he had made a trivial reference to the founders of the country, how they finally were driven to eschew taxation without representation with the business end of a musket. It was a minor comment in the context of explaining the evolution of dissatisfaction among the rural residents of the county. For chrissakes, man, he had said to the television reporter, "A man can't plant his shovel on his own land anymore without being permitted to death. And try developing your property. You can't do nothing with the parts that have been declared wetlands--he spoke this word like a curse--but you sure's hell have to pay property taxes on it!"

The reporter had poker-faced him, revealing no signal that he understood, empathized, gave a shit. It was going to make a great sound bite though: "When the fathers of our country had enough, they got out their muskets." And that's what showed up on television, and then every media outlet in the state did a second-day story, scavenging from the enterprise work of the television reporter like crows sucking rotten gore from days-old roadkill.

"When the fathers of our country had enough, they got out their muskets," Parmalee's talking head said from the television, and the committee groaned, and the referendum scorecard in the screen's corner rolled again and the percentage next to "Yes"--meaning to defeat the referendum--increased, and that next to "No" decreased.

"Shit," Oxendine said.

"Exactly," Parmalee agreed, for once, with his flack.

Oxendine's cell phone chirped and he flipped it open, aping a planetary explorer with a communicator on Star Trek. Beam me up, Scotty.

"Oxendine," he said into the mouthpiece. "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure, lemme see." He turned to Parmalee: "Mike Devon at the Post wants your reaction to the voting. Just a sec..." he turned his attention back to the caller. "Uh-huh, hold on..." Again to Parmalee: "He's claiming exit polls are showing we're toast. Wants to know whether you'll concede and try again next election. Hold on..."

"Gimme that thing," Parmalee said, snatching the device from Oxendine. "This is Ed Parmalee," he spoke.

"Oh... Mr. Parmalee, thank you for your time, sir."

"Yeah, yeah. You're quite welcome..."

"Sir, the exit polling shows that the referendum for Tall Tree County will fail, sir."

"Yeah, well the night ain't over yet, is it now, son?"

"No, no, you're right, the night isn't over. But I wonder if you have been watching..."

"Of course I been watching..."

"Then you see the numbers, sir, right? You see the numbers?"

What to say? "Mr. Devon, the night is not over, and I have no further comment at this time except to add that we are gaining anti-momentum."

"Anti-momentum, sir?"

"Gaining anti-momentum. That's what I said."

"Can I quote you on that, sir?"

"Why do you even ask?" Parmalee queried the matte-black object in his hand, an article of technology that allowed his own living room to be invaded by these asses from the press. He snapped the loathsome phone shut.

Two weeks after the defeat of the Tall Tree County referendum, the Tall Tree County committee met again in the Parmalee living room to germinate planning for a third run, six months hence.

"We need a plan," Parmalee opened, as if launching into lecture. Instead of speaking further, he held forth a copy of the Post: TALL TREE REFERENDUM 'GAINS ANTI-MOMENTUM,' DIES.

"We need a communication plan," said Oxendine, examining for the dozenth time the raggy newspaper. "We need a plan that sets forth how we will communicate, what our goal is, what our mission and vision are, what our strategies will be, what key messages we will say."

The group was listening to him, rapt.

"What tactics we will use to deploy our key messages. What metrics we will use to adjudge the success of our communication efforts."

"That's easy," Moira exclaimed, as if solving an enigma. "We'll win!"

"We'll win," Oxendine agreed.

"What kinds of things will we do?" asked Scott Frost, who owned and operated the feed-store at Four Corners.

"That's to be decided later," Oxendine said. "We have to start with the vision, the mission. And from that we derive our goals and strategies, and only then do we entertain the notion of the actual things we will do."

"Seems the long way through it," Parmalee said. "We could simplify it right here, right now. The mission and the vision and the goal are the same: an independent Tall Tree County. The strategy is to get everybody in Tall Tree country to think this is the right thing."

"Well, yes, but..." Oxendine began.

"Lemme finish," Parmalee commanded, and went on: "The message is do you wanna be part of Tall Tree County or not, because if you don't, then you gotta be part of Grogan County and pay Grogan County taxes and you can't plant your shovel in Grogan County wetlands even if they're on your property cause Grogan County says so like the rest of the Grogantuans." He paused, face coloring with lack of oxygen, to take a breath.

"Then we get some bumper stickers and signs and get us some t-shirts made and start getting on the phone again. Try harder this time."

"Well," Oxendine said, and the rest of the council began to discern the makings of an intellectual cow-pie-throwing match, "Those are all good ideas, but I think we'd better, as a committee, talk through them all. Really understand what we're about. Yeah, I mean, what are we about? And when we've decided, as a committee, what we're about, then we're ready to tell others, and then we're ready to do the heavy-lifting work."

"Like what I said," Parmalee agreed.

"Like, for instance, I like the idea of having a web site, too," Moira offered, embroiled again in the tactical, in spite of Oxendine's explanation of the proper progression of this type of strategic planning. "I like it a lot."

"I like the bumper sticker idea," Frost offered. "I could hand them out at the store."

Oxendine rolled his eyes. It was going to be a long meeting.

"How about a flag?" asked Tina Frost, Scott's teen-aged daughter. "A flag for Tall Tree County. We could have a contest."

The room fell silent for a moment as each member of the council turned over this idea in his or her head.

"On the website," Moira broke the reverie.

"We could put it on the stickers," the elder Frost noted.

"It's a good idea," Parmalee said, blessing the notion of a Tall Tree County flag. Then he abruptly stood up, an all too clear indication that the meeting was adjourned.

Three months after the pivotal night in which the Tall Tree County committee forsook the machinations of a properly constructed communication plan and jumped right ahead into tactics, specifically, the tactic of holding a flag-design contest, the web site was activated. The URL was www.talltreecounty.org, and clicking on it would bring a home page with a DESIGN OUR FLAG button. The only requirement was that the designer reside in the environs of the proposed Tall Tree County, and that the design have no "underlying questionable content of prurient, lascivious, militantly seditious, or otherwise objectionable content," a script written by Oxendine. Within days, the committee had its first designs.

"Look here, an act of vexillological plagiary!" Oxendine shouted after printing out one submission.

"A what?" asked the teen Frost.

"I'll wash your mouth out with soap!" Moira Parmalee kidded.

"No, see," explained Oxendine. "Vexillological. Latin for the study of flags. I looked it up in research for our project. But this here's a flag that's already been used. I seen it in a book."

"But her note says it's the Liberty Tree flag, used by the rebel navy in the Revolution," read Tina Frost, from the e-mail accompanying the design. "'It's perfectly good for Tall Tree County,' the designer says, 'a green tree on a white field--a Tall Tree,' she says in her note."

Oxendine reached for the paper, examined the design. A green tree centered on a rectangle of pure white. The words AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN above the tree, in black. Pure and simple.

Parmalee came in, fresh from a walk through his barn and a horse-feeding.

"Lookee here, Ed," Oxendine offered, "Lookit this flag submission."

Parmalee accepted the papers, evaluated the design, perused the letter, handed it back. "I don't like it."

The group was stunned. It was the first decent thing they'd seen. "How come?" Oxendine asked tentatively.

"Too religious."

"Too religious?"

"Yeah. Too damned religious."

"But it fits so well with us, I mean, look at the tree. This is heaven, this is God's country, Tall Tree County is God's Country," Oxendine explained, letting passion creep into his diction, an effort to tug at Parmalee's emotional strings.

"It's too religious. People could mistake us for a bunch of whackos."

Oxendine fished in his back pocket for his wallet. Drew it from around his waist, opened it, pulled a one-dollar bill forth, splayed it in his palm for Parmalee.

"Look here," he attempted. "Here's the legal tender of this great country. The father of our country, George Washington, on the front. Like you, the father of a movement. On the back,"--he flipped the bill one handed--"the motto: IN GOD WE TRUST. Good enough for this great country, good enough for me."

Ed Parmalee was unused to being challenged. Especially in front of the entire committee. It burned him.

"Lemme show you somethin'," he said, retrieving the note from Oxendine's hand. "You take the father of our country and you fold him like so," and he made a fold horizontally the length of the bill about a third of the way up the portrait's neck, "Then you fold him like this," and he folded the bill again, back toward the original fold just above the bridge of the first president's nose, "And what you got is you turned the father of our country into a mushroom."

Parmalee looked around the room, expecting laughter, but encountering only stillness.

Oxendine stared down at the twice-folded note in Parmalee's hand, and then slowly looked up at Parmalee's eyes.

"I give up," he said after a while.

"You're fired," Parmalee concluded.

Another week passed, and Parmalee was in his shop reloading 30.06 bullets at a counterpress when the phone rang on the wall next to his head.

"Parmalee," he answered.

"Oh... hello, uh... Mr. Parmalee?"

"That's what I said, yeah."

"I'm sorry, I didn't expect to ring directly through to you."

"Well... I'm standin' here by the phone..."

"Yes, well, us, this is Mike Devon at the Post."

"Good for you Mike Devon at the Post."

"I, um, had a coupla questions for you, sir, regarding the Tall Tree County movement."

Parmalee shrugged, as if the reporter could see him, as if he were right there with him in the shop, reloading too, and poured a measure of gunpowder into brass while balancing the phone between his shoulder, neck and chin. "I guess you're talking to the right guy, then, huh?"

"Yes, well, sir, I hear you canned Jim Oxendine."

"Yep."

"Can you comment on that for me sir? You are confirming that the Tall Tree County movement fired Jim Oxendine?"

"Yep."

"Yes, then, well, any further comment as to why."

"The Tall Tree County movement is headed in a new direction," Parmalee answered, pleased with his glibness, his manipulation of the words and the copy he knew they would produce in tomorrow's editions. A new direction. The opposite of gaining anti-momentum. He decided to add a nugget: "We are moving forward."

"Yes, moving forward... In a new direction."

"That's right."

"OK... One additional question, sir, Mr. Parmalee, I understand that the Tall Tree County movement is designing a flag, a sort of rallying symbol. Can you confirm that, sir?"

"Yes."

"Yes, sir, that's true?"

"Yes, that's true."

"Well, can you tell me anything about it?"

"Not much right now, no. We had a contest. A design won. We're having it made."

"What's it look like...? I mean, do you mind saying?"

Parmalee levered lead into another brass shell. "I'd rather not."

"Any details at all, sir?"

"Well... OK, maybe just one. There's a motto on the flag."

"A motto, sir?"

"A motto."

"What's it say?"

"'Don't tread on me.' Perfect, huh?"

"I guess so, I mean, it's been done you know?"

"Yep. But it's perfect because it's in perfect alignment with our new direction, our moving forward."

"I see. OK. So you really fired Jim, huh?"

"Totally."

"You got an opening for a P.R. man, then?"

"Yeah, why, you interested?"

"I don't know, maybe. Seem to think more and more these days of getting into private practice. Workin' for the paper don't pay shit."

"Why don't you come around to the farm and see me then, sometime, maybe this week."

"Maybe."

"Yeah, I'll show you all about our new direction."

"OK, sure."

"I'm here all the time."

"OK, thanks."

"Fine."

"OK, goodbye."

"Bye bye."

Parmalee pressed another shell. And another. And a cache of ordnance grew, first in his shop, then outgrew his shop, and the munitions mounted, and the new direction moving forward moved forward and negated the gaining of anti-momentum and the flag of Tall Tree County would have a rattlesnake on it, by God, and that was that.

Parmalee loaded his rifle and waited for the reporter.

Brian Ames writes from St. Charles County, Missouri. His work appears in The North American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, The Massachusetts Review, Big Muddy, Night Train and Wisconsin Review. He is the author of story collections Smoke Follows Beauty (Pocol Press, 2002), Head Full of Traffic (Pocol Press, 2004) and Eighty-Sixed" (Word Riot Press, October 2004). He is a fiction editor at Word Riot, and a former editor of Wind Row, Washington State University's literary journal. "Oxendine's Fall" is excerpted from his novel in work, Salt Lick: When Lothar Walked Among Us. Fanmail to: tendollardog@charter.net. Web site: webpages.charter.net/tendollardog/.

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