America 1982-Chapter 488 - 91: How Much Do You Love Him?_3
To go along with the camouflaged vintage military pick-up truck parked in the open-air parking spot, Tommy believed that the voters wouldn’t even need to see Jeff Raven in person; they would only need the first impression of his home through their television sets to imagine that Jeff was absolutely a patriotic and very tough white man.
"This dog is not bad, it looks just like the kind of pet a veteran should have, where did you get it from?" Tommy whistled at the fierce dog and asked.
However, the dog clearly did not appreciate Tommy’s teasing, especially when it saw Tommy, a new face, brazenly walk into the yard, it lowered its body and emitted a threatening growl from its mouth. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖
"Hey, Lance! Calm it down! This is Mr. Tommy Hawk, his charity organization donated two hundred thousand to Jeff, and I guarantee that Mr. Page, who was drinking with you just last night, could hang you and your dog without a facial expression the next second if this dog hurt him," Martin shouted to a black middle-aged man squatting in the front yard, fixing a lawnmower.
The black man stood up, glanced at Tommy, then turned and scolded the dog. The dog immediately closed its mouth, and the man continued squatting down, silent like a mute, fiddling with the lawnmower.
"This is Lance, a homeless Vietnam War veteran that I met during a talk at an elder care facility. The pick-up truck broke down, and Lance helped fix it. I thought it was only fair to give Jeff a job, which would make people think that Jeff was genuinely helping veterans. Currently, Lance is Jeff’s driver, gardener, and pet nanny, and the dog is his too. After he got the job, he stole the dog back from his ex-wife." Martin pulled open the front door of Jeff’s house and gestured for Tommy to enter:
"Welcome to the home of Patriot Jeff Raven."
The entire living room had been transformed. Tommy hadn’t even entered when he saw a white-tailed buck’s head mount on the wall facing him, with a shotgun hung beneath it.
Before Tommy left to help Jeff find fundraising, what hung there was a family portrait of Jeff’s family and his two best friends, all smiling in the photo as brightly as fools.
Stepping into the living room, he noticed that the scenic decorative painting that used to be above the fireplace had also been replaced with an oil painting of a bald eagle, and the line of photo frames on the mantelpiece had also changed contents. Previously, it was photos of Jeff’s family life, but now the most prominent frame contained not a photo, but a sheet of paper with writing in fountain pen:
"As long as this nation, this government, protects our rights, it deserves our dying defense! As long as it is worth defending, every American is willing to form an unbreakable shield with their bodies to protect it! If that day comes, some of us may bleed, some may be captured and tortured, and some may die on the battlefield, but I believe, as long as the freedom-loving citizens with weapons in hand still cherish this nation, we will never be conquered by foreign enemies!"
Below it was a line in smaller print: To the finest soldier of this nation, Jeff Raven.
The signature was Irvin Cohen.
Tommy was familiar with this passage, it was from a speech by Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States and also the first President from the Democratic Party. There was a section about this speech in his high school history class, but he was very unfamiliar with the last signature: "Who is Irvin Cohen?"
"Former Deputy Commander of the Florida National Guard. The paragraph above is real, the small line below, and the line before it is real too. The name Jeff Raven was signed by an employee with a nice handwriting on our behalf. Originally, every soldier serving in the Florida National Guard received a letter like this, and Jeff was no exception. But Jeff never took this seriously; his genuine letter was carelessly left in the glove compartment of his car, and then one time when his son had diarrhea on a trip, he simply used it to wipe his child’s bottom. Because of this, we had to find another letter and changed the name to his," Martin explained on the side.
Tommy even noticed that the pop music cassettes previously in the cabinet had all been replaced with folk songs with straightforward patriotic lyrics.
"Thank God! Tommy, is that you? You’re finally back! Help us—everyone’s gone mad! Everyone!" Jeff’s wife Jessica, upon hearing the conversation between Martin and Tommy in the living room, hurried downstairs, her face a picture of distress, she rushed toward Tommy, grasping his arm, then like finding someone to confide in, she poured out all her grievances that had accumulated during Tommy’s absence.
Jessica was a very virtuous and traditional homemaker. While Jeff worked every day, she took meticulous care of their four children, prepared dinner with great attention, and looked after the family’s daily life. Although taking care of four children as a homemaker was exhausting and Jessica sometimes fantasized while watching TV about dressing up in beautiful and proper attire and attending formal receptions like the women she saw on the screen, it was just a small indulgence in her spare time. When it really happened, she realized that it was not what she wanted at all.
First, the two lovely dogs they had raised for years were suddenly sent away to live with relatives in the countryside. In exchange, they got a large fierce dog that the four children, eager to befriend with dog food, would have to carefully kneel before to avoid being attacked.
