“Montgomery is turning into a damn police state! We’re supposed to have open carry laws, but I was at the Safeway gettin’ gas, wearing my double holster, and I was arguin’ with this snowflake from the Valley had one of those Darwin fish on his little hybrid car, and a cop on the other side of the pump started starin’ at me real suspicious like.”

“Sheriff’s deputy,” Chet corrected him. “They’re not cops.”

“Whatever. This pig started eyein’ me, and I knew he wanted to take my guns. I mean, what’d he think I was gonna do? Shoot the guy? What kind of country is this?”

“You make a good point. Law enforcement is supposed to protect us. But in Montgomery, we need to be protected from them.”

“That’s how the Revolutionary War started, Chet.”

“Thank you, caller. You make a lot of sense.” He dumped line two and reached for the paper on which he’d typed the copy for his first commercial, wishing the station had a more up-to-date computerized system. “We’ll be back right after these words.”

A hand pulled the copy from his hands and Chet jumped. He hadn’t heard anyone come in and thought he’d been alone in the studio. He swiveled around to see the man from the bank, who handed him a new piece of paper.

There’d already been several seconds of dead air. Remembering the terms of his loan, and not wanting the silence to extend for so long that listeners tuned out, he read what he’d been given. “The system is rigged. But if you listen to this show, you know that already. The question is: what are you going to do about it? Vote? Yes, of course. Exercise your Second Amendment right to arm and defend yourself? Certainly. But what else can you do? Well, for one thing, you can make sure that your money is not invested in ways that run counter to your beliefs as an American. That is why I am asking all of my listeners to trust The First People’s Bank with all of your financial needs. The First People’s Bank. The bank that knows what is right.”

Chet pressed a button on his console. “Caller? What’s on your mind?”

He pressed another button to take himself off the air, and, quickly, while the caller made his statement, turned to the banker. He still had no idea how the man had gotten in the studio, especially without him seeing or hearing it, but there wasn’t enough time to go into that. “Is that all you need?” he asked.

The banker shook his head. “No.” He handed Chet a paperclipped set of pages. “We want you to skip your other commercials and read the rest of these during your remaining breaks.”