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Meeting the neighbors

All of this cross talk has put a strain on Prairie Chapel Road, a winding strip of hot asphalt from Crawford eight miles north to the president's ranch. Normally, it's a quiet, though sometimes busy, stretch. But Ms. Sheehan's stay at "Camp Casey" has drawn a crowd and stirred up the neighborhood.

So far, it's been mostly polite, if often frustrating, exchanges among the protesters, the neighbors and the McLennan County sheriff's deputies, sworn to keep the peace.

Wednesday night, Jerriann Mattlage, who lives near the camp said she asked some of the protesters to move their cars parked in the ditch along her pasture. And they did.

"If they feel like doing what they want to do, that's fine," Ms. Mattlage said. "But I don't think this is the place to do it. This is our home out here."

Instead, she suggested the protesters rent space in Crawford or somewhere else with toilets and other facilities for the gathering crowds.

She's sorry about Ms. Sheehan's loss, she said. But she added pointedly: "There's no draft. Nobody has to go to the Army, or the Navy or whatever."

And she said she knows her neighbors are just as annoyed as she is about all the congestion at the fork in the road because "they were all over here, very upset."

Since Ms. Sheehan arrived over the weekend, sheriff's deputies have politely but firmly pushed the protesters off the median triangle of grass into the nearby ditches and sent their cars and trucks down a side road.

Meanwhile, protesters have begun planting small, white crosses in the ditch in honor of military personnel killed in Iraq. And donations have begun flowing in, injecting new life to the Crawford Peace House, founded by Dallas-area activist John Wolf, and financing other costs.

Thursday morning, the deputies showed up at the camp with a pair of health inspectors, who poked around for a while, then left. The protesters have repeatedly warned of imminent arrests, but so far there have been none.

Today, Mr. Bush plans to attend a Republican fundraising lunch at a neighbor's ranch, which could spark some angry salutes should he pass by the protesters. And there was no indication from the White House that he planned to change his schedule, or meet again with Ms. Sheehan.

Mr. Bush met with her and other family members last year at Fort Lewis, Wash., during one of his regular, private gatherings with the families of the fallen. And Ms. Sheehan was quoted afterward in Vacaville's newspaper, The Reporter, saying "we haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled." But she said her family had decided then not to confront the president out of respect.

In later appearances, and particularly lately in Crawford, she's been very strident in her demands to meet again with the president.

"Why did George Bush kill my son?" she asked Thursday. "What was the noble cause that my son died for?"

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