Free Republic

Closing the Borders of HardyvilleBy Claire WolfeThe hubub was horrible. And somehow, also surprisingly unHardyvillian. "We gotta keep out those people!" "Yeah. Their kind don't understand our traditions of freedom. They got no business comin' here and ruinin' it for the rest of us." "They want all our benefits without paying the price." "Close the borders!" Not the kind of talk you usually hear in Hardyville. Here, people are pretty much accepted on their own merits, and Borders is just a chain of book stores in far-off Big Cities. But that day at the All-Hardyville Real ID Emergency Meeting...

Hardyville Taxesthe TaxmanBy Claire Wolfe Each year on April 15, Hardyville's Leading Citizens, plus a few stragglers with nothing else to do, head up to the pet cemetary for a solemn moment of remembrance. The thing they're remembering didn't actually happen on April Fools Day. It happened in March. During the Blizzard of Ought-two, to be exact. That storm shut the town down for darned near a week. It was at the beginning of the storm that a taxman -- yes, an actual IRS man -- came wandering into town. He was the new kind of IRS man. All brimming...

So I'm driving out of town when I see the strangest thing. There's Nat's old Dodge pickup parked at the side of the road. He's roped his battered shooting bench in the bed. And there sits Nat himself with his spotting scope nearby, his deer rifle at the ready, and a six-pack of Moose Drool beer. He's peering over the rifle down the long, empty stretch of road that leads to Hardyville. Naturally, I have to stop and find out what the heck is going on. "Climb up here and spot for me," he says. "Er ... spot what?" "License...