CLAY COUNTY, Ala. - There are only two towns, five miles apart, in this county. The nearest Wal-Mart is 35 miles away, but few complain because life is a bit slower. Families don't have much to spare, but everybody volunteers. And joining the National Guard and military reserves is as much a way of life as turkey hunts and Wednesday night Bible study.
Lately, though, Clay County is on edge. The sun comes up and the televisions click on to the news as people brace for a war they know is coming. They just don't know when.
Robbie Lett has consolidated all the bills and helped his wife put her will in order. Julie Lett is making videotapes so her baby girls won't forget what she looks like when she goes.
When Anita Barrett isn't frying chicken at Ms. Anita's Cafe, she is sewing stripes on Walter Kidd's dress uniform. Kidd, whose wife is a waitress at the cafe, is doing 30 sit-ups every morning and trying to lose 20 pounds.
Buddy Griffin has made sure his wife has power of attorney. Jarred Griffin is getting used to the idea of high school graduation without his dad.
The Tru-Wood Cabinet Co. is breaking in a new lead man for the frame department. The Lineville High School principal is looking for a seventh-grade social studies teacher, preferably one who can also coach softball.
A police chief is figuring out a way to manage without one of his five officers. The town of Ashland could lose its mayor. And the Lineville Baptist choir is wondering how it will sound minus one tenor.
As the nation ponders a war in Iraq, people are preparing for a disruption of their lives in neighborhoods across America, but perhaps nowhere more so than here.
Alabama leads the nation in National Guard enlistments per capita. By the same measure, Clay County, which contains the twin towns of Ashland and Lineville, sent about 1 percent of its 13,000 residents to the Persian Gulf war 12 years ago, a higher percentage than any county in the United States.
"The National Guard is real big in Alabama," says Jim Luker, principal of Lineville High School, which could lose as many as three teachers to a reserves call-up. "When you take 25 people out of a town this small, you really miss them. And when you take one teacher, 100 kids feel the effects."
A feeling of foreboding permeates Clay County. Nearly 59,000 reserve forces have been mobilized nationally. Units throughout Alabama have received their orders, and Clay knows its time is coming.
Headquartered here are the 128th Medical Company and the 1200th Battalion, which handles water purification, the only one of its kind in the state. Both services are considered vital to a war effort - particularly now, when the nation's pared-down armed forces depend more on reservists than ever.
In addition, countless residents are attached to units in nearby counties. While Clay County's two units await deployment, a few of the county's reservists attached to units elsewhere have received their orders.
"We've downsized the active army. Once it could fight one, two, three major crises at one time. Not anymore," says Adjutant Gen. Mark Bowen, commander of Alabama's National Guard forces. He grew up in Lineville and worked for years as a pharmacist. He predicts Clay County will be asked to serve again. "Last time, we sent every one of 'em. We cleaned out the whole bunch."
These are not active-duty military towns. People here have civilian lives, but they put everything down when Washington calls, leaving colleagues, neighbors and families to fill in the gaps.
They join to be patriotic, they say, and because the extra pay helps make ends meet.
In small communities such as Lineville and Ashland, which have a combined population of 4,300, a war takes people of standing, people who are hard to get along without - such as Ashland Mayor Norman McNatt, who wears other hats as a member of the water and sewer board and a major in the National Guard.
The citizens of Ashland call their mayor for everything from the recent spate of burglaries to a barking dog. McNatt has about a year left in his term and wants to run again, but if he's deployed, he'll have two choices: resign or take what could be a long leave of absence.
Hardly a day goes by when McNatt or Bowen doesn't bump into somebody who wants to know when. It broke Bowen's heart when 17-year-old Jarred Griffin, who works after school at the Ashland Pharmacy, asked him if his father, a full-time lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, would be gone for his June graduation. Bowen avoided confirming what seemed likely. Less than a week later, Martha Griffin stopped by the pharmacy with tears in her eyes to tell her son that his father had been called up. "That was a bad day," Jarred says.
Finding stand-ins in a place this remote is a challenge, particularly for jobs such as law enforcement and teaching, which explains the mess on Principal Luker's desk. He had spent much of the day trying to find a replacement for Shannon Thornbury, the seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher who also coaches football and softball. A sergeant 1st class in the Army Reserve, Thornbury, 31, was one of the few in town with orders in hand. He shipped out last month.
Leaving his job is not Thornbury's greatest hardship, however. His infant son needs surgery in Boston for a defective heart. Bowen offered to pull some strings, but Thornbury refused, deciding to take emergency leave from his unit when the time comes.
"That's not what I signed up to do," he says of delaying his deployment. "When duty calls, you make arrangements."
Patriotism often flourishes in Southern towns, and Ashland and Lineville are no exception. But the gung-ho spirit that prevailed before the gulf war seems tempered now.
"You don't know what kind of environment you are going to, if you are ever coming back home or what," says Kidd, a sergeant 1st class with 24 years in the National Guard. He is also lead man in the frame department at Tru-Wood, where he supervises 12 workers, including his wife, Penny, 33.
Kidd, 42, has been breaking in a man to replace him at the factory, but filling his shoes at home will be harder.
The sacrifice is about to get tougher, which brings up the question: Why stay in? "Patriotism, Southern culture, second income," Bowen says. "This is a poor county in a poor state."
The National Guard provides a lot - scholarships, stipends for training one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.
Regular domestic pay varies according to rank and years of service, among other factors, but the average base pay is about $375 a month. Pay for hazardous duty and overseas assignments can mean $700 to $800 a month in extra money.
It is the reason Robbie Lett, 37, is urging his wife, Julie, to aim for 30 years in the National Guard, even though it tears her apart to think of leaving her girls, Lydia, 2, and Hanna, 11 months. He is trying to get a printing business off the ground and Julie, 32, is a social worker for the state.
"There is the future to think of," says Robbie Lett.
Faye Fiore wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.