Envious Shadows

by R.P. Burnham

  A Gathering of Like-Minded Men

  Rett Murray woke up on Saturday morning feeling hungover. The headache that caused a sharp shooting pain whenever he moved his head was not, however, caused by drink. He had given up alcohol years ago when he committed himself to the Nazi Party and had led a Spartan dedicated life ever since. Whenever he had been tempted to take up drinking again, he only had to think of the example of Hitler, who was a teetotaler, to quickly squelch the desire. Following Hitler had had other consequences as well. He had lost his wife, who divorced him because of what she called his obsession with evil, and he had no social life outside of the party functions he attended. Having never smoked, he could think of himself as one without vices. Yet being a Nazi monk was the cause of his ersatz hangover. He was up until three o’clock in the morning reading a book by the British historian David Irving about the Holocaust. Denying that that event ever occurred was one of the topics scheduled for discussion at the monthly meeting of the party at Len Carter’s compound outside of town. He planned to have much to say about certain other topics, things that Carter would not like, and that too was perhaps another cause of his headache.

  He swung his feet onto the floor and sat at the edge of the bed waiting for his head to settle. He lived in a one-room furnished apartment. It had a bed with creaking springs and a mattress older than the White Mountains, a bedside table, a bureau, and a kitchen table with one chair for the furniture. In one corner a small sink, counter and cabinet setup and refrigerator made up his utilities. A hot plate on the counter was for cooking, or rather for heating up canned goods, but it wasn’t used as much as the small microwave oven in which he heated the frozen meals he mostly ate. A television on a stand with casters, a rocking chair, a radio by the bed and a small bookshelf were his contributions to his domestic comfort, and for personal touches he’d mounted a photograph of his grandfather’s farm and a couple conventional prints, one of the German Alps and one of the seacoast of Maine. He’d wanted to mount a portrait of Hitler, but the landlord, Murray Foss, who was a distant cousin and who had found out he was a Nazi only after he had already rented him the apartment, had nixed that plan. “I don’t want any Nazi stuff,” he’d said. “What you think is your own business, but I might lose a renter if there was any monkey business.” That was three years ago, after he had moved out of his house and been divorced by his wife. It was a quiet place with the only disadvantage being the garrulous old man, Tom Belcher, who lived downstairs. Rett was a loner.

  After he had breakfast, taken some aspirin, and washed up in the bathroom he shared with two other tenants in the hall, he was just settling down to look over some notes he’d made on the Irving book when a knock on the door interrupted him. It was Tom Belcher, who was just going down to pay the rent and offered to bring Rett’s with him. The way he peered into the room told Rett Belcher’s actual reason for the visit was to have a chat. He was a lonely old man, a conventional Republican in his sympathies who disliked what he called foreigners. He liked to talk about Hitler, if only to have something to talk about. Rett used to indulge him until he saw he was not going to change the old man’s mind much. But Belcher was never one to be discouraged from trying. As Rett wrote his check on top of the bureau, he stepped into the room.

  “What do you think of that guy in Austria who’s trying to keep foreigners out?”

  “What do you think? Of course I agree with him. Don’t you?”

  A sour look came over Belcher’s face. He pressed at his stomach and emitted an eponymous sound. “Sorry,” he said with an embarrassed grin. “Breakfast didn’t agree with me. But yeah, I can see his point. I used to say to Walt Pingree, the fella who lived here before you did, that too many foreigners were coming here. I agree with you, see? It’s just that you go too far. We should pass laws to keep them out, and one to make the ones already here speak English.”

  “You’ve got the right idea, Belcher. These spicks come here and expect everything to be in their monkey lingo. Did the Germans and Scandinavians see such a thing? No! And I’ll tell you something else, Belcher. It makes me want to puke when they rant about their ethnic pride. They leave an inferior society, one which is a complete mess because of their Catholic medievalism. They come to a superior society and tell us they’re proud of their ethnic background. If they’re so goddamned proud of it, why’d they leave? Why don’t they go back to Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, that’s what I’d like to know.”

  Despite his resolve, he was getting heated. Belcher, in the act of sitting down on the kitchen chair for a nice little chat, brought him back to himself. “I’d like to talk more, but I’m in a hurry. I’ve got a meeting.”

  Belcher looked crestfallen. He stood up instantly before his butt had hardly touched the seat. “Okay, but I think the problem can be solved with laws. That’s the American way.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be working, though, does it?” Rett said at the door. “We added thirty million more people at the last census. It’s both new and old immigrants. Once they get here they haul the whole family in behind them, and of course they multiply like jackrabbits. We’re being swamped, I tell you.”

  With Belcher out of the way, Rett gathered his papers into an old leather briefcase and left his apartment. First he walked downtown to buy the morning paper, and then back at his car he spent a few minutes looking it over for any pertinent articles. No stories of particular interest to the Nazi cause could be found, so he put it in his briefcase and drove to Carter’s compound upcountry.

  It was a cloudy, humid July day, and the open windows of his car made it difficult to hear the country station on the radio. He passed his grandfather’s farm where his father had been born. It had passed out of the family three decades ago, and because the developer had cheated his grandfather, no one in the family ever got a cent from it. The old man had been forced to sell because he was in debt, so there wouldn’t have been much money anyways. Now ten colonial houses stood where cows had grazed, one of which belonged to a Jewish lawyer in town. Every time he thought about that fact, Rett would indulge in a pleasing fantasy whereby he as a Nazi official with a Judenfrei document would drive that Jewish family off Saxon land. But mostly he was a realist. The work he was doing was on the long road to a pure Aryan America. Even when he thought that it wouldn’t be realized in his own lifetime, his work sustained him. He had been a soul lost to alcohol until Len Carter had rescued him for a life of service.

  He had first come to the compound about a week after meeting Carter at a bar, where they had talked for several hours. Carter had asked him many questions. One he remembered was about the Serbs. He’d answered that the Croats, Albanians and Muslims were like the Irish in Massachusetts. They moved into a superior society and by sheer numbers alone, not intelligence, not ability, not initiative, they took it over. He answered many other questions in a similar manner as Carter kept buying him drinks while nursing his own scotch and soda. Only next day when he’d sobered up did he realize he was being tested. He must have passed, for a week later Carter called and asked him if he’d like to see a little operation he was setting up.

  He had loved the compound at first sight. He remembered the excitement he felt on that day every time he drove up its long driveway. Its self-sufficiency was one appeal. In two locations— a bomb shelter under the farmhouse and a special humidity-controlled room in the barn—there was enough food, water and supplies to keep ten people alive for months. A large fence with sophisticated electronic equipment surrounded the compound. In three different locations, portable electrical generators and large gas tanks were ready to supply power to the compound. Besides the house and barn, the compound consisted of several other buildings, all of them connected by narrow underground tunnels high enough for a man to walk, and one of which was a cinder-block building that housed the Nazi headquarters. It had several phone lines and computers, a small printing press and various office equipment and emergency gear such as shredders, photocopiers, fax ma
chines, short-wave radios and the like. In the back room was a small weapons cache consisting of a dozen 38-caliber pistols, an equal number of high-powered rifles and a few shotguns. Carter, a wealthy man who owned two automobile dealerships and shares in several other businesses, had bankrolled the entire operation, including the weapons, though his innately cautious nature made sure no automatic weapons or illegal explosives were on the property so that he would have no trouble with the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco. He was very disturbed by the troubles of a fellow white supremacist out west who had had all his property confiscated in a civil suit and had made sure he was never in danger of a similar action in Maine.

  Rett felt at home here and often wished that Carter would invite him to live on the com-pound. He was the chief’s lieutenant, after all, and knew every aspect of the operation. One of the small outer buildings was a cottage, originally built for one of Carter’s sons, that was now empty; it would be perfect for him. He had hinted as much to Carter, but Mrs. Carter, a pale, gray, worn-out, old woman who didn’t have the gumption to oppose her husband in almost anything you could name, didn’t like him, and for some inexplicable reason in this one issue alone Carter deferred to his wife.

  Rett was hoping to arrive early enough to have a private chat with the chief, but as he approached the gate he saw that it was already open and that Bobby Maclean’s motorcycle was parked in front of the party office.

  He found Maclean in the inner office working on the computers. He was a self-pro-claimed skinhead in his early twenties and a college dropout. Tall and skinny, pale, almost albino, with white-blond hair and blue eyes, possibly handsome except for a pockmarked face, a pronounced Adam’s apple and a hooked nose from where it had been broken in a fight, he was a quiet, sullen young man, though he would have occasional bouts of motor-mouthing. Today he was in his default sullen mood, for when Rett asked him, “Where’s the chief?” he took a long time to answer. He was running some diagnostic utility on the computers, which they had been having trouble with recently, and his eyes peered intently at the screen. Finally he stroked at his blond crewcut with a spiked Mohawk running across the crown of his head and looked up.

  “He’s talking with his wife about something.”

  “How’s the traffic on the web site?” Rett asked. “It was pretty good last Wednesday.”

  Maclean was their computer man. He had set up their web site and took care of their three computers. He also trained the men on how to use the computers and how to conduct a chat-room session. Carter paid him a part-time salary for this work, though Rett gathered it was a labor of love. He hated Jews, blacks, Hispanics, and all other nonwhite people. Often he listened to the dreadful racket of skinhead bands while he worked, groups with names like Angry Aryans, Nordic Thunder, and Blue-Eyed Devils. He was so crucial to their operation that Carter, who favored Beethoven and Mozart, let him play that noise. Today, though, he was working in silence for some reason.

  His attention went back to the screen for a minute or so; then he looked up. “We’ve had eighty-five hits since yesterday. Thirty-three downloaded our Mongrelization PDF file.”

  Rett whistled. “Not bad. Sounds like I’ll be busy later today.” They opened the chat room on weekends and Wednesday nights, and Rett did a four-hour session on Saturdays and Sundays and ran the Wednesday session on his own. He was a little jealous of the computers since they generated much more action than the recruitment drives using old-fashioned leaflets and talk, which were his purview.

  Maclean shrugged. “We’re not in the big leagues yet, but not bad.”

  Rett sat down and started reading the paper, but before long he went back to his notes, and when that too couldn’t keep his attention, and when it became obvious that Carter was not coming to the office until the meeting at 9:30, he started thinking about Lowell Edgecomb and the black girl he’d confronted. He had a lot to say about them.

  A half hour passed while he sat in one of the leather chairs in the outer office and Maclean worked silently at the computer. Then two cars drove into the parking lot and the other four active members of the party arrived.

  Darren French, who with his scar and permanent scowl always accompanied Rett on recruiting and propaganda excursions like the one last week in Portland, was the first one out of the car—a tiny import that barely contained his huge six-foot-six frame. With him was Douglas Douglas, known to one and all as “DD.” He was short and portly and worked at the same factory in Bedford where Darren worked. Ted Cummings and Ron Turner got out of the second vehicle, a sporty pickup truck. Ted ran a gun and tackle shop in town. He had gotten into the Nazi world through his work with the National Rifle Association. He was a phlegmatic man about fifty years old, whose sons often joined them at these meetings. They were on a fishing trip to northern Maine this week. Ron Turner was a friend of Ted’s and the newest member of the permanent committee. Like Ted he was an outdoors man and a rabid NRAer. He was lanky with huge feet that even in summer were covered by heavy work boots, and he was also non-too bright, which in Rett’s opinion was an observation that applied pretty generally to all of them except for Carter and himself.

  They, at any rate, comprised the hope of the white race in Waska, Maine. Four or five others joined them occasionally and a couple hundred passive supporters helped with e-mail and regular mail drives to contact Republican senators and representatives, but these were the men committed enough to come to meetings and planning sessions. The first thing they did was to get the coffee machine filled and brewing. Rett had forgotten to do it because he did not drink coffee, but being Carter’s lieutenant he was not criticized openly, only with a few glances through narrowed eyes. The men talked about Ted’s sons and their fishing trip as they waited for the coffee to brew, and as soon as it was done, promptly at 9:30, Len Carter came into the office.

  He was of medium height and stocky. He wore a suit coat and tie during the workweek, and his only concession to weekend wear was to do without the tie. He was about 55 with deep furrows on his high forehead before it merged into his balding scalp, and the lines running from the corners of his nose down past his mouth were so deep that his chin almost looked like a wooden dummy’s. But his craggy Yankee face was nevertheless handsome. In his youth he was rumored to have been a lady’s man. One thing that was not at first apparent but which was the source of his power over his own sex was an aura of suppressed fury that could be read in his eyes. Most people, including Rett, who had thought about him a lot, were afraid of him. He was wealthy and used to command. Rett called him Len but always with the feeling he was being granted an unspeakable privilege. The rest of the group called him Mr. Carter.

  He strode into the room with a sheath of papers clutched in one hand and immediately sat down on the leather chair placed in front of the other chairs. The group, which had stood upon his entrance, waited for him to settle down before resuming their seats.

  Maclean poked his head out of the inner office and gave the chief a look.

  “The computer problem is fixed, I presume, Maclean?”

  “Yes sir. Looks like it was a corrupt font. I’ve also been reworking the link to the Nazi Party headquarters. It seems they’ve changed their web site and it doesn’t work anymore. I think they’ve been having trouble with hackers.”

  “Jewish hackers, you mean.”

  “Yeah, Hebe hackers. May they rot in hell.”

  Carter nodded in agreement; then his expression changed and he was all business.

  Maclean went back to work. The policy discussion was none of his concern.

  “What I have to say is important, so listen up. I’ve got some papers for you that gives the answers to any question you’re likely to be asked in the chat room. I want you all to read them and become familiar with them. Have them on hand when you’re manning the lines. I’ll go over some salient points now, but remember the thing is this: when different people are on the phones or the chat rooms online, we’ve sometimes given different
answers to the same question. This is bad, very bad. What I want established is an official stance. We don’t want to confuse people. To speak with one voice is of the utmost importance.”

  DD stirred in his seat. An overweight man who had little self-confidence because he had always been teased about his name and his weight, he appeared very ill at ease. “Can I ask a question, Mr. Carter?”

  When Carter nodded his head slightly and looked at him expectantly, DD said, “Are we conforming to what the national party says?”

  “Yes,” Carter answered sharply. “With a few provisos. We’re in Maine, so we have a different perspective. For example, we don’t have many niggers in the state because those jungle bunnies like warm temperatures. So we don’t need to be giving people advice on how to deal with them.”

  Here Rett felt he should interrupt. “Remember I told you about that Lowell Edgecomb and his nigger girl, Len. We do have a problem.”

  Carter nodded curtly. “I’m going to ask you to speak about your recruitment drive later. You can tell the others about the matter then.” He looked down at his notes. “The main thing today, though, is addressing the problem of the Holocaust. We do have Jews in Maine—too many of ’em—so this is important. As the book says, what we want to say is this: Hitler and the German government knew nothing about the killing of Jews. If someone asked how is it possible for millions of people to disappear, you’re to say that in wartime things aren’t like a quiet New England town meeting. Things are chaotic. If you want to be clever, remind anyone who challenges you of the missing kids hysteria a few decades back. Kids’ faces were put on cereal boxes and milk cartons, and we were told up to a million kids were missing. When the hysteria died down, it turned out nationwide a dozen kids were missing. So tell the caller the numbers are exaggerated hysterically. Emphasize the hysteria of the Jews. They’ve got a stake in this Holocaust. It’s one of the things along with money they’ve got the U.S. government by the balls with. But you also all read David Irving’s book. Remember some of the things emphasized in it. The Nazis were planning on moving the Jews out of Europe, to Madagascar or Israel. At Auschwitz there is no scientific evidence, no proof whatsoever, that gas was used. There are absolutely no traces of cyanide. The so-called death showers have no holes in the ceiling where the gas was supposedly dropped. If anyone says they’ve seen films of piles of dead bodies, tell ’em typhoid epidemics were the cause. Especially, though, you’re to emphasize that it is in the interest of the Jews to say there was a Holocaust. They want the Christian world to feel guilty so that no one notices they’re taking over the government. Remember, more Russians, Poles and Germans died than Jews. Any questions?”

  Rett leaned forward in his seat. “Only the big one, Len. The one we’ve talked about before.” He and Carter had discussed the matter privately many times. Rett liked the Holocaust and thought it was one of the best accomplishments of the Nazis. Carter didn’t disagree, but besides his focus on winning hearts and minds, and beyond his generally cautious nature, he was essentially not a violent man, or at least not violent unless it was the last resort. Rett was trying to voice, in a nonthreatening way, the basic disagreement between them. “When conditions are right,” Carter said, “we can talk about getting rid of the Jews by whatever means are best. I don’t disagree with you, but we have to be practical.”

  He spoke in a tone that precluded disagreement, so Rett shrugged to indicate his disagree-ment but with a facial expression that was conciliatory to show he understood the necessity of being prudent.

  “Any more questions?” Carter asked.

  Ted Cummings had one. He raised his hand. “So what are we to say to a guy who calls or logs on who thinks like Murray? The Holocaust happened and it was good? Let’s continue the work?”

  “Well, if you’re sure of the guy, okay. But it could be a provocateur or a journalist, so I’d be very, very careful. Let me remind all of you why this is important. We’re trying to win hearts and minds. The war now is a war of ideas. America is becoming mongrelized. More and more dark people are swarming in. The Jews want them for cheap labor, so the immigration laws are ignored. Now think of it like it’s selling cars. You’ve got to sell them to people who have doubts. Too many people get squeamish about killing. We want to save the white race, and especially the white Anglo-Saxon race. That’s our goal. Whites are still the majority. If we could get everyone who’s white to work together, we could get rid of all the Jews and darkies. But we’ve got to get them on our side first. But let me be clear. Of course I don’t mean that we mollycoddle the Jews. Say it loud and say it boldly anytime anyone asks: the Jews are evil incarnate, grasping, greedy, hypocritical, arrogant and standoffish. If anyone asks what would things be like when the Jews are completely in control—when they control not only the money and the Jews media but the government and the military as well—tell them to look at the arrogance and inhumanity with which they treat the Palestinian people. That’s how they’d treat us if they could.”

  Ron Turner, with a doubtful look on his face, raised his hand. “Could you explain again how the Jews are behind blacks and other niggers coming into the country?”

  Carter thought for a moment, then started on what he called the Socratic method. He admired the ancient Greeks, maintaining they were Aryans and the founders of western civiliza-tion. “The white race is heading towards extinction in America. That’s a fact unless we do something. The country is being overrun by spicks, Asians, black, brown and yellow people, many of them not even Christian. Tell me something, Turner. Do you meet many, or even any, white people, white Anglo-Saxon people, who like this, who like it that their country is being stolen from them?”

  Turner shook his head. “No, even some liberal friends my wife knows don’t like it.”

  “Uh huh. Mind you, it was bad enough when those Italians, Greeks and Slavs, those people from southern and eastern Europe, came here, but they were at least Christian, though Catholic. But what’s the difference?”

  Turner smiled at the easy question. “They was white.”

  “Yeah, they were white. They started speaking English and acting like Anglo-Saxon Protestant people. But how are these black, brown, and yellow people going to do that?”

  “They ain’t.”

  “Okay. Now here’s the crucial question. If your ordinary American doesn’t like being swamped by foreigners, who does like it?”

  “I guess the answer is the Jews, but I’m not sure why.”

  “You’re right it’s the Jews. Why? Because they control the money. If foreigners come they can pay ’em less. That’s the first thing. But the second thing is just as important. The more aliens there are, the weaker the white race is. The Jews always use divide and conquer as their technique. You’ve read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, so you know that. The third thing is this: what do people say to you around Christmas time?”

  “Merry Christmas?” Turner said doubtfully.

  “Your friends do, sure. But what about people in stores when you buy something? What do they say?”

  “Oh, I see. They say ‘Happy holidays.’”

  “There you are. They’re told to say that by the Jewish owners of the stores. And in the Jews media that’s all you hear, that and Happy Hanukkah. So who’s behind it? The Jews, of course. They’re jealous of Christians, see? The eternal outsider wants to belong. They’ve got everyone trained now to be ashamed of Christmas. It’s insensitive, see, to wish anyone a merry Christmas. What they want, see, is for us to be ashamed of being Christian. The more nonchristians there are, the better the Jews like it. Does that answer your question?”

  While Turner said “Yes, sir,” Cummings caught the chief’s eye. “I’ve got another question, Mr. Carter. One of my sons asked me the other day, and I was confused, I admit. He asked what’s our position on immigrants fleeing communism. Like Cuba or China or Vietnam?”

  Carter listened to the question with a deepening frown which made everyone nervous that he was going to
explode, but then he flicked his hand as if shooing a fly away. From his tone of voice when he asked, “What the hell do you mean?” he was obviously trying hard to keep his temper.

  “What I mean is, we don’t like socialism and communism, but we don’t like foreigners either. So when someone asks me, for example, what we thought of Cubans and the Elian Gonzalez thing awhile back, what do I say?”

  “What do you say? You say we don’t like foreigners and we don’t like communism. It seems pretty simple to me. But maybe you’re wondering if we should like foreigners who hate communism?”

  Cummings nodded nervously. He still looked genuinely perplexed.

  “Well, use your common sense. Most people probably don’t like communism. It’s no ticket to our country if they do. Usually these wars that happen are caused by our Jew govern-ment meddling with other countries to help the rich Jewish businessman. The people who come here after we’ve made a mess of things are just rich businessmen as good as Jews. Most of those so-called Vietnamese who came here in the seventies were really Chinese who ran Vietnam. Those chinks are called the Jews of Asia, you know. So you got it straight now? We don’t like foreigners. We don’t like ’em even if they’re saints.”

  Rett was rather inattentive as Carter spoke, partly because he had already discussed most of these points with Carter and even more because he was concentrating on what he would say in a few minutes. What he wanted to accomplish would require tact and discretion, but the strength of will and the ability to convey conviction that he had felt within him last night was more difficult to find as the moment approached. He wanted to disagree with Carter and carry the boys with him, but he could not forget that he owed everything to Carter, his job as a salesman and junior executive at the car dealership from which he made a good salary before the child support was deducted from it, his calling as a Nazi, even his emotional stability. He had been Carter’s lieutenant for over five years. They had grown very close, with something like a father-son relationship, since one of Carter’s sons had repudiated the old man’s Nazi ideology and the other one was more interested in money and being respectable. The one who repudiated his father, a lawyer living in the Boston area, had even married a Jew. He was disowned and never mentioned, but the other son visited home frequently and helped run his father’s businesses. But because of this family situation Carter had made Rett his ideological son. Close as they were, however, they were different personalities, and issues had arisen between them. Rett thought Carter had lost his edge. He emphasized winning hearts and minds. The war right now, he maintained, was a war of ideas. Rett didn’t dismiss the importance of ideas—Mein Kampf was his bible—but he saw that Hitler was also prepared for action, the Beer Hall Putsch being but one of a series of acts that led to Nazi ascendancy. Sometimes—and last night in the sleepless predawn darkness was one such moment—Rett saw himself as Hitler and Carter as Ernst Röhm, the man who originally organized a private army to destabilize the Weimar Republic and to protect Nazi meetings. Hitler was at first an underling of Röhm’s but managed to outmaneuver him and gain the party leadership. Wisely Rett kept these ideas locked securely in his own mind and regarded them even in his secret musings as in the realm of daydreams with only a slight and long-term chance of being realized. The impediment, if this cautious prudence could be called that, that stopped him from attempting to realize his daydream was not the lack of ambition; rather it was his feelings for Carter. He liked and respected him for his dedication to the cause of white supremacy. He wanted to change the chief’s mind, not overthrow him. But he also wanted power.

  When he got up to speak, standing a few feet to the left of Carter and facing the men, he was initially calm because he talked about his recruitment drive in Portland, the easy part of his speech. The drive was a success, he said, though not because of numbers. New active members were nice, but the purpose of going to the public was to get out the word and create sympathy for their cause. The number of hits on their web site the past week indicated the level of interest that had been created. The success of the demonstration they had staged at the temple last year was of course not matched by choosing a baseball game as their venue, but still it was a success. Two skinheads showed interest in joining the party when he talked to them, but they hadn’t contacted him yet. All this information Rett delivered in a matter-of-fact voice, but he felt himself growing nervous as he approached the second item he wished to discuss. He looked at all the men watching him closely and exchanged a glance with Carter. His nerves failed him even before he spoke. But he rallied somewhat after taking a deep breath. He would say it anyways, come what may. “But the most important finding from this event was that we discovered a case of mongreli-zation right here in Waska. That half-breed nigger girl that’s been in town all these years and staying out of trouble now requires our attention. As you probably all know, she was seen with Lowell Edgecomb, the son of some hippy and that waitress Pat Edgecomb. I’ve checked around and they are in fact lovers. The question is, what are we to do about this situation in our own backyard?”

  He looked up at Carter to see if he had a green or red light. Carter was listening with an affected nonchalance. “I think we should consider some action—action,” he hastily added, “that will have great propaganda value. I think a little visit out to where that nigger girl lives with her mother is in order. I don’t mean,” he again added quickly when he saw Carter frown, “any violence or any burning of crosses type of business. But I did think we should do something like this: paint on their house ‘no mongrelization in america.’ Scare them off, you know. And it’s bound to make the papers.”

  “Just a minute, Rett.” Carter’s eyes were flashing dangerously. “What do you men think of this idea?”

  There was a general stirring of chairs and some murmuring, but nobody spoke. They all knew from Carter’s tone that he didn’t like the idea.

  After a few moments, Rett broke the silence and defended himself. “I was thinking of doing it really late at night. It could be something they wake up to. We’d be long gone. I like it because I think it’s part of the war of ideas but has a touch of action to it. We’d be making a statement.”

  Carter leaned back and crossed his legs casually. Only his eyes looked dangerous. “Don’t you think everybody would know who did it?”

  “But could they prove it?”

  “They could if you got caught, if you were seen in the vicinity.”

  The men murmured their assent to this observation, and Rett felt himself totally defeated. His plan of carrying the men with him so that Carter would have to concede to his idea was beyond him. He hadn’t been even remotely able to pull it off the way he imagined last night he would. He wasn’t going to be Hitler and Carter wasn’t Ernst Röhm. He was a follower and Carter, who with nothing more than a look in his eyes had imposed his will on the men, was a leader. He could only face the facts and accept it.

  But it wasn’t easy and it hurt like hell. He tried to take comfort from the thought that he was not ruthless enough. He liked and respected Carter, and that’s why he couldn’t outmaneuver him. It was his human decency that stopped him. For the rest of the meeting he kept trying to convince himself of this conclusion, but he wasn’t successful. Mostly he felt like a loser. But when the meeting broke up and the men went outside to their cars, he caught Darren’s eye. When the big man came over he asked him, “Do you agree with me or the chief?”

  Without hesitating, Darren said, “No. I agree with you. I can see the chief’s concern and his caution because he’s afraid of being sued, but we’ll never make any progress if we only talk to people. At some point we have to do something.”

  Rett nodded. He watched the door to make sure Carter wasn’t coming out. “We’ll have to lie low for a while, but then we can figure out what to do. That nigger lover and his nigger girlfriend shouldn’t be able to flout their evil.”

  After that exchange Rett breathed a little easier. His inner Hitler wasn’t dead yet.