“Who rules Mexico? Who has always ruled Mexico since 1521?” demanded the priest, rising from his seat. “A shitty little group of white Spanish Europeans. They live in splendor in estates in Mexico City while the descendants of the Indian tribes live in squalor. If we don’t clean house, the same fate will befall Aztlan. Some slick, royal, white-fleshed Spaniard will swoop down and boot you out, Guerrero, and impose his white man’s aristocracy on us yet again. Yes, someone sent by Alfonso de Caballero. Some slick, fine-featured, Spanish Spic.”
“Get out of my house!” reiterated the president. “Or do you need my guards to escort you and beat you for good measure? The president of Mexico means us nothing but good will.”
Mictlan growled a curse in the Nahuatl language, rose, and walked slowly from the room. A maid followed him to the front door.
“He left his knife,” Antonio cried excitedly, and grabbed it off the plate. The hilt was jade. The flint blade was stained with dark, nearly black splotches.
Chapter 10
Rick turned up the wireless earbuds in his ears. Drums, an electric guitar, and powerful vocals bulldozed his consciousness. It was an experience he was only recently adjusting to. The tracks were recommended by Hans—all fell under a dated, nearly forgotten genre of rock music called heavy metal. Metal for the gym, classical while studying or reading, and country, ballroom, and folk music for dancing. It was a recommendation, not a rule, promulgated by the FCP that enjoyed widespread conformity. Heavy metal was disapproved of by Swan for allegedly creating “an involuntary urge to clench your fist” in the listener. Rick laughed ironically as he wove the hand wraps, criss-cross fashion, across his hands.
Sliding on a pair of worn gloves, he began throwing quick, light combinations at a heavy bag hanging from a chain. His combinations slowly grew in velocity and power, until he was slugging full force two minutes in. The bag was spinning wildly. Its emblem was long effaced by untold hammerings, but an illustration of Swan in permanent marker smiled on the tan canvas.
Over the clamoring of the metal in his ears, Rick perceived yells of encouragement. He turned from the punching bag and surveyed the large gym, his eyes temporarily vexed by the endless mirrors. Near the entrance was an imposing bench press, its bar dripping with plates the color of gunmetal. He walked toward the commotion.
Hans stood at the center of a throng, hand on his hip, right foot resting on the flat bench in a posture of conquest. His blond hair was spiked, and a gold cross around his neck gleamed beneath industrial lights overhead. The onlookers were cheering, their fists held high. Hans was breathing heavily, tank top stretched taught by a musculature flushed with blood.
A woman emerged from the crowd, her long brown hair luxuriant. She was dressed in pink lady’s gym shorts and a small t-shirt. Her build was that of a fitness competitor, her face that of a makeup model. Tall and slender, she rested a hand on Hans’s v-shaped back.
Rick had little knowledge of Hans, other than awareness that he listened to heavy metal, steeped himself in fighting arts and weightlifting, was Stewart’s son, and had a reputation for instability. A superficial observer might categorize him as arrogant. That same observer would anticipate him to disregard the beautiful woman at his side, lest she restrict his self-absorption.
But he was galvanized by her touch, a broad, roguish grin sneaking across his face. Picking her up, he spun her around and around, her feet kicking girlishly, her red lips parted in laughter.
“My God, that’s a healthy site!” Stewart stood, beaming, at the gym entrance. “Two strong, healthy young people who are crazy about each other. Who want to have a strong, good, traditional white family. Who want to raise their future children right. Who want to serve their people in every capacity. Damn that’s refreshing.” The crowd parted to let the old man approach.
Hans’s face was red, and he looked away to unwrap power lifting tape from his elbows.
“Dad, I finally got it—five hundred ten. One rep max,” he breathed.
“If we could have one white baby for every pound you lift, every day, we’d be in pretty good condition.” Stewart smiled. “Damn, boy, you’re turning yourself into a super Hercules.” He eyed the stretch marks burgeoning along the juncture of his son’s chest and shoulders.
“Naw, George is Hercules.” The titan laughed.
“But my Hans is Thor,” exclaimed the girl, patting her boyfriend’s upper arm. “You should have seen him lift that, Mr. Stewart. He has to be the strongest guy on earth. He was amazing!”
“He just might be, Kim.” Stewart winked. “I’m supportive of my son’s quest for superman strength. Just so long as he doesn’t use steroids—they can knock you sterile. And he also has to watch his muscle mass doesn’t reduce his hand speed and fighting ability. What do you think, Rick, you’re the brawler everyone’s been talking about—choked out a God-damned gray quite efficiently from what I hear. Does Hans’s muscle mass impede his fighting ability?”
“I sure wouldn’t mess with him.” Rick laughed. “I guess you have to balance the benefit to the detriment. Right now I’d bet the extra strength he carries is worth more than his reduction in speed—at least for wrestling. Now boxing, on the other hand . . . I bet he’d be better off shedding some mass for boxing. I’ve been wondering—who’s more effective in a fight—a wrestler or a boxer?”
“Who says you have to separate boxing and wrestling, Rick?” inquired the old man. “The world’s gotten too damn complex for purists—you’ve got to be a killer at both.”
“Well, I mean they’re two distinct sports, right? That’s what you’ve been teaching us so far.”
“So far, yes.” Stewart grinned. “Because to do otherwise would be like teaching algebra to a first grader trying to learn addition. Boxing and wrestling are, of course, two separate sports, but the ancient Greeks combined the two and created something else. This is what we’re moving toward. But we’re not hammering these fighting techniques into you just so you can become great athletes. George will tell you all about it on Wednesday—he’s our head coach.”
“And this guy right here is his top student.” Kim smiled flirtatiously, her blue eyes gleaming, and kissed Hans on the cheek.
“And this hot chick right here is my top cheerleader.” Hans laughed, kissing her in return. “So how do you like the metal, Rick? It’s pretty fuckin’ good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it really helps to give me energy whether I’m lifting or hitting the bags. This may sound stupid, but it just feels great to lift weights and hit punching bags. Yet those things are so simple—I never would have thought they could bring me so much release. Even the metal is amazing—it makes me feel damn good to be a man.”
“You enjoy the lifting and boxing so much,” Hans smiled, “because there are certain things that nature intended to boost men’s spirits—and you just discovered some of them. You’re finally starting to explore the archetypal male gender role. That’s the last thing the media wants you to do if you’re a white man. Because with the traditional white man’s gender role comes a whole army of ideas and morals and standards that Swan and his crew are threatened by and hate.”
“But we don’t embrace every element of the traditional male gender role,” chimed in Stewart. “Part of the stereotype is a doltish intellect and a tyrannical treatment of women. We strongly reject both of those aspects because stupidity is a weakness and mistreatment of women is hateful and poisons families. We want to become supermen, not super jerks.”
“Yeah,” Rick laughed, “that’s what Cathy’s afraid of a little bit. She’s scared I’m going to turn into a caveman and drag her around by the hair or something.”
“Well, she’ll learn pretty quick not to be afraid of that.” Kim smiled. “Your wife’s so sweet. I’ve only spoken to her a few times, but she seems so nice.”
“My wife says she’s a huge help in the classroom.” Stewart nodded. “Apparently the kids love her. I’ve observed her read to the children before—they’re e
ntranced. She’s got a superb reading voice. Margaret goes on and on about what a help she is.”
“That’s great. She’ll be so pleased to hear that. Well, anything we can do to help pay you guys back for letting us live here like this. God I hope they don’t find us.” Rick sighed.
“That’s one of the few redeeming qualities of the diversity mongers,” joked Max. “They’re so caught up in their diversity moments, affirmative action statistics, and human resources counseling that they don’t get shit done. The police are just a bunch of grays anyway—I doubt they even put a search out yet.”
“I wonder where Laurence and his family went. He seemed to have a place to go.” Rick sighed.
“I’m sure he’s hiding out with family somewhere. They’ll pursue him a little more tenaciously though, since his wife stabbed your lard-ass CEO. If Laurence’s not with family in a basement somewhere, I bet he’s brushing up on his Malcolm-X and bunkering down with a black nationalist group,” Stewart speculated.
“I’m worried I killed that damn pianist,” Rick murmured, staring at the ground.
“Don’t worry about it, man,” Hans assured. “You didn’t cut his oxygen for that long, from how you described it. You just sent him to la-la land for a while.”
“But if Bradley hadn’t busted that chair over my back . . . I don’t know. I don’t think I would have let go. I really may have strangled him to death.”
“Rick, don’t go getting all introspective and shit,” warned the titan. “It’s moot. You didn’t kill him. But he’s just a fucking gray anyway—actually, it’s a shame you didn’t send him to Divine Color. That fucking child molester.”
“Yeah, I guess,” reasoned Rick.
“Speaking of which, what the hell is Divine Color anyway, Dad?” Hans turned to Stewart. “What’s it supposed to be? A god? An ideal?” The youth rubbed his chin inquisitively.
“As once explained by Swan on television, in very Gnostic fashion I might add, Divine Color is supposed to be a benevolent entity from far off space. Supposedly, it’s somehow connected with the aggregate spiritual essence of all the non-white peoples on the planet. In classic binary opposition to Divine Color is the spiritual energy of the Caucasians. Really what we’re talking about here is what theologians call a dualism. You’ve got non-whites on one side, who Swan believes are sacred and blessed, struggling against whites on the other side, who Swan believes are evil.”
“But Swan’s white,” said Rick, “or he was white before he became gray.”
“Yeah, but now he’s got that facial transformer that makes him look like any race he wants to look like,” reminded Kim.
“Well, rest assured he’ll never look like us again. I’m sure that’s not part of his programming package.” Hans joked.
The crowd had slowly dispersed, leaving the three men and girl alone in the gym. Hans posed in a mirror, flexing his right bicep.
“Damn I wish I had been born in the past, cause I would have changed things,” the youth commented.
“When do you wish you would have been born?” Kim asked wistfully, studying the bulbous peak of his bicep.
Stewart and Wilkerson listened intently, their interest piqued.
“Oh, I think about 1910, in Germany.”
“Why then?” Stewart’s inquiry was edged with tension.
“Look at me,” Hans joked, “I’m a bull shark. Bull sharks are my favorite animal because they have more testosterone than any other creature on the planet.”
“How nice, son.” There was impatience in his voice. “But finish what you were saying about your wish to live in early twentieth-century Germany.” Stewart folded his arms and exhaled.
“Oh, yeah,” Hans replied mockingly, “uhm, because I would have enjoyed being a member of a Communist anti-fascist knitting society.”
“A what? Is that so?” The old man asked skeptically.
“Yeah, it is!” Hans grinned. “Ah, come on, Dad. You know damn well why I’d really want to be born then. Because in 1930 or so I’d want to be some strapping young fascist lad at a biergarten, kicking back in a chair with a beer in one hand, Kim’s hand in my other, and a KO’d Commie at my feet. Come on, Dad, you know it would’ve been awesome to have lived back then with like-minded people. They were like the precursors of our movement.”
Kim’s eyes widened. She knew where the conversation was headed.
“They are not our precursors and that was not our movement!” exploded Stewart.
“Oh, come on! Wouldn’t you want to be on the winning side for once? Wouldn’t you want to live in a country where the people thought like we do and we didn’t have to hide out and live like fucking hermits?”
“We have nothing in common with those people, damn it! Do you hear me? Nothing!” The older man was livid. “Fine, say you were some Nazi super-soldier. Would you want to be marched off to go shoot some Pols? Maybe some Russians or French? Would you want to kill innocents by the millions and exterminate your European brothers and sisters? Would you want the sin, and I mean sin, of murder on your hands? All the poor Jews and Slavs—wiped out or enslaved?”
The older man’s hands trembled as he spoke. Hans noted this and turned away.
“I wouldn’t want to do any of that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone or anything that wasn’t trying to hurt me or my family,” the youth affirmed. “But the way I look at things the pendulum is swinging to the left . . . way to the left, and it’s building momentum instead of slowing down. I know the Nazis were evil, Dad, but they had more strength and power than any group in history I can think of—and they had the will to use it. I mean, I think we’ve gotta fight fire with fire. We’re not slowing down the pendulum with what we’re doing now—we’ve got to tap in to something radical and strong—the polar opposite of Swan—to get things back to normal,” Hans explained. “Man, what I wouldn’t give to be at the head of a Waffen SS division, locked and loaded, laying siege to the House of Color. I’d storm that fucking place, guns blazing . . . I’d kill Swan and all his toadies and make things normal again,” the youth vowed.
“You don’t get it, do you?” The older man stared, sweat beading down his forehead, his eyes glassy. “The God-damned Nazis are already in the House of Color. They run the damned place!”
Hans looked toward the bench press, cerebral cogs turning. He tugged at his lifting belt.
“Let me tell you something,” breathed the old man. “If you think political ideology is confined to a linear construct you’re totally mistaken. You probably envision Swan on the far left and Hitler on the far right. But in reality, the political continuum is a lot more like that belt around your waist. The extreme left side and the extreme right side merge. In fact, they latch together and overlap—they are one.”
The youth hurriedly unlatched the belt and threw it down.
“Why does everything have to be so fucking complicated?” he fumed.
“Because the world is complicated,” instructed his father. “It’s not a simple place. Humanity wants it to be, but it isn’t. Remember this, and remember this well, son—the Nazis were the worst thing to happen to European peoples in our entire history. They’re the main reason Swan and his bastards have had the ability to come to power.”
“Yeah, right,” scoffed Hans.
“I’m serious, and I’ll prove to you I’m right. If you want to keep up your pendulum metaphor, that’s fine, let’s work with that. You want to know why the political pendulum is streaking to the left so fast? It’s because in the mid twentieth-century it was pulled so damn far to the right that when it was released, it shot to the left like a bat out of hell.”
The youth looked at Kim in dejection. He didn’t like losing at anything in front of her.
“And do you want to know where the pendulum gets its velocity, its power?” asked the older man. “It gets it from embarrassment, shame, and guilt—for all the sins and atrocities the Nazis committed in the name of their venomous ideology, and to a lesser degree for the sl
avery and misery perpetrated on U.S. blacks prior to the mid twentieth century.”
Hans’s eyes lit at mention of the trio.
“Yeah, and embarrassment, shame, and guilt are the three biggest nails in our coffin. We don’t need any of them!”
“Not quite,” qualified Stewart. “We need them, in moderation, when they’re called for. Not in quantities, by any means, to put us at the mercy of predators who want to oppress us and rob us of our equal rights and liberty. But we must maintain our capacity to feel enough of each to retain our humanity and decency, and to stop us from devolving into clinical monsters.
“If, as you say, we needn’t feel embarrassment, shame, or guilt, it will only be because we, ourselves, in our lives, have committed no serious misdeed to feel embarrassed, shameful, or guilty about. That, Hans, is the objective. Not to eliminate our capacity to feel those emotions, but to eliminate cause to feel those emotions. Nor should the misdeeds of our people in the past be forgotten, like the old aphorism says, lest we find ourselves repeating them. And, we also have the damned Nazis to thank for the permanent association of reasonable political subjects like border control and white civil rights with evil and fanaticism in the public eye. People say, ‘Well, the same people who protest against affirmative action today will want to burn people tomorrow.’ It’s a terrible precedent they left to us. Terrible.”
The youth ran his hand along the stubble of his cheeks and stared at the floor. Kim moved close and he wrapped an arm along her shoulder.
“You’re right as usual, Dad.” He sighed. “It’s just so frustrating sometimes. Sometimes . . . sometimes I feel like it’s got a gravitational pull on me or something. It goes away when things are going well, but then comes back when they’re not.”
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