A God in Ruins

by Leon Uris

  Weapons makers were always nervous over the seamier sides of their product: gun smuggling, arms dealing, and massive domestic illegalities. Although AMERIGUN was somewhat diminished, it was necessary for The Combine to keep the organization going as a “clean” shield defending a dirty trade.

  New AMERIGUN headquarters, the Alamo, were set up, out of harm’s way, in western Maryland with a view to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Combine reduced AMERIGUN functions. They could carry on shooting seminars, publish the magazine, Weaponry, conduct mailings and competitions, and rise up and scream when ordered.

  Longstanding leader of AMERIGUN, King Porter, understood that without The Combine’s financial support the organization would collapse.

  Once King had been a terrifying predator who gained his spurs in Congress by fear tactics. His fall from grace only lathered up his innards for the moment of revenge.

  For two decades King Porter had been the “rock of ages,” cemented into bedrock with a fifty-foot-high, twenty-foot-thick brick wall enclosing his brain.

  King didn’t stand very tall in actuality. Most people looking at eye level saw the naked crown of his head with an occasional upright hair from the horseshoe fringe. His skin was stretched tightly over his face, flattening his cheeks into a mouth set with the left side of his face a fraction higher than the right.

  His dress, by ancient tailor, had a Western swag to it, back snug and straight with heavily seamed outlines. Heels of Western boots pumped him up a bit. King’s eyes and ears allowed little humor. Not infrequently had he envisioned himself a Confederate general about to lead a cavalry charge when he appeared before a House or Senate hearing.

  King Porter was bred and brewed as the middle and smallest male of nine stunted hillbilly kids. In order to survive he had willed himself an aura of power through intimidation. No one doubted he’d set them afire if angry enough. With rage always near the surface he was able to gain mastery over his siblings.

  The level of rage was usually close to a boil, as was his memory of hunger and its pains.

  Porter was at once an unpleasant person, bully, and righteous defender of the Second Amendment.

  What really ticked King Porter off was that the names of The Combine were held secret from him. He had to deal with a single person representing The Combine. He loathed her.

  Maud Traynor was the lawyer and sole contact to The Combine. She was a middle-aged, expensively dumpy bitch. Her language could startle a drunken sailor. She cracked her knuckles and blew foul cigarette smoke in his sensitive eyes. Maud Traynor, King was certain, was a practicing lesbian.

  From his window he could see her pull into the circle in her vulgar red Ferrari. King greeted her at the elevator door with the stiffness of a Prussian field marshal. She pinched his cheek in passing. He smiled through locked teeth.

  “Beautiful ride up here,” Maud said. “Saving your booze for the Fourth of July?” She was a no-nonsense rye drinker. King Porter slid into his seat tentatively.

  “We’ve got a problem,” she said right off.

  “We have?”

  “It’s this off-year election. The polls show us clobbering the dirty dozen we tagged for defeat. But this cowboy running for governor of Colorado is opening his lead.”

  “O’Donald?”

  “O’Connell. Quinn Patrick O’fucking Connell. It was made clear, King, that we can’t have a gun-control freak in the middle of gun territory. He could poison all the states around him.”

  King shook his head. “Too bad his daddy, old Daniel O’Connell, passed on. Dan was a real shooter.” King called for his records. Colorado had been saturated with infomercial tapes to three hundred radio talk shows in the region. Six hundred thousand pieces of literature had been mailed. Two or three weekly leaks to the tabloids had been accomplished. AMERIGUN’s website carried out a gnashing attack.

  “Look at this,” King said. . O’Connell is the son of a death-row inmate and a prostitute. . possible fetal alcohol syndrome. . severe learning disabilities. . what is the true story behind his Navy Cross? A coverup was needed for his cowardice. . suspected drug addiction. . wife abuser. his father-in-law, Reynaldo Maldonado is red, left-wing professor and creator of pornographic art. . Maldonado probably committed incest with daughter when she was ten. . O’Connell suspected of sodomizing sheep. . Quinn’s Mexican wife cavorted with drug kingpin. . marital infidelity. . hit-and-run charge covered up. . tried to give state park concessions to Jap companies. . caught in woman’s rest room. . non-churchgoer.

  .. . satanic rituals on ranch during full moons. . 666 tattooed on his penis. . O’Connell ranch a transit point for Mexican illegals, who are sold to farms for eight hundred dollars a head. . often seen in the company of Jewish money lenders. . son, Duncan, a campus radical and suspected gay. . daughter, Rae, badly retarded.

  Maud took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “You know what we’ve got here, King?”

  “Well, he refuses to answer these charges publicly.”

  “Well, fathom that. I said, do you know what we’ve got here?”

  “What?”

  “A shithole, and we’ve just poured six hundred thousand dollars down it. Your stupid campaign is only making people flock to him.”

  “This stupid campaign has worked time and time again,” King argued.

  “Can’t you even understand a man who can’t be intimidated!”

  “You go with what works,” he answered reactively. “Our education programs have always been successful. Be patient, because eventually some charge is going to stick to him.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s stuck. AMERIGUN and The Combine are stuck with a fucking Democratic liberal for the next four years.”

  “You were the one who signed off on this Colorado strategy,” King retorted.

  “Well, it’s not working,” she grunted. “Close down the Denver operation, phone banks, ads, talk show and media handout sheets, and slink off quietly.”

  King pounded his little fist on his desk and wheezed in discomfort.

  “As of now,” Maud said, “The Combine wants you to plan a post-election party for O’Connell. Our thinking is that we should move our 2003 convention from Dallas to Denver. What I mean is, we come in blazing and go after the legislators. We bring in Hank Carleton and every kid who ever owned a squirrel gun who has risen to fame. We bus in demonstrators from Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, et cetera, et cetera. We show them how unpleasant life is going to be if gun-control shit is enacted. Your campaign has got to have smarts this time, King!”

  “Convention in Denver. You bet it will!”

  Maud unzipped and popped open her alligator/lizard/twenty-four-carat gold-trimmed briefcase and tucked in her papers. “Battlefield, Denver 2003. Concentrate your plans on the legislature. I want everything run through me for approval.”

  Maud consumed another belt of rye and said, “Ahhh.” She didn’t move.

  It wasn’t all over. The phone rang mercifully. It was for Maud. Probably her lesbian bitch partner, King thought, or maybe she’d brought a pretty boy to oil himself up in front of her.

  “My granddaughter,” Maud said after she hung up. “We’ve a long horseback ride in the hills tomorrow. Ow-ee, I’m getting a bit of a buzz. I’ll bet you’d like me to drive off one of those curlicue roads back to Washington.”

  “No such thing, Miss Maud. Do we have any more business?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “we’ve got to do something about this fucking

  magazine,” she said, reaching to an end table and throwing a half dozen

  copies of Weaponry on his desk. She read the covers: “357 Sig, Colt

  380, AR-15 keeps gaining fans despite media attacks, Springfields, H&K

  USP .45 ASP, Savage, how to carry concealed, protecting freedom, more

  guns less crime. And on page five the smiling face of King Porter on his continuing ‘to the bunkers’ sermon, rewrite one hundred and twenty. “We’re under siege, clean decent Americans are being stripped
of their birthright by the United States government in defiance of our forefathers who gave us the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment/ cha, cha, cha!”

  Everything that could stretch and stiffen did so inside King Porter.

  “Here’s a good one,” Maud said, “God made man. Guns made man equal.

  Guns are the legacy of liberty.”

  “Just because .. . just because our magazine doesn’t feature a naked woman on the cover!” he cried.

  Another belt of rye. “Hell, no, there’s no naked women. The sickos would rather squeeze a trigger than a woman’s breast. Guns are good old boys! They got them wham-whap two-fisted names, like .. . like Savage, Colt, Ruger, Baretta, Sigs, Winchester .. .”

  Porter’s eyes widened. “Springfield!” he cried.

  “Browning!” she exclaimed.

  “Luger,” he cried.

  “Smith & Wesson,” she said.

  “Remington Viper,” he cried.

  “Clock. Don’t forget Clock!” she said.

  “Markov, Walther!” he retorted with a double.

  “H and K,” she said.

  “Mauser parabellum,” he cried.

  “Anschutz,” she sang.

  “Magnum! All sorts of mags,” he cried.

  “I quit, you win,” Maud said. “Mags are it.”

  King Porter was breathing hard and smiling at winner ship

  “You start thinking about a few Sandis, or Debbies or Tracis on the cover.”

  “What about Dixie?” he said, miffed. “I’m not turning Weaponry into a pornographic sex magazine.”

  “Sex?” she said. “What the hell do you think this is all about,

  King? Guns are the little people’s sex machines. Hell, they are nothing more than the extension of a cock. Bang! The ultimate orgasm! Guns make piss ants at the end of the bar as big as Hulk himself. Guns equalize the oppressed in his never-ending battle with the oppressor. Guns are empowerment!”

  For a moment King Porter was in a little clapboard church in a gully by the creek at a foot-stomping tirade by its preacher. He snapped back to consciousness.

  “The Combine is sending some designers to work on Weaponry. Maybe we’ll have a miss bang-bang beauty pageant. Let’s sell fifty thousand of them from newsstands and not hide them inside our raincoats. Let’s get ads from Ford trucks and Seagrams and ATT instead of all those chewing-tobacco ads. Let’s have stories written by real writers.”

  Maud was tipsy. She managed to get into the elevator. King watched the circle. The Ferrari took off at a volume that shook the leaves on the trees. Maud Traynor’s red Ferrari screamed down the Alamo’s long driveway and onto the highway. King stood watching on his balcony and taking a few puffs from his inhalator, his baby blanket for years. Hope the bitch is found in scattered pieces at the bottom of a ditch, he wheezed to himself. Suppose she doesn’t run off the road, he thought; maybe I’d better tip off the state patrol there’s a dangerous drunk on the road.

  The red tide of liberals was poisoning the country. No longer was he able to use “friendly persuasion” to make certain commies didn’t get on university teaching staffs and the subjects were kept pearly clean. No longer could he visit the local sheriffs and see that things were open for the gun clubs and shooting programs. It was even getting difficult to sway local and state government officials.

  The colors outside flamed along with his red orange mood. His capacity to terrify had slithered away. He was in eternal battle, often with his own board.

  And came the final humiliation, of exiling AMERIGUN to a puny reconverted hundred-year-old hotel. The Alamo! He had named it, and the Alamo would be heard from again.

  King stared out to the land sloping down from the Alamo. He had plans of his own for the acreage he’d optioned all around. One day the Alamo would be the center of an AMERI GUN heritage park!

  Great battles of our history would be reenacted. He, King Porter, would lead the first charge up San Juan Hill. Charge!

  Kiddie rides on trains or a river would take them through virtual battlefields; Belleau Wood, the Normandy invasion, Iwo Jima, where a kid could plant a flag, Yorktown, and well .. . even Gettysburg.

  And .. . and .. . and the Hall of the Great Gunfighters. For a dollar a kid could buckle up and fast-draw with a laser pistol against Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and .. . and .. . and .. . Doc Holliday.

  And .. . and ... a very subdued, shrouded building depicting the demise of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd and a scad of Mafia gangsters including Capone and .. . and the guy in the Texas tower sniping people on the ground .. .

  And the heroes, the buffalo hunters and men who tamed Indians and the West. John Wayne, Jesse James, Davy Crockett!

  And the kids could buy a replica only at the museum store with a host of AMERIGUN knives and grenades and pistols. And the crowning glory would be an amphitheater which would give a nightly replay of the Alamo!

  DENVER, 2002-2003

  QUINN PATRICK O’CONNELL WINS

  GOVERNORSHIP OF COLORADO IN OFF-YEAR

  ELECTION

  Governor O’Connell stood as a lone pine in a burned-out forest. The Republican sweep took the state house in Denver and a majority of the national delegation to Washington.

  Tuesday follows Monday. Quinn awoke to the reality that a sensible gun-control law didn’t have a chance. He would take his time, build bipartisan coalitions, push the easy legislation first. Once he had a sense of his statehouse, he might unwrap his gun-control bill. That would be a year off, anyhow.

  Quinn did not face automatic Quinn haters. His father had been a shooter, a Republican, a Marine hero. Quinn was a hero of the state, a successful rancher and state senator and a diehard Coloradan.

  For years the O’Connell office in Denver had been a place of civility, debate, and compromise. The Republicans relaxed, as long as Quinn didn’t push a liberal agenda too hard.

  The mansion on 8th and Logan was too stilted for the O’Connells. They

  used it for state functions, Girl Scout troops,

  parties, and photo ops, but home was their Chessman Park condo a few blocks away.

  During the first months Quinn traveled in the state’s King Air to get a pulse of the people and to prioritize his legislative program and win new constituents as a hands-on leader. His first goal was to balance the state’s resources for the coming century. Land and water laws were needed to protect the ranches and farms, for mining, housing developments, and the enormous tourist industry.

  Quinn’s blue-ribbon panel contained a cross section of ideology, but at his personal behest they worked in a professional and intelligent manner. Quinn had imposed on them the canon that if one segment of the Colorado economy defaulted, the nature of the state could be lost.

  He took on commencement speeches, town hall meetings, a semimonthly TV show, business lunches, union picnics, ribbon cutting ceremonies and, mercifully, he was a judge in the Miss Colorado beauty pageant.

  Quinn ended his day’s work in the evening, phoning all over the state to congratulate the day’s winners or to express sorrow over deaths.

  Denver was a legitimate small-time big city with generations of character and livability while retaining its cowboy gait.

  He and Mayor Cholate formed a Coming to Denver committee. Gateway to the Rockies! Most sports-loving city in America!

  The state supported the city in hiring a top museum curator to scout the world and put together exhibitions from Mongolia to Brazil to France and have their grand openings in Denver.

  Likewise, he won support, with powerful persuasion, for the funds to upgrade the Denver Symphony Orchestra.

  The Coming to Denver committee purchased a small hotel, large enough for the cast and crew of a Broadway musical. Quinn and the mayor hounded New York producers to stage their big shows.

  Playing on Aspen’s glitz, a series of events were telecast from skiing to the Aspen Music Festival in the summ
er. In a smaller way, Telluride’s film and country-western festivals reached millions.

  Some of the ski areas had gone “soft” as the number of skiers dwindled. Quinn convinced the newly rich entrepreneurs of China and Russia to build vacation towns for their countrymen. Little Moscow and Little Shanghai came into being and resulted in an open door for the state’s export products.

  Quinn Patrick O’Connell created a feel-good atmosphere.

  But always hovering over him was the coming AMERIGUN convention. AMERIGUN sent shock waves through the state capital with their announcement that a regional AMERIGUN office was being established in Denver.

  AMERIGUN was picking a fight, making a power play. It was a defeat that Governor O’Connell could not abide without throwing his delicately balanced program into a heap.

  As the year of 2003 rolled on, end game was near.

  THE ALAMO—MARYLAND 2003

  In the Alamo, King Porter seethed and wheezed the hours until the convention.

  Deep down and not revealing it to a soul, King had prayed that Quinn would win the governorship. AMERIGUN and himself could prove their mettle by “victory at Denver.”

  In the meantime, Quinn burned the midnight oil to try to craft some way to blunt the AMERIGUN assault.

  Mayor Cholate simply did not want a rumble involving his police. Peace at any price. He conveniently booked a seminar in Tokyo during the gun group’s stay in Denver.

  With limited knowledge, limited forces at his disposal, and limited

  legal options, Quinn was simply outgunned. The helplessness of his

  situation crashed down on him when AMERIGUN mailed flyers announcing the exhibition of a new weapon, The Colorado Blizzard, at the convention.

  An Australian invention, the Blizzard, touted as the first great weapon of the new century, was a souped-up double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun that was fed cartridges through a machine-gun belt. Fifty times faster than the semiautomatic “street sweeper,” it could fire thousands of pellets a minute.