by Paul Theroux
In spite of this knowledge of the weaponry that bordered on connoisseurship, most of the gun-show-goers were just looking, hands in pockets, sauntering, nudging each other—admiring, dazzled by the size and rarity of the guns, as though they had gone there to gape, swap stories, meet old friends, drink coffee, and walk among the tables the way people do at flea markets. And this greatly resembled a flea market, but one smelling of cleaning oil and wood polish and a dustiness of scorched steel and gunpowder. They were at the show, man and boy, less to buy than to be reassured by the firepower.
Yet there was something else in the atmosphere, a quality of mood I could not define as I walked among the weapons; it was an attitude, a vibration, a buzz. As I strolled and listened, and registered the pulses of the air and the postures of the men, the feeling became more apparent. I could not at first understand what it was that I felt.
“Thank you much.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Go right ahead, sir, pick that bad boy up.”
The long tables of knives were the least visited, but they showed every sort of blade, from exquisite penknives to machetes to iron hackers, some of them engraved, with bone and ivory handles—and swords and bayonets too. At other tables, military memorabilia, Nazi blades. “That’s an Ernst Röhm dagger,” one side of the broad blade etched Alles für Deutschland, the motto of the Sturmabteilung (SA) that Röhm cofounded with Hitler, as the seller explained to me. After Röhm was arrested for treason by Hitler on the Night of the Long Knives, in 1934, he was executed. As for these daggers that he had distributed to his Brownshirts, the inscription In Herzlicher Kameradschaft Ernst Röhm was obliterated from the blade with a stone grinder.
“See? They got rid of the Röhm business. If your knife had it showing, you’d be in trouble. This is highly collectible.”
Gas masks, helmets, belts, harnesses, badges, flags, all with swastikas, and many 9-millimeter Lugers.
“That’s a working gun. You could fire that. But don’t dry-fire it here.”
Civil War paraphernalia—powder flasks, Harpers Ferry rifles, peaked caps, insignia, Confederate money, and pistols—a number of tables were piled with these battered pieces of history. Nearly all of them were from the Confederate side. Bumper stickers too, one reading The Civil War—America’s Holocaust. Another, Hey Liberal, You’re the Reason We Have the 2nd Amendment, and many denouncing President Obama: NObama, Obummer, Obamanation, and Advocates of Gun Control: Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Obama.
“My uncle has one of them powder flasks.”
“If it’s got the apportioning spigot spout in working order, your uncle’s a lucky guy.”
Many of the rifles and pistols at other tables were old muzzle-loaders, percussion varieties, or big, mean revolvers that shot black powder ammo. Because they were antiques, and theoretically unworkable, they could be sold to anyone. But black powder ammo, though rare, was obtainable, and any one of these old weapons could still open a fatal hole in a man or a beast.
“That there’s museum quality,” a seller said of a musket with an engraved barrel and a beautifully carved stock. I had the impression that many of these gun guys had brought their best weapons as boasts, in the boyish, proud, show-and-tell manner of collectors, and would not have parted with them for anything.
But a greater number of the stallholders looked hard-up and desperate to sell the stack of battered guns and tarnished magazines and parts lined up in front of them. At one of these tables, alongside a plastic Glock and a .22 plinking rifle, I saw a German World War Two–era .32-caliber Mauser pistol. I picked it up and hefted it.
“Three hundred fifty bucks and it’s yours. I got extra mags that go with it.”
“I’m from out of state.”
“Don’t matter. Private sale. Okay, three hundred even.”
Not every sale was private. Half a dozen sectioned-off areas were authorized dealers, and inside the enclosure scowling men sat at smaller tables, filling out applications for background checks, while staff members swiped credit cards through machines. These were registered guns, better quality, more of them. A background check would not take more than thirty minutes, I was told.
Some were reenactors: one man in a Confederate uniform, another dressed in period cowboy costume, looking like a vindictive sheriff, black hat and tall boots and pearl-handled pistols. He saw me staring.
“Howdy, partner.”
One of the tables was set up like a museum display of World War One weapons and uniforms, as well as maps, books, postcards, and framed black-and-white photos of muddy battlefields. This was a commemorative exhibit put up by Dane Coffman, who had driven down from Leesburg, a hundred miles away, and rented eight tables to mount a memorial to his soldier grandfather, Ralph Coffman, who had served in the Great War. Dane, who was about sixty or so, wore an old infantryman’s uniform, a wide-brimmed hat, and leather puttees, the getup of a doughboy. Nothing was for sale. Dane was a collector, a military historian, and a reenactor; his aim was to show his collection of belts and holsters, mess kits, canteens, wire cutters, trenching tools, and what he called his pride and joy, a machine gun propped on a tripod.
“I’m here for my grandfather,” he said. “I’m here to give a history lesson.”
Throughout the gun show, I saw a mixture of private and commercial, mostly poor or out-of-work-looking men in cracked boots and faded hats, but there were a few well-heeled buyers, some obvious cranks, and loiterers. A few people were selling flags and patriotic items and comical signs: Warning—I’m a Bitter Gun Owner Clinging to My Religion, which was an echo of what Barack Obama had said when campaigning for president; No Trespassing—Violators Will Be Shot—Survivors Will Be Shot Again; and Gun Control Is Being Able to Hit Your Target.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” a man leaning on a fat black assault rifle expostulated. “If that damn vote goes through, we’re finished.”
“Oh, yeah. They’re fixing to change this whole bidniss,” another man added. “You can kiss your AR goodbye.”
This made the first man indignant. “I would like to see someone try and take this away from me. I surely would.”
Others were ranting quietly, but not many, because there was no disagreement in the hall. These were all gun guys, gun owners, gun rights people—men and women, whole families—all on the same side. It was my first glimpse of a large gathering of white Southerners, and some observers have commented that white Southerners are like an ethnic group, similar to Irish or Italians—“a culturally distinct group.”
Reverend Johnson’s Story
“I’m just a country boy from bottom-line caste, born and raised in Estill, Hampton County,” Virgin Johnson told me a week later, over the daily special at Ruby Tuesday, up the road in Orangeburg, where he lived. Estill was the sticks, he said, deep country, cotton fields. Never mind. He smiled; he had a way of showing two prominent front teeth when he smiled, as if to demonstrate he was being ironic. Then, with a mock-resigned sigh, he said, “Po’ black.”
Still in his dark suit, he sipped at his iced tea and told me about his life. This was another man speaking, not the Sycamore preacher, not the shrewd Orangeburg trial lawyer, but a quiet, reflective private citizen in a roadside restaurant, reminiscing about his life as a loner. I told him I’d been to a gun show in Charleston.
“I got guns,” he said eagerly. “I got all sorts. I got an AK-47, I got so many. The legitimate gun owners don’t cause the deaths—it’s the illegal guns that are the problem, the criminals. Tell ya, I want some protection. This can be a dangerous place.”
“Give me an example,” I said.
“My father ran for a county council seat in Hampton in 1968. Virgin Johnson Senior—he was a stonemason, and later a teacher and a county councilor. My grandfather picked the name, it seemed special—Virgin Mary, virgin soil, virgin anything. My son is Virgin the Third.” Virgin Johnson leaned toward me and tapped the table. “’Sixty-eight was not a good year fo
r a black man to run for anything. He got a message in the mailbox. It said, ‘If you win, we will kill you.’”
“Did he drop out of the race?”
“Didn’t stop him,” Virgin Johnson said. “But know why he lost? Because people knew about the message, and the ones who liked him—and there were many—voted against him. Didn’t want him to dah. He ran again, years later, and won. My daddy was at my service today. He’s ailing, but he always comes. He’s a popular man in these parts.
“I was born in 1954. In 1966, the year of what they called ‘voluntary integration,’ I was the only black student at Estill Elementary School. Happened this way. There were two buses went by our place every morning. I had said to my daddy, ‘I want to get the first bus.’ That was the white bus. He said, ‘You sure, boy?’ I said, ‘I’m sure.’”
It was so odd to be here, in a busy restaurant—whites and blacks together at booths and tables—almost fifty years later, as Virgin Johnson recalled this episode that left such a mark on his life, the matter of a black student on a white bus.
“The day I hit that bus, everything changed. Sixth grade—it changed my life. I lost all my friends, black and white. No one talked to me, no one at all. Even my white friends from home. I knew they wanted to talk to me, but they were under pressure, and so was I. I sat in the back of the bus. When I went to the long table for lunch, thirty boys would get up and leave.”
He sipped his tea, nodded, and smiled ruefully. The Ruby Tuesday waiter led prospective diners to a booth beyond, and the three glanced at the well-dressed man—the only man in the restaurant wearing a suit and tie.
“I was twelve,” he said. “The funny thing is, we were all friendly, black and white. My grandfather was beloved by all. Oncle Henry, they called him—Henry Frazier. We played together in and around Estill. We picked cotton. My daddy and uncle had a hundred acres of cotton. Uncle Clayton still farms cotton, corn, watermelon. I picked a hundred or a hundred twenty-five pounds a day with my family and my friends. But when I got on the bus, it was over. I was alone, on my own.
“When I got to school I knew there was a difference. There was not another African American there—no black teachers, no black students, none at all in the elementary school. Except the janitors. The janitors were something, like guardian angels to me. They were black, and they didn’t say anything to me—didn’t need to. They nodded at me as if to say, ‘Hold on, son. Hold on.’
“So I lost all my friends, and I learned at an early age you have to stand by yourself. That gave me a fighting spirit. I’ve had it since I was a child. It’s destiny. What happens when you let other people make your decisions? You become incapable of making your own decisions. They were not all bad days. In those days you had to earn respect. Nowadays no one cares about respect. It’s more of a political show.”
We continued to eat our meal, and he went on talking, reminiscing. He was a reflective man, pausing between thoughts, punctuating sentences with silences, so it was easy for me to take notes and go on eating.
“When I was thirteen I had a job pulling string for a surveyor. He was white. I liked the job. This was the summertime, the sixties. We were surveying a farm, the man and me. We pulled up on a property and started our work.
“Then I hear a voice: ‘I don’t want that boy on the property!’
“The owner of the property, see. He took out his shotgun and shot it in the air. I was thirteen! So we left, the white surveyor and me. That was in Hampton County, and this man’s daddy was in the Klan. But they all had that mentality because of him.
“I was the first African American to go to law school from my side of the county. University of South Carolina at Columbia. I was in a class of one hundred—this was in the eighties. I was the only black person. Passed the bar in 1988. Got a license to preach.
“There’s no contradiction for me. I’m happy doing both. I just wish the economy was better. This area is so poor. They got nothin’—they need hope. If I can give it to them, that’s a good thing. Jesus said, ‘We have to go back and care about the other person.’”
In the silences that followed I asked about Orangeburg and Sycamore and Fairfax, and especially about Allendale, which seemed to me so woebegone.
“These are friendly places—nice people. Good values. Decent folks. Next time you come down here, pay us a visit at our church, Revelation Ministries. Promise you will.”
“I promise,” I said, and the notion of returning made me happy.
“We have issues—kids having kids, for one, sometimes four generations of kids having kids. But there’s so little advance. That does perplex me, the condition of this place. Something’s missing. What is it?”
And then he made a passionate gesture, flinging up his hand, and he raised his voice in a tone that recalled a preaching voice.
“Take the kids away from this area and they shine!”
Atomic Road
The narrow country road through the fragrant yellow pinewoods I saw on my map was named Atomic Road. A back road, it branched as Route 125 from dear, dilapidated Allendale and doom-laden Route 301 with its ruinous motels, and it followed the course of the Savannah River, which was the South Carolina–Georgia state line, to Augusta. “Atomic Road” was just too tempting a name to pass by. Seeing a big fence and a sentry box, I stopped to ask what was behind the fence.
“Turn your car around, sir, and keep going.”
“I just wanted to ask a few questions.”
“Did you hear me, sir?”
It was too late to stop at the nearest town, Aiken, to make inquiries, but I thought: The next time I come this way—when I visit Revelation Ministries—I’ll look closer. But I knew that the fence enclosed the Savannah River Site, a nuclear facility known locally as the Bomb Factory.
That was another thing that distinguished this trip from others I’d made in my life. In Africa or China I never said, I’ll come back in a few months and continue. Instead, I pushed on to a destination and then went home and wrote about it. But in the South I traveled in eccentric circles, in and out of the fourth dimension, always hopeful, making plans to return, and saying to myself, as I did that day on Atomic Road: I’ll be back.
Believers on Bikes
On the way through Georgia to Tuscaloosa, I met Kelly Wiggly at an Alabama rest stop. He was with his wife, taking a breather. I saw he was towing a beautiful Harley-Davidson three-wheeler on his flatbed trailer, and asked him about it. A stout, white-haired man in his mid-sixties, in bib overalls and boots, he was a biker, but a kindly one, so mild-tempered as to be beatific.
“We’re on our way home from Hatfield, Arkansas, on the Oklahoma state line, where we had a meeting of the Christian Motorcyclists Association,” he said. “We ride for the Son—Son of God. We had three thousand bikers there from all over the country, other places in the world too. One biker from South Africa. We get together every year to witness, bless bikes, and to pray.”
“You see any Hells Angels?”
He laughed and said, “We welcome the Hells Angels, the Banditos, anyone. It doesn’t matter that they’re dirty or violent—we have bikes in common. We say, ‘Come on over for coffee. Four in the morning? That’s okay. Any time is fine, you’re welcome. Then we talk to them about Jesus, and maybe we share a little about the Bible, pray some, fellowship a little, no pressure.”
“Do you make many converts?”
“They’re pretty rough but they can be saved. Hey, some of them just got out of prison. All they have to do is listen and witness. I know we can bring them around. All you need is a Ride Plan. Step one: Pick your road. Step two: Consider your destination—we’ve all taken wrong turns. Step three is: Realize your dilemma—everyone’s spiritual ride ends at the Canyon of Sin and Death. But God made a bridge over it, and that’s Step four: Cross the bridge today—make a decision to cross that bridge, with the help of God.”
“How was your weekend?”
“It was beautiful. All of us were camping there in Hatf
ield. Camping and witnessing. And you know what? This movement of Believers on Bikes started with one man, some years ago. It has grown tremendously. Listen, I’m about to retire, and when I do, my wife and I are going to ride this Harley all over the country, camping and witnessing.” He thought a moment. “Maybe out of the country too. Know the fastest-growing Christian country in the whole world? It’s China.”
“I wonder why.”
“’Cause they want to be saved. Gotta go now, off to Scottsboro. Bless you, brother.”
Tuscaloosa: Football Matters
I drove to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to get my bearings, to go deeper south, into Hale County and Greene County.
Tuscaloosa is a college town—more than half the town is the campus of the University of Alabama, celebrated as having the best football team in the country and the highest-paid coaches. It is the home of the Crimson Tide, the scarlet letter, the enlarged italic of the Alabama A on cars and clothes and often showing as a bold red tattoo.
I arrived on a Friday night, and the next day Tuscaloosa was in the grip of something more intense than a carnival. A riotous hooting tribal rite possessed the whole town, because of the University of Alabama football game that day in a stadium that held more than 100,000 people. I remarked on this and on the fans—everyone in Tuscaloosa was a fan. A man said to me, “This is a drinking town with a football problem,” and winked to show he was joshing.
That idle quip has been made of many college towns, but is football a problem in Tuscaloosa? It seemed to me a chronic condition, and perhaps not a problem but a solution. The town is consumed by the sport. It is funded by football, and it prospers. Football is the town’s identity, and the game makes its citizens happy—resolves their conflicts, unifies them, helps them forget their pain, gives them membership in a cult of winners—and it makes them colossal, monologuing, and rivalrous bores.
“Football’s a religion here,” some Tuscaloosans also say, and smile in apology, but they are closer to a complete definition in that cliché than they perhaps realize. Even the most basic of psychological analysis can explain why that neat formula is so fitting. Not any old religion, certainly not the mild, private, prayer-muttering, God-is-love creed that informs decisions and gives us peace. The Crimson Tide football religion is one that is awash in fury, something like Crusader Christianity reared on bloodthirstiness, with its saber charges and its conquests, or like Islam in its most jihadi form, the blazing, red-eyed, uncompromising, and martyring faith; an in-group cohering around the sport to demonize and vanquish an out-group. In Tuscaloosa it is a public passion, a ritualized belief system, a complete persona. It is why in Alabama some men have the A tattooed on their neck, and some women on their shoulder: a public statement, a commitment for life, body modification as proof of loyalty and cultural differentiation, like a Hindu’s caste mark or a Maori’s tattoo or the facial scarring of a Sudanese Dinka.