Out of the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “My father used to sit in his study, listening to fine music while going over his day’s cases, a brandy at hand. My mother was having a sherry—not Ripple,”—he laughed—“going over her papers from the college. My home life was conducive to a moderate, intelligent way of life. My father told me, if I wanted it, to participate in sports, but to keep the game in perspective and always remember it is but a game. Nothing more. No, Ben, I didn’t grow up as the average black kid. That’s why I know what you say is true. Home. The root cause.

  “I went to the opera, Ben. Really! How many violent-minded people attend operas? How many ignorant people attend plays and classical concerts? How many bigots—of all races—read Sartre, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dante?” He shook his head.

  “No, you find your bigots and violent-minded ignoramuses seeking other forms of base entertainment. And I’m not just speaking of music.

  “Do you know why I joined the Green Berets, Ben?”

  Ben shook his head.

  “So I could get to know violence firsthand. We didn’t have street gangs where I grew up. To try to understand violence.” He laughed aloud, heartily, slapping his knee. “Well, I found out about it, all right; I got shot in the butt in Laos.”

  “Enough,” Lila said. “Let’s don’t you two refight the war. I’ve heard all your stories. Tomorrow is a workday. Let’s go home.”

  They all stood up, Cecil saying, “Both our peoples have a way to go, Ben.”

  “Think we’ll make it?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll wager that with your ideas and my ideas we could give it a hell of a try. Think about that, Ben Raines.”

  After they had said their good nights and good-bys, for Ben was pulling out in the morning, Ben walked into the bedroom. “Are you all right, now?”

  “Of course, I am,” Salina said, her voice small in the darkness. “I always lie in the dark and bawl and snuffle.”

  “You heard everything that was said?”

  “I’m not deaf, Ben.”

  “Well . . . you want to head out with me in the morning?”

  “Maybe I like it here.”

  “Sure you do. Stay here, and if you’re not killed by Parr’s meres, you can marry Kasim and live happily ever after.”

  “That is positively the most dreadful idea anyone could offer. Thank you, no.”

  “I repeat; would you like to head out with me?”

  “Why should I?”

  “You might see some sights you’ve never seen before.”

  “Ben, that is a stupid statement for a writer to make. If I haven’t seen the sights before, of course I’d be seeing them for the first time.”

  “What?”

  “That isn’t a good enough reason, Ben.”

  “Well . . . goddamn it! I like you and you like me.”

  “That’s better. Sure you want to travel with a zebra?”

  Ben suddenly thought of Megan. “I’ll tell everyone you’ve been out in the sun too long. But let’s get one thing settled; when I tell you to step-and-fetch-it, you’d better hump it, baby.”

  “Screw you, Ben Raines!” She giggled.

  “I also have that in mind.”

  She threw back the covers and Ben could see she was naked. And beautiful. “So come on. I assure you, whitey, it doesn’t rub off.”

  SIXTEEN

  Ben, Salina, and Juno pulled out before dawn, heading east, to Mississippi. Salina thought it best she tell no one verbal good-bys, so she left a note. Both Ben and Salina thought it best. Juno offered no opinion; he just liked to travel.

  “I thought I was opinionated,” Ben said. Faint streaks of red mingled with gray in the eastern sky. “With some strong ideas. But Cecil lays it right on the line, doesn’t he? I like him.”

  “You agree with him, Ben?”

  “Yes, I do. We both agree that the root cause for most of this nation’s inner problems lies in the home. But . . . my solution—as he said—was Orwellian. Other than that, I don’t know how to correct it.”

  “You could start by killing all the rednecks,” Salina suggested. Ben did not think she was joking.

  He smiled, thinking: she may be half-white, and look almost pure white—with a dark tan—but she was raised among blacks. The next few months should be interesting. Or years; the thought came to him, and he was comfortable with it.

  “Let me tell you something about rednecks, Salina,” he said.

  “I know all I need to know about them. I saw pictures of them in Alabama and Mississippi during the civil-rights movement in the sixties. I saw them putting high-pressure water hoses on little children; saw them throwing rocks and bottles; saw the churches that were bombed and burned; and the bodies of black people who were killed. I’ve read many accounts of the KKK—night riders.” She shuddered. “Thanks, Ben, but no thanks.”

  “If you’d have looked a bit more closely at those pictures, Salina, you’d have seen some fear as well as hate on those white faces.”

  She glanced at him. She waited.

  “Don’t you know that a lot of whites—many more than will admit it—are afraid of black people? The myth of the black man—subhuman species, only a few centuries away from being an ape.”

  A very small smile creased her lips. She fought it back. Ben did not ask why the smile. But he hoped she was thinking of Kasim.

  “As for rednecks, Salina, allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Back when things were normal, if you’d had a flat on the highway—”

  “Don’t use me, Ben,” she interrupted. “I don’t look black.”

  “All right, then, two black, black women. Your slick dude in the three-hundred-dollar suit, driving the fancy car is not going to stop to help those ladies—not ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But some ol’ boy wearing a cowboy hat or a ball cap and boots with mud on them, bouncing along in a pickup truck will stop. I’ve watched that scenario played out a hundred times over the years. And that ol’ boy will work and sweat and bang his knuckles and cuss under his breath. But he will change that tire for those black women.

  “Traditionally—and unfortunately, this is changing —your good ol’ boys were the first to volunteer during a war. Call them rednecks if you will—I do—and many of them are. Point I’m making, babe, is this: you look closely at most people, you’ll find some good in them. Maybe not much, but some. Unless he’s a punk, pure, and then you can search forever and not find anything of redeeming value.”

  “Kluckers—KKKers—have redeeming values?”

  “I feel certain many of them are good solid family men, hard workers in their churches and on their jobs. Aren’t those redeeming values, Salina?”

  She reluctantly agreed with a short bob of her head. “I read all your books while at your house, Ben. You never wrote much about the black experience.”

  “I don’t know anything about the black experience—as you call it. How can I write anything about it?”

  A smile crossed her mouth. “Oh . . . I wouldn’t say that, Ben. I’d have to say you did a pretty good job of getting into the black experience last night.”

  Ben groaned. “Very funny, Salina. Yeah. Cute.”

  She laughed at his expression. “I think, Ben Raines, inside you, buried deeply, there is just a little bit of bigot.”

  “I’ll certainly agree with that.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. I’m prejudiced against anyone, of any color, who wants acceptance, but refuses to conform—even just a little bit—to gain it. Agreed, everyone has a right to dress the way he or she chooses, but if that style is blatantly against the norm, a shop owner has the right to say, ‘No way am I going to hire you—you’d scare my customers to death.’ Sorry, Salina, but that’s the way I feel about it. And before you jump down my throat, remember that Cecil—and Pal, too, I’m thinking—have always been accepted in my quote/unquote ‘world.’ Care to dwell on why that is?”

  “Oh, Ben! I could tear that hypothesis to shreds. You don’t know Cecil like
I know him. I can’t speak for Pal—not really—but Cecil is a snob, and damned if I don’t think you are, too. In music, in taste of clothes, theater, literature; the whole bag.”

  “Well, then, three cheers for snobbery, if that’s what it takes. Yes, I am somewhat of a snob, Salina. And I damned sure offer no apology for it.”

  “Go on, Ben,” she urged. “Let’s get it all said. Clear the air; plug up all the openings.”

  Ben glanced at her and grinned.

  She grimaced. “Very funny, Ben. Yeah. Cute.”

  “There isn’t that much to clear, babe. Education on both sides. Conformity—there again, on both sides . . .”

  “Words, Ben—words. I’ve heard them all before. How do you plan to implement them into action?”

  “I won’t have to. Because the people we shall gather around us will accept them willingly. That’s the simplistic beauty of the society I advocate.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Ben. You will take the cream of all races and the rest can go to hell?”

  “That’s not . . . entirely the way I envision it.”

  “But close enough?”

  “Ummm . . . O.K. Yeah.”

  “Seems like a man named Hitler had a plan something along those lines.”

  “Oh, come on, Salina! Goddamn. Don’t compare me to that nitwit.”

  “Honey . . .” She put a hand on his arm. “Don’t get angry. I’m not comparing you to Hitler. What I’m saying is there are flaws in your logic. What you envision is grand—what I know of it. But what of the people of limited intelligence? Those of small imaginations? You’ve made no allowance for them.”

  “But I have, Salina: education.”

  “Forced education, Ben?” she asked softly.

  “If I have to.”

  “Maybe it’s time,” was her reply. She picked up a map and looked first at it, then at the town they were passing through. “Ben, where are we?”

  Ben looked around him and cussed. They had been talking and arguing so heatedly he had taken the wrong turn. They had to backtrack ten miles to get on the right road.

  On the way through Mississippi, Ben told her of Ike and Megan. She simply refused to believe a man born and reared in Mississippi would marry a black woman.

  “I’m telling you,” Ben protested. “I married them—down in Florida.”

  “You married them? God, what a ceremony that must have been.”

  “I thought it was rather nice,” Ben said. “Except for the beer running out of my ears.”

  “Someday,” she said, her tone one of utter disbelief, “you will have to tell me about it.” She patted his arm. “I’ll let you know where and when.” She glanced at his ears and muttered something under her breath.

  “Well, I’ll just be damned!” Ike said, grabbing Salina in a bear hug and kissing her on the mouth. “White boy from Louisiana done got hisself a half-breed coon. Will wonders never cease?”

  Ben had told Salina all about Ike’s career as a SEAL. She struggled against his bear hug, then gave up. “Turn me loose, you . . . redneck aquatic freak!”

  “Oh, I like her.” Ike grinned, turning her loose. Megan took her in tow and told her to pay her husband no mind. The salt water had corroded what little brain he had.

  Ben and Salina spent two days with Ike and Megan, talking over plans to move west. Ike assured Ben he would do his part; his people had been busy securing trucks, gathering up everything to rebuild. They were ready to roll.

  “Logan’s people been back?” Ben asked.

  “Be back next month, so my people say.”

  “We’ll be settling in by then.”

  “You and Salina taking the point?”

  “Leaving in the morning.”

  “Radio back when you’re ready for us.”

  On the way west, Ben and Salina spent their first night at a lake on the border between Louisiana and Texas. Salina had never fished in her life, and Ben had a good time teaching her the rudiments. She caught a white perch, was finned trying to get it off the hook, and cussed—very unladylike.

  She held out her hand to Ben. “Make it all better,” she said.

  Ben poured iodine on the small cut. After she had finished her dance of pain, she shoved him in the lake and walked back up to the cabin, leaving him floundering and hollering.

  Sitting on the dock, a blanket wrapped around him, Ben fished and cussed, caught a mess of perch, then cleaned them for supper.

  It was peaceful on the lake as the sun was setting, bathing the water, creating hues that bounced off the shoreline. Salina sat a few feet from him, in a chaise longue. She wore a bikini that could have been stuffed into a cigarette package that still had room for a few smokes.

  Leaning back in his own lounge, Ben studied her profile (and her curves, which were many and provocative) in the glow of fading sun. She was not a tall woman: five-four, she had told him. Her facial features were soft, delicate, her skin a gentle fawn color.

  “Why are you staring at me?” she asked, turning her head, meeting his eyes.

  “Because I like to look at you. You’re a beautiful woman; surely you must be used to men staring at you?”

  “What were you thinking as you looked? Be honest.”

  Ben grinned.

  “Sure,” she said dryly. “That. Of course.”

  “Among other things,” he added, which was true.

  “And whitey says all niggers think about is sex. You people better get your act together. You’re hypocrites.”

  “Well,”—Ben’s grin broadened—“I’ve always heard that if a man just has to marry, marry a white woman. If he wants a good piece of ass, get him a black gal.” He waited for the fire storm.

  She rose slowly from the lounge and came to him, pulling him to his feet. “Old man,”—she smiled—“you are going to pay for that remark.”

  “I just repeated what ‘they’ say, that’s all.” Ben pulled her to him and they stood for a moment, mouths silent now, but their lips speaking silent messages.

  “Uh-huh,” she whispered.

  They walked hand in hand into the cabin.

  Juno sat looking up at the darkening sky. And if he had a thought that could be put into words, it would be: humans sure do act funny.

  Waco appeared to have been hard hit. From what they could see, Ben calculated less than one percent of the population had survived. Baylor was almost deserted, only a handful of people on the campus.

  “Why is it, Ben,” Salina asked, as they walked the quiet corridors of a science building, “that in some towns a great many people survived, in others almost no one?”

  He shook his head, unable to answer her question. He still did not know why he had survived when others had not.

  Back in the bright sunlight, she asked, “Why do you always go to universities and colleges, Ben?”

  “I’m looking for a . . . friend.”

  Salina picked up on the hesitation. “She?”

  He told her about Jerre.

  “Did you—do you—love her?”

  “A little bit, yes. But I worry about her a lot more.”

  “Ummm,” she replied.

  They headed west. Occasionally, Ben would feel Salina’s eyes studying him as he drove and he knew she had questions she would like to ask, about Jerre. Ben wondered how he would answer them when the time came. He thought he knew.

  Less than a year after the world-wide war, the United States Government was off and running, with Hilton Logan at the reins. The east coast was being resettled, from the edge of the hot areas in the northeast, down to central Florida. Law and order was being reintroduced to the citizens. The regular military watched as Logan’s army, under the command of Col. Kenny Parr knocked heads, confiscated weapons, shuffled people about, and listened grimly to the rumors of large bands of so-called Rebels moving west, stripping entire cities as they went. But the lawful military was very small, now, and they did little except maintain a presence and wonder what Logan would do next.
>
  Logan chose as his vice president a man the regular military approved of; a man of good sense, who weighed the issues at hand and then acted, not out of emotion, but out of what he felt would be the best for the country. Aston Addison. Maybe, the military thought, there might be hope for the nation yet.

  Mid-June found Ben and Salina in the state of Idaho, just on the southernmost fringe of the Great Primitive Area, on the south side of the Fork. Ben had spoken with Ike, and those who supported a free state were moving, from all over the nation, toward Idaho.

  Ben cranked up his radio and called in. “How many do we have, Ike?”

  “‘Bout five thousand, I figure, not countin’ the Rebs. How many folks alive where you are, Ben?”

  “Damned few. It’s wild and beautiful, Ike.”

  “Not too far from where you are, Ben, there’s a platoon of Army Rangers from Fort Lewis ... or what’s left of Lewis, that is. They’ve split with Logan. Down a way from them, there’s what’s left of the west coast SEAL team. They don’t like Logan either—but they like what you and I have planned and are ready to move to join us. Rebuild. I talked with some folks from up Canada way; they were hard hit. They’d like to pitch their hats in the ring, too.”

  “O.K., Ike—let’s get cracking.”

  “I’ll see you in about a month, partner. Excuse me—General.”

  “What do you really know about Ben Raines?” President Logan asked his wife over dinner.

  The question startled her, caught her off guard. She had not thought of Ben in months. Did not know if he was dead or alive. She pondered her husband’s question for a moment.

  “Well . . . he’s a rude man, very arrogant, sarcastic. But he’s also a very tough man—not just physically but mentally. I don’t think he’s afraid of anything. He’s smart, too. Why do you ask?”

  “He was put in charge of Bull Dean’s Rebels.”

  “Are you serious?”