"This," Dr. Krantz said, looking scandalized, "is ridiculous. Rob, surely you—"
But Rob straightened on the back of the snowmobile, his head turned in the direction of the lights from Jim Henderson's house.
"Bogey," he said, "at twelve o'clock. Krantz, if you don't get the hell out of sight, you're gonna find yourself with a belly full of buckshot."
"W-what?" Dr. Krantz looked around nervously. "What are you—"
Rob was off the snowmobile and shoving Cyrus Krantz behind a tree before the good doctor knew what was happening. At the same time, I saw what Rob had seen, a light coming toward us through the thick trees on Jim Henderson's side of the barbed wire. As the light came closer, I saw that it came from one of those old-fashioned kerosene lanterns. The lantern was held by a big man in red-plaid hunting gear, a rifle in his other hand, and a dog big enough to pass for a small pony at his side.
The dog, when it noticed us, began hurtling through the snow in our direction. For a second or two, as it came careening toward us, its long tongue lolling and its eyes blazing, I thought it was one of those hell dogs. . . . You know, from that Hound of the Baskervilles they made us read in ninth grade?
But as it got closer, I realized it was just your run of the mill German shepherd. You know, the kind that clamp down on your throat and won't let go, even if you hit them over the head with a socket wrench.
Fortunately, just as this particular German shepherd was preparing to leap over the barbed wire between us and do just that, the guy with the rifle went, "Chigger! Down!" and the dog collapsed into the snow not two feet away from Rob and me, growling menacingly, with its gaze never wavering from us.
The man with the rifle put the lantern down, reached into his pocket, and pulled something out. Handgun, I thought, my heart thudding so loudly in my chest, I thought it might cause an avalanche. If there'd been any cliffs around, anyway. The rifle's too messy. He's going to put a bullet through each of our skulls and let Chigger eat our frozen carcasses.
Sometimes it really did seem like the whole world was conspiring against me ever seeing Rob in a tux.
"Hey," Rob said, keeping his hands in the air and his gaze on Chigger. "Hey, don't shoot. We don't mean any harm. We just want to talk to Jim."
But it turned out the thing Chigger's owner had taken out of his pocket wasn't a gun. It was a Walkie-Talkie.
"Blue Leader, this is Red Leader," Red Plaid Jacket said into the Walkie-Talkie. "We got intruders over by the south fence. Repeat. Intruders by the south fence."
"We aren't intruders," I said. Then, remembering what our cover story was supposed to be—except of course that we weren't supposed to have let ourselves get caught until after Chick and his friends were safely hidden in the bushes and trees around the compound, ready to bust us on out as soon as we successfully found Seth—I quickly amended that claim. "I mean, we ain't intruders. We want to join you. We want to be True Americans, too."
Static burst over Red Plaid Jacket's Walkie-Talkie. Apparently, someone was replying to his intruder warning. He must have been speaking in code, though, because I couldn't understand what he was saying.
"Copy that, Red Leader," the voice said. "Tag and transport. Repeat, tag and transport."
Red Plaid Jacket put his Walkie-Talkie away, then signaled for Rob and me to climb over the barbed wire. The way he signaled this was, he pointed the rifle at us, and went, "Git on over here."
Climbing over barbed wire is never a pleasant experience. But it is an even less pleasant experience when you are doing it under the watchful gaze of a massive German shepherd named Chigger. Rob went first, and didn't seem to snag anything too vital while climbing. He very politely held as much of the barbed wire down for me as he was able, so that I could arrive uninjured on the other side, as well. I didn't succeed as nimbly as he had, being about a foot shorter than he was, but all that really suffered was the inside seam of my jeans.
Once we were safely on the True Americans' side of the fence, Red Plaid Jacket went, "Git on, then," and signaled, again with the mouth of his rifle, that we should start walking toward the house.
Rob looked back at the snowmobile.
"What about our ride?" he asked. "Is it safe to leave it there?"
Red Plaid Jacket let out a harsh laugh. That wasn't all he let out, either. He also let out a stream of tobacco juice from between his cheek and gum. It landed, in a steaming brown puddle, in the snow.
"Safe from what?" he wanted to know. "The coons? Or the possums?"
This was a comforting response, as it indicated that Red Plaid was as unaware of the presence of Dr. Krantz, hidden behind the thick pines, as he was of the many patrons of Chick's who had answered the call to arms by the owner of their favorite carousing spot … or who at least I was hoping would answer that call. And show up soon.
"Move," Red Plaid said to Rob and me.
And so we moved.
C H A P T E R
12
It would be wrong to say I enjoyed our long walk toward Jim Henderson's house. I relished any time I got to spend in the presence of Rob Wilkins, as our meetings, now that he had graduated but I remained trapped behind in high school hell, had grown all too infrequent.
No matter how nice the company one might be with, however, it is never pleasant to have a rifle pointed at one's back. While I didn't think Red Plaid Jacket would fire at us in cold blood, there was always the chance that he might trip over Chigger or a stump hidden in the snow, and accidentally pull the trigger.
And though this would solve my problem of how I was going to get Rob to invite me to a formal affair like his uncle's wedding (so I could impress him by now nice I look in a dress), it would not solve it in the right way. So it was with some trepidation that I made the long journey from the south fence to the heart of the True Americans' compound.
Once we got moving, though, I did start to feel a little less cold. Now that the blizzard had blown away, the sky was completely clear, and this far out from the lights of town, it was magically dusted with stars. I could even make out the Milky Way. It might almost have been romantic, a moonlit walk through the freshly fallen snow, the smell of wood smoke hanging tantalizingly in the air.
Except, of course, for the rifle. Oh, and the dangerous German shepherd slogging along beside us.
I am not afraid of dogs, and in general, they seem to like me. So during our walk, since we didn't dare talk to pass the time, I concentrated on trying to get Chigger to give up on the idea of tearing my throat out. I did this by thrusting my hand, whenever Red Plaid Jacket wasn't looking, and the dog came close enough, in front of Chigger's nose. Dogs operate by smell, and I figured if Chigger smelled that I really wasn't the lunchmeat type, he might hesitate about eating me.
Chigger, however, like most males I've encountered in my life, seemed remarkably uninterested in me. Maybe I should have taken Ruth's advice and invested in some perfume, instead of just splashing on some of Mike's Old English Leather now and then.
As we got closer to the buildings we were approaching, I have to admit, I wasn't too impressed. I mean, compared to Jim Henderson's place, David Koresh's compound over in Waco had looked like the freaking Taj Mahal. Henderson's entire operation seemed to consist of nothing more than a ranch-style house, a few trailers, and one rambling barn. Sure, the whole thing had that army barracks, ready-to-mobilize-at-any-minute kind of lack of permanency.
But hello, where was the bathroom? That was all I wanted to know.
To my dismay, Red Plaid Jacket, tailed by the ever faithful Chigger, led us not toward the ranch house, or either of the trailers, but directly to the barn. My chances of finding a working toilet were beginning to look dimmer than ever.
You can imagine my delight then when Red Plaid threw back the massive barn door to reveal what appeared to be the True Americans' command center, or bunker, if you will. Oh, it was no NORAD, don't get me wrong. There were no computers. There wasn't even a TV in sight.
Instead, th
e seat of Jim Henderson's white supremacist group resembled photos we'd seen in World Civ of Nazi headquarters, back in the forties. There were a lot of long tables, at which sat a good many fair-haired gentlemen. (Apparently, we had interrupted their supper.) And there was a giant flag hanging against the back wall. But instead of a swastika, the flag depicted the symbol that had been carved into Nate Thompkins's chest, and spray-painted onto the overpass and on the overturned headstones at the Jewish cemetery. It was the coiled snake Chick had described, with the words DON'T TREAD ON ME beneath it.
But may I just point out that there the resemblance to the Nazi war machine ended? Because the gentlemen, fair-haired as they were, gathered in the large, drafty room, were neither as tidily dressed nor as intelligent looking as your average 1940s-style Nazi, and seemed also to prefer body art to actual hygiene, a choice perhaps thrust upon them by the lack of easily available running water, if what Chick had said about Jim Henderson refusing to pay his water bill was true.
There weren't only men gathered in Henderson's barn, however. Oh, no. There were women, too, and even children. I mean, who else was going to serve the men their food? And a fine, healthy lot those women and children looked, too. The women's garb I instantly recognized as typical of a local religious sect which, besides favoring snake-handling and coming-to-the-water-to-be-born-again, also forbade its female practitioners from cutting their hair or wearing pants. This made it difficult for girls belonging to this religious group to participate in physical education classes in the public school system, as it is almost impossible to climb a rope or learn the breast stroke in a dress, so many of them opted for homeschooling.
The children were a pasty-faced, runny-nosed lot, who seemed as uninterested in a man with a rifle dragging two perfect strangers into their midst as I would have been by cooking lessons from Great-aunt Rose.
"Jimmy," Red Plaid Jacket said, to a sandy-haired man at the head of one of the long tables, who'd just been presented with a plate of what looked to me—considering that I hadn't eaten since downing a turkey sandwich around noon—like delectable fried chicken. "These're the kids we found sneakin' around by the south fence."
Kids! I resented the implication on Rob's behalf. I of course am used to being mistaken for a child, given my relatively diminutive size. But Rob stood a good twelve inches taller than me. . . .
And, I soon noticed, twelve inches taller than the leader of the True Americans, that fine, upstanding citizen who had, if we weren't mistaken, killed one kid, abducted another, attempted to murder a law enforcement officer, and burned down a synagogue.
That's right. Jim Henderson was short.
Really, really short. Like Napoleon short. Like Danny Devito short.
He also seemed kind of miffed that we had interrupted his dinner.
"What the hell you want?" Henderson inquired, showing some of those exemplary leadership qualities for which he was apparently so deeply admired by his followers.
I looked at Rob. He appeared to be at a loss for words. Either that or he was doing one of those Native American-silence things, to psych out our captors. Rob reads a lot of books that take place on Indian reservations.
I felt it was up to me to salvage the situation. I went, "Gee, Mr. Henderson, it's a real honor to meet you. Me and Hank here, well, we just been admirers of yours for so long."
Henderson sucked on his fried-chickeny fingers, his sandy-colored eyebrows raised. "That so?" he said.
"Yes," I said. "And when we saw what ya'll did to that, um, Jew church, we decided we had to come up and offer our, um, congratulations. Hank and me, we think we'd make real good True Americans, because we both hate blacks and Jews, and stuff."
There appeared to be a good deal more interest in Rob and me now that I had begun speaking. Nearly everyone in the barn was looking at us, in sort of stunned silence. Everyone except Chigger, I mean. Chigger had found a plate of chicken bones, and was consuming them with great noise and rapidity. I noticed no one leapt to stop him, which proved that the True Americans were not only despicable human beings, but also lousy pet owners, as everyone knows you should never let a dog eat chicken bones.
Henderson was looking at us with more interest than anyone. Unlike Chigger, he seemed completely oblivious to the chicken on his plate. He went, "Why?"
I'd been prepared for this question. I said, "Well, you should take us because Hank here, he is really good with his hands. He's a mechanic, you know, and he can fix just about anything. So if you ever got a tank, or whatever, and it broke down, well, Hank'd be your man. And me, well, I may not look like it, but I'm pretty swift on my feet. In a fight, you wouldn't want me on your bad side, let me tell you."
Henderson looked bored. He leaned forward to pick a piece of chicken off the bone and pop it into his little mouth. He reminded me, as he did it, of a baby bird. Except that he had a sandy-colored mustache.
"That ain't what I mean," he said. "I mean, why do you hate the blacks and Jews?"
"Oh." This was not a question I'd been prepared for. I hurried to think of a reply. "Because as everyone knows," I said, "the Jews, they made up that whole Holocaust thing, you know, so they could get their hands on Israel. And black people, well, they're taking away all our jobs."
This was not apparently the correct answer, since Jim looked away from me. Instead, he stared at Rob. He appeared to be sizing up my boyfriend. I had seen this kind of appraising look before. It was the kind of look that little guys always gave to big guys, right before they barreled their tiny heads into the bigger guy's stomach.
"What about you?" Henderson asked Rob. "Or do you let your woman do your talking for you?"
This caused a ripple of amusement amongst the men at the dinner tables. Even the women, poised at their husbands' elbows with pitchers of what looked to me like iced tea, seemed to find this hilarious, instead of the piece of sexist crap it was.
Rob, I knew, was being tested. I had not passed the test. That much was clear. It was clear by the fact that Red Plaid Jacket still had his rifle trained on us, just waiting for the order from his boss to blow our heads off. Chigger, I was certain, would gladly lick up whatever mess our scattered brains made upon the barn floor.
It was up to Rob to save us. It was up to Rob to convince Henderson that we were a pair of budding white supremacists.
And I didn't have much faith Rob was going to perform any better than I had. After all, Rob hadn't liked this idea in the first place. He had objected strenuously to it from the start. All he wanted to do, I was sure, was book on out of there, and if it was without Seth, well, that was just too bad. Just so long as we still had heads on our shoulders, I had a feeling Rob would be happy.
So you can imagine my surprise when Rob opened his mouth and this is what came out of it:
"To be born white," he said, "is an honor and a privilege. It is time that all white men and women join together to protect this bond they share by their blood and faith. The responsibility of every American is to protect the welfare of ourselves—not those in Mexico, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or some other third-world country. It is time to take America back from drug-addicted welfare recipients living in large urban areas. . . ."
Whoa. If Rob had my attention with this stuff, you can bet he had Jim Henderson's attention—not to mention the rest of the True Americans. You could have heard a pin drop, everybody was listening so intently.
"It's time," Rob went on, "to protect our borders from illegal aliens, and stop the insidious repeal of miscegenation laws and statutes. We need to do away with affirmative action and same-sex marriages. We need to prevent American industry and property from slipping into the hands of the Japanese, Arabs, and Jews. America should be owned by Americans—"
Applause burst from one of the tables at this. It was soon joined by standing ovations from several other tables. In the thunderous cheering that followed, I stared at my boyfriend with total disbelief. Where on earth, I wondered, had he gotten all that stuff? Was there something abo
ut Rob I didn't know? I had never heard him say any of that kind of stuff before. Was Claire right? Were all Grits the same?
The applause was cut off abruptly as Jim Henderson climbed to his feet. All eyes were on the tiny figure, really no taller than I was, as he eyed Rob, one finger thoughtfully stroking his thick mustache. Again, the room was silent, except for Chigger, who was enthusiastically licking a now empty plate.
Staring at Rob with a pair of eyes so blue, they almost seemed to blaze, Henderson finally thrust an index finger at him and commanded, "Get … that … boy … some … chicken!"
Cheers erupted as one of the women hurried forward to present Rob with a plate of fried chicken. I couldn't believe it. Chicken. They were giving Rob chicken! Easy as that, he'd been accepted into the bosom of the True Americans.
Or was it possible that they knew something I didn't? Like that Rob was maybe already a member?
Hey, I know it was a disloyal thought. And I didn't believe it. Not really. Except that … well, it was kind of weird that he'd known exactly the right thing to say to get these freaks to believe we were on their side. And knowing what I did about his dad, it wasn't much of a stretch to imagine there might be a few things Rob hadn't told me … and I didn't just mean what he was on probation for.
Rob stood there, smiling shyly as he was applauded. I couldn't help it. I had to know. So I asked him, out of the corner of my mouth, "Where'd you come up with that horse shit?"
Rob replied, from the corner of his own mouth, "Public access cable. Would you get this chicken away from me before I barf?"
I grabbed the plate just as Rob was engulfed in a crowd of happy white supremacists, who slapped him on the back and offered him chews from their bags of tobacco. I stood there like an idiot watching him, the plate of chicken getting cold in my hands. I couldn't believe how stupid I'd been. Of course Rob wasn't one of them.
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