Shella

by Andrew Vachss

  He stopped what he was saying when a waitress came close. Ordered some beers. He never did that before, stopped talking.

  When the waitress went away, he leaned over close to me. “You like killing niggers, John? Let me tell you something, there’s lotsa people feel the way you do. But killing them one at a time, they ain’t never gonna get it. The leader says, we kill them one at a time, the fucking monkeys could breed faster than we could kill ’em. What we need, what this country needs, is race war. Race war. And we got the start of it. Not so far from here. We want you with us, John. And you know what the best part is? You’ll be with your brothers. Men who’ll give their lives for you, go with you to the end. What do you say?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Look, how’d you like to quit working for niggers over at that car wash? Make some real money?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. I got the word. Got it this morning. You got a car?”

  “No. All I got …”

  “That’s okay. You had a car, you couldn’t bring it anyway. Security don’t allow it. Tomorrow night, I’ll pick you up myself. Take you to our camp. Then you’ll hear what we’re about, okay? Make up your own mind. You decide you don’t want to be with us, no hard feelings. And I’ll guarantee you a month’s pay, tide you over until you get another job, if that’s what you want. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He handed me a bunch of bills. I put them in my pocket.

  “Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. You be out in front of your house.”

  “Okay, it’s over on …”I stopped, like I just figured out he must know where I lived. Where they dropped me off last night.

  “See, John. We know what we’re doing.” He winked at me. “See you tomorrow night, brother.”

  There was a note on my bed. BASEMENT, is all it said. I left the lights on in my room for a while. Then I turned them off like I was going to sleep.

  He was there. “Was that enough for them?” he asked me.

  “Tomorrow night, they’re coming to take me someplace. He gave me some money too.”

  “I guess that did it. They took the gun from you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Listen to me now. I got to tell you a couple of things. First, don’t go to the car wash tomorrow. A guy like you, like you’re supposed to be, he wouldn’t go to work a car wash job, he had money. What time he’s supposed to pick you up?”

  “Ten.”

  “Okay. Stay in tomorrow, like you were sleeping late. Then go out, spend some of that money. Over on Sheridan, they got daytime whores working. Get one of them, spend some money. That’s what you’d do.”

  “All right.”

  “You have to … practice? What you do … with your hands?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now listen. We know where their camp is. We’ll be there before you. And we’ll be there from then on. Until you come out, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know how they work it. Could take weeks before you even see the head man. Or they could take you right to him, I don’t know. We don’t know what they do, inside. Waiting don’t bother you, right?”

  “No.”

  “You talk like this when you’re around them?”

  “Like what?”

  “Yes. No. Okay.”

  “I guess.”

  “They don’t look at you funny?”

  “They do all the talking. They like to talk.”

  His teeth were real white in the basement. “Kill the niggers, huh?”

  “And the others.”

  “What others?”

  “Jews. Spics. Queers.”

  “No Indians?”

  “They never said.”

  “You understand what they’re saying?”

  “The niggers are apes. All they want to do is fight and fuck. Especially fuck white women. Rape them. So the races get mixed. The white man don’t know his true place in America. This is a white man’s country. Like Rhodesia.”

  He gave me a look.

  “Rhodesia’s in Africa,” I told him. “White men, they built it right out of the jungle. A long time ago. But the niggers took it for themselves. And the UN, they didn’t do nothing. What we need is race war. But the white man, he’s too beaten down here. The white man needs to see the light. So what we need is to start the fighting. Then the white man will show his true colors.”

  “Damn! You listen, huh?”

  It made me feel good, what he said. “I always listen,” I told him.

  “So they’re going to wipe out all the niggers?”

  “That wouldn’t do any good,” I told him. “They’re not the real enemy. They’re like dogs—it all depends on who their masters are. The Jews—they’re the ones in control. All this stuff, it’s part of their plan.”

  “The Jews, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ever think about that stuff?”

  “No.”

  “Ever kill a Jew?”

  “I don’t know…. how could I tell?”

  He made a sound that was like laughing, but kind of strangled. He lit a cigarette, cupping the tip in his hand. Walked around in a little circle.

  “You get a chance, ask one of them how it got its name. Rhodesia, okay?”

  I nodded, waiting for him to say more.

  “You know my name?” he asked.

  “Wolf.”

  “Yes. Listen, now. You get a chance, do him. Don’t wait around for the perfect moment—it might not come, okay? You need to be alone with him to do it?”

  “It would be better…. depends on how many others.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I figured. You remember how to come out?”

  “Tie something around my head and run.”

  “Yeah. You got it.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. I waited. He came over, stood real close to me.

  “If you think they’re on to you … if it looks bad … just … run for it. Don’t wait to do him. Run for it. We’ll get him some other way.”

  I stayed in my room the next morning. Lying on my bed with my eyes closed. Like you do in prison. I was watching television. In my head. There’s no sound in my head either. I like to watch the nature shows. I look at the ones I saw before.

  There was one. A caterpillar. It crawls over a plant, like a bright worm. Eating and eating. Then, one day, it stops. Stuff comes out of it until it’s all covered. Then the stuff gets hard. It looks like a jewel, hanging there. A long time passes, and the shell cracks. The shell cracks, and a butterfly comes out.

  Then it flies away. I don’t know what happens to it after that. When I was a kid, I saw something like that, but I don’t remember it so good.

  When I got up, it was almost twelve o’clock. I walked over to Sheridan. The whores were out. I saw one, a short blonde in red shorts. For a minute, I thought she was the same one that was with the pimp I killed, but it wasn’t her. This one was older.

  It was twenty dollars for her, ten for the room. The room was much smaller than mine. A long, narrow room with a bed. There was a paper shade on the window. The sunlight came in. The sheets were gray.

  She asked me if I wanted something special. Everybody wants something special. It costs more.

  It didn’t take long. She cleaned herself off, squatting over a basin on the floor.

  She asked me my name, said to come back and see her. I told her John, and said I would.

  I had something to eat in a restaurant. I thought about the car wash for a minute—it’s open on Sundays. You could work seven days a week if you wanted to, but you had to work at least five, they said. Walking back to my room, I saw a blue-and-white police car go by. The cop on the passenger side gave me a cop look. I looked down—I never looked back.

  I wondered if Shella knew I was coming.

  My rent was paid till Monday, so Sunday night was the right time to go anyway. Maybe they knew that, the people Mack was with.

  I pac
ked my duffel bag. There was plenty of time, so I watched some more television in my head.

  A show about white tigers.

  A little black car pulled to the curb. A low, smooth-looking car. A Firebird, I think. Mack got out of the front seat. He shook hands with me, opened the trunk, put my duffel bag in there.

  “All set?”

  “Sure,” I told him.

  There was nobody else in the car. He drove on the highway by the lake, heading back downtown.

  “We got a ways to go,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable…. That seat goes all the way back, like an airplane.”

  I pushed the buttons on the side of the seat until I got it right. I wanted to close my eyes but I thought it would make him nervous.

  “How come they call it Rhodesia?” I asked him. “I mean … where’d that name come from?”

  “From Cecil Rhodes, John. Cecil Rhodes, the Builder of the Empire. He started that country with his own bare hands. You get there first, you’re entitled to stamp your name on a country, right?”

  “Right.”

  Two black guys on motorcycles went past us real fast, cutting in and out of traffic. I expected him to say something, but he didn’t.

  We went back downtown and kept going. We stopped to pay a toll. The signs said we were heading to Indiana.

  He was smoking a lot. I felt like I should say something, but I didn’t know how.

  We turned off the highway. There was a sign, but all I could see on it was South and some number.

  He drove careful, not too fast.

  “Could you use a beer, Johnny?”

  I told him sure.

  When we got back on the road, the clock on the dashboard said 12:45.

  “You have any questions?”

  “When does it start?”

  “What?”

  “The race war?”

  He turned sideways to look at me. His face was a little sad. I never saw him look like that before.

  “This is a military operation, John. We’re a guerrilla force…. You know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “Like … we hide in the jungle, then we sneak out and zap them and sneak back. See what I mean? We don’t have enough manpower to just march in and take over. It’s our job to start the fire. First it gets going strong enough by itself, then we provide the leadership. When the white man rises up angry, he’s not going to know what to do. The Jews, they’ve been running the government so long, the white man’s forgot how to do it. That’s where we come in.”

  “Where?”

  “We all got our jobs. Those boys you went out with, we got people who work with them. They’re the shock troops. They keep the action going. Heighten the contradictions, that’s what the leader taught us. I don’t work with them myself. Me, I’m in recruitment.”

  “Recruitment?”

  “Sure. That’s one of the most delicate jobs of all. I have to, like … screen the applicants. My judgment is very important. I started out just bringing guys in. At the plant where I worked. I put in a long time doing that. When I’d find a right guy, I’d turn him over to one of the coordinators—the guys who run the individual groups. And I worked my way up. What I do now, I recruit for the cells.”

  “The cells? Like in …?”

  “No. A cell is a small group. It operates all by itself. With specific targets. We got procurement cells … they raise money for our treasury. I recruited for them. You’re my first recruit for the Lightning Squadron.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Doing what you did Friday night.”

  “Killing niggers?”

  “Killing whoever. Like I told you, it’s not niggers we’re worried about.”

  “Killing Jews?”

  “Whoever. Any enemy of the race. There’s plenty of white men who’re enemies of the race too. Traitors.”

  “That’s what I’ll do?”

  “Yeah. I seen other guys from the Lightning Squadron, but I never brought one in myself before. I’m supposed to look for guys. For different things we need. But as soon as I met you, I said to myself, there’s a man for the squad. It’s a real honor, Johnny. For me too, I want you to know. I passed your name on to HQ, and they checked you out.”

  “HQ?”

  “Headquarters. They got an Intelligence Unit. You wouldn’t believe the places we got people. See, the Jews are clever, Johnny. They’re always trying to infiltrate our operations. So we got to be sure who we’re dealing with. They checked your record. We got other ways too. Remember Ginger?”

  “Sure.”

  “She’s one of us.”

  “Ginger?”

  He smiled, looking out the windshield. “Yeah, sure. It’s not just men in with us. Women. Kids too.”

  “The skinheads, right?”

  “No, I mean little kids. We raise them right, in the white man’s way. The leader says they’re the hope of the future, the kids. We got kids eight years old, know more about their true heritage than the average grown man could ever imagine. Anyway, a man’s gonna be considered for the squad, we got to test him. The acid test, we call it. Mostly, unless the man has got a name for himself, like if he was with us inside, we bring him out, give him the test. This time, the leader told me, test this guy outside. We got to be careful, can’t be bringing too many guys inside. In case they don’t pass the test, see?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Johnny, listen to me a minute. These are serious people I’m taking you to. You can’t fuck with them. These men will be your brothers. And that’s forever. This ain’t something you can get tired of, go on to something else. Your brothers, you know what that means?”

  “They’re all white?”

  “Yeah, of course they’re all white, for Christ’s sake. That’s not what I mean. Brothers. Like blood brothers. This is for a cause, Johnny. A holy cause. You’ll see, inside. When they show you right in the Bible. This is bigger than any of us. No matter where you go, your brothers will be around. Even in prison. You’ll never be alone.”

  I guess he meant it to be a threat, but it sounded like it was a good thing, the way he said it.

  “It’s on me, I bring a man in. You do good, it’ll be on me. You fuck up, it’ll be on me too.”

  “I won’t fuck up,” I told him.

  He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed it hard.

  We drove for a long time. The roads kept getting smaller. He never checked directions or anything. We were outside the cities. Just a farmhouse once in a while. The clock said 2:12.

  It was still dark when he turned off onto a dirt road.

  “We have to go slow from here,” he said. “The first checkpoints won’t stop us—they’re just watchers.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  There was a telephone between the two front seats. He picked it up, pushed in a number.

  “It’s me,” he said. “I just passed checkpoint three. I’ve got him with me.”

  He listened for a minute, then he put the phone back.

  We came around a bend in the road and there was a log lying across it on an angle. We couldn’t drive past. Mack stopped the car. Spotlights came out of the night—little ones, slicing across each other.

  Men came out of the woods. They were dressed like soldiers, in those suits that look like the woods, green and brown. They all had guns.

  Mack told me to get out of the car. He did too. One of the soldiers patted my clothes. Then he told me to take my jacket off and my shirt too. Mack said it was okay. They didn’t ask him to do it.

  “No wire,” one of the soldiers said.

  “All the way,” another said to him.

  The first soldier told me to take all my clothes off, even my shoes and socks. I did it. It was cold out there.

  Another soldier stepped over to me. He was putting a rubber glove on his hand. “Bend over and spread em,” he said. “Just like in the joint.”

  I did it. He was rough with his finger. When he took it out, he pulled
off the rubber glove, threw it away in the woods.

  “Okay, get dressed,” the first soldier said to me.

  Another one had my duffel bag on the ground. They took everything out, piece by piece, going over it.

  “It’s clean,” one of them said.

  Mack came over to me, held out his hand. “They’ll take you the rest of the way, Johnny. You’re gonna see things you never dreamed of. I know you’re gonna make me proud of you. Proud that I brought you in.”

  “You’re not coming?” I asked him.

  “No. I won’t see you again, not for a while. Maybe never. It depends.”

  “Goodbye, Mack,” I said.

  “Goodbye, brother,” he said, turning away.

  On the other side of the log, they had a pickup truck and a couple of Jeeps. They had those bars that run over the top of the cabs, all with lights on them. I got in where they told me, and they chased each other going back. It made a lot of noise.

  From the way they were dressed, I thought they would live in tents. But it was all buildings, like a little town. I couldn’t see much—it was still dark. They put me in a big room with bunks in rows. Like the juvenile institution they put me in once. Only there was no bars on the windows.

  I got up when it turned light in the morning. There was only two other guys sleeping in the dorm where I was. Neither one moved when I got up.

  My duffel bag was at the foot of my bunk. I took it into the shower room, got cleaned up, changed my clothes. Still nobody came around.

  I went outside and sat down on the steps. I had a cigarette. It was quiet, like being around a bunch of drunks sleeping it off.

  I wondered if everybody was sleeping. If the smiling man in the mug shot was sleeping real close to me, someplace.

  I didn’t try and figure out what to do. Shella told me once she danced because she was good at it. I told her she was good at a lot of things, she could do them too. She said that was sweet, for me to say it. And she gave me a kiss. Like a kid does, maybe. On the cheek. She told me I was good at different things too. I knew the one thing I was good at, so I asked her, “What else?” She looked at me a long time. I didn’t move, just watched her watch me. Finally, she came over, sat next to me. “Waiting,” she said. “That’s what you’re good at, honey. Waiting.”