Shella

by Andrew Vachss

  A guy with a beard and a watermelon belly walked past where I was sitting. “They serving breakfast yet?” he asked me. I told him I didn’t know. “Come on, let’s take a look,” he said. I got up and walked with him.

  It was the next building. Like a cafeteria, except that the tables were all scattered around and the food wasn’t already cooked.

  The woman behind the little counter was skinny. She looked real tired. The place was almost empty—I only saw a couple of guys, eating in one corner.

  “You got pancakes this morning, Flo?” the fat man asked her.

  “I didn’t make up the batter yet,” she said. “How about some bacon and eggs?”

  “Suits me,” he told her. “What about you, friend?”

  I said that would be good. I didn’t see any cash register and I couldn’t tell what things cost. We sat down at one of the tables. When the food was cooked, the woman behind the counter said it was ready and we went over and got it.

  In the middle of eating, the fat man told me his name was Bobby. I told him my name and we shook hands. The other guys who were there, at the other table, when they got finished eating, they picked up their plates and brought them over to the counter. The waitress took them and put them in a big rubber bin.

  Bobby took out a pack of cigarettes, asked me if I wanted one. I said thanks.

  “When’d you get in?” he said.

  “Last night.”

  “Yeah, I heard a new man was coming. Who brought you in?”

  “They didn’t tell me their names,” I said. “A bunch of guys.”

  “Oh, you mean the transport team. No, I mean, who was your recruiter?”

  I looked at him.

  “Your recruiter, man … the guy who talked to you about—”

  “He knows what you mean.” A voice behind me. I didn’t recognize it. When he stepped around, I could see it was one of the soldiers from last night. A short man wearing a black T-shirt. His arms were big, like he lifted a lot of weights. “See, Bobby, this man, he just got here. And he already knows more than some of the veterans. Like how to keep his mouth shut, see?”

  “Hey, don’t get your balls in an uproar, all right, Murray? I was just being friendly, a new man and all.”

  Murray introduced himself, sticking out his hand. He put a lot of pressure into the grip. “Flo take care of you all right?” he asked me.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. You all finished? Good. I’m gonna take you to meet some people.”

  I took my plates over to the counter. When the woman came over, I told her, “It was good. Thanks.” She gave me a funny look.

  It was wide daylight now, and I could see everything as I walked across the compound with Murray. It wasn’t all that much, not as big as it looked at night. Most of the buildings were like houses; only one was higher than the first floor.

  You could walk to anyplace they had. The front was open. Across the back, there was this high fence, but it didn’t connect to anything. Like they started it and never got it done. Murray saw me looking at it.

  “When it’s finished, the whole compound’ll be behind a wall. That’s just the preliminary work you see there. This is all our land. We own it. Free and clear, and all legal. Five thousand acres … a lot more than you see here. All the woods around here, even the road you came in on, it’s all ours. That’s one thing the leader taught us, to own our own. Own our own. There’s no welfare in here, no government, no IRS, no nothing. On our land, we make all the rules. You want to live pure, you want your kids to be raised pure, you got to own your own to do it.”

  I nodded the way I always do when I don’t understand something. He kept showing me things, saying how they owned it all.

  We came to this house at the back, near that fence they were building. Murray knocked on the door. The guy who answered it was wearing a shoulder holster like he was used to it. He turned his back and we followed him. It looked like a regular house, living room and kitchen and all. We walked past, to the back, where the bedrooms would be. It was a much bigger room than I thought, bigger than the living room. A man was sitting behind this desk they made out of a door laid flat across a pair of sawhorses. The walls were covered with maps, colored pins stuck in them.

  The guy behind the desk was wearing a white shirt and a dark tie. He had glasses, and he looked older than the others, but maybe that was because he was losing his hair in front and he combed it over from the side. That always makes you look older.

  The guy with the shoulder holster said, “Thanks, Murray,” and Murray got a look on his face like he wasn’t happy about the way the guy said it, but he didn’t say anything himself before he walked out.

  The guy in the shoulder holster told me to have a seat, pointing with his finger for me to sit on the other side of the desk from the guy in the white shirt.

  I sat there and waited.

  The guy in the white shirt studied me. I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to be nervous, so I lit a cigarette like I needed something to do. I guess it was a good idea, because the guy in the shoulder holster lit one too.

  The guy in the white shirt was looking at his fingernails. “What’d you kill the nigger with?” he asked me.

  “I shot him,” I said.

  “Not that nigger, the one in Florida.”

  I remembered the Indian, telling me to stay right next to the truth as much as I could. The lawyer they got to throw me away in Florida, I remember him asking me where the weapon was … what I had killed the guy with. They just had “blunt object” on the police report, the lawyer said, and it would be better if I told them where the weapon was. So I knew the answer. “A tire iron,” I told the man in the white shirt.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause it was right there.”

  “Not why you used a tire iron,” he said. He was using that tone people use when they talk to me sometimes—like I’m stupid and they’re being nice about it but it’s hard work. “Why did you kill him in the first place?”

  “I was in this motel,” I told him. “He had a white woman in his room with him. I saw her leave. I said something to him and he said something back. The next thing I know, it was done.”

  “You lost your temper?”

  “I guess.…”

  “You hate niggers?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come?”

  “How come?”

  “Yeah. How come. How come you hate them?”

  “’Cause …” I tried to think of all the stuff Mack told me—it all got mixed in my head. I knew they’d think I was stupid. “’Cause … if it wasn’t for them, this would be a good place.”

  “What place?”

  “America. Our country. It would be a good place without the niggers. They’re dirty animals. And all the government wants to do is make them happy.”

  “The Jew government,” the guy in the shoulder holster said.

  I nodded. The guy in the white shirt gave the other one a look, like he shouldn’t help me with the answers.

  “You want a pure race?” he asked me. “A pure white race?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you willing to do battle for your race?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin like he was considering something.

  “You a pretty good shot?” he asked me.

  “If I get close enough.”

  They both laughed, but it sounded like they thought I said the right answer.

  They gave me a lot of stuff to read. Piles of it. Books and magazines and little thin things with covers. I took it all back to the dorm.

  I tried to read the stuff. I don’t read so good, but I know how.

  They had a television in the dorm. I was watching it one day when the guy in the white shirt came in. He asked me why I had it on with the sound off. I told him I was trying to read the books he gave me. He looked at me for a minute, then he said “Good,” and walked out.

  There were
always people around, but I was by myself. Like prison. Like being out of prison too, when I thought about it. I thought about it. I thought about what people say in prison, how you have to kill time. They would do all these things … basketball, dominos, read magazines. To make time pass. They thought I was stupid because I didn’t do anything. To make time pass. I’m not stupid. Not like they think, anyway. Time passes by itself—you don’t have to do anything.

  It is different, though, prison. Being inside, you don’t work. When I was outside, before Tampa, I was with Shella. I didn’t think about her—she was there. When I was inside, I would think about her. Like studying. But all I ever figured out was that Shella had the answers, not me.

  I thought about her a lot in the compound. No dreaming—I wasn’t asleep when I did it. Shella had bad dreams sometimes. She woke up once, making noises like she couldn’t breathe. I grabbed her—she was strong. When it was over, my shoulder was bleeding. From where she bit me. She was sorry, sad about that. She poured some stuff on where she bit me.

  She wanted to tell me what was in her bad dream, but when she started to tell me about the broomstick, I got sick and she stopped.

  “Don’t you ever have dreams, honey?” she asked me.

  I never thought about it before that. I guess I don’t.

  Shella liked to dress up. She had all kinds of clothes. She even had eyeglasses she wore sometimes. I put them on once—they were just plain glass. She wore them when she put her hair on top of her head, when she went out sometimes, all dressed up like an older lady.

  She didn’t wear the glasses for reading. Shella read all the time. I asked her to read some of it to me once, but I couldn’t understand the words. It wasn’t like the stories. After a while, I fell asleep.

  One time when Shella got her period, she had terrible cramps. They hurt so bad she cried. I didn’t know what to do. I got a cold washcloth, tried to put it on her head. She threw the washcloth at me. “It’s my guts that hurt, not my head, you stupid bastard!” she yelled. But when I put on some of the music she liked, she said it gave her a headache.

  I asked her if she wanted a cigarette. A drink, maybe? She was curled up in a little ball then, holding her stomach. When I touched her back, it was like iron.

  It hurt me to hear her cry like that. I filled the bathtub with hot water. The bathroom got all steamy. I put some of the green bubble stuff she liked in there. I pulled her robe off. Then I picked her up in that ball she was wrapped in and carried her inside. I lowered her into the tub. She tried to bite me, but I held her face hard against my chest until I got her in.

  “It’s too hot,” she said, but I kept her there.

  She came out of the ball and laid back. I held the back of her neck so she wouldn’t go under.

  “The water’s all turning red,” she said, real quiet.

  After a while, she started to cry again. But it was different, the crying. I let the water out of the tub. Then I stood her up against me and showered her off. All the bubbles and the blood ran down the drain.

  She was still crying when I dried her off. I took her into the bedroom and put her on the bed.

  “Could I have powder?” she said.

  I knew the powder. Baby powder. Shella always puts it on under her pants. I spilled some on her. “That’s too much,” she laughed. A little laugh, like a giggle. But she wasn’t crying by then. I rubbed it all over her. Then she rolled over and I did it on her back too. On her bottom and legs too. Then I covered her with some sheets and she fell asleep.

  It was dark when she woke up. I was in the chair, next to the bed. I patted her. She took my hand and kissed it. “I’ll make it up to you, baby,” she said. Then she went back to sleep.

  I don’t dream, but I can see things, like on a screen if I close my eyes. I did that in the compound. A lot, sometimes for a whole day. I would think about why I was there, and then it would start. Shella.

  A couple of nights after she had the cramps, Shella came in and took a shower. She was in there a long time. When she came out, she was naked. I was on the bed, watching TV. Shella turned it off. It was dark in the room, but I could see good. The neon sign outside the motel flashed off and on against Shella’s body. She was red, then she was blue.

  “Do you want a cigarette?” she said.

  I told her okay, and she lit one for me. Then she crawled onto the bed on her hands and knees, watching me. She licked me a couple of times and I got hard.

  “You want something special?” she asked me.

  “What?”

  “Special,” she whispered. “Like you haven’t had before.”

  I knew she meant sex. I closed my eyes, thinking. I dragged on the cigarette until it was done.

  “You can’t think of anything, can you?” Shella was still whispering. “Nothing you want you didn’t already have, huh, baby?”

  “Anything is … I mean, anything you …”

  “Ssssh, baby. I know. I was thinking too. Special. Like something I never did with anyone else, you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I couldn’t think of anything I haven’t done,” she said. She lay down on my chest. Her body was shaking.

  Her hands dug into me. I could feel wet on my chest but I couldn’t hear her cry.

  Nothing much happened where I was. People came in and out all the time, and you could tell some things were going on in other parts of the place. There was a lot of practice with guns. I did that too. I didn’t know anything about the guns, but they showed me. The guy who showed me, he liked to do that. He was glad I didn’t know anything so he could teach me. He was a good teacher—he wanted to make people smart, not tell them they were stupid.

  The targets were pictures of people. Some were famous people. Some were just different kinds of people. Black people were their favorite.

  Gunfire was always going on.

  They had classes in other things. Political classes. And fighting too. One teacher, he was dressed all in black, even with a hood over his face. He said he was a ninja. He mostly talked.

  Every time he would ask for a volunteer, I would sit very still. I was scared to do this. But one day he made me. He told me to come up behind him and get him in a choke hold, try and pull him down.

  I was so afraid I’d break his neck that I grabbed him around the jaw instead of the throat. He hit me hard in the ribs with an elbow and then chopped me in the neck. It hurt, where he hit me.

  He told me to stick with guns. Some of them laughed.

  I was there about two weeks when Murray told me the leader was going to talk the next morning.

  Everybody in the whole camp was there. In a big hall in the back, with the doors open.

  He was the man in the mug shots. The same man. He was a good talker. There must have been a couple of hundred people in the room, but he didn’t use a microphone and he didn’t shout.

  It was a good speech. He said we were the warriors. The warriors of the right. Not the right wing, he said, the right way. Mostly he talked about race. Pure races. How they got all mixed together. Like dogs. Mongrel dogs. He said our race was like snow on the ground, covering the dirt underneath. When the snow melts, it could wash all the dirt away. But if you mix stuff in with the snow, it gets all filthy. It’s not beautiful anymore. Not pure.

  He said niggers weren’t the real enemy. It was the Jews. It’s the Jews who gave us the niggers. The Jews needed animals to work the land around Israel—that’s where Israel is, Africa. So they started experimenting with different animals. They are real fine scientists. And that’s how they ended up with niggers, like a cross between apes and people. The niggers are just animals—they were being used by the Jews. He said even the stupidest niggers were waking up to this. Niggers in the big cities hate the Jews too. He said they were getting smarter to be feeling that way. That’s what comes of educating niggers. He said the Jews hate themselves because they really want to be white. He said the big Jews are born smart, but the regular Jews, they’re al
ways trying to be friends with the niggers.

  The leader said that our race was dying. The niggers and the Jews breed faster than we do. Soon there would be more of them than us. And that would be the end. He said white men have always known this, but we always got ruined by fighting among ourselves. That’s what he said. He said there were a lot of white-power movements, but they always fought each other.

  He said he would give examples. He said that Europe was all white men. Nothing but white men. If white men fight white men, white men have got to lose. He said that over and over again.

  He had a Bible with him, and he talked about what was in it. He talked about resources—he said that a lot, resources. How if we had enough resources we could have our homeland.

  “Partition!” he yelled. And everybody cheered.

  He said Partition was our own land. A couple of states for white people only. Our own schools, our own churches, everything our own.

  The Promised Land, he said it like it was holy. He said it was promised to us, right from the Bible. The truth of God.

  God was a white man, everybody knows that. Even the niggers know that. That’s why they hate us.

  He talked for a long time. When he was done, everybody yelled. Some of them waved guns in the air.

  Everybody talked like the leader, but he was the best at it. I practiced with the guns they had. I read the stuff they gave me. They watched TV a lot—they never watched the nature shows. They played cards a lot. Mostly, they just worked, like anyplace else. Cooking, cleaning, fixing. Some of them, they would just come and go.

  Everybody called everybody brother in there. Everybody did it. I never heard white people do that before I went to prison the first time.