The cow hooves clopped and shuffled, and they neared, at his back. He touched the fence. Nothing happened. He climbed over and pressed on, heading downhill.
Halfway down he stopped and crouched at a bush. He could see the rear side of the Rooster Lair at the bottom of the hill. Behind it, closer to him, stood a one-room hall like one of those few grange halls still left in the farthest reaches of Portland’s suburbs. His eyes had adjusted, but the square hall with its tarred-up siding was darker than all, like a void. He saw Double Cross regulars filing in, taking the few outside steps that separated the hall from the Rooster Lair.
Once the flow had stopped, Greg waited a minute, counting off the seconds.
He made his way down, stopping a couple times to make sure no one was outside on watch. He approached the hall from the side and found an open window. He could see in through a break in what looked like two homemade Double Cross flags doing double-duty as curtains. He saw men sitting on rows of benches, like pews, and a small low stage. With all that camo crammed together, it looked like a small forest right in the middle of the room. Without the Double Cross decoration and camo, it might have only been some odd men’s-only church from the pioneer days since the interior was so bland with its planks for floor and wood paneling for walls. The window was cracked open an inch—Greg pushed it open another inch, a millimeter at a time, and could hear better. The men chatted, boasted, bantered.
Wannabe guards flanked the stage, which almost made Greg chuckle considering the fact that the real danger was he, here outside.
Wayne Carver was there now, taking a seat up front, dead center.
Bland country rock began blaring from a boom box. A man in camo stood and introduced their main speaker, their patron, their leader.
The man he introduced was not Wayne Carver. It was Charlie Adler.
27
Donny was shaking and couldn’t stop it. That twinge in his marrow had turned into an unrelenting tremble. It had started as he watched Greg’s rental car drive away. So he headed back inside the Rooster Lair and marched straight to the bathroom, locked the door.
Who knew what Greg was up to? How could Donny know? If he asked he’d be giving himself away and showing that he was spooked. And Greg probably knew that. Greg always brought more to the table, more than trying to keep Donny’s mouth shut about what they’d done.
Donny wiped down the Formica sink countertop so it was good and dry. He set out two lines of meth. He hadn’t planned to do it—he had no problem getting fired up for what he was about to do; he was a natural, people said—but ole Greg, he had left Donny shaking. Just shaking. Maybe Greg still was one of the smartest guys he had ever met after all. That was why he had put so much trust in Greg before.
He snorted up the last of the lines and felt it burn high up his nose then his sinuses, like fucking sawdust and pins, fuck it. He stared at the mirror, right into it, stared until things blurred and it was like he was looking at a movie of himself and his face rather than a mirror image. A screen test, they called it. He made a blank face. Even then he could see the faint line of his dimples. God bless those dimples, Donny Jepson Wilkie. He tried a subtle smile, just the curly ends of his mouth, and those dimples deepened and lengthened until he got a big grin going of his white and shiny teeth. It looked like a grimace if he looked at it too long, but he only had to flex his muscles and dimples until he had something special going again. Again and again and again and again.
Knock knock knock. Someone was banging on the door.
“Yee-ep!” he shouted, letting that grin show through in his voice.
“You good in there?” said that whiny voice. It was Wayne Carver.
“Yep. Coming,” Donny said, wiping down the counter and keeping the damn good grin going. He was going to need it and he would use it.
He bolted out of the bathroom on his toes. He sensed something and turned to see that he’d passed right by Wayne, who was leaning against the wall in shadow.
“He gone? He better be gone,” Wayne said.
“Sure. I got rid of him. No harm done,” Donny said and kept on going before Wayne could question or answer with one of his smart-ass remarks.
Attached to the rear of the Rooster Lair was the main hall, an older building. It had been a grange hall at one point, but it was probably a church before that even though it didn’t have high ceilings or a steeple. About half the length of a little old-fashioned school gym, the place was. Its wood exterior was almost black from all those years of oil and tar that preserved the siding. You could barely even see it from the front of the Rooster Lair, which suited Donny just fine. It was simple inside, with only rows of benches and a stage, which suited Donny too. The focus was on the speaker in a room like this. The man with a plan! Wayne and the boys had strung up their homemade Double Cross flags and banners on the walls and over the windows, since no one could see them in here, and Casey and Damon were helping the other so-called tough guys stand guard at either side of the stage. It was all a little too close to the Neo-Nazi scene in some dumb thriller movie or even a comedy movie, but what the hell did Donny care? He wasn’t the one playing dress up. He wasn’t the one doing what he was told.
Their eyes were all on him, about thirty guys including a few he’d never met, they were so off the grid. The seats almost full. Donny took his time coming up the middle aisle, nodding at some dudes and high-fiving others. Wayne had skirted the benches and moved at his pace, practically in step with him, like some mad pig predator eyeing its kill, Donny thought, but then Donny saw that Wayne was grinning too at all these Double Cross diehards.
Donny stood off to the side of the stage, flushed all warm now with the feeling of wide smiles on him and wishing some others would quit talking. Luckily someone had a boom box going, some of that slick and pompous country music that was giving country a bad name, but it had enough beat in it that he started doing his little jig, just on his toes, not too much, just enough to let them see he was fired up and he sure did love it here with them. Wouldn’t be anywhere else, no sir!
Man, just what would he do without that meth? Coffee and drink and pot even just didn’t cut it at times like this, whiskey no way.
A small farmer-looking feller shouted, “Let’s get to it now!” A couple other guys hollered something, and then a couple more were shouting, urging him up, “You get to steppin!” and it was like they were all on meth with him, they’d all done it just for him. Wayne was pivoting in his seat, twisting his neck either to quiet them or let himself be amazed, and Donny decided it was only pure amazement.
Donny leapt onto the stage to wild applause and cheers. It roared on, with beers raised in toast. Wayne stood to quiet them, doing a fake knife across his throat with his hand and grimacing at them, at each one, eye to eye until they stopped.
Quiet now. Donny stood front and center. Looking out. Nodding. Guys nodding back. His feet planted farther apart than normal. Stability. They liked that. No time for dancing now. This place wasn’t big enough for a microphone, but Donny would’ve liked one. Props were no good.
He stopped eyeing, stopped the nodding. He let his focus blur and took them all in. He said: “You saw it yesterday. I saw you saw it. I really think we’re on to something here, don’t you?”
The crowd burst into hoots and hollers. Donny let them go a while. When they calmed again, he said: “We are not the first who were on the right path. No, we are not. We know there is a long line of heroes who stood up. We will do them proud. We’re not going to be ignored. We’re not going to be stopped. The first? You know who they are. There once was a little movement like ours, and they called it the American Revolution.” A few hollers. “And, and, years later, when that revolution had become all corrupted, there rose up some real brave men to fight back …”
And Donny went on, blah blah blah, telling them just what they wanted to hear. He hadn’t practiced this much or knew what to talk about exactly, but he damn well knew what to stroke. He spoke to them about a
Civil War battlefield in the 1860s, hearing mock-heroic fiddling music in his head as he did so. He told them about waves of eager but poorly equipped Confederate troops charging with the Dixie flag.
He didn’t tell them the way he really saw it: Those boys were mowed down as their Confederate generals watched from a hilltop and ordered more, more, more of them to be sent to their death.
He didn’t tell them what he really thought: Those dead Johnny Rebs were nothing but suckers and raw fuel for men hunting medals and offices and chests of gold.
He had their attention, had their shiny, perky eyes on him. He moved on: “And, many years later, 1941 it was, we rose up south of here, near this very land right here—and they called it the Jefferson State!”
The crowd cheered, fucking roared.
Donny was hearing silly, good-timey bluegrass music now in his head. He didn’t tell them the truth as he knew it. In November of 1941, those Jefferson Stater secessionist yokels—let’s just call them what they were—had showed up near the southern border of Oregon and tried to block the interstate highway up from California. They bore guns, touted flags, and had their own slogans, but they were also drinking a shit ton and were certainly almost too drunk to stand. Soon enough, Oregon State Police troopers swooped in and persuaded them to go on home, which they did, without a fight. One vomited on himself. The sucker.
Meanwhile, Donny was telling his crowd: “They showed the powers that be, right then and there, that we’re the ones showing them now! Screw us over? Knock us down? Again and again, we stood up again and again, and again we stand up to fight …”
Blah blah blah. Giving them what they needed from him.
Now country rock music twanged in his head, from the 1980s—those very tunes Greg had talked him out of listening to when he got into Portland. He told his rapt crowd about the infamous and legendary Posse Comitatus gang and how they stood tall, though Donny knew they were nothing more than bigots and kooks holding meetings similar to Double Cross’ but with crosses and sheriff badges and actual swastikas and Nazi salutes, sure as shit, because if you were going to ride that steer, you might as well break a record. On a small town Main Street, the Posse Comitatus had shot and killed two federal marshals. Dumb mother suckers. They weren’t even suckers. They were just baby children crying out for attention, wailing for mommy’s teat.
It reminded Donny of a bumper sticker he’d seen on a car traveling through Pineburg, probably from Portland: Tea Parties Are for Little Girls and Their Imaginary Friends.
He was practically laughing now as he went on, boasting of how “someone around these parts” just the other day went and stood up to some outsider snoopers over at the old gas station, and for that, those snooping snoopers were good and branded for life. He couldn’t help himself.
He could have raved on about other recent heroes, such as that self-appointed rebel grazer of an Arizona rancher-racist who recognizes no authority but that which he himself appoints, or any version of those one-man loser militias who gun down innocent cops while calling themselves patriots. He had to leave something to these boys’ imaginations, such as they had them. Each needed a patriot terrorist to call their own. And the boys were going nuts now, standing and pumping fists and high-fiving each other all over; one fat guy actually rose up and ran around the perimeter of the benches like a born-again in a revival tent. Wayne and about five others only nodded, amen—you could bet those were the ones that were there on the spot, Donny thought.
Suckers all, but at least they were his suckers. For now.
And then in a flash—of hope, he hoped, he saw in his head Wayne and his armed Double Cross regulars holing up on the Pineburg Dam like it was the Alamo. Fed officials watch from afar, with Donny at their side because he had made that one very smart phone call to the FBI. And at that scene, Donny pretends to be shocked, just plain shocked at how far Wayne Carver had taken things. If only he could’ve known. Who could’ve known? Looking back, he could see it, sure. There were signs. And he could admit he hadn’t helped matters, confessing it with a hand on his heart. But he had simply been honoring the word of Loren Callum for the love of his daughter, Karen. Blah, blah, blah, and blah and blah and blah …
“This town was a goner when I got here,” Donny said to his boys in the hall. “Folks were just begging for someone to save them, some who’ve been here since the pioneer days. Then we began to stand up. You are the only ones who can help this poor town. This whole region. This whole state. You! You do it for these sad, frustrated, hard-working folks. You give them hope. And so we will show them there is in word and in deed a right and good way out of this …”
The crowd showed Donny frozen and strained faces, some on the verge of tears. So he went for it: “You know, there was this great lady, named Ayn Rand she was, who once said that if we are not understood in our greatness, and the bureaucrats and the lazy and the niggling little rule makers go try and stop us, then we should go leave them be, and go on to make our own world. Well, friends, I am here to lead you there, and I am here to stay …”
By the time Donny finished it off, he was shouting and pumping fists right back at them and hooting and hollering too. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Wayne still sitting. Wayne nodded, just once. Donny only hoped it was an amen.
28
Greg had heard it all, Donny’s whole bullshit speech.
At the end, as the boys inside hooted and hollered and high-fived Donny, Greg thought he heard a door swing open somewhere. He was done anyway, done with this shit charade. He backed away and quickly made his way up the hill, his lungs pumping. Marched straight through the gang of cows who parted for him. He found his car and sped along until he was back on the dirt and gravel side road that jostled him with a clamor like bullets shredding the car.
He imagined Donny boasting to him how he had fed those Double Cross fools the lines they wanted to hear, but substituting “blah blah blah” as he laughed about it.
Donny had pretended to be their leader. Donny had pretended to be his friend. Donny was out for no one but himself. He could sell out Greg at any time. Blame the whole murder on him, even.
Greg certainly couldn’t kill Donny now, even if he had the guts. Torres was watching them both.
He should have been banging his fist on the steering wheel. But it only made him think of Leeann Holt. Again. He thought of that photo of her and of those cracking bends and folds that he had tried to straighten out.
He braked to a sliding stop before Torres’ ramshackle secret mobile home, bringing flying rocks and a cloud of dust. Torres stood in the open doorway breathing in the dust.
Greg pushed by him, found a chair inside, and sulked a while. Then, ranting, he told Torres about all that he’d seen and heard. Torres nodded along as if checking off a list.
“Oh, he’s good, your Donny, I’ll give him that,” Torres said. “Telling them they’re saviors like that. Even trotted out the old Ayn Rand horseshit—pretty highbrow horseshit for this crowd, but I guess it depends on what lines you choose.”
“It’s a scam. He’s a phony,” Greg said.
“Come again?”
“He’s bluffing them.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You heard him. Sounds cut and dried to me.”
“It’s not. He’s pretending. He doesn’t believe it at all.”
“We all pretend somehow. Doesn’t take away from the fact that he appears to be leading them. You just heard it. It’s a fact. If he’s not, who is? A speech like that is big. The challenge now is finding proof of any direct orders.”
“You won’t find it. And I won’t do it for you. He’s stalling. If push came to shove, they got no leader. He’d be out of there. It’ll be you he’s scamming next, just you wait, making you do things you shouldn’t have ever done.” Greg banged his fist on the table.
“Whoa. Easy. Let’s talk it out. How do you know that?”
“I know. I just do.”
Torres was silent a moment. “All right,
let’s just say he is. The question then becomes, what kind of phony is he?”
As they spoke, Greg noticed the two pairs of headphones sitting out over on the desk. They were wired to computers, but the monitors were dimmed. So that someone like Greg couldn’t see the screen? He didn’t need to see the screen. If this was some 1970s conspiracy film, it would be large reel-to-reel tape recorders with a blanket thrown over them.
“Hello? I’m over here,” Torres added.
Greg could feel the sick grin on his face as if someone had pried his mouth open with rubber-gloved fingers. The grin only spread as the realization grasped him.
“You know exactly what Donny said,” Greg said.
“Yeah, you just told me. What’s wrong with you?”
“No. I never told you about the Ayn Rand horseshit. You’re the one who mentioned it.”
Torres didn’t nod. He didn’t shake his head either.
“You heard that speech just now,” Greg said. “Didn’t you?”
Only now did Torres glance at the headphones. He pursed his lips. He nodded. “Okay, yes. I did hear. Right now, they’re back inside the Rooster Lair getting drunk. Some dumbshit just threw up near our bug. Believe me, you don’t want to hear that with headphones.”
“I wondered why I didn’t have to wear a wire—or whatever you call it,” Greg said.
He stood. Anger had won the battle in his head, strutting on a stage wearing medals, lugging the bloodied and shredded corpse of poor incredulity. Never had a chance.
He turned from Torres, clenching another fist. He should kick at a table, bash a laptop over his knee, something.
The Other Oregon Page 16