Zack paused, took another bite of his sandwich, and then chewed and swallowed it. “Anyway, I’m going to meet with some people about joining the Northwest Volunteer Army and setting up a unit here. You guys want in?”
“Yes,” said Ekstrom, quietly and without hesitation.
“Yes,” said Washburn with a nod.
“Welcome to the lunatic fringe, boys,” said Hatfield.
II
The Trouble Trio
Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat.
No stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit,
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
If I know this, then know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny I do bear
I can shake off at pleasure.
Julius Caesar—Act I, Scene 3
The three friends met again in the watery gray twilight of a December afternoon, in the old Kiwanis Club beach shelter on the Washington side of the Columbia River, about a half a mile up Highway 401 from the gigantic bridge. The pre-fab building with the concrete floor was cold as a walk-in freezer inside, and the would-be insurgents kept their heavy winter coats and caps on, but it was enclosed and tight against the wind, and it had electricity. The hut contained several picnic tables and some plastic chairs, a ping-pong table leaning against the wall that could be laid across the picnic tables if anyone wanted to play, a sink, a battered old refrigerator, and some cupboards. The nearby beach was really just a small shelf of gravel instead of sand, but it served as a passable casting spot for fishermen and a good picnic place in the summer. As the early darkness descended they could see the Christmas lights starting to come on across the river in Astoria, twinkling green and red and white.
“I’ll get the heat going,” said Charlie Washburn, stoking up a propane stove in one corner and lighting all the burners. He found a large saucepan in one of the cupboards, filled it with water from the sink, and put it on one of the burners. “Instant coffee all around, I’d say. These cups look more or less clean, and I see we’ve still got some sugar and creamer left over from Labor Day. Okay, Zack, care to run tonight’s revelries by us again?”
“We’re going to meet a guy they’ve sent down from Olympia who’s called Mr. Chips,” Hatfield told them. “It goes without saying that he’s wanted by the law, and if we are so much as seen in his company we will all be marked men.”
“Like we’re not marked already?” snorted Washburn. “I think Lear knows damned well who did Liddy King and that plug-ugly dyke Proudfoot. He gave me a funny look when he talked to me about your night of gainful employment at the store. It’s common knowledge we’re Steve’s closest friends, and Zack’s military record isn’t exactly a secret.”
“Yah, same with me. I think he knows, all right. He just can’t prove anything,” said Len Ekstrom.
“I don’t think he wants to prove anything,” said Hatfield. “He’s known Steve as long as we have. Rod Berry told me Ted was damned near crying when he had to come and get Steve and take him to jail on that damned bullshit warrant those two bitches swore out on him. He knew what the score was, and what Liddy and that dyke were doing to Steve and the girls. I don’t think he was too upset over being compelled to release Steve from jail, and I don’t think he’s looking any harder for the killers than the pressure from the PC establishment over there makes him look.” Hatfield gestured toward the lights of Astoria. “What I don’t understand is why no FBI involvement? Why no mention in the media of the letters NVA I scrawled on the bedroom wall in dyke squaw blood? Especially since they were all over Steve and his kids in the original hatespeech case?”
Washburn spoke up. “From what I gather from the news, the Bureau has a whole new set of priorities these days. Damn if you weren’t right about the NVA fighting on, Zack. I heard on the truck radio coming over here they tagged another couple of Mexicans in The Dalles and bombed a Portland Police Bureau patrol car at an intersection, with a nigger cop still in it.”
“Steve is out now, he’s back with his kids, and he has a chance to rebuild his life and theirs. That’s the important thing,” said Ekstrom. “It worked.”
“I guess Mr. Chips can bring us up to speed on what’s going on around the Northwest,” said Hatfield.
“And who exactly is this Mr. Chips?” asked Washburn.
“He’s a representative from the Party, and now I suppose from the NVA,” replied Hatfield. “He doesn’t really have a title. Few of them do. The Party has always avoided handing out Chief Cook and Bottle Washer monikers like some racial groups back in the old days used to do. It’s kind of like the Mafia. Let the feds keep on guessing as to who does what. Chips is kind of a general factotum. He describes himself as a Johnny Appleseed who wanders the Pacific Northwest planting seeds of hate and hoping they’ll turn into big blooming orchards. I’ve met him before, back when the Party was legal and I went up to some meetings in the Olympia area, and also down in Dundee and Centralia, Washington. He’s one of the most knowledgeable and intelligent men I’ve ever met. When he speaks, we listen. If we want in on the revolution, then he’s the man who can get us in.”
From the gloom outside there came the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside, tires crunching on the gravel beach and a motor running. “That’s them,” said Hatfield, looking out the window. “Right on time. A good sign in a revolutionary. One thing, boys, if we ever do get into a shooting sitch. Four thirty means four thirty on the dot. One man out of position at the wrong time can kill us all. You can take that as my first lesson to you in combat skills.” The visitor they were waiting for had arrived in a battered and nondescript Subaru sports utility vehicle. In the falling darkness, Hatfield couldn’t tell if it was black or dark blue or green. Mr. Chips got out of the back seat. He was accompanied by a young man wearing a denim jacket and a tweed golf cap, and a tall young woman with a plain but strong-featured face and long orange-ish hair tied in a ponytail behind her head. The boy and the girl both appeared to be about 18 years old. Hatfield had met both of them before up in Dundee. Hatfield opened it and let the youth in. “Hey, Shane,” he said.
“Hey, Mr. H. How’s it going?” The young Volunteer stepped in and looked quickly around the hut. The Oregon men could see the butt of a Tec-9 machine pistol poking from a shoulder holster rig under his denim jacket. The woman stood in the door, wearing a tan fur-lined shepherd’s coat, and they could see the nubby barrel of an Uzi submachine gun protruding from the open coat, held respectfully pointed at the floor. “Hi, Rooney,” said Hatfield.
“Hey,” said the girl. The boy went to the door and beckoned, and a bespectacled man in late middle age with a grizzled moustache stepped inside the room. He took off his overcoat. Under it he was wearing a green cardigan sweater and a tie with a light yellow pastel shirt. In the pocket of the shirt was a plastic protector containing several pens. He looked like a teacher or a computer geek.
“How was the traffic on the bridge?” asked Hatfield.
“We came down the scenic route, from Ilwaco,” replied the newcomer. “Homeland Security is starting to put closed-circuit TV cameras on bridges and tunnels so they can monitor traffic, so I figured we’d better meet here on the Washington side rather than cross the river. The damned things can’t always be avoided, but there’s no need to leave them a trail of breadcrumbs. Shane and Rooney will stay outside and keep an eye out. A young couple in a parked car will need no explanation to any passers-by. By the by, I hope you men are armed and ready to use your weapons, because I should tell you that if anyone comes at us, we’re shooting our way out.” The boy and the girl turned around and left without another word, and Hatfield closed the door. “These gentlemen are . . . ?”
“This is Charlie Washburn, and this is Lennart Ekstrom,” said Hatfiel
d, indicating them. There were brief handshakes. “They’re good men. I’ve already trusted them with my life.”
“You know our names now, but all we know about you is you’re called Mr. Chips,” said Charlie. “Do we get code names too?”
“Eventually you’ll each have a whole collection of your own, yes,” said the Party’s man with a smile. “Mr. Chips isn’t so much a code name as it is a nickname. I used to be a schoolteacher up in Dundee, and I taught a kind of unofficial history course to certain selected white students after school, strictly extracurricular. The feds know who I am, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t. My name is Henry Morehouse, but back in the days when I had more hair, I ended up being called Red.”
“Zack vouches for you,” said Washburn. “That’s good enough. I suppose we’d best get on with it, then. He’s told you what we want from you?”
“Yes, and some of the background. You would be amazed how common a story yours is, gentlemen.” Morehouse sat down and accepted a steaming hot cup of instant coffee, black, and waved away the proffered packets of creamer and sweetener. “They say that all politics is local. So is oppression, apparently. It requires a man to be personally affected by tyranny at his own front door before he will act. Sometimes not even then. You guys acted, on your own, and that impresses us. Zack has told me about the incident that took place here with the King woman and her beast of pleasure.”
“Uh, we gonna have to take some blood oath or something?” asked Ekstrom.
“No, not at this time,” said Morehouse. “Later the Army may find it expedient to formalize. For now, if you’re good men and true then an oath is unnecessary, and if you’re not, no oath will make you so. If I say you’re in, then you’re in.” Morehouse paused and took a sip of coffee. “The first question that I need to ask is the obvious one. Are all of you up for this? Do you fully understand just what the hell you’re doing? This isn’t a video game or a made-for-TV movie. This is the real thing. You see what’s going on in the Northwest, every time you turn on CNN. People are dying, and not just white people this time. The Beast is in a blind rage. It has been defied and it has been wounded, and it’s lashing out in all directions. You do understand that if you proceed, there is every chance that you men will end up either dead or living out the remainder of your lives in a federal prison, under conditions that don’t bear thinking about?”
“Mister, the way they’re hollering in the news media about racism and domestic terrorism, if we were even caught sitting here with you, we’d go to prison for the rest of our lives,” said Ekstrom. “We know this, and we’re still here.”
“Yeah, official paranoia is rampaging, all right,” replied Morehouse with a chuckle. “They’re starting to wake up to the fact that they didn’t get us all when they stormed into Coeur d’Alene last month, and some of us are still fighting. Fair enough. But before we get down to cases, I’d like each of you to tell me in your own words what has brought you here tonight.”
“I guess I’ll start,” said Hatfield. “I had some idea of what the Party was doing behind the scenes, of course, that preparations were being made. Some of it you told me, Red, and some of it I figured out for myself. I was starting to turn over in my own mind whether or not I wanted to join you when the time came to pick up the gun. I knew that time had to come, if any of us in this country had one spark of manhood left in us. We have tried everything else,” Hatfield went on grimly. “For generations we have dutifully trooped to the polls like sheep and voted in elections where we were given no meaningful choice, and where not one single candidate or party represented the white man’s racial interests. Nothing changed except the politicians grew more and more coarse and corrupt, more cynical and contemptible. For almost a hundred years now we have been betrayed at every turn by the men we voted into office, and we have been ravaged and bled dry by these alien creatures called Jews. We have tried every single peaceful avenue of redress, every non-violent method we could think of to try and change the world, to try and make these sons of bitches wearing the suits stop doing what they are doing. None of it has worked worth a tinker’s damn. We have shouted and screamed NO at the top of our lungs, and we have been ignored and spat on and called haters for our trouble. We tried the internet and spent years tapping to one another on keyboards, because we bought into the idea that ‘education’ was the answer, and if we could just get the truth to people, then things would change. Well, education without action isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit. We got the truth to people, all right, and it turned out to be nothing but a bunch of noise that was simply ignored, because the internet was where it stayed. Nobody ever did anything except tap on keyboards. That was fine with the bosses. Tapping on keyboards was no threat to them, we just let off steam and nothing changed. It is now crystal clear to any white man with two brain cells to rub together that the only thing that will make these dogs in power hear the word no is the sound of gunfire.
“But I didn’t make up my mind finally until that night when I took care of Steve King’s problem for him,” Hatfield continued heavily. “I never realized just how damned good it would feel to strike back! It wasn’t like Iraq at all. I hated those hadjis because they were killing and maiming my friends and trying to do the same to me, but I knew in my heart that we had no business there, that the reason they were trying to kill and maim me was because I was trying to take from them their little patch of the world and the oil that was underneath it. I was a thief who had come into their home to rob them of their land and their goods and their dignity, and they had every right to try and shoot and bomb my ass off. To be honest, those Iraqis were doing what I would have been proud to see Americans do if we were ever invaded and occupied. We never said such things, of course, and most of us didn’t even think them out in our own minds in so many words, because we knew how dangerous those thoughts were, but we all knew that we were the guys in the black hats over there.
“I got back home and I somehow understood as I never had before that we are an occupied people. Occupied by our own government, occupied by the same goddamned Jews and politicians and business executives who sent me over to Iraq to steal what little those poor people have. Then came the business with Steve and Liddy King, when I used the skills ZOG gave me for my friend and for his children, for my own people and not for a monthly paycheck from the Jews. It felt right. I find that I like the feel of that white hat on my head, and I want to keep it there. That’s not very articulate, Red, but that’s the best I can tell you right now.”
“I know what you mean,” said Charlie Washburn with a smile. “For once, just once, the bad people didn’t win. I am just so damned sick and tired of bad people always winning all the time. But not this time. For once, just once, there was true justice and a good man and two good children will now have some kind of a chance together in life. A horrible deed committed by wicked perverts has been undone. The scales were balanced just a tiny bit back in the right direction. I feel it too, and it’s indescribable.
“But it’s more than that with me,” he went on carefully. “You know, Americans see a lot of movies and TV shows where some ordinary Joe like me is called upon to step up to the plate, so to speak, and be a hero in some way, usually fighting against the Arabs or Serbs or French or evil white racists or whoever the Jews’ main enemy of the moment is. Most of those flicks are just hokum, but in the past few months, ever since Coeur d’Alene, I’ve been feeling like that. Like I’ve gotten a call from destiny, as conceited and arrogant as that sounds. I couldn’t do it alone, but Coeur d’Alene changed everything for me. Now I know that there are others, others who see the things I see and read them the same way, who think and feel as I do, who understand that it’s a truly wonderful gift from God to be born white. I saw what happened in Coeur d’Alene on CNN, but I don’t want to watch the rest of this great thing on television. I have to be here tonight, Mr. Morehouse. I have to be part of this. I don’t think I could walk away if I wanted to.”
“Things must ch
ange,” said Lennart Ekstrom slowly. “Every white man and woman in America knows it, deep down inside of themselves. This isn’t America anymore, it’s a Rocky Horror Picture Show that just goes on and on. Somewhere, sometime, it has to stop, at least in some part of the country, and here in the Northwest is the best place for that. Once you accept in your own mind that things have to change, you don’t sit and reflect and introspect and brood and agonize over it. You just do what has to be done.”
“And that, Mr. Ekstrom, is what the white race has been waiting to hear from men like you for a hundred years,” said Morehouse with a nod. “You know that we were in a very similar situation, back before the Party was formed? The Old Man himself Came Home in 2002, but for years he simply sat all alone in a series of cracker box apartments or trailers or boarding houses, pounding on a computer that grew older and crankier as time passed. For years he looked for those out-of-state license plates to come over the hill, begging and pleading on his knees with his fellow white people to come to his side and help him, and for year after year, no one came. He asked only for a hundred good men, or women. One hundred people who were willing to place the future of their blood and their civilization over their own personal welfare. And for year after year, no one came.”
The Brigade Page 5