The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

“I know,” said Eric, opening the car door. “I love you, Annette. Now let’s go see if we can cop ourselves a couple of life sentences.” They got out of the car as the customer drove away and walked up to the pump jockey.

  “What can I do for you kids?” he asked cheerily. On closer inspection he was a thin man of medium height; his long hair beneath the battered and stained baseball cap on his head was a dirty blonde laced with gray, and he looked at them through cheap Wal-Mart wire-rimmed spectacles with thick plastic lenses. They looked down and both spotted an odd tattoo on his right hand between his thumb and forefinger, a diamond with the crude letters “AB” over it. Both the young people recognized it as a prison tattoo.

  “This is going to sound kind of weird, sir, but we’re trying to find somebody,” said Eric. “I think you might be able to help us.”

  “And who might that be?” asked the man politely.

  Annette stepped forward. “Okay, look, I’ll tell you exactly what this is all about. Sir, my name is Annette Ridgeway. This is Eric Sellars. You probably don’t remember me at all, but about two years ago, my father and I stopped here at your station for a couple of hours to get our car fixed. When I was here then, I saw that behind your counter there you had a little stand with a couple of flags on it. There was an Oregon state flag, and there was a three-colored flag that was blue and white and green. Plus there were some copies of a newspaper in your waiting room called the Northwest Republic. I think you can guess who we’re looking for. Now, have we come to the right place?”

  While Annette had been speaking, a change had come over the man in front of them. It was impossible to define, except to say that during her few words the man seemed to become somehow hard and real. When Annette had begun speaking, he was a man of flesh and blood. When she finished, through some silent transmutation he was made of steel.

  “I am going to ask you a question,” he told them both in a soft voice that struck them almost dumb with terror. He did not raise his voice, or make any threatening gesture, but all of a sudden both of them understood what they had gotten themselves into. “Who else have you told about me and about this place?”

  “No one,” said Annette.

  “We told no one,” confirmed Eric.

  “I see. So you two fucking rich kids have the gall to come into my place of business and imply that I am some kind of racist terrorist? You’re saying that I hate people because of the color of their skins or their national origin? That I am in some way disloyal to the United States of America? I’ll tell you what. Both of you get back into your goddamned Lexus and you get the hell out of here. Do not ever let me see either of you around here again. Am I making myself quite clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Annette, gulping. Suddenly she knew that this man was turning over in his mind whether or not he should kill her and Eric.

  “Yeah, okay, man, our mistake,” said Eric. “No offense intended, okay, man? Fine, we’ll go. Just be cool, all right?”

  The two of them backed away and made it back to the Lexus. Eric started the car and then all of a sudden there was a knock on the window. He rolled it down. The pump jockey leaned in and said to them both, “Look, I don’t know what the fuck kind of game you two kids think you’re playing. But I’m going to give you a word of advice. Whatever it is you’re doing, stop it. One thing I learned at a very young age, about your age, in fact, is that if you go looking for trouble, you’re gonna find it. You don’t want to go looking for the Boys. Because if you do, then somebody who isn’t as loyal to this great country of ours as I am might make a phone call, and then the Boys might come looking for you. You don’t want that. Trust me on this, you don’t.” He turned and walked away, and Eric peeled the Lexus out of the gas station.

  The man went inside the gas station, opened the drawer and pulled out a cell phone, and dialed a number. A male voice answered. “Sugar Shack.”

  “You guys got any more of those jelly donuts you sent me last week?” asked the man.

  “Plenty,” said the man on the other end. “You need some?”

  “Yeah. I need some donuts, right away.” He closed the phone. Damn! he thought to himself, looking around the gas station. I’ve been here for ten years, and now I have to go on the bounce because of a couple of goddamned kids!

  Back in the Lexus, Eric and Annette were so shaken by the encounter that they pulled off several intersections up the interstate and went into a Denny’s for coffee and a quick cholesterol fix. “Jesus,” whispered Eric as they sat in a rear booth inflicting death by ketchup on plates piled high with delicious fried things. “I think the death angel’s wings just brushed our shoulders. I swear I thought that character was going to kill us! It wasn’t what he said, just the way he looked at us! Maybe he just didn’t have his gun on him at the time, and that’s why we survived. I think you’re right, Annette. I think he is NVA!”

  “Keep your voice down!” hissed Annette. “Yeah, I think so too, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to listen to anything we have to say.”

  “Can you blame them?” asked Eric. “Two total strangers rock up out of nowhere and ask them to go kill some guy? I mean I know, that’s what they do, but think how it looks to them. Why should they trust us?”

  “I guess it was a stupid idea,” admitted Annette with a sigh. “But it was our only shot at finding them.”

  “Yeah, well, we tried, anyway,” said Eric. “So what now? Maybe we can get Lucius busted on drug charges? You know all that shit he has in his dorm room is still technically illegal. Maybe we can ruin his basketball career.”

  “And do you think anyone gives a flying fuck about him having drugs?” demanded Annette wearily. “So long as he doesn’t get hooked on them himself and screw up his jump shot? The Portland cops won’t do anything, they’ll just tell us to go talk to the campus cops, and the campus cops will give him a pass on the Dean’s orders like they always do. They don’t object to his keeping girls overnight in his dorm room. What do they think he’s doing with them, playing Parcheesi? Nobody is going to help us and nobody is going to do anything about him. Flammus is immune, Eric. He can do anything he damned well pleases, so long as he performs on the goddamned basketball court. You know that.”

  “He knows it, too,” growled Eric, the rage and hate starting to build up again inside him as he thought of the arrogant, smirking anthropoid he had seen with his arm wrapped around Janet Ridgeway. “I think that’s what pisses me off so bad. The way Flammus knows he can do anything he wants and he just accepts it as the natural order of things. Like he’s the king of beasts at Ashdown Academy because he can bounce a ball. He’s in one of the most exclusive prep schools in the country, and he can barely write his own name, just because he can bounce a ball. He’s got his own special tutors and a whole harem of star-struck white girls to do all his homework for him, just because he can bounce a ball. He’ll probably pass with a higher GPA than you or I will, just because he can bounce a ball. White girls are just there for him to use and throw away like empty malt liquor cans once he’s drained them, mentally, and sexually. They’re just there to service the Big Black Badass Bakketbawl Player. He doesn’t care one goddamned bit who he hurts, because white people’s children and white people’s pain and suffering don’t count anymore in America. White people’s daughters are just sex objects for mud people’s pleasure anyway, so who gives a damn about them? He doesn’t care what he did to you, or your parents, or me when he took Jan away from us. Lucius Flammus probably doesn’t even know you exist.”

  “No,” whispered Annette, staring at the corner of the table, her mind racing. “No, I don’t think he does, does he? You know, Eric, I think you may be right. I think you may have hit on it.” She looked at him. “Right now I am thinking over everything Jan ever told me, everything we have been able to learn about their relationship, if you want to call it that, and I think you’re right. Even though I go to the same school as the girl he murdered, I don’t think Lucius Flammus even knows that I exist.
He’s never acknowledged my existence. He’s never said hello to me in the halls or tried to bullshit me and pull me into his little circle of whores. He likes them young and fresh, like Jan. I think to him I’m just another blonde bimbo he sees around, a blonde bimbo he may or may not have time to get around to before he goes on to play basketball for Duke. I don’t think he knows who I am at all.”

  “So?” asked Eric suspiciously. He had a vague perception where she was going with this, and he didn’t like it.

  “So I can get close to him,” she said calmly. “I can make him believe I’m a whore like all the rest of them. I can steal one of Dad’s guns, get him alone up in his dorm room, and kill him.”

  “And what happens to you after that?” demanded Eric.

  “I know it’s risky. That’s why I don’t just steal the gun and walk up to him in the cafeteria or the gym and blow him away,” she said. “I get him up in his dorm room and claim he tried to rape me. I was defending myself, and with his reputation who will believe otherwise?”

  “So you just happen to go up to a dorm room with the man the whole school knows was doping and screwing your sister, and who drove her to suicide, with a gun in your purse, and you end up shooting him in self-defense?” demanded Eric. “Nobody’s going to buy that, Annette. You deprive Ashdown Academy of its prize nigger hoops player and several million dollars in subsidies from the NBA for his care and feeding, pissing off the school administration and 50 million basketball fans who are slavering waiting for this asshole to show up on their TV screens, and you think you’re just going to dance away on tiptoe like Tinkerbelle? Annette, granted your dad is rich as hell and he can get you a legal dream team that will maybe get you off, after a two hundred-day court case, so long as nobody ever utters the N word at any point during the trial. But in the process you’ll ruin him financially and business-wise, you’ll probably drive your mom into a mental institution with worry, you will drag Jan’s name through the mud and you’ll immortalize this last wretched year of her life on every sleazy cable TV talk show, make her name synonymous with sex and drugs and teen suicide everywhere that CNN and Fox News and Court TV reaches, and that’s the whole damned world! The racial angle will be especially titillating. I’ll give you this, Annette, you’re a real fox, and you’ll look very winsome going in and out of court and sitting at the defendant’s table for the cameras, while millions of pervs have sexual fantasies about you, and this whole cesspool of a country feasts on Jan’s carcass. Jesus, Annette, don’t you get what you’ll be doing, to yourself and the rest of us?”

  Annette looked up at him, her eyes wet with tears. “Yes,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Eric, but I have to. Right now there is only one thing in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. My sister was mauled to death by a black animal, and it will not be allowed to live. Dad says we have to just learn to accept it when the black or the brown butcher comes into the pen to take away one of us pale hogs for slaughter. No! No, I won’t accept it! Never! An animal took Jan away from me and put her in a hole in the ground forever, and I am going to kill it.”

  “No, you’re not,” Eric told her gently. “I am going to kill it. Now, you listen to me. I don’t have any place to get a gun, so you’ll have to snag one of your father’s weapons for me. That’s okay. I’m in and out of your house often enough so if this goes bad, I can claim I stole it. That’s all you need to do, Annette, just get me the piece and some ammunition. I haven’t figured out how, and it will take some planning, since I’d kind of like to survive and marry you and have a little girl with you that we can name Janet, but I’ll do it.”

  “We’ll do it together,” Annette told him, taking his hand. Eric decided not to start a long and wearing argument with her that he knew quite well he would lose.

  “Okay,” he sighed. “So, how hard can it be to plot a nigger-killing? The NVA does it all the time.”

  * * *

  Planning a murder turned out to be a lot harder than they thought. As research, Annette had the idea of going to their local video store and renting a large stack of the “CSI” television series and its many spin-offs, which had been popular in the previous decade, to study crime scene investigative technique that might be used against them by the police. “No, don’t rent them,” said Eric. “We rent them on our own cards, we’re leaving a paper trail right from the beginning. Same thing with downloading them to our computers. You need to hit the ATM, draw some cash, and then we split it and we each go to different malls in Portland on our own and buy one set of episodes in each video store, only one, so no clerk remembers us coming to the counter with a whole bunch of these things. Then we study each episode and make notes, and after we’re done we throw all of them in a dumpster somewhere. No, a bunch of separate dumpsters. We can’t let anyone know we’re interested in how to whack people out.”

  The two young people did so, and they were able to get most of their research done in a single weekend in the basement rec room at Annette’s house, the same one where Jan had died, which Annette found reaffirming and poetically just. Eric reassured Annette’s worried parents on Saturday night when Ray took him aside during dinner and hesitantly brought up the subject of condoms. “It’s not like that, sir,” Eric told them, “And if it was, I can get all the condoms I need from the dispensers at school. No, Annette and I are just spending as much time as we can together trying to re-normalize, if you get what I’m saying. We’re just watching TV and talking.”

  “In . . . that room?” ventured Lorraine Ridgeway hesitantly.

  “Yeah, I know, it kind of freaked me out a bit at first, but I think Annette wants to face it and beat it,” Eric told her. “Look, folks, I hope you know I wouldn’t do anything to get Annette in trouble. She’s got enough trouble as it is.”

  “We know that, Eric,” said Ray gratefully. “I’m just glad she’s got someone like you, her own age, to help her through this.”

  “I think if you give us some space for a little while, she’ll come down and level off,” said Eric in a voice of sincere concern. “You might say we’re working through some anger issues.”

  “Thank you, Eric,” said her mother with a relieved smile. Fortunately neither parent walked in on the two of them and discovered exactly what they were watching and making notes on. On Monday morning a number of crime show discs went into dumpsters around the city, and that afternoon Eric and Annette met in the school library to compare notes.

  “Okay, so what did we get from all that, besides about twenty-three hours of political correctness and maybe a cumulative hour’s worth of worthwhile information?” asked Annette.

  “A couple of points spring to mind,” said Eric. “First off, do the hit outside, not inside, preferably in the woods somewhere. An outdoor crime scene is much harder for a CSI team to work, and there’s much more chance of weather and animals and such contaminating the evidence. An indoor hit is too confined. All the evidence is pretty much there in one room for them to find.”

  “Check,” said Annette practically. “Second, always make sure you get rid of the gun. A good defense lawyer can square almost anything except for DNA and their connecting you to the murder weapon.”

  “That’s a weak point,” said Eric. “Should we maybe not use one of your father’s guns, but try to get our own from somewhere? I know some loadies who can probably hook me up with a Babu.”

  “Uh, I don’t think that’s what they call illegal gun dealers any more,” said Annette. “And if they ever did, it was in New York. That was TV, remember? But if we buy from someone, that puts us in the power of the person we get the gun from, who will be able to identify whichever one of us makes the buy. My Dad isn’t dumb and he’ll know what we’ve done, and he will go nuts, but he won’t rat us out to the police.”

  “Yeah, good point,” said Eric with a sigh. “Which one do we borrow? Your Dad has how many pistols?”

  “Four,” said Annette. “Plus a couple of shotguns and a .22 rifle, and a deer rifle. He bought them years a
go, before you practically had to sign your name in your own blood and provide your whole life’s story since kindergarten on a BATFE form to own a firearm legally. I don’t know if there’s any police or government record of those guns or not. He’s got a .22 Ruger revolver, a .357 Magnum with a short barrel, a cowboy-looking .45 revolver, and a German Luger he says my great-grandfather brought back from World War Two as a souvenir. Which one do you want?”

  “Skilled Mob and NVA hit men apparently use .22s all the time, up close and personal, but I’m not a skilled hit man. Flammus is a big nigger, and I need something that will put him down with one shot, and the second will finish him for good. I don’t want a wounded animal charging me. Which one is your Dad least likely to miss?” asked Sellars.

  “He takes the .357 with him a lot when he travels. He’s got a special permit for it, because as rich as he is and as important in banking as he is, he’s a possible terrorist target. I don’t know if we have any bullets for the Luger, and it’s old and it might not shoot anyway. It will have to be the .45 cowboy gun. Dad told me once it’s called a Colt Peacemaker. It’s a replica of the old Wild West gun and I know we’ve got a box of .45-caliber shells for it. I don’t know how often Dad looks at it. He won’t miss it for a while. When he does, he’ll know, and he won’t ever trust me or look at me again in the same way, but he won’t rat me out. Or tell Mom.”

  “You’re okay with that?” asked Eric curiously.

  “I haven’t got a choice,” she said with a shrug. “We need to hold off on my stealing the gun until the last minute, so Dad doesn’t miss it too soon, but we will also need to test fire it and make sure it works.”

  “Yippie ki yi yay, then,” said Eric. “After it’s done we’ll need to throw it into the river.”

  “Not the river,” corrected Annette. “The cops drag the rivers along the shorelines and under bridges around Portland for NVA guns about once a week, all up and down the waterfront and as far up as Longview and The Dalles along the Columbia. They use metal detectors and stuff. It’s the first place they’ll look.”