Return Engagement td-71

by Warren Murphy

  "It's getting so a man can't count on worthwhile employment in the land of his birth no more," said Boyce.

  "There are other gas stations," said cousin Luke.

  "Not in Dogwood, there ain't," Boyce complained. "I can pump gas as good as anyone, but I ain't pumping gas in Dogwood no more."

  "Move."

  "Shoot, man. I was born here. Can you beat Old Man Shums up and firing a native son like that? I was with him, hell, all of a year and three months. I had seniority. "

  "Old Man Shums said you also had your hand in the till."

  "So what? I worked there, didn't I?"

  "He said you had your hand in the till after closing," Luke pointed out.

  "I was drunk," said Bovce. "How the hell's a man supposed to know what he's about when he's drunk? It ain't natural."

  "I hear Old Man Shums got himself a replacement," Luke offered.

  "Some Indian fella from Huntsville."

  "Indian! Damn! That's what's wrong with this country. Too many damn furriners."

  "I don't think he's that kind of an Indian."

  "What other kind of Indian is there?" asked Bud, who had dropped out of Dogwood Elementary School after the fifth grade.

  "There's two kinds. The turban kind and the bow-and-arrow kind," said Luke, who'd come within two months of graduating from high school. "Neither damn one of them any damn good."

  "Damn straight," said Boyce. "They're lazy, don't like to work, and they sponge off this great nation of ours."

  "Sounds like you, Boyce," the bartender called over.

  Boyce threw the bartender a surly look. "When I want vour attention I'll piss on the floor."

  "You did that last week."

  "And this week I'm considering the other option."

  "I had no idea you took in solids," the bartender said dryly.

  "Which kind stole my job?" Boyce wondered aloud. "The turban kind or the other?"

  "I hear the guy's name is Eagle," said Bud. "John Eagle."

  "Must be the bow-and-arrow kind. If it were the other, his name would be John Cow," offered Lake, the historian. "They're big on cows over in India."

  "It's un-American," Boyce complained to no one in particular. "Him taking my job like that."

  "It's very American," said the bartender, polishing a glass. The bartender polished his glasses to get some use out of them. No one drank beer out of a glass in Dogwood. "The Indians were here before us. That guy's more American than any of you."

  The revelation seared into the brains of the drunken trio.

  "I think he's right," Luke whispered. "I heard something like that on The Rifleman once."

  "Well, he's not white, is he?" demanded Boyce.

  "That's right. They're red. They call 'em red men."

  "Communists," said Bud, spitting on the floor.

  "No, but they're no good neither," said Luke.

  "I think we should do something," said Boyce Barlow.

  "Do what?" asked Bud.

  "Like let's take Dogwood back from the Indians."

  "How many Indians we talking about?" asked Luke, who was a cautious soul.

  They looked at Bud.

  Bud shrugged. "I think there's only one of them."

  "Good. We outnumber him."

  "Not from what I hear. Them Injuns, they're tough mothers."

  "We'll bring a hat with us," said Boyce Barlow, pulling his baseball cap with the Confederate flag down low over his mean eyes.

  And that night, the three cousins pulled into Old Man Shum's gas station and yelled for service.

  "No need to shout," a deep, rumbling voice said very close by. "I'm right here."

  "Where?" dernanded Boyce, sticking his shaggy head out the driver's window of his four-by-four pickup. And then he saw John Eagle. The man stood nearly seven feet tall. He was as wide as a gas pump. In fact they had mistaken him for a gas pump in the darkness, which was why his sudden appearance was so unnerving. "You John Eagle?" asked Boyce Barlow.

  "That's right," said John Eagle, leaning down. He smiled. It was a big, friendly smile, but it made John Eagle's wide Indian face look like the front of a Mack truck. "Something I can do for you?"

  The three cousins stared at John Eagle with their mouths open and spilling beer fumes.

  "He's whiter than us," whispered Luke.

  "And he's bigger than us," added Bud. "All of us. Put together. "

  "Fill 'er up, friend," Boyce said good-naturedly, vainly trying to match the big man's smile.

  Driving off; Bud Barlow broke the strained silence.

  "It was a good idea, anyway."

  "It still is," said Boyce Barlow. "We gotta make Dogwood a fit place for white Americans."

  "And Indians, white ones," added Bud, looking back furtively.

  "Who else lives in Dogwood who ain't white?" asked Boyce.

  "There's that pumpkin farmer at the edge of town," Luke said. "What's his name? Elmer something."

  "Elmer Hawkins," said Boyce. "He's a nigger. Yeah, we can run him off."

  "What'd he do?" demanded Bud.

  "He ain't white, is he?" said Bovce. "Ain't this the idea? We gotta run off the ones what ain't white."

  "But Elmer, he's pushing seventy. And who'd he ever bother?"

  "You let one nigger in, soon you got a townful."

  "Shoot, Elmer's been living here going on fifty years. He come into town by himself. He's the only nigger we got."

  "He's leaving town. Tonight," Boyce said finally. They crept up on Elmer Hawkins' neat shack by moonlight, Boyce Barlow in the lead. It was easy going. There was no kudzu to tangle their feet. Elmer Hawkins' place was about the only open part of Marshall County that wasn't overrun with the indestructible weed. They knocked on Elmer's front door. The windows of the shack were unlit.

  "Elmer, open up," Boyce called drunkenly.

  When there was no answer after ten minutes of furious knocking; they gave up.

  "Must be minding someone's kids," said Bud. "Elmer's always doing nice stuff like that."

  "Shut up!" yelled Bovce. "I ain't coming back tomorrow night. I'm in a mean mood now. Tomorrow I might not be."

  "Well, I ain't waiting all night, neither," said Luke.

  "Who's got a match?" asked Boyce. "We'll burn this nigger out of Dogwood."

  "I don't like this," said Bud, but it was too late. Boyce was holding a butane lighter under one corner of the dry wood shack.

  The corner darkened, caught, and a line of yellow flame climbed the unpainted wood until there was no chance of putting it out.

  Elmer Hawkins came running up the road not many minutes later.

  "What's goin' on? What you doin' to my house?" he yelled. He was a lanky old man with peppercorn hair. Boyce Barlow yelled back at him.

  "We're running out all the niggers in Dogwood."

  "This ain't Dogwood, you fool. This is Arab."

  "Ayrab?" said Luke dazedly.

  "The Dogwood town line is up the road. What you want to go and burn down my house for?"

  "We're getting rid of all the niggers in Arab too," Boyce said smugly.

  And he did. But not the way he thought. Elmer Hawkins watched the shack he had lived in for most of his life burn to the ground. He did not get mad. He did not call the police, nor did he press charges. Instead, he hired a lawyer and got even.

  The county judge at the trial awarded Elmer Hawkins seven hundred dollars in punitive damages for his shack and an additional fifty thousand dollars for emotional distress. Because Boyce Bariow was dirt poor and unemployed, he could not pay. So the judge ordered Boyce's house-which had been in his family since the Civil War-auctioned off and the proceeds given to the victirn. Elmer Hawkins took the money and bought himself a modest home in Huntsville. There was enough left over to put a down payment on a diner near the Marshall Space Flight Center, where Elmer Hawkins lived out the rest of his days in busy contentment.

  "At least I won," Boyce Barlow said when it was over. He was back at his usual t
able at Buckhorn's.

  "But you lost your house, Boyce," Luke pointed out glumly.

  "Dogwood is racially pure, though, ain't it?"

  "Always was. Elmer lived in Arab, remember?"

  "We're not stopping with Dogwood anymore," Boyce said, staring into the dark Coors bottle like a man gazing into a crystal ball. "We're going to expand." Expanding was not easy. The White Purity League of Alabama picked up a few new members who thought it was a crying shame that Boyce lost his house that way, which brought the ranks to exactly six. Because all six were temporarily out of work, dues were a problem.

  "How can we expand without any money?" Boyce complained one night at Buckham's.

  "We could all go out and get jobs," Bud suggested. He was ignored.

  The bartender, who had long ago grown tired of the White Purity League of Alabama holding meetings in his establishment and forgetting to pay its tab, made a fateful suggestion.

  "Go on cable TV," he said. "They let any group on the air now. It's called local access or something like that. It's free."

  "We don't have cable TV in Dogwood," Boyce said reasonably.

  "They do in Huntsville," the bartender countered. And so the White Purity League Hour was born. Within three months its message, "Take Back America," was reaching viewers in twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia. Membership rose from the founding six members to nearly three thousand nationwide. Boyce Barlow bought himself a nice white frame house in suburban Huntsville, a short drive from the national headquarters of the renamed White Purity League of America and Alabama, a former Boy Scout campground Barlow had purchased and converted into Fortress Purity, a barbed-wire compound off Route 431.

  Barely a year after the groundbreaking of Fortress Purity, a man showed up at the electrified fence. The man was in a wheelchair.

  "I want to join your worthy group," the man said. He was old, too old. And he had no legs.

  "Go 'way," said Luke Bariow from the gate. "We got standards."

  "Ilsa!" the old man called.

  A blond girl stepped out of a bronze van.

  "Hi," she said breathily. Then she smiled sunnily.

  "Hi!" Luke said, staring at her chest.

  "Can we come in? Please?"

  "Sure," said Luke, who realized that recruitment among single women was distressingly low.

  After he had unlocked the gate, he said. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Luke. I'm vice-corporal in charge of security."

  "I've never heard of such a rank," said the old man in the wheelchair.

  "I made it up," said Luke proudly. "It was either that or admiral of the gate. I liked that one best, but the other was longer."

  The old man smiled. His smile was hideous. It was the smile of a rot-toothed corpse. "Of course."

  When the old man was brought to Boyce Barlow, Boyce was three thousand dollars in the hole to his poker partners and welcomed the interruption.

  "I'm calling the game. We split the pot," he announced suddenly, scooping up two handfuls of money. "What can I do for you folks?"

  "You are Boyce Barlow. I have watched your program. We are kindred spirits, you and I."

  "You and me is kin?"

  "In spirit. I, too, believe as you do. America for Americans."

  "Who're you?"

  "This is Herr Konrad Blutsturz," said Ilsa proudly. "He is an Aryan. He is like you."

  "The hell he is. I got both rny legs," said Boyce Barlow. "No offense," he added.

  "I have a gift for you," said Konrad Blutsturz, tossing a book onto the poker table.

  Boyce Barlow picked up the book and read the title. Main Kampf," he said aloud.

  "The first word is pronounced 'mine,' as in 'yours or mine,' " Konrad Blutsturz corrected. "Not 'main.' "

  "Main's how they say it at the China Dragon. You know, chow mein."

  "A different language altogether. The words mean 'My Battle.' A great man wrote it."

  "Adolf Hitler," Boyce read aloud. "Wasn't he a bad guy."

  "The losers are always called that. Had Hitler won the war, there would now be no Jews, no blacks, no inferior peoples living in America, taking American jobs from true Americans and draining the vitality out of this once-strong nation."

  "Is that so?"

  "His ideas are your ideas," said Konrad Blutsturz. "He was espousing them before you were born. You, Boyce Barlow, have reinvented the wheel. Read this book and see for vourself. When you are done, call me at the number I have written on the flyleaf and we will talk."

  Boyce Barlow had read the book. The old man without legs had been right. Boyce Barlow found that the old man was right about many things.

  Konrad Blutsturz told them he could triple the membership of the White Purity League of America and Alabama. Overnight.

  "You have only to do three things."

  "What are those?" Boyce had asked suspiciously. "Starting today, fly this flag from your highest building."

  Boyce Barlow took the flag. It was red. In the center was a twisted black crass in a white circle. Boyce recognized the flag; he had seen it in World War Two films. He showed the flag to Luke and Bud.

  "What do you guys think?"

  "It would look better if it were green," said Luke.

  "I like red," said Bud, thinking of the Confederate flag.

  "Me too," said Boyce. "Done."

  "Excellent. Second, change the name of your organization to the Aryan League of America."

  "What's an Aryan?"

  "We are Aryans," said Konrad Blutstrarz. "Aryans are the master race, descendants of the racially pure warrior- Vikings. Like Ilsa, here."

  They all looked at Ilsa. Ilsa looked back. She smiled sweetly.

  "We're all Aryans, ain't we, boys?" Boyce said. "Especially me. How about we call it the White Aryan League of America, though? So the dumb ones don't get confused. "

  "I will agree to that," said Konrad Blutsturz.

  "And the third thing?"

  "Appoint me your second-in-command."

  Boyce Barlow had done this too, and, true to the old man's promise, the membership rolls swelled. That they swelled with people who had German last names was at first troublesome to the ruling triad of the newly renamed White Aryan League of America and Alabama. Boyce had insisted on retaining the "Alabama" part, in his words, "to remind folks this great movement began in the heart of Dixie."

  One night, while counting up the month's dues, Boyee asked the old man, "Isn't our slogan supposed to be 'America for Americans'?"

  "That is our slogan," admitted Konrad Blutsturz.

  "Then what are those damn furriners doin' here?"

  "They are not foreigners. America is a melting pot. The best of all white nations have come to these shores. German-Americans are as American as any. More so. It is the blacks, the Jews, the Smiths who are to be eradicated."

  "The smiths?" asked Boyce. "Aren't they white too? I mean mostly?"

  "They are the worst of all. They look white. Their skins appear to be white. But their souls are black, and evil. We will rid America of the blacks and the Jews and other inferior peoples. But first we must crush the Smiths."

  Boyce Barlow didn't quite follow Konrad Blutsturz on that last point, but the dues kept coming in and so he did everything that Konrad Blutsturz suggested.

  Konrad Blutsturz had showed how to get the White Aryan League of America publicity. Instead of just preaching the word over cable TV, or on street corners where they were hooted and booed, he showed that marching down the streets of American towns, shouting racial epithets, usually brought media coverage. Free media coverage. And when you shouted racial slogans, the races you insulted always shouted back. Sometimes they threw rotten fruit and bottles.

  "Do this and we will get sympathy. Provoke the blacks and Jews and Orientals to attack us. We will look good and they will look bad because the networks can not spend more than three minutes of footage on any news event. They will omit our slogans and show our enemies attacking our peaceful march."


  And it had worked. All of it had worked. That man Konrad Blutsturz was a genius. He knew everything. And when Blutsturz had insisted that he be called Herr Fuhrer, Boyce Barlow had made it White Aryan League policy. And when Herr Fuhrer Blutsturz had made the finding of one man named Harold Smith the League's top priority, Boyce Barlow had not questioned him. After all. Harold Smith was a black-souled Smith, possibly the secret leader of the coming Smith uprising that threatened to undermine the racial purity of America.

  And when Herr Fuhrer Blutsturz ordered Boyce Barlow and his cousins Luke and Bud to personally go to Falls Church, Virginia, after a scientist named Ferris D'Orr, Boyce Barlow asked only one question.

  "You want him alive or dead?"

  Chapter 12

  At first, Dr. Harold W. Smith thought he was hallucinating. He had not gone home the night before. He dared not. First, there was the fear that he would miss some critical report coming over his computers. And then there was the shame. He did not want to face his wife in his current state, as the old Harold Smith, the lemony-faced, cold-blooded Harold Smith who had been ground down by a lifetime of intelligence work. Last, there was the fear that if he went home, he would lead the unknown killer straight to his door, and to his wife.

  "Could you repeat that, please?" Smith asked, thinking that lack of sleep had caused him to hear things. Mrs. Mikulka patiently repeated herself, speaking slowly and distinctly through the office intercom.

  "I said a Mr. Chiun is here to see you. He's very insistent, and the guards at the gate don't know what to do."

  "You did say Chiun?"

  "Yes, Dr. Smith. Chiun. What shall I tell the guards?"

  "Tell them to escort Mr. Chiun to my office. Carefully. Tell them not to touch him, provoke him, or otherwise get in his way."

  "My goodness, is he an escaped patient?" asked Mrs. Mikulka, placing a plump hand to her well-cushioned chest.

  "Just do it," said Smith, one harried eye on his computer console.

  Minutes later, the guards left their charge outside Smith's office door.

  "Oh, hello." said Mrs. Mikulka, recognizing the Master of Sinanju. She had seen the elderly Oriental before. He had visited Smith on other occasions.

  "Greetings, lady-in-waiting to the Emperor Smith. Please inform the emperor that the Master of Sinanju, formerly his royal assassin, has arrived."