Shella (25 page)

A show about white tigers.

A little black car pulled to the curb. A low, smooth-looking car. A Firebird, I think. Mack got out of the front seat. He shook hands with me, opened the trunk, put my duffel bag in there.

“All set?”

“Sure,” I told him.

There was nobody else in the car. He drove on the highway by the lake, heading back downtown.

“We got a ways to go,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable…. That seat goes all the way back, like an airplane.”

I pushed the buttons on the side of the seat until I got it right. I wanted to close my eyes but I thought it would make him nervous.

“How come they call it Rhodesia?” I asked him. “I mean … where’d that name come from?”

“From Cecil Rhodes, John. Cecil Rhodes, the Builder of the Empire. He started that country with his own bare hands. You get there first, you’re entitled to stamp your name on a country, right?”

“Right.”

Two black guys on motorcycles went past us real fast, cutting in and out of traffic. I expected him to say something, but he didn’t.

We went back downtown and kept going. We stopped to pay a toll. The signs said we were heading to Indiana.

He was smoking a lot. I felt like I should say something, but I didn’t know how.

We turned off the highway. There was a sign, but all I could see on it was South and some number.

He drove careful, not too fast.

“Could you use a beer, Johnny?”

I told him sure.

When we got back on the road, the clock on the dashboard said 12:45.

“You have any questions?”

“When does it start?”

“What?”

“The race war?”

He turned sideways to look at me. His face was a little sad. I never saw him look like that before.

“This is a military operation, John. We’re a guerrilla force…. You know what that is?”

“No.”

“Like … we hide in the jungle, then we sneak out and zap them and sneak back. See what I mean? We don’t have enough manpower to just march in and take over. It’s our job to start the fire. First it gets going strong enough by itself, then we provide the leadership. When the white man rises up angry, he’s not going to know what to do. The Jews, they’ve been running the government so long, the white man’s forgot how to do it. That’s where we come in.”

“Where?”

“We all got our jobs. Those boys you went out with, we got people who work with them. They’re the shock troops. They keep the action going. Heighten the contradictions, that’s what the leader taught us. I don’t work with them myself. Me, I’m in recruitment.”

“Recruitment?”

“Sure. That’s one of the most delicate jobs of all. I have to, like … screen the applicants. My judgment is very important. I started out just bringing guys in. At the plant where I worked. I put in a long time doing that. When I’d find a right guy, I’d turn him over to one of the coordinators—the guys who run the individual groups. And I worked my way up. What I do now, I recruit for the cells.”

“The cells? Like in …?”

“No. A cell is a small group. It operates all by itself. With specific targets. We got procurement cells … they raise
money for our treasury. I recruited for them. You’re my first recruit for the Lightning Squadron.”

“What’s that?”

“Doing what you did Friday night.”

“Killing niggers?”

“Killing whoever. Like I told you, it’s not niggers we’re worried about.”

“Killing Jews?”

“Whoever. Any enemy of the race. There’s plenty of white men who’re enemies of the race too. Traitors.”

“That’s what I’ll do?”

“Yeah. I seen other guys from the Lightning Squadron, but I never brought one in myself before. I’m supposed to look for guys. For different things we need. But as soon as I met you, I said to myself, there’s a man for the squad. It’s a real honor, Johnny. For me too, I want you to know. I passed your name on to HQ, and they checked you out.”

“HQ?”

“Headquarters. They got an Intelligence Unit. You wouldn’t believe the places we got people. See, the Jews are clever, Johnny. They’re always trying to infiltrate our operations. So we got to be sure who we’re dealing with. They checked your record. We got other ways too. Remember Ginger?”

“Sure.”

“She’s one of us.”

“Ginger?”

He smiled, looking out the windshield. “Yeah, sure. It’s not just men in with us. Women. Kids too.”

“The skinheads, right?”

“No, I mean
little
kids. We raise them right, in the white man’s way. The leader says they’re the hope of the future,
the kids. We got kids eight years old, know more about their true heritage than the average grown man could ever imagine. Anyway, a man’s gonna be considered for the squad, we got to test him. The acid test, we call it. Mostly, unless the man has got a name for himself, like if he was with us inside, we bring him out, give him the test. This time, the leader told me, test this guy outside. We got to be careful, can’t be bringing too many guys inside. In case they don’t pass the test, see?”

“I guess so.”

“Johnny, listen to me a minute. These are serious people I’m taking you to. You can’t fuck with them. These men will be your brothers. And that’s forever. This ain’t something you can get tired of, go on to something else. Your brothers, you know what that means?”

“They’re all white?”

“Yeah, of
course
they’re all white, for Christ’s sake. That’s not what I mean. Brothers. Like
blood
brothers. This is for a cause, Johnny. A holy cause. You’ll see, inside. When they show you right in the Bible. This is bigger than any of us. No matter where you go, your brothers will be around. Even in prison. You’ll never be alone.”

I guess he meant it to be a threat, but it sounded like it was a good thing, the way he said it.

“It’s on me, I bring a man in. You do good, it’ll be on me. You fuck up, it’ll be on me too.”

“I won’t fuck up,” I told him.

He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed it hard.

We drove for a long time. The roads kept getting smaller. He never checked directions or anything. We were outside the cities. Just a farmhouse once in a while. The clock said 2:12.

It was still dark when he turned off onto a dirt road.

“We have to go slow from here,” he said. “The first checkpoints won’t stop us—they’re just watchers.”

I didn’t say anything.

There was a telephone between the two front seats. He picked it up, pushed in a number.

“It’s me,” he said. “I just passed checkpoint three. I’ve got him with me.”

He listened for a minute, then he put the phone back.

We came around a bend in the road and there was a log lying across it on an angle. We couldn’t drive past. Mack stopped the car. Spotlights came out of the night—little ones, slicing across each other.

Men came out of the woods. They were dressed like soldiers, in those suits that look like the woods, green and brown. They all had guns.

Mack told me to get out of the car. He did too. One of the soldiers patted my clothes. Then he told me to take my jacket off and my shirt too. Mack said it was okay. They didn’t ask him to do it.

“No wire,” one of the soldiers said.

“All the way,” another said to him.

The first soldier told me to take all my clothes off, even my shoes and socks. I did it. It was cold out there.

Another soldier stepped over to me. He was putting a rubber glove on his hand. “Bend over and spread em,” he said. “Just like in the joint.”

I did it. He was rough with his finger. When he took it out, he pulled off the rubber glove, threw it away in the woods.

“Okay, get dressed,” the first soldier said to me.

Another one had my duffel bag on the ground. They took everything out, piece by piece, going over it.

“It’s clean,” one of them said.

Mack came over to me, held out his hand. “They’ll take you the rest of the way, Johnny. You’re gonna see things you never dreamed of. I know you’re gonna make me proud of you. Proud that I brought you in.”

“You’re not coming?” I asked him.

“No. I won’t see you again, not for a while. Maybe never. It depends.”

“Goodbye, Mack,” I said.

“Goodbye, brother,” he said, turning away.

On the other side of the log, they had a pickup truck and a couple of Jeeps. They had those bars that run over the top of the cabs, all with lights on them. I got in where they told me, and they chased each other going back. It made a lot of noise.

From the way they were dressed, I thought they would live in tents. But it was all buildings, like a little town. I couldn’t see much—it was still dark. They put me in a big
room with bunks in rows. Like the juvenile institution they put me in once. Only there was no bars on the windows.