Shella (29 page)

The three guys with the rifles went in first. We had to wait for them to finish so they could stand guard. It didn’t take long. We all got a turn. I knocked on the door to the trailer. A skinny old woman with a big blonde wig let me in. It cost thirty bucks. The room was like a closet. The girl in there was tired and she smelled bad. You could hear the people grunting in the next room over—the walls were made of some cardboard stuff. I finished quick.

When we got together outside in the parking lot, the one they called Billy checked us over. He pointed to the house on the left, told me and Murray to take that one. The other ones fanned out.

“You see one, shoot him,” Murray said. “They all carry razors and they’ll cut you in a minute.”

“Okay,” I said.

Murray knocked on the door. A woman in a red dress opened it—she was fatter than the door opening. We climbed up the steps and went inside. We took out our guns.

“Get your hands up,” Murray told the fat woman.

She did it. She looked bored.

“How many girls you got back there?” he asked her.

“Three.”

“They all busy?”

“Two are. Mary’s alone in her room.”

“Where’s the phone?”

“There’s no phone here. We use the one in the tavern.” The fat woman sat down, lit a cigarette. Murray looked mad, but he didn’t say anything.

The fat woman dragged on her cigarette. I could hear a radio playing. Country music, it sounded like.

“Call her out … this Mary. Get her out here.”

The fat woman started to get up, then she sort of shrugged, yelled “Maaary!”

Another fat girl came out, this one was younger. She was wearing a shortie nightgown and high heels. When she saw the guns, she went and sat down next to the other one, like she was half asleep.

“You try to run, I’ll blow you away,” Murray said to the women. They didn’t look like they could.

The hall was too narrow for two of us. Murray went first. He stood outside a door to the left, pointed to my door on the right. He stepped back and kicked the door. It made a loud noise but it held. He kicked it again. I heard a scream. I turned the handle of my door and it opened. Inside there was a man just getting off a woman. They were both naked, except he had socks on. I pointed the gun at them.

“Get out,” I said.

The man kind of jumped into his pants, grabbed up his clothes and ran out. The woman just laid there.

“There’s gonna be a fire,” I told her. I walked out of the room and I heard a shot. I looked through the open door. Murray was aiming at a man—I couldn’t tell if he hit him or not.

“Come on,” I yelled at him. “It’s going up.”

He followed me out. The two fat women were still sitting in the front room.

Another shot, from one of the other trailers. A man in a red jacket came in the front door. He had a stocking mask over his face and a metal gasoline can in one hand. He started splashing the gasoline all over—the smell was choking me.

The two fat women ran out. When the fire man got to the back of the trailer, the other two women came out too.

We went back to the parking lot. There was a big
whooosh!
from between the three trailers. A fireball went up, then it shot out in three arms. You could see it rip toward the trailers. They all went up. It sounded like a war … explosions from inside, popping, then a big bang. People were running out of the tavern. There was a lot of shooting, but it was all up in the air. Two men ran to a corner of the parking lot. They stuck a cross in the ground. The guy in the red jacket lit that too.

That was all. We got in the cars and took off. Nobody tried to stop us. I couldn’t hear sirens.

The car I was in had a police radio in the front seat. I couldn’t understand it with all the crackling, but the guy next to the driver said the State Police were rolling toward the tavern. By then we were miles away.

When we got back, they dropped us off near the dorms. The guy in the shoulder holster was waiting. He told me and Murray to come with him.

We walked to another building, where the guy in the white shirt was waiting.

Murray went in first. The guy with the shoulder holster told me to wait.

When it was my turn, the guy in the white shirt asked me what happened. I told him.

“Good work,” he said.

I was walking back when I saw Murray ahead of me. He must have been waiting—I was in with the man in the white shirt for a while.

“What’d you tell him?” Murray asked me.

“What happened.”

“About the niggers?”

“What niggers?”

“At the place … the niggers. I told him I … shot one. A nigger. In the room with a white girl.”

I didn’t say anything. All the men in the house had been white.

Murray put his hand on my arm. I let him do that—he was scared of something.

“John, did he ask you … if there was any niggers there?”

“No.”

“You won’t tell …”

“Tell what?”

“You’re my true brother, John,” Murray said, squeezing my arm hard.

On the TV the next day, they said it was the KKK who set fire to the trailers. Some of the guys watching cheered.
The fire man rubbed his hands, watching the tape of the burning.

It was another ten days or so when Murray came by. All excited again. Worked up.

“We going to an Action Team, John. I just heard. They tell you yet?”

“No.”

“Hey, it’s true. I got it straight from HQ. You’ll see, both of us got tapped.”

He was pacing around in a little circle, really happy.

The only thing I knew about the Action Team was what the leader said in one of his talks. He talked about Partition again. He said the niggers wanted their own land too, but, like all niggers, they wanted the government to just give it to them. Like Welfare. Our land, he said, our land would come from our own labor. We would pay for it. The Action Teams, they were the way they got the money.

The guy in the white shirt, he was the one who told us about the Action Team they picked me and Murray for. Hijacking was what it was. An armored car, carrying a factory payroll from a bank. He knew everything about it. Everything. You can’t shoot out the tires on one of those armored cars—the guards would just stand inside and call the police on their telephone. Roadblocks are no good either. What you have to do, he said, is hit them while they make a transfer. While the door is open.

He said they were experts. They did dozens of these, all around the country. It was the only way to get the money they needed.

Me and Murray were watching TV. They just arrested this guy in Milwaukee. They found all kinds of bodies in his house. The announcer was saying the guy was maybe the worst serial killer ever. The fire man came in. He listened for a minute, getting excited.

“How many women did he kill?” he asked Murray.

“He only killed boys,” Murray said.

“He’s a sick bastard,” the fire man said, getting up and walking away.

One day, Murray asked me if I wanted to go work out with him. There’s a weight room in one of the buildings. I told him no.

“John, come on, man. You’re too skinny. I mean, I’m not coming down on you or anything, but I can see you got good musculature … a good skeleton, see? If you was to work out with me, I guarantee you, maybe six months, you wouldn’t recognize yourself.”