Jonesy was the kind of girl who carried hand grenades in her purse.
Having discovered that they had bitten off a wee bit more than they could chew, the state troopers hollered and scattered, a couple of them with their pants on fire. I decided it was time for me to do the same. I’d done my bit, I hadn’t dodged the bullet in any sense of the word, I hadn’t fallen back on General Order Number Eight, and I was somewhat proud of myself. I started running down Second Street. Behind the store a Mexican in a grocery apron was standing there gawking at all the noise, holding a crate of leafy produce of some kind, an expression of slack astonishment on his face. Since he had no business being in my country I shot him on general principles, and ran on. As I reached the corner of Second and Main I saw the pickup truck with Johnny Pill driving turn the corner, and the other two running Volunteers piled into the cab. Fortunately it was one of these big tanks yuppies used to get their dumb-ass jock sons in college as a status symbol, so there was plenty of room for three up front, but not four. In a heartbeat, I was up on the running board and over into the back bed, lying flat, and then we were off, fast at first and then slowing down as we eased onto the interstate. We passed Fulton’s market as the sirens wailed in the distance, and as I lay on my back I made a note in my mind of the telephone number on their wall. While I enjoyed my bumpy reclining ride I took out my cell phone and called them up. “Is this the manager?” I asked. I could hear screaming and shouting and police radios in the background.
“Uh, this is the assistant manager,” mumbled the guy on the other end, who appeared to be in shock. “We just had a.. .what can I..?”
“You can quit hiring wetbacks,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m the guy who just plugged that spic of yours out back,” I yelled over the sound of traffic on the interstate, lying on the bed of the pickup. “You will, let me repeat that, you will get rid of all of your non-white employees, and you will, let me repeat that, you will hire white Americans to replace them. Because if you don’t, asshole, you are going to see me in person. You just saw what we did in your parking lot, right?”
“Bah...bah...bah...” babbled the idiot.
“Next time I come in there I’d better not see one black or brown or yellow face. Otherwise you and me are going to have a quiet word ofprayer, boy,” I said in my best Carter Wingfield imitation. Then I hung up.
The one thing that we understood from the start was that we had to hit ZOG where it hurt, in their wallets. Red Morehouse was right when he said that the generals never surrender in a colonial war, it’s always the accountants who convince the occupying power to throw in the towel. The rich businessmen who owned that supermarket chain could not have cared less about a single madrugadore warehouse hand; there were umpteen thousand more where he came from. But they understood that getting their stores shot up and their employees murdered on a regular basis was very bad for their bottom line, and already some far-seeing men among the Northwest business community were beginning to wrap their minds around the possibility that the mighty United States could not protect them from the NVA. Or at least couldn’t protect their bottom line. Profit came first, always, and when faced with a combined threat of falling profits and a bullet in the face, the Northwest’s economic ruling élite saw the light very quickly. For some odd reason, after we went waltzing Matilda in the parking lot that day with Sorels and his oafs and got away with it, all seventeen stores of the Fulton’s Market grocery chain throughout western Washington subsequently developed a remarkably non-diverse hiring policy. They never had a single visible non-white employee for the rest of the War of Independence. Wonder why that was? The NAACP and the Hispanic American Council tried to sue them, but the NVA shot the lawyers, which put an end to that lark and reinforced the point I first made that day in Dundee. I might also add that this policy paid them dividends in the future. Fulton’s is now the largest grocery chain in the Northwest American Republic, and every store has a large Tricolor flying prominently from the roof.
I knew that we weren’t headed for the NVA railroad station hideout we’d been in that morning, because one of the standard operating procedures was that when you were hot you never went back to your previous base camp, lest you lead any pursuit to your comrades. Everybody had an E & E point and I figured that Johnny Pill was taking us to his own and we’d sort things out from there. It turned out to be the pool house on the sumptuous estate of a corporate executive perched high above Budd Inlet. John’s lady Mary was the official house-sitter while the big shot and his slut rich-bitch wife were off doing the fleshpots of the Pacific Rim on assorted business conferences, and we had the run of the mansion. This was an interesting experience in that for the first time I saw how the wealthy had been living while I had been growing up in the repulsive shithole that was Dundee under ZOG. Multiple jacuzzis, 64-inch plasma TVs, marble fixtures, a game room the size of a basketball court, an Olympic length heated indoor swimming pool, carpet you could sink in, refrigerators full of food I didn’t even recognize and mangled horribly in the microwave, mahogany furniture, brocaded sofas I made it a point to sleep on while wearing my boots, a garden like something out of Versailles which was tended by a couple of Chinese whom we had to hide from by day and were forbidden to shoot, you get the picture.
As per usual we had the TV in the pool house running full time on the cable news channels, and although no one had been killed except the Mexican, the media were on an even greater rampage about the Fulton Market fracas than they went into over the dead police. It turned out that Sully and Jonesy had been recognized in the store because they’d been featured on America’s Most Wanted the previous Saturday night. They were the NVA’s first celebrity terrorists, “the racist Bonnie and Clyde,” and somebody at Fulton’s decided he or she wanted to pick up some rather substantial reward money, so they called the special Domestic Terrorist Hotline on an 800 number. Interestingly enough, the Feds always emphasized for informers to call that line and never 911. ZOG knew even that early on that they couldn’t trust the local police in the Northwest.
On the second night at Budd Inlet, Carter rocked up with another Volunteer whose name I never knew and whose job was to take Sully and Jonesy out to Montana someplace to cool off for a bit. They both sang my praises to the sky as a mighty Aryan warrior indeed, and after Jonesy had given me a farewell hug and they’d driven off into the darkness, Carter shook my hand. “You just ain’t the type to walk away from white folks in trouble at all, are you, son?” he asked me with a grin. “You did real well, Shane. Our little crew is getting quite a rep in the Army and you’re a large part of the reason why. We’re all real proud of you. I have a present for you. I believe you once stated that this was your favorite gun among all our collection we used to play Little Willie with?”
“The Tek-9?” I asked excitedly.
“Naw, that thing is junk. I mean the really nice one.” He took out a beautiful old British Webley, .455 caliber, top-break owl clip, square 6-inch barrel. It was a reproduction, of course, but a repro old enough to be an antique in itself, and yet like every firearm in the Wingfield arsenal it was in perfect firing condition. I had small, stubby hands and the grip fitted into them better than any other pistol butt except for Western-style revolvers, certainly a lot better than most of the more modern weapons. I could control it and actually hit things with it. I had named the gun King Henry the Fifth after one of my favorite Shakespeare plays.
“If I’d been packing this, I wouldn’t have missed Sorels on that first shot,” I said with a sigh.
“Well, you won’t miss him again. This is now yours, your first testimonial from a grateful Northwest Republic for services rendered. By the way, even though Brother Leon was wearing a vest when you plugged him, you sent that big bad boy to the hospital with a torn sternum. A direct hit from a .357 is no joke, even on body armor. His buddies from the patrol are guarding him night and day. They know his reputation and they’re scared we’ll come and finish the job. W
ith any luck you’ll be able to show him King Henry here. I got the cleaning kit and three boxes of ammo for you out in the truck.” And so King Henry became my personal handgun for the rest of the war. I had to carry other weapons because ammo for the Webley was hard to come by, and by good luck I wasn’t packing it when I was arrested that one time and so my comrades saved it for me and gave it back to me later. I have kept His Grace in mint firing condition, and I still sleep with that piece by my bedside to this very day, so that when I bite the big one my son or grandson or whoever finds me can put it into my palm and wrap my fingers around it, and I can die the death of a true Northwest Volunteer, with a gun in my hand. After I croak I have left it to the Museum of the Revolution in my will. Sometimes when I was carrying that gun I’d wear a tweed golf cap from Ireland on my head, and I felt like I was Michael Collins or Dan Breen hunting down the Black and Tans. I guess maybe I have more Irish in me than just my name.
When I got back to Dundee we’d changed locations again. This time we were way out in the hills in an old Cascade logging camp that had a number of trailers and cabins and hangars, but which had been shut down because of the spotted owls a number of years before with the loss of several hundred jobs. Since the Bush family and their big business cronies were making money hand over fist importing paper and pulp from Siberia and China, the camp never opened up again, not even with Mexican labor. It was one of the best and most comfortable places we ever had, and we had to really watch ourselves and make sure we didn’t get too settled in. There was a fire tower and we built a couple of observation posts in the trees that could see all up and down the fire road and all along the ridge, and since we had some night vision goggles we’d liberated, no one could sneak up on us. We could hide all our vehicles in the hangars and as long as we didn’t build any fires during the daytime and kept a strict blackout at night to foil ZOG spotter copters, we were about as safe as Volunteers could ever be.
The Wingfields were there, and John, and some of the other Volunteers I’d get to know really well down through the years, like Mack the Knife and Tommy Connors, and Sam Maxwell had just escaped and gotten back in contact, so he was able to fill us all in with personal, first hand accounts of the Sixteen Days in Coeur d’Alene. There was also Noble Gill, who was another Southern settler who had followed the call to the Promised Land in the Northwest. Noble was from the hootin’ hollers of the Appalachians somewhere. He was a grizzled old man with a white beard who looked like either a Biblical prophet or an insane wino on first impression, but he was as hard as nails and one of the bravest and most loyal men I think we ever had in the NVA. He went to war quite literally with a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other. He carried by preference an old M1 Garand he’d inherited from his father and his father before him. It was World War Two issue but Noble could still knock a squirrel’s eye out at ninety feet with it. “The Scripture says to smite the enemies of the Lord with a rod of iron,” he’d say. “Nowadays the rod of iron is made by Colt, Ruger, and Smith and Wesson.” Noble was a Hardshell Baptist minister and he served as our unit’s chaplain on the occasions when anyone felt they needed one.
Well, Rooney and I finally decided we needed one.
Carter got a bit nervous about having so many people in one place, and we still had support work to do backing up our out-of-towners, and so after a week it was decided it was time for our crew to make like an amoeba and split. To my surprise he and Ma decided to head back to Dundee with Tommy Connors, Noble Gill and his wife Lurleen. The second team would consist of China, Sam Maxwell as team leader, Mack the Knife and his girl Tracy, and the big guy Teddy the Bear. The Bear didn’t have his M-60 machinegun yet, but he was shaping up very formidably and he appeared to have a strictly honorable and bashful crush developing on China. The third team would consist of myself, Rooney, and Red Morehouse. I arched my eyebrows in an unspoken question. Carter answered it. “We’re deliberately breaking ourselves up, Shane,” he told me quietly. “This way if one team is caught and arrested, or more likely annihilated the way the Feebs and state cops feel about us now, we won’t lose an entire family in one fell swoop. The brutal logic of war. I know I can trust you to look out for Rooney and for that matter I can trust Rooney to look out for you, and I feel better with both of you looking out for Red. He’s our Political Officer and he’s the most important man we’ve got. Most of what you two will be doing will involve assisting and transporting and bodyguarding Red while he touches all the bases that need to be touched for the Party and makes new ones. Don’t worry, he and I will need frequent consultation, and we’ll still be seeing a lot of each other.”
Around sunset that afternoon Rooney came out to where I was sitting on guard duty on a small hill overlooking the winding, empty fire road. She dressed in the heighth of partisan fashion, denim jacket and her wartime-approved blue jeans, a plaid shirt and tennis shoes, her hair in a single braid down her back, with the très chic family Beretta in a shoulder holster rig and a slung Uzi and canvas magazine pouch. The girl knew how to accessorize. “Looks like we’re gone be teammates from now on,” said Rooney.
“We’ve been teammates for a long time, Roon,” I laughed.
“Yeah, but.” She blushed.
“But what?” I asked.
“This is the first time we’re gone be teammates without Mom and Dad and Chine around,” she said.
“Oh, I get it.” And I did.
“My ma says you’re a real gent and I’m damned lucky to have you,” she said. “I know it. All this time we been on the bounce you’ve never pushed me, even though I know you want to.”
“Look, Roon, you know how I feel about you,” I told her. “I told you on the day that Coeur d’Alene went up. I think you feel the same way about me. I hope so, anyway, because that’s what’s been carrying me through these past months. But this war has messed up all our lives and things aren’t normal. I’d give my right arm to be able to give you a church wedding with the white dress and the flowers and the organ and all, but it’s just not possible, and I know how you feel about marriage in your church. I will always respect you and respect your faith. You know that. You don’t have to worry about being together with me without your mom and dad. I’ll stay a gentleman as long as it takes.”
“I know, Shane, and that’s one of the reasons it ain’t right to make you wait any more,” she said. “Look, Mom and Dad are very practical people. They know I’m a grown woman now, and they like you and approve of you. They always have, ever since that day in the park when you didn’t turn your back and walk away like the other white boys when I had black nigger trouble and white nigger trouble. They know I’m gone do what I’m gone do, but.” She looked at me. “Do you mean it when you say you want to marry me?”
“You know I do,” I told her.
“Marriage is a sacrament between two people in the eyes of God. That’s all it takes, those two people and God. Dad asked me a favor just now, and that was that if you’d agree, before him and his team leave for Dundee tonight, if we could go and see Noble Gill. He’s a preacher and he can say the words. That’s all they’re asking of us. It’s just a few spoken words, but they’re important words, because they have to be spoken where God hears them and other people hear them.”
“You got it,” I told her. Tommy relieved me half an hour later, and we went and found old man Gill loading one of the trucks getting ready to leave. We stood before him holding hands. “You really a preacher, Noble?” I asked him.
“I am,” growled the old man. “Got the call when I was about your age, back in Tennessee. Been preaching the gospel for forty years now, and I have never taken one thin dime for it. That’s one mark of The Beast, you know. Priestcraft. There ain’t nothing in the Bible about a cash register, and Jesus himself took up a whip to drive the Jew money-changers out of the temple. God is love, my ass! God is righteousness, and that ain’t the same thing.”
“Well, we need a preacher,” Rooney told him, “Me and Shane are going up in that tr
ailer tonight, and I reckon it’s your Christian duty to marry us beforehand so we don’t sin.”
The old man looked at me like an owl sizing up a mouse for dinner. “Young man, Ambrose Bierce warn’t no prophet, warn’t even no Christian, but he had a way with words. He once defined a husband as a man who, having dined, is henceforth charged with perpetual care of the plate. Is this a plate you want perpetual care of?”
“As perpetual as it gets,” I said.
“And you, young lady. I do things the old way and I ain’t takin’ the word obey out of the rixual. None of that feminist horse shit even if you gals are carrying guns for the time being. Things ain’t always gone be like this, and when time comes for us all to go back to the natural way for our people to live, you’re damned well gone go back. You got a mulish streak in you. I seen it. I marry you two, he wears the pants in the household. You got that?”
“I got it,” said Rooney. I figured I’d best keep my mouth shut.
“Okay, let’s go git yer folks and do the deed,” he said.
“Now?” I asked. “Uh, sir, I think to be fair I should mention that at least technically speaking, I’m a Roman Catholic. About the only thing my father’s family kept from Ireland.”
“So were Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Knox at one time,” chuckled Gill. “You’re in good company. This ain’t Ireland, son, and we all got other things to worry about. That’s what I keep telling our comrades who want us all to dance around wearing horned helmets and drinking mead.”
A DISTANT THUNDER Page 31
