But it was scary how easily I'd been swayed into thinking he might have been. Prejudice runs deep. Grits and Townies, blacks and whites … you grow up hearing one thing, it's hard to believe that something else might actually be true.
Hard to believe, maybe. But not impossible. I mean, look at Rob. He was nothing like your stereotypical Grit, gleefully chowing down on fried chicken while discussing the supremacy of the white race. Rob didn't even like fried chicken. Who knows how long I would have stood there, admiring the genius of my boyfriend, if a voice at my elbow hadn't gone, "Well, just don't there stand there, girlie. Give that chicken to one of the men and then git on back to the kitchen fer more."
I turned and saw a doughy-faced woman with a kerchief holding back her long blonde hair glaring at me.
"Go on," the woman said, giving me a push toward one of the men's tables. "Git."
I got. I put the chicken down in front of the first man I saw—a gentleman who did not appear to have as many teeth as he did tattoos—then followed Kerchief-Head out a side door. . . .
Into the cold night air.
"Come on," the woman barked at me, when I froze in my tracks, shocked by the sudden cold. "We gotta git the mashed potatoes."
I followed her, thinking, Well, at least this way, I'll have a chance to look for Seth. I knew he was here on the compound somewhere. I knew that he was no longer tied up or gagged, but locked into a small, wood-paneled room. That didn't mean he wasn't still scared, though. I could feel his fear around me like a second coat.
Kerchief-Head threw open the door to the ranch house. This, apparently, was where all the cooking was done. I could tell by the intoxicating odors that hit me as I came through the door. Chicken, potatoes, bread … it was a dizzying set of aromas for a girl as hungry as I was.
But when we got into the kitchen—which was crowded with other doughy-faced, long-haired women—and I tried to bogart a roll, Kerchief-Head slapped my hands.
"We don't eat," she said, harshly, "until the men're done!"
Whoa, I wanted to say. Nice operation you got going here. If you're a guy. What is it with women like Kerchief-Head? I mean, why are they so willing to put up with that kind of treatment? I would way rather have no guy than some guy who tried to make me wait to eat until after he was done.
But I didn't want to blow things with the True Americans, so I dropped the roll like a good white supremacist housewife and asked, "You got a bathroom around here?"
Kerchief-Head pointed down a hallway, but she didn't look too happy about it. I guess she thought I was trying to shirk kitchen duty or something.
I'll tell you something, those True Americans were pretty scary. Even their bathrooms were filled with racist propaganda. I couldn't believe it. Instead of issues of National Geographic or Time magazine, like in a normal house, there was a copy of Mein Kampf to peruse while you were otherwise indisposed. Like these guys had totally missed the part where Hitler turned out to be a maniac or something.
When I was through in the bathroom, I looked up and down the hall to make sure Kerchief-Head or any of her cronies weren't lurking around. Then I started testing doorknobs. I figured when I got to a locked one, that's the one I'd find Seth behind.
It didn't take me long. It wasn't like the house was so big, or anything. The room they were keeping Seth in was way at the end of the hall, past the homeschooling room—instead of the old red, white, and blue, there was another one of those "Don't Tread On Me" flags hanging in there. The door was locked, but it was one of those cheap button locks you only have to turn from the right side to undo. I turned it, opened the door, and looked inside.
Seth Blumenthal, tears streaming down his face, sat up in bed, and blinked at me in the semi-darkness.
"Wh-who are you?" Seth asked, hesitantly. "Wh-what do you want?"
How else was I supposed to reply? The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I mean, I'd only seen the movie like seventeen times.
"I'm Luke Skywalker," I said. "I'm here to rescue you."
C H A P T E R
13
Seth didn't fall for the Luke Skywalker line. This was one kid you obviously couldn't pull anything over on.
"No," he said. "Who are you, really? You don't look like one of them."
I closed the door behind me, in case Kerchief-Head came looking for me. There was no light in the room, except the moonlight that came filtering in between the wooden boards that covered the windows—always a Martha Stewart "do," boarding up your windows, by the way.
"My name's Jess," I said, to Seth. "And we're going to get you out of here." But not through those windows, I now realized. "Are you hurt anywhere? Can you run?"
"I'm okay," Seth said. "Just my hand."
He held out his right hand. It wasn't hard to see, even in the moonlight, what was wrong with it. Somebody had burned a shape into it, between Seth's thumb and forefinger. The burn was red and blistered. And it was in the shape of a coiled snake.
Just like the shape that had been carved into Nate Thompkins's naked chest.
I knew now how they'd gotten Seth to tell them where to find the Torah.
And I wanted to kill them for it.
First things first, however.
"Six weeks hydro-therapy," I said to him, "that puppy'll be gone. Won't even leave a scar." I knew from my own third-degree burn, which had been roughly the same size, but which I'd received from a motorcycle exhaust pipe when I'd been around his own age. "Okay?"
Seth nodded. He wasn't crying anymore. "That policeman," he said. "The one they shot, back at the trailer. Is he okay?"
"He sure is," I lied. "Now listen, I've got to get back to the kitchen before they notice I'm missing. But I promise I'll be back for you just as soon as the shooting starts."
"Shooting?" Seth looked concerned. "Who's going to start shooting?"
"Friends of mine," I said. "They got the place surrounded." I hoped. "So you just hang in there, and I'll be back for you lickety-split. Got it?"
"I got it," Seth said. Then, as I started for the door, he went, "Hey, Jess?"
I turned. "Yeah?"
"What day is it?"
I told him. He nodded thoughtfully. "Today's my birthday," he said, seemingly to no one in particular. "I'm thirteen."
"Happy birthday," I said. Well, what else was I supposed to say?
I was just sauntering away from the newly relocked door when Kerchief-Head appeared.
"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded. One thing I had to say for the wives of the True Americans, they weren't very polite.
"Oh," I said, giving my ditziest giggle. "I got lost."
Kerchief-Head just glared at me. Then she thrust a huge bowl of something white and glutinous in my arms. Looking down, I realized it was mashed potatoes. Only the True Americans, unlike my dad, hadn't put any garlic in them, so the aroma they gave off was somewhat nondescript.
"Take this to the men," Kerchief-Head said.
"Can do," I told her, and headed out the door.
The big question, of course, was would it work. I mean, would Chick and his friends show up in time for us to get Seth out? And what about Dr. Krantz? Let's not forget about him. The Feds had a major tendency to mess things like surprise attacks up, big time. Would Chick be able to get around whatever idiot scheme Dr. Krantz was probably, at this very moment, cooking up?
I hoped so. Not for my own sake. I didn't much care what happened to me. It was Seth I was worried about. We had to get Seth out.
Oh, yeah. And kill every True American we possibly could.
I don't normally go around wanting to kill people, but when I'd seen that burn on Seth's hand, I'd felt something I'd never felt before. I am no stranger to rage, either. I get mad fast, and I get mad often. But I could never remember feeling the way I had when I'd seen that burn.
I'd felt like killing someone. Really killing them. Not breaking someone's nose, or kicking someone in the groin. I wanted him to pay for branding
that kid, and I wanted him to pay with his life.
And I had a pretty good idea who that someone was.
When I got back into the barn, everyone had calmed down from Rob's little speech, and was busy chowing down again. Being the mashed potato girl, I was pretty popular. Guys kept on raising up their plates as I passed, holding them out for me to glop mashed potatoes onto. I obliged, since what else was I supposed to do? I got through it by pretending I was a prison guard, and all these guys were demented serial killers that I was mandated by the state to keep fed.
In the back of my mind, however, this mantra was playing over and over. It went, Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick.
When I reached Rob, I saw that he and Henderson were already well on their way to becoming best friends. Well, and why not? Rob would be a boon to any hate group. He was good-looking, great with his hands, and—though I hadn't been aware of this talent until very recently—he was obviously a passionate and lucid orator. I had a feeling that, given enough time, Rob would have been appointed Jim Henderson's right-hand man.
Too bad for the True Americans that it was all an act.
A good one, though. Claire Lippman would have been astounded by Rob's theatrical flair. As I leaned over his chair to lump potatoes onto his plate, he didn't even seem to notice me, he was so wound up in what he was saying … something about how the criminals in Washington were selling us out with something called GATT.
Wow. Rob had obviously been watching a lot more CNN than I had.
After piling some potatoes onto Jim Henderson's plate—only for a second did I fantasize about pretending to accidentally drop them into his lap—I moved on to the rest of the table, trying not to notice as I did so a disturbing thing. There were lots of disturbing things to notice in that barn, but the one that I kept coming back to was the men's hands. Each and every one of them had the same tattoo on the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of their right hand. And that was the coiled snake of the "Don't Tread On Me" flag. The same snake that had been on Nate's chest. The same snake that had been burned into Seth's hand. This was some fraternity, let me tell you.
It wasn't until my bowl was almost empty that I felt the cold, wet nudge on one hand. I looked down and saw Chigger, his big brown eyes rolling up at me appealingly. Gone was the menacing growl and raised back hairs. I had food, and Chigger wanted food. Therefore, if I gave Chigger food, I would be Chigger's friend.
I let Chigger lick what remained in the bowl.
I fully intended to go back to the ranch house kitchen and refill that bowl without rinsing it out first. In fact, I was headed toward the barn door to do just that when I noticed something that I didn't like … that I didn't like at all. And that was Kerchief-Head, over at Jim Henderson's table, leaning down to whisper something in his ear. As she whispered I saw Jim glance around the room, until at last his gaze found me. Those piercing blue eyes stayed on me, too, until Kerchief-Head finished whatever it was she'd had to say and straightened up.
Look, it could have been a lot of things. It could have been the thing with the roll. Heck, she could have seen me letting Chigger lick the bowl.
But I'm not stupid. I knew what it was. I knew what it was the minute Jim Henderson's gaze landed on me.
Kerchief-Head had told him about catching me in the hallway near where they were keeping Seth. That was all.
We were dead.
It took a little while for it to happen, though. Henderson whispered something back to Kerchief-Head, and she scuttled out of there like a water bug. For a little while, I thought maybe we were all right. You know, that maybe I'd made a mistake. Rob was going on about abominations of nature and how America would never be restored to the great nation it had once been until all Christians banded together, and Henderson seemed to be listening to him pretty intently.
But then I saw something that made my heart stop.
And that was Red Plaid Jacket with the end of his rifle pointed at the back of Seth Blumenthal's neck as he forced the boy to walk across the barn floor, right up to where Jim Henderson and Rob sat.
Everyone stopped talking when they saw this, and once again, the silence in the barn was overwhelming. The only sound I could hear was the sound of Seth's sobs. He had started crying again. I saw him look frantically around the barn, and I knew he was looking for me. Fortunately, I was far enough in the shadows that he hadn't been able to see me, or without a doubt, I'd have been dead.
If I'd known, of course, what was going to happen a minute later anyway, I probably wouldn't have cared so much. As it was, I was actually relieved Seth hadn't spotted me. I sunk my fingers into Chigger's soft fur and willed my heart to start beating again. Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick!
"Americans," Jim Henderson said to the assembled masses. I could see at once that he was every bit the orator Rob was. Everyone looked at him with that glazed expression of adoration I recognized from that movie about the Jim Jones massacre. Henderson was these people's messiah on earth.
"We've made some fine new friends tonight," Henderson went on, slapping a hand to Rob's shoulder. The only reason he'd been able to reach it was that Rob was sitting and he was standing. "And I for one am grateful. Grateful that Hank and Ginger found their way to our little flock."
Ginger? Who the hell was Ginger? Then, as a good many heads turned in my direction, I realized Rob had told them my name was Ginger.
He is such a card.
"But however impressed we may be by Hank and Ginger's professed dedication to our cause," Henderson went on, "there's really only one way to test the loyalty of a true American, isn't there?"
There was a general murmur of assent. My heart thudded more loudly than ever. I did not like the sound of this. I did not like the sound of this at all.
"Hank," Henderson said, turning to Rob. "You see before you a boy. Seemingly innocent enough looking, I know. But innocence, as we all know, can be deceiving. The devil sometimes tries to fool us into believing in the innocence of an individual, when in fact that individual is laden with sin. In this case, this boy is soaked in sin. Because he is, in fact, a Jew."
I dug my fingers so hard into Chigger's coat, a smaller dog would have cried out. Chigger, however, only wagged his tail, still hoping for another crack at the bowl I held. Apparently, nobody had ever bothered to feed Chigger before. How else could you explain how easily I'd won over his allegiance?
"Hank," Henderson said. "Because you've already, in the short time I've known you, so thoroughly impressed me with your sincerity and commitment to the cause, I am going to allow you a great privilege I've heretofore denied both myself and my other men. Hank, I am going to let you kill a Jew."
And with that, Jim Henderson presented Rob with a knife he pulled out of his own boot.
A lot of things when through my mind then. I thought about how much I loved my mom, even though she can be such a pain in the ass sometimes, with her weird ideas about how I should dress and who I should date. I thought about how mad I was going to be if I didn't get to stick around to find out if Douglas ever did anything about his crush on Tasha Thompkins. I thought about the state orchestra championship, and how for the first time in years, I wouldn't be bringing home a blue ribbon cut in the shape of the state of Indiana.
It's strange the things you think about right before you die. I don't even know how I knew I was going to die. I just knew it, the way I knew that eventually, all that snow outside was going to melt, and it would be spring again someday. Rob and I were going to die, and the only thing we had to make sure of was that they didn't try to kill Seth along with us.
"Well," Henderson was saying to my boyfriend. "Go on. Take my knife. Really. It's okay. He's just a Jew."
Seth Blumenthal, I have to say, was being pretty brave. He was crying, but he was doing it quietly, with his head held high. I guess after what he'd been through, death didn't seem like such a bad thing. I don't know how else to explain it. I kind of felt the
same way. I wasn't scared, really. Oh, I didn't want it to hurt. But I wasn't scared to die.
All I wanted was to take as many True Americans down with me as I could.
Rob reached out and took the knife from Jim Henderson.
"Thataboy," Henderson said, smiling in a sickly way beneath his mustache. "Now go ahead. Show us you are true believer. Stick it to the pig."
So Rob did the only thing he could. The same thing I'd have done, in his situation.
He threw an arm around Jim Henderson's neck, brought the knife blade to his jugular vein, and said, "Anybody moves, and Jimbo here gets it."
C H A P T E R
14
Have you ever been to a football game where the higher ranked team was so certain of winning, there wasn't even a doubt in the minds of their fans that they wouldn't? And then, through some total miscalculation on the part of the superior team, the underdog got the upper hand?
The faces of the True Americans looked like the faces of the fans of the winning team, seconds after their team mangled some play so horribly, their opponent, against all odds, scored a touchdown.
They were stunned. Just stunned.
"Thanks," I said to Red Plaid Jacket, as I relieved him of his rifle. "I'll take that."
I had never held a rifle before in my life, but I had a pretty good idea how one worked. You just pointed at the thing you wanted to hit, and pulled the trigger. No big mystery in that.
Of course, if you thought about it, there was no reason in the world for us to be so cocky. Okay, so yeah, Rob had a knife to a guy's throat, and I had a rifle. Big deal. It was still about fifty to two. Well, three, if you counted Seth. Four, if you included Chigger, who was still following me around, hoping for more mashed potatoes, even though I'd put down the bowl.
But hey, we had the upper hand for the moment, and we were going to take advantage of it while we could.
"Okay," Rob said, as the blood slowly drained from Jim Henderson's face. Not because Rob had poked a hole in him or anything. Just because the leader of the True Americans was so very, very scared.
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