He said the white pit bull died for love. Love of its master. That’s why they fight to the death, he said. For love.
He was talking about race when there was a knock from behind him. I didn’t know there was a door there. He didn’t act like he heard it. The knocking came again.
Finally, he got up and opened the door that was behind a curtain. A young woman came in. Pregnant, real heavy in front.
“John, this is my daughter, Melissa.”
She kind of giggled at me. He talked to her, quiet-voice. She was touching his arm, patting at it. There was a button on his desk. He reached over and pushed it. The door opened behind me and shoulder holster came in. He looked at the leader, said “Come on” to me, put his hand on my arm to take me out of there.
As I was going, the girl looked at me. I saw her eyes and I saw what Shella must’ve seen.
The more I practiced with the guns, the more they watched me do it. Every time I held a gun in my hand, I would feel it. What it could do.
I could do it too—I just had to be close.
I kept the gun with me all the time. So they’d expect it. Once, I was looking for a place to put it while I took a shower. They give us plenty of room for things here—not like in prison. Some of the guys had foot lockers, some of them had trunks. Most of the guys, they didn’t stay in the compound anyway, they just came and went. I was the longest man in the dorm.
I couldn’t think of a place to put the gun. I didn’t want to leave it on my bunk. There was a row of metal lockers against the far wall. I looked there, but they all had locks on them. Then I saw it—Murray’s trunk. I remembered it because it was this dark-red color, with black bands around it. It was all covered with dust, just sitting there in the corner.
Nobody was around. I didn’t break the lock, I unscrewed the plate. Shella told me how to do that, once when we were trying to get into someplace.
Inside the trunk Murray had his clothes. And his little weight things for his wrists and his ankles. There was a bunch of letters. He had them tied with a ribbon. They looked old.
He had a jacket in there. It was black, with big white sleeves. It felt like silk. On the front, over the heart, it said Ace in little white letters, like writing. On the back it said the name of some gym.
I put my gun in his trunk while I took my shower. I fixed the lock plate so I could just pull it off with my fingers when I came out.
“Who brought him in?” the leader asked the guy in the white shirt. Like I wasn’t there. It didn’t make me mad—people always do that.
The white shirt always has the long flat aluminum box with him. When he opens it up, there’s pads and stuff inside. He looked there for a minute. “Mack,” he told the leader.
The leader looked at me. “Mack say anything to you about the Lightning Squadron?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“He said he was a scout.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
The leader gave white shirt one of those looks I never understand—it could mean anything.
Every day was the same after that. Every day I would get up and walk around. Sometimes I would look at the posters. THE JEWS ARE THROUGH IN ’92, was one I saw a lot. Then I would take my gun and go over and practice. After that, I’d walk back to the dorm. More people would be out by then. There would be kids too, dressed up like the older people in soldier suits with little guns. Some of them wore armbands … red with white circles and the black crooked cross inside … and they said nigger and kike and spic and that kind of thing like they were learning their ABCs or something.
They were always beating the kids. With sticks and belts. And slapping them. I saw a man whipping a little boy. The boy was screaming. The man’s wife said it was good discipline and everyone standing around nodded. I walked away. When I looked back, the others were watching the little boy get whipped.
I would look at TV until one of them came for me. They would walk over with me. Then they would take my gun and search me so I could go inside with the leader. Sometimes there were other people there, sometimes we were alone. Sometimes his daughter came in. He never talked on the phone they had in his office. When it would ring, somebody else would take it.
I never knew if I would be alone with him. I never knew how long it would last.
Every day, the same talk from him. Master race, masters and slaves, serving the master. The Lightning Squad, it would strike like lightning at the enemies of the race. Some of the members, they wouldn’t get out. But they would go to Valhalla for sure. Guaranteed.
Nobody ever talked so much to me. Nobody ever explained things like he did, except maybe Shella.
On one wall of his office, he had pictures. Pictures of men. Each one was in a metal frame. He said those men gave their lives for the Nation. They were heroes. Heroes of the race. The children who went to their schools would memorize their names.
He said the niggers weren’t human, so you couldn’t really blame them for the animal way they acted. The Jews, you could blame them. They knew what they were doing. They were a different race, even though they looked like us. You could tell the difference, but only if you knew them real good.
The leader told me that we were going to win, because we were superior. And because the niggers were starting to really hate the Jews and the Jews were going to have to do something about it.
He gave me books to read. One was a little red book, some kind of story. One of them said PROTOCOLS on it. I tried to read it. I’m not stupid. But I couldn’t understand it. When he asked me, I told him the truth.
He said that was okay—the important thing was, would I do the right thing when the time came?
I always said I would.
Once in a while, they would ask me if I wanted a woman. I always said I did.
When I was fucking one of the women, I wondered if they had ever asked Murray if he wanted one.
Every day, it got dark quicker at the end. It started to get colder. I didn’t have a jacket with me, just what was in my duffel bag. When they searched me one day, before I went inside to be alone with the leader, they said why wasn’t I wearing a jacket. I told them it wasn’t that cold yet.
They must have a way the men outside could talk to the leader, because he asked me if I had a jacket. He said, if I didn’t, I could grab a ride into town with Rex and pick one up. I didn’t know who Rex was, but I figured out he meant the guy with the shoulder holster.
I never found out the name of the guy with the white shirt and the clipboard.
I told the leader I already had a jacket. He said I should start wearing it, otherwise I could catch a cold.
The next morning, I remembered what the leader said before they came over to get me. I went into Murray’s locker and got his black-and-white jacket. It was way too big for me when I put it on.
The men who searched me hadn’t seen the jacket before. They made me take it off. They went through it real careful, but there was nothing in it.
They kept my gun. I carried the jacket inside with me to be with the leader.
It was never going to get any better. I knew that. It wasn’t that I couldn’t wait—I can always wait. But it would never change, I could see that.
He was talking and talking. I moved around a little bit, listening to him, always watching his face. He kicked back in his chair, put his feet on the desk. I never saw him do that before. I guessed there was a button he could push, bring the other men inside. Theres always a button like that in back rooms. He put his hands behind his head, the way Murray used to do. But there was no muscles bulging.
The way his hands and his feet were, he couldn’t push a button real fast.
I got up, started to walk around a bit. I did that before. It didn’t make him nervous anymore.
When his head tilted back, I saw the black dots pop out on his Adam’s apple. The place where you can tell the real men.
I walked just past his feet, so close I could s
mell him. My back was to him for a second. I planted my foot and spun around. His mouth came open. I hit him so hard in the throat he couldn’t make a sound even if he was alive. I pushed his face against the desk and held him there while I broke his neck from behind.
I didn’t have a plan to get out. I started choking him. He let go while I was still squeezing—I could smell it.
His daughter walked in. Just walked in, didn’t make a sound. She had a denim shift on, barefoot, a red scarf around her neck. Her belly was really big. She looked at me. I saw the blue marks high on her arms, where someone had grabbed her hard. I moved to her before she could get out the way she came in, but she just stood there.
She didn’t say anything. Then she moved her hand, just a little bit. I stepped next to her, put my hand on the back of her neck. I gave it a little squeeze. Not to hurt her, just to tell her.
When I took my hand away, she didn’t move.
I picked up Murray’s jacket and put it on, watching her. Something told me, told me so I knew. If she screamed, it wouldn’t matter. Even if she screamed, the guards wouldn’t come in.
She turned around, away from me. Started moving out the way she came in. I was right behind her. It was a whole apartment in one big room. A kitchen against one wall. The ceiling was very high. There was a platform on the wall, with chains holding it, like a bed in an old jail. A ladder so you could climb up there, maybe to sleep. I could tell it was just for her—the leader didn’t live there.
I pushed her to a chair. She sat down without me having to do anything to her.
I looked out the window. It wasn’t far to the woods. I stayed close to her. The red scarf around her neck, I took it off her, tied it around my head.
I couldn’t take her out the window—she’d never make it up and through. I looked for something to tie her up with. She stood up quick, opened a door. There was a platform there, a little platform with steps to the ground. I saw a man with a baseball cap turn around when he heard the door open. I never saw him before. He had a machine gun on a sling over his shoulder.
“Come on,” the girl said, and started down the stairs.
I came right behind her. I had to get close to the man with the gun. He started coming toward us, but his hands were away from the gun. I had my hand just behind her, on her waist. Soon as he came near enough …
The woods were close. Real close.
The man stopped. Too far away. “What’s going on?” he said.
“He’s just taking me into town. In the truck. To buy some things,” she said.
“The leader didn’t say anything to me about that.”
“So what? You think I need his permission just to go into town?”
“Yeah, you do,” a man’s voice said. A voice from behind us.
I knew it then—I’d never see Shella.
“Get your hands up, boy! Fast!”
I raised my hands.
“Step away from her … move!”
I did that too. The man who’d been behind us stood to one side. He had a pistol, a big chrome one. Aimed right at me. The guy in the baseball cap, he had both hands on his gun too.
“He told me to watch out for you,” the guy with the pistol said. I could tell, the way he said it, he meant the girl.
“Let’s take them both back,” the man with the machine gun said. “Let the leader decide. You … let’s go,” pointing at me with his chin.
It didn’t matter, but the woods were so close I had to try. I stumbled a little so I could get next to him, but the guy stepped back and then I heard something like a real quiet motorcycle trying to start and both of them went down, blood and bone flying from their heads.
I ran for the woods.
I got over the fence in a flash. When I dropped down on the other side, there was nobody there. I ran away from the fence, hard as I could.
The Indian was there. Just standing there. I couldn’t see where he came from. He had a rifle in his hand, a long rifle with a tube over the barrel. He moved his hand, like in a wave, and I followed him.
There was a Jeep at the end of the trail we went down. A black Jeep. I got in the back with the Indian—there was two men in the front seat already. We took off.
The Indian picked up a phone, touched one button.
“We’re off,” he said. “It’s still quiet here. Check with the post, get back to me.”
The driver was going through the woods like it was a street.
The phone made a noise. The Indian picked it up. “Go,” he said. Then he listened.
“They found the bodies,” he said to the men in the front seat. “They can’t get a ring up in time. Sam’s team will give em something else to think about in a minute, but we gotta go through the roadblock on our own.”
The man in the passenger seat reached up over the windshield. He pulled something down, like a window shade. Only you could see it was metal. There was a thin slit in it. The driver leaned forward, looking through it. There was shades like that for the windows too, even the back window. I pulled mine down.
The Indian opened this case he had on the floor. I saw grenades, one of those little machine guns, some other stuff. It made metal clicking sounds when the Indian snapped it all together.
“Get on the floor,” he told me. I did that and then there was this explosion. Like a bomb. From somewhere behind us.
“One more corner,” the man in the passenger seat said.
The Indian slid up his metal window shade and poked a gun out the open window.
I felt the Jeep slide around a long corner and then it was nothing but blasting. Bullets smacked into the Jeep but all I could hear was the guns. The Jeep kept moving. I felt it hit something, then we were through.
The Jeep came to a stop.
“Come on!” the Indian told me.
We got out. The Jeep was smoking, one tire was off. There were two cars at the roadblock and a lot of dead people.
We got into the woods again. The man who’d been in the passenger seat went first. Then the driver, then me, then the Indian.
We stopped after a bit. The driver was bleeding down one side of his face. He didn’t seem like he knew it. The Indian took a little box out of his pocket. He pushed a button on it and there was a booming sound. We started off again. Then there was a loud sound like a firebomb.
“Gas tank,” the Indian said to me. He took the phone out of the holster, pushed a button. “Six,” is all he said. Then he listened.
The others looked at him.
“They’re there,” the Indian said. Then he took the lead and we followed him.
Near the edge of the woods there was a big gray Ford. Me and the Indian got in the back seat. I saw the other two guys get in another car, a brown Chevy. There was another Jeep there too, a white one.
When we came onto the paved road, the white Jeep was in front and we followed.
The Indian lit a cigarette, offered me one.
“Nice jacket,” he said.
I touched Murray’s jacket with my fingers.
“They’ll remember it,” the Indian said. “We should of left it there.”
I didn’t say anything.
He waited, smoking his cigarette.
I leaned forward in the seat, took off Murray’s jacket, and handed it to him.
“We’ll hold it for you,” he said.
They didn’t say much, but you could feel how tight they were. When the Indian moved in the seat next to me, I could see the little sparks all around him. I thought we’d go to their camp, but we drove all the way back to Chicago, straight on through. The car stopped in front of the apartment house where I stayed before.
When we got upstairs, it looked the same.
“I’ll be back tonight,” the Indian told me. “I’ll tell you everything then.”
I took a shower, changed my clothes. There was food in the refrigerator. I listened to the radio, but there was nothing about what happened in Indiana. Maybe they bury their own dead.
&nbs
p; I knew the Indian would come back. Otherwise, they would have just left me after I did the job. Left me right in that compound.
I wondered why they didn’t. Maybe Indians don’t do that.
After a while, I found a nature show on TV.
I heard the Indian let himself in but I didn’t move. The only light was the TV screen, but he came through the apartment like he could see.
He sat down across from me. “You did it perfect,” he said. “Glided in right under their radar.”
“Where is she?” I asked him.
He took some paper out of his pocket. Handed it to me. It was pages from a magazine, black and white. One page was folded back at the corner. A woman was standing there. In the light from the TV, I could see she had high black boots, something in her hand. There was another woman next to her, kneeling on a couch or something.
I turned on the light. The woman standing was blonde. Her hair was long. Her arms and shoulders were heavy. Big. Almost like Murray’s. The woman kneeling next to her had a dog collar around her neck. She was stripped naked. The big woman was holding a leash in one hand. A little whip with a lot of strings on it in the other.
It wasn’t a real good picture, but I could see enough.
“That’s her?” the Indian asked.
I told him it was.
Later he showed me a lot of other stuff. Mostly pictures. Shella with a girl over her knee, like she was spanking her. Shella whipping a man, his hands tied way above his head. Shella with her hands on her hips, like she was giving orders. He showed me some ads too. Mistress Katrina. Discipline lessons, private. In one picture, Shella had a girl all tied up, clothespins clamped on the tips of her breasts, a gag in her mouth. It was all Shella, even if she looked different every picture.
“We don’t have any close-ups,” the Indian said. “The crazy man said all this stuff was old, at least a couple a years, okay? But if that’s her, we know where she is now.”
“Where?”
Shella Page 16
