Anthill

by Edward Osborne Wilson

  "I guess you're saying we don't have a lot of time to do that either," Raff said. He knew LeBow was getting to the standard End-of-Time message but he still couldn't understand why he'd been singled out.

  "You know we don't have a lot of time, Raphael. If you'd read your Bible, instead of that trash they fed you up at Harvard, you'd know we don't. All the signs that foretell the Second Coming of Jesus are now here. The Jews have come back home, chaos is spreading around the world, the environment is going down the toilet--get that, Raphael, the environment is just another sign. All that means one thing. Jesus is coming, boy. Not in a hundred years either. Real soon. Anytime now. Maybe tomorrow. And when Our Lord comes, those saved in His name will ascend bodily to heaven, and the rest are going to be left behind, and they are going to suffer terribly because of that. It will be so bad for them it'll be hell on earth. And when they die they will all go on down to the real hell, and they'll stay down there for eternity."

  "With all due respect, Reverend, I can't see it that way. If the Second Coming is so obvious, why don't other people, and especially the large majority of Christians you say aren't truly saved, see it that way?"

  "I am glad you asked me that question, Raphael. That's why I came personally to warn you, 'cause Satan is already here. The Antichrist, he's here. He's preparing in his own way for the battle to come with Jesus and God's holy angels too. He's assembling his forces. You don't know who he is, because he's one of those we least suspect, and he already has a huge army among us. And maybe you do know who he is. Most people haven't met him, but they're doing his cause. Satan, he doesn't think he's going to lose the Final Battle. He thinks he's going to win that battle, and take over God's throne. A lot of people are going to perish in the war between God and Satan."

  "Pastor, I know a good many people believe what you're saying. And I haven't met the Antichrist, thank you, whatever that means. But tell me this: if God is all-powerful and if Jesus is God incarnate, and part of the Trinity, and Jesus is such a great force of love and mercy in our lives, why would God and Jesus allow war and misery?"

  "I suggest, Harvard man, that you go right home and read the book of the Revelation to Saint John the Divine. It's the last book of the Bible, put there for all to read, and it contains the prophesy in Jesus's own words. His own words. You've probably been brainwashed to think the Lord is always kind and forgiving. Now, that's a lot of crap! Jesus came to John holding a sword. He said he hates those who deceive others and those who refuse to accept His rule. He said He will kill them. Yes, He will kill people in order to protect God's people, those who choose to believe His Word. That's the kind of war we're in, Raphael, and Satan can't be beaten any other way except by people giving their souls to Jesus Christ, and right now!"

  At last Raff began to worry about what this strange man and his tattooed companion might do.

  "Well, Pastor, I guess I understand what you're saying. Do you go around making this case to everyone who believes another way? For the last time, why me? What's this all about? Do you think I'm working for the devil and the Antichrist, whoever he is?"

  "You listen to me, boy, in your heart, you know who you're working for. You're too smart and too educated not to know what's going on. Why'd you come back down here anyway?"

  "How could I be on the devil's side? You know who I am? You seem to know I'm one of the ones around here working to save God's Creation!"

  "I see you miss the point. Maybe you intended to do that. Maybe that's what you're up to. God didn't send His only Son to save bugs and snakes. He sent him to save souls. God doesn't give shit about the land and the creatures on them except how His people can use them. This is just a place on the way to heaven or hell. Anything that's against His will is the devil's work."

  Raff stood up to leave, but LeBow couldn't be stopped. "You want an answer? You came from around here, but then you went on up to Harvard and now you're some kind of fuckin' atheist. You're a big-time science lover, bragging on it all the time, they tell me. You're getting to be a big influence around here. And you are not a friend of God and His people."

  Raff squeezed silently past LeBow and Rainey and walked toward the exit. The automatic rifle fire started up again.

  LeBow shouted after him, "You're one of the deceivers! You're working for the Antichrist and maybe you're too stupid to know it. You're pulling people away from God's Will and God's Word!"

  Raff reached the door to the outside, but LeBow caught up with him, and now said in a normal voice close to his ear, "You better listen to me, Raphael. You better change your ways while you still have time!"

  35

  RAFF EXITED HENRY'S Guns and Shooting Gallery and walked on down Oak Street as fast as he could without breaking into a run. He turned onto Bledsoe Street and continued until he reached the entrance to the Sunderland Office Building. He squeezed into the elevator, which was crowded with employees returning from their lunch hour. Arriving at the executive office floor, he waved away a staffer trying to hand him a file folder, went into his office, closed the door, fell into a swivel chair, and speed-dialed Bill Robbins.

  The answering machine announced that the journalist was in the field on assignment and would be back the next day. He didn't like cell phones: "It scares the birds." Raff then remembered that Robbins was with a small group of ecologists visiting the Red Hills, just north of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. They were going to explore a backcountry tract containing remnant old-growth pine savanna and hardwood-clad ravines.

  Raff left a message, "Hey, Bill, must talk. Please call. Urgent."

  There was nothing left for him to do for the while except try to calm down. He walked back out of his office, collected the file folder, walked back in, and put it on top of papers already stacked on his desk. He stared at the pile several minutes, keeping his hands folded in his lap. Then he got up and walked over to the window. Looking out at nothing in particular, he mentally rehearsed his bizarre encounter with Reverend Wayne LeBow. That resulted in no new insights. After a while he sat down again at his desk. This time he buried himself in paperwork.

  Late that night, while Raff was getting ready for bed and distracting himself with a WBC welterweight championship fight on television, Robbins finally called. He said he was dead tired, begged off, and offered to come over first thing the next day.

  Early the next morning they met for breakfast in the first-floor cafeteria of the Sunderland Office Building. As soon as they were settled, Raff said, "I think I just got a death threat." He then gave as verbatim as possible an account of his conversation with Wayne LeBow.

  "Well, congratulations. You just met the Sword of Gideon," Robbins said. "I remember I warned you about those people before. Now it looks like they think you're a pretty important guy around here and want to do some pushing around. I know that outfit a little. Rob Davis, on Channel Eight News, talks about them once in a while. LeBow is your classical egomaniac rabble-rouser of the kind that spring up like mushrooms around here. He's actually pretty well educated. He spent a couple of years at Auburn University, can you believe that? With a major in religion studies. He's not a real minister, at least not ordained by any place I ever heard of. He's actually a guard captain at the Monroeville Prison. I hear he's always jabbering at the inmates about finding Jesus. He just took over a little church near there. What's its name?"

  "Church of the Eternal Redeemer, I think he said."

  "Yeah. Well, anyway, LeBow's a piece of work. But you know, he's not that far out down here in South Alabama. A lot of the country people, not to mention working folks in and around Mobile too, have more or less the same ideas. Jesus is coming in our lifetime, and we better be ready. It's called the Rapture. The ones who've been saved will go right up bodily, Jesus leading the way. LeBow's just taken the prophecy to the extreme. What's worrisome is he's getting aggressive and he's pulling in a lot of followers. That little church is packed every Sunday. He's building a cult, is what he's doing. Shall we call them the LeBowites? They're
itching to go to war with the devil. Heaven knows what happened to the original pastor. Rob Davis probably knows the story. I'll try to remember and ask him, or maybe you can go talk to him yourself, if you want."

  Raff was breathing hard and sucking air through his teeth. This discourse was not helping him relax at all. He pushed back his chair to get more leg room and squeezed his eyes shut.

  "Anyway," Robbins pressed on, "it's an old evangelical tradition with a military twist. Ever heard of Billy Sunday, the big-time evangelist back in the twenties? He'd say--I actually heard him on an old record--'I'll fight sin till I can't use my arms no more, and then I'll bite it, and when I got no teeth left, I'll gum it.' Great stuff! There's a difference here, though, and I don't want to make too much light of it. The radical fringe folks like the Sword of Gideon are always dangerous. A few of them can turn violent on a dime. Either that or they're violent nutcases from the start. There have been quite a few murders and even mass suicides in this country and elsewhere. The Sword of Gideon fits the pattern another way, at least for down here. Like a lot of religious fringe groups, it recruits mostly from poor whites who feel that they've been cheated some way or other. They're the most alienated group in the South right now. Basically, it's the same old same old. They'll get justice any way they can, even if that means getting violent. Social justice anyway, if you can't get economic justice."

  "Now that you mention it," Raff said, opening his eyes and pulling himself up in the chair, "the guy with LeBow looked like a real thug. I just assumed he was a bodyguard, or a muscleman of some sort. I wondered why he was there. He sure wasn't any altar boy."

  "Yeah, let's make a distinction here if you haven't already thought of it yourself. The way I see it, there are rednecks and then there are redneck white trash. The large part of the population who call themselves rednecks, and laugh about it, are good people--really solid, mostly working-class citizens. But the white trash, they're the underclass. They're the ones with the abandoned automobiles in the front yard and mongrel dogs living off kitchen scraps and running around all over the place--the kind you accidentally squash on the highway and nobody cares. The men like to hang out at strip joints, drink a lot of beer and whiskey--anything they can afford for the night. They'll pull out a knife and cut you if you insult them--which, by the way, you can do just looking at them or their girlfriends too long. They're racists, of course. But mostly they're just proud, and broke, and mad all the time."

  "Yeah, I guess the best way to get in big trouble with one is either to kick his motorcycle or come on to his girlfriend. It's part of our tradition down here."

  "But, you know," Robbins went on, "and maybe this is your point. They're proud but they're not monsters. Make friends with one of them, he'll give you the shirt off his back--maybe. My point is that they got no education, and they're easily led by anyone who says he speaks for God. If you want to see a big concentration of them, go to the Monroeville Prison. They've all been saved by Jesus up there."

  Raff added, "The Klan comes to my mind--you know, these people from the same breed that made up the foot soldiers of the old Klan. The difference, I think, is that the Klan preached raw racism, and groups like the Sword of Gideon are more into religious bigotry." Robbins affirmed his agreement by pointing both index fingers at Raff. He said, "Except the Klan and the fighting Born Agains you're dealing with are racial and religious bigots both, just in different proportions."

  "Anyway," Raff said, "the question I need to put to you right now is, should I worry? Are LeBow and his gang going to be dangerous for me personally, with all that 'Jesus kills' stuff? What do you think, should I do anything, go to the police? I've been guessing maybe not. LeBow didn't actually threaten me with anything. He just gave me a hellfire sermon."

  "Rob Davis tells me that LeBow's given that little spiel to a few others--academics, high school principals, local politicians. So you're not alone. The fact that it was a sermon of a sort, with a 'Come to Jesus' tag line, makes me think he may not be talking to you at all. He's trying to impress his followers. You know, the crusader, tough guy for Jesus. He's saying to his people, See how I can push those big-shot liberal atheists around."

  "That makes sense," Raff said. "But are they dangerous? Have they actually attacked anybody?"

  "Well, you know, yes, they're dangerous. I say that because there have been a number of beatings and unsolved murders and disappearances. LeBow and his church members haven't been charged with any of it, not yet anyway. And the victims have been, so far as I've heard, just apostates--you know, rivals or defectors. Not outsiders like you."

  Raff said, "Sounds like a power struggle. Maybe that's why LeBow is getting so aggressive. That would explain that tattooed guy he brought along. He's desperate."

  "Could be. In any case, I'd be careful. I'd talk to Rob Davis about the whole thing, if I were you. You might also want to file a report with the police and let LeBow know about it if you ever run into him again. Who knows? Maybe somebody's trying to kill him."

  36

  THE DAY OF DECISION for Nokobee arrived in the morning of one of those late September days on the Gulf Coastal Plain so hot it seemed that fall as a season had been banished. At eight o'clock three linen-clad executives entered the boardroom on the top floor of the Sunderland Office Building. Drake Sunderland, president and chief executive officer of the company named after his father, moved on past the conference table to the continental breakfast laid at the end of the room, drew a cup of coffee, added skim milk, no sugar, picked up a glazed donut, unglued his fingers with a paper napkin, and slumped into the nearest chair at the table. He was fifty-five years old, thirty pounds overweight, and had an as-yet-undiscovered partly blocked right carotid artery.

  Raphael Semmes Cody, chief counsel, a short, slim man of twenty-eight years, dressed in a J. Press summer suit, shirt, and tie, selected croissants, butter substitute, and fruit. Richard Sturtevant, vice president and chief financial officer, sixty-plus, rumply white-haired, and with more than ample girth to advertise the good life he had enjoyed, hesitated, then chose the same. Both took seats opposite the president.

  Drake Sunderland crinkled his face into an alpha good-old-boy smile. "Well, Raff, I'm so glad you made it. I'm really happy to see you. What you got?" He pulled himself up straight in his chair as he spoke. Tense this morning, no mistake about that. No feigned humor in his eyes now. All three knew this was going to be a crucial meeting for Sunderland Associates.

  Raff urged himself silently, Stay calm, stay focused. He breathed deeply but quietly as he spoke. "Well, sir, I've got some good news and, well, a little bit of semi-bad news, or at least a problem or two we'll need to fix."

  Sunderland looked up, slid his spectacles down his nose to look over them, and studied Raff's face.

  "The good news," Raff said, "is that we won the blind bid on Nokobee Westside. The Jepson lawyers in Atlanta just called me thirty minutes ago, as promised, to give us the word. Furthermore, we came in only five percent over the next-highest bid. So we ended up shaving it close; we did really well."

  Sunderland leaned forward, brightened again. He balled and lifted his fists with thumbs up the way he did at Auburn University football games, but this morning a little less emphatically.

  "That's good, that's real good. What's the bad news?" Then he frowned, working his mouth from side to side.

  "Well, sir, it's the enviros again, as you might guess. They are not going to be happy campers on this one. I think we underestimated how serious they are. Nokobee Westside is what they call 'biologically rich.'"

  Vice President Sturtevant said, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  Raff continued, ignoring the question. "They've designated it a local biodiversity 'hot spot.' I've checked with the state Department of Environmental Management, and here's what they've got. The area immediately to the west of Lake Nokobee has two species of salamanders, a bird, and a turtle listed as vulnerable under the Endangered Species Act. And there's wo
rse. In that pitcher-plant bog that lies on the boundary with the national forest? There are two endemic plant species. That's endemic. I mean, found no other place on earth."

  Vice President Sturtevant interrupted with mocking exasperation, "Well, guys, the fucking salamanders and pitcher plants. There goes the golf course."

  "I'm afraid there's more," Raff continued. "The longleaf pine stand can't be cut. Just can't be cut at all. We assumed that since longleaf pine is found all over the South, taking it out at Nokobee would be no problem. But that westside stand is original old growth, and there's only about two percent of real old growth like that left in the entire United States. I know the timber at Nokobee is worth over a million dollars, but we can't harvest it."

  Sturtevant broke in again. Time to talk sense to this fellow. He's gone over the line, giving everybody a hard time. He slammed his hands on the table, but not too hard, since he was only four feet from Sunderland facing him. "What are you saying? That we gotta pull out? This is the best deal the company ever had. People are starting to move into that area big-time. Property prices are going up. Nokobee Westside is going to give us the biggest profit we ever had."

  He paused, let it sink in, continued quietly, "Now, look here. That whole region may be piney woods now, but in a few years it's going to be built over as much as the suburbs around Mobile and Pensacola. It's going to be a real nice place to live. New South and all that, you know. You're going to have your housing developments, your schools, your strip malls. Lots of paved roads. Nobody is going to stop any of that. So endangered species or whatever the hell you're talking about don't have a chance anyway, do they? Why can't we just leave the bog maybe and a couple of acres of piney woods alone, a little nature center maybe, that ought to be enough for any judge or jury, and just present the enviros with a done deal. Let 'em suck it up. Fat accomplee, as they say up at Emory."