Out of the Ashes ta-1

by William Wallace Johnstone

  “The damned fool!” Ben muttered.

  “I said the same thing, Mr. Raines,” a black woman said. “My first cousin was on the other side of what took place up there.”

  Ben looked at her. “What did take place?”

  “There was spotty violence all winter. The whites controlled the suburbs, the blacks controlled the city. The whites cordoned off the city, wouldn’t let the blacks out. And last winter was a particularly brutal one. Many died from exposure. Expressways were blocked and guarded, same with bridges and avenues. The white group raided national guard and reserve armories, got mortars and cannons, began shelling the city. It was a regular war. Then, a couple of months ago, a full-scale military invasion took place. Not the regular military, but the whites. There were no prisoners taken… on either side. From what we’ve heard, it was senseless and brutal.”

  “Who won?” Ben asked, a sour taste in his mouth. He thought of Cecil and Lila. And of Salina.

  “Well,” a local minister said, “if it can be called a victory, the whites did. Then they turned on the Jews, the Latins, the Orientals. Everyone not… what’s the old term? WASP?”

  “Yes,” Ben said. “It had to come. Sooner or later. I wrote it was coming.”

  “I read that book of yours, Mr. Raines,” a black woman in her mid-thirties said. She sat across the table from Ben. “I didn’t like it when I read it—I thought you surely had to be a racist. Then I reread it and changed my opinion of you. You’re a complex man, Mr. Raines, but I think you mean well… for those who, in your view, deserve the well-meaning.”

  “Thank you.” Ben acknowledged the decidedly left-handed compliment.

  The minister said, “The party seems to have grown in strength over the months. So far it is still mostly centered in the Chicago and central Illinois area, but it is fanning out. And”—the man tapped his finger on the table—“it is not comprised only of filth like that dogfighting Pitrie and his ilk. From what we can gather by listening to the broadcasts, some rather… at one time anyway… level-headed men and women are joining. That’s the… ones I don’t understand.”

  “I do,” Ben said. “And I can tell you who they are: businessmen and -women who lost their businesses through boycott or riots; men who had wives or daughters mugged or assaulted or raped by Latins or blacks and then had to watch while our courts turned them loose—if they ever even came to trial—because of the pleadings of some liberal bastard lawyer whining about past wrongs, that had absolutely nothing to do with the crime; store owners who were repeatedly robbed and were unable to do anything about it or who watched criminals turned loose because of some legal technicalities; people who lost their jobs because of hiring practices. It’s a long list, with right and wrong on both sides. But the hate finally exploded into violence—the hate directed toward the minorities. Many of us, of all colors, wrote of its coming. No one paid any attention to us. Well… now it’s here.”

  “That’s the part of your book I didn’t like,” the black woman said.

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” Ben defended what he had written, so many years before. “But don’t misunderstand me. I am totally, irrevocably opposed to what is happening in Chicago. I just saw it coming, that’s all.”

  “Be careful on the road, Mr. Raines,” the minister cautioned him. “I’m afraid it’s going to get much worse before it starts to get better.”

  The black lady looked at Ben. “I believe you wrote that, too, didn’t you, Mr. Raines?”

  “Ben, it’s stupid going into Atlanta!” April told him. “The same thing might be going on there as happened in Chicago.”

  “We won’t go into the city proper,” he assured her. “But I want to get close enough to hear what’s going on.”

  They were on Interstate 75, heading for Atlanta. An hour out of Moultrie.

  A few miles further, Ben saw his first manned roadblock on an interstate.

  “Oh, hell, Ben!” April said, her fingers digging into his leg.

  “Relax.” Ben patted her hand. “Let’s just see what’s happening. Hold the wheel for a minute.” He took a grenade from the pouch at his feet on the floorboards and pulled the pin, holding the spoon down with his left hand, just as he had back at the station with the so-called Georgia Militia.

  Ben rolled up and stopped, lowering his window, his left hand out of sight. “Howdy, boys—what’s the problem?”

  “We just like to see who is comin’ and goin’ out of Cordele, mister. No real problem.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ben said.

  “I can see your right hand, buddy. But I can’t see your left hand. You wouldn’t have a gun pointed at me, would you? One word from me and that bunch over yonder,” he jerked his head, “would shoot this truck full of holes.”

  “You like to shoot strangers who have done you no harm?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “That’s kind of a dumb question, mister.”

  “Humor me,” Ben said, but there was no humor in his voice.

  The man spat a brown stream of chewing-tobacco juice on the highway. “You ‘bout half smart-ass, ain’t you?”

  “Maybe. Maybe I just don’t like to be stopped for no reason. Ever think about that?”

  “Not often. Git outta the damned truck. Both of you.”

  Ben smiled and lifted his left hand. The man almost swallowed his chewing tobacco. “No. You get on the running board. My fingers are getting tired. I might just decide to drop this out the window.”

  “Man, you are nuts! That thing ain’t got no pin in it! Jesus Christ!” he hollered. “Don’t nobody shoot, or nuttin’. This crazy son of a bitch is holding a live grenade.”

  “Fragmentation type. Get it right.”

  “It’s a frag type. Lordy, Lordy!”

  When Ben spoke, his voice was loud enough for all to hear. “Now all you men listen to me. It is not my intention to bother a soul—unless that person first bothers me. And you people are bothering me. Now you get on the running board and tell your buddies to open that goddamned roadblock.”

  “I ain’t botherin’ you, mister. Lord, no—I ain’t botherin’ you. TEAR DOWN THAT FUCKIN’ ROADBLOCK!” he screamed.

  The blockade came down. The man stepped up on the running board. That put his face level with Juno’s muzzle and bared teeth. “Oh, Lord!” the man hollered.

  Ben stepped on the gas and drove up the interstate, out of rifle range, stopping in the middle of the highway. “Get off,” he told the man.

  The man did so, gladly. “Mister,” he said to Ben, “you jist ain’t pullin’ a full load.”

  “Yeah? I heard that the first time I ate a snake during survival training.”

  The man paled.

  “Now you listen to me,” Ben told him. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you people have had with thugs and punks, and you definitely have a right to keep those types of people out of your town. But you do not have a right to keep people from traveling on this interstate.”

  The man bobbed his head in agreement, watching with great relief as Ben inserted the pin back into the grenade. “Yes, sir.”

  “If I were you, I’d dismantle that blockade. Somebody’s liable to come along and really take offense at being stopped and questioned.”

  “More than you did?”

  “Hell, friend.” Ben smiled at him. “I’m a saint compared to some folks roaming around out here.” He put the truck in gear and rolled on, leaving the man standing in the middle of the interstate, shaking his head and mumbling.

  “Ben?” April asked. “Why did that roadblock make you so angry?”

  “I really don’t know,” he confessed. “I think maybe the arrogance of the people behind them—some of them—has always irritated me. And the structure itself somewhat. But the reasons have always been the real irritant with me: checking for a driver’s license, to make certain it’s the proper license for the state you’re living in. What earthly difference does it make? If you can drive in California you can certainly driv
e in Utah. Or if you can drive in Hartford you can drive in Dallas. Country should have had one national driver’s license and to hell with it.” He smiled. “That’s one of my very few pet gripes, April.”

  “The others?”

  Ben grinned. “Those people who take it upon themselves to tell others what to read, what to watch on TV, or see in the movies. Or out of a township of one hundred people, fifty-one don’t drink liquor, so they tell the remaining forty-nine they can’t drink in their homes, or purchase a six-pack or a bottle in that township. What a person does in his or her own home is nobody else’s business. But I’m death on drunk drivers, April. I have always believed that if a drunk driver kills someone, the charge should be murder—not manslaughter. And”—he grinned—“nobody on the face of this earth loves a drink of whiskey any more than yours truly. But I don’t drive when I’m drunk, or even drinking very much for that matter. I used to, though. Until one night I almost ran over a kid on a bike. That was about ten years ago. That put a stop to it—for me. Don’t get me started, April. My beliefs are intense.”

  “You’re a complex man, Ben Raines.”

  “Maybe. And maybe I’m just a man who doesn’t want to get too far away from the basic concepts of living.”

  “What if a drunk driver ran over and killed a loved one of yours, Ben—what would you do?”

  “Now?”

  “No. I mean, back when things were normal.”

  “My first inclination would be to kill him. But that would be wrong for several reasons. Our laws—back when things were normal, as you put it—were far too lenient on most criminals, especially the drunk driver involved in fatal accidents. So how can you blame the guy for drinking when the penalty for getting caught really, in many states, almost encouraged the drunk driver? No, education and stiff laws are the answer, and then gradually, over a period of years, as people become accustomed to those laws, and a generation grows with them, that’s when you get tough with those who flaunt the law. Not abruptly. Not unless everybody in that state, and I don’t mean fifty-one percent of the population, I mean about ninety percent of the population, agrees with those harsh laws. This fifty-one/forty-nine plurality is now and always has been, to my way of thinking, a crock of shit.”

  “How about those people, say, to use your figures, that ten percent—what happens to them? Those who disagree with it?”

  “They can live with it, or leave.”

  “That’s hard, Ben.”

  “Yes.”

  April was silent for several miles; miles that passed in silence, with only the humming of the tires on concrete and the rush of wind.

  “All this…” She waved her hand, indicating the emptiness of highway, the silence of the land all around them. “All this doesn’t really bother you, does it? I get the impression you’re looking forward to rebuilding.”

  Ben thought about that question. “I guess I am looking forward to the rebuilding, April. As to it bothering me? No, I guess it really doesn’t. Not to the extent it should, I suppose.”

  “Why?” She glanced at him. “You don’t believe all this is God’s will, or something hokey like that, do you?”

  “Hokey? Well, yes. I have to admit I’ve wondered about the hand of God in all this. Haven’t you?”

  “I don’t believe in God,” she said flatly. “I think it’s a myth. I think when you’re dead, you’re dead. And that’s it.”

  “That is certainly your right.”

  “Not going to give me a lecture about it?”

  “Not me. Believe what you want to believe. That is your right.”

  “How about prayer in public school?”

  He laughed out loud. “You’re really hitting all bases, aren’t you? All right, April. Fine, for those who want to pray. Those that don’t could whistle ‘Dixie’ if they so desired.”

  “And take a lot of abuse and bullshit from the kids and the teachers, too, huh?”

  “Root cause, honey.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Root cause. Ignorance, prejudice, thoughtlessness, all those things will never be stamped out unless and until we attack the root cause. And that’s in the home.”

  “Total state control, Ben? That’s just a bit Orwellian, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, it is. But if our present method of education isn’t, or wasn’t, eradicating the inequities, what would you suggest as the course of action?”

  “What inequities? Give me an example.”

  “One kid wants to play sports, another kid wants to study music: the piano, the violin. Each should be able to do as he or she wishes without being ridiculed for making a particular choice. But it didn’t work that way. The kid who chooses to pursue a life of music is often—ninety-nine percent of the time—subjected to taunts and jeers and ridicule for his choice, while the kid who wants to play sports is adored and given honors. The sadness of it, April, is this: the kids who ridicule and jeer have to have learned it at home; their parents have to be condoning it. Perhaps not knowingly, but still condoning it. If they do no more than refuse to broaden intellectual horizons, they’re condoning and passing their ignorance on to their kids.”

  “Ben… do you want a perfect society?”

  “No,” he said. “Just a fair one.”

  And he thought of the mountains. And of the Rebels. Waiting. Something stirred deep within him.

  April looked at the man; took in his lean ruggedness. How fast he was, to react to a deadly situation. He had a… dangerous look about him. She said, “You look the type to spend Sunday afternoons in front of the TV, watching football.”

  “I did, for years,” Ben admitted. “Still think it’s a great sport. Played it in high school. But it’s gotten—had—out of hand. I began to open my eyes and my mind and to look and listen to all that was happening around me; with my friends and others; what they were teaching their children. I was at a friend’s house one evening, watching Monday-night football. I heard my friend tell his boys that anyone who didn’t play sports was a sissy and probably a queer. I thought, what a terrible thing to tell a child, and told my friend so—in front of his kids. That man hasn’t spoken to me since.”

  “And never will again,” April reminded him.

  Ben glanced at her. “I don’t consider his death any great loss to the world.”

  THIRTEEN

  Ben had pulled off the interstate just a few miles south of Fort Valley and headed east. “Just wandering,” he told April. “We’re not on any timetable.”

  At a small town located on a state highway, Ben pulled over when he saw a group of elderly people gathered on and around the porch of a general store. When they saw the truck stop, they ran as if in a panic.

  “Why are they afraid of us?” April asked.

  “There is a certain type of filth in this world that preys on the old. I think these folks have been the victims of those types of slime. Let’s see.”

  But when Ben opened the door to the truck, he found himself looking down the twin barrels of a shotgun. It was, he thought, like looking down a twin culvert. He lifted his eyes to meet those of the man standing on the porch, behind the shotgun.

  “I didn’t stop to harm anyone,” Ben said. “I’m a writer, traveling the nation, attempting to chronicle all that has happened. If you people are in some sort of difficulty, perhaps I can help?”

  “Lower the shotgun, Homer,” a woman’s voice said. “He speaks as though he has some degree of education.”

  The shotgun was lowered to Ben’s legs. “One funny move, sonny,” Homer said, “and I’ll shorten your reach considerable.”

  Ben forced a grin and told Juno to please stop growling. Juno licked him in the ear. “I can see where that 12-gauge would definitely do it, sir.” He cut his eyes to the door of the general store. An elderly woman stood looking at him. Ben nodded. “Ma’am.”

  The woman asked, “Where did you attend school, young man?”

  “The University of Illinois, ma’am. For about
twenty minutes. I didn’t like college.”

  She laughed. “What books have you written?”

  Ben began reeling off titles and the various names he wrote under. She waved him silent.

  “That’s enough. Some of those books were pornography, Ben Raines. Filth. The sex acts were too descriptive. We’re all adults; we know how the act is done.”

  Ben laughed. “But I’ll bet you read every word, didn’t you, ma’am?”

  She grinned and moved out onto the porch. “I taught English for fifty-five years, Mr. Raines. You need to learn about the positioning of adverbs and the splitting of compound verbs.”

  “And don’t forget who and whom and me and I.”

  “Yes,” she said, sitting down in a chair. “That, too.” She pointed to April, sitting in the truck. “Are you and that young lady married, Mr. Raines, or are you living in sin?”

  “No, ma’am, we’re not married. As for living in sin, I wouldn’t know about that. She doesn’t believe in God.”

  “I’m Nola Browning, young man. Ms. Nola Browning, thank you. We have all gathered here from several small communities in this area. I’ll introduce you around a bit later. Given a little age, your young lady will come to her senses concerning God and what is His. If not,”—she shrugged—“her loss, not His. As to our troubles… well… it seems we have a gang of hooligans and roughnecks roaming the countryside, preying on the elderly… those who survived God’s will, that is.”

  “They have been here?” Ben questioned. “Bothering you folks?”

  Ms. Browning laughed without mirth. “Bothering us, sir? Oh yes, I would say so. They came up on us… what, Mr. Jacobs? Three months ago? Yes, something like that. They roughed up the men—humiliated them, I won’t go into details—then they left. We hoped they would not return. But of course, they did.

  “The second time they took all the weapons in the town. Mr. Jacobs hid his shotgun in a ditch; they missed that. Then they disabled all our vehicles. Left us stranded here. They’ve been back a number of times since then. The last time just the past week. Mrs. Ida Sikes is the youngest of us all: she’s sixty-two. They took turns raping her. Then they pulled Mrs. Johnson out of her house and raped her the next time. A woman a trip. Mrs. Carson is next. She’s sixty-five, but still a very attractive woman. The things they said they were going to do to her… well, they were rather perverted, to say the least. So can you help, Mr. Raines? Yes, very probably. But there is only one of you, fifteen of them, at least. What can you do?”