What a fucking creep.
X nodded, just as a steam clock out on Stuart Street gave this hollow whistle. X looked at his watch. “We have to go soon,” he said. He held up the copy of Migrations of Israel.
“Are these books and leaflets for sale?”
“The books are, but the pamphlets are free,” the man said, waving a hand at the bookshelf, while still maintaining a careful distance. “If you like, we can also put you on our mailing list. You can leave your name and address on the clipboard on the reception desk.”
“I’d appreciate that,” X said. He scribbled down a false name — “Jamey Jones,” a play on a Clash song title — and the post office box of Sound Swap in Portland. “I’d like to buy this book, if I could, and any pamphlets you have on British Israel.”
Ten minutes later, we were back out on Stuart Street, where Patti and Betty were waiting for us. X put the pamphlets and the book he had purchased in his backpack. “What’s that stuff?” Patti asked him.
“Evil,” X said, as we started walking again toward the train station. “But the kind of evil that I think inspired Bauer and his friends.”
C H A P T E R 31
The Brotherhood — or as its members had apparently taken to calling themselves, the New Order — got together in their barnlike “barracks” on a rundown farm in Potter County, Pennsylvania.
In its rituals, and in its words, the group wanted to be like Adolf Hitler’s SS, the informant’s report said. At the moment, however, they basically resembled what they really were: a group of unhappy-looking white losers in their thirties and forties, overflowing with anger and hate. There were a couple farmers, a former marine, a teacher, a trucker, and quite a few unemployed guys.
Taking part in the swearing-in ceremony was one of the three out-of-state “brethren,” a couple who had met through another whack job group called the National Alliance, and six Aryan Nations members. Most of the men were Identity Christians, that insane “religion” X had told us about. One of them would later become the police informant. An older guy, the leader, stepped forward and made a big show of looking around.
“I am so proud, kinsmen,” he said. “I am so proud that you have come together this night. Coming together in this way, as brothers in blood, is step one.”
The next step, he explained, was to establish a set of common goals. The third was to find funds for the movement and the fourth was recruitment of new members. “The fifth step,” he loudly declared, pausing for effect, “the fifth step is the elimination of enemies of the white race. And the final step — the final solution, you might say — will be the creation of a guerrilla force, of men like you, to bring the battle right into urban areas and wipe away the cities and the Jew filth and the mud-people scum. To wipe away what hasn’t been already destroyed by the race riots.
“And then, we can start over, rooted in the land. And then, we can re-animalize the white man. We can return to nature and what is natural, as Elijah prophesized.”
Without speaking, the group then got closer together in their circle, standing around one man’s six-week-old daughter, who was placed in a blanket on the floor. The only light came from a few candles. The men held hands and repeated their oath, which the leader had apparently written for the occasion: “Let us go forth by ones and by twos, by scores and legions, and as true Aryan men with pure hearts and strong minds, face the enemies of our faith and our race with courage and determination. We hereby invoke the blood covenant and declare that we are in a full state of war and will not lay down our weapons until we have driven the enemy into the sea and reclaimed the land that was promised to our fathers of old, and through our blood and his will, it becomes the land of our children to be.”
The baby had not cried. After their ceremony was over, her father carefully picked her up. Receiving a few pats on the back, he took his daughter outside, where his wife was waiting in their idling pickup truck. The men milled about, pleased with themselves.
They were excited, too, and full of questions about the big adventure that lay ahead. The one from Maine, Northman, half-raised his arm, and when he did, quite a few racialist tattoos could be seen. “I’ve got a question,” he said. The men stopped talking to listen to him. They liked this big, plainspoken white man from the North. “How do we convince our white kinsmen to return to what is natural and to nature? It’s not going to be easy. Too many of them are addicted to the idiot box and the Jewsmedia and living in big cities.”
The Brotherhood’s leader spoke. “The cities are tombs,” he said. “And they will be graveyards for muds and Jews and race traitors.
“They will be graveyards for the rootless ones.”
C H A P T E R 32
The Downeaster headed north, clack-clacking over gaps in the rail as it did the milk run through the New Hampshire backcountry. Patti Upchuck rubbed her eyes and squinted at Betty and me, who at that moment were twisted over our seats, deep asleep. I was snoring, she later told me, amused.
Patti looked around her. The railcar was dark, almost totally empty of passengers, but X was not there.
She and I were used to this, of course. Since they had started their quiet, almost-top-secret relationship, she had discovered that X would often disappear for lengthy periods. She figured he was writing essays for The NCNA, or lyrics for a song, or reading (and actually enjoying) obscure Russian literature. He would return, always, without saying what he had been doing or where he had been.
She got up, soundlessly, so as not to wake up her sister or me. After a brief stop in the railcar’s washroom, she headed toward the observation coach. They called it the Skylite Dome Car.
She found X there, papers and books spread out on his lap, a single light illuminating him. It was really late. There was no one else in the car. He looked up.
“Hey,” he said. “Welcome.”
“Hey,” she said. “Couldn’t sleep on the super-comfy seat they’d provided us with, amazingly. Saw you had flown the coop.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Figured I’d head up here and take in the stars, and catch up on my reading.”
“What are you reading?” she asked, settling into the seat beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder. “The stuff you got at that place in Cambridge?”
“Yeah,” X said, shaking his head. “It’s terrible. Really hateful stuff, but all written as if it’s academic or scientific.”
“What’s the gist?” she asked, warily examining the spine of Migrations of Israel.
“The gist of it,” he said, “is that Jews are not the true Jews. The true chosen ones are white, Anglo-Saxon people, and that the Jews are imposters. The authors even seem to believe that the Jews are the descendants of Cain, and therefore the devil. They’re Satan’s children.”
“That’s insane,” she said. “Is it legal to publish this kind of stuff?”
“Yes, unfortunately. First Amendment and all that,” X said. “I even picked up another pamphlet, from something called the Aryan Nations, that calls mixed-race marriages ‘the ultimate abomination,’ and that says that non-whites are ‘mud people,’ quote unquote.”
“That is just so awful,” she said. She paused. “So … why did you get these things, babe?”
“Know your enemy, I guess,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t say anything for a few moments. “I didn’t want to upset you,” he said, touching her hand. “But Kurt and I have been poking around, talking to various people.”
“Like?”
“Like a reporter at the Press Herald, like some people with connections to the police,” he said. “And there’s no question that whoever killed Jimmy, Mark, and tried to kill Danny were motivated by hate, but …”
“But?”
“But not just that,” he said. “It’s not just some skinheads who are racist and anti-Semitic and anti-gay or just anti-punk
. It’s more than that.”
“What?”
“It seems to be connected to religion, somehow.”
“Religion?” she said, sitting up and looking directly at X. “I don’t understand.”
He looked out the window as New Hampshire whipped by in the dark. “British Israelism. That’s what it’s called. It’s this bogus religion that’s been around for a hundred years,” he said. “It was like some secret society at the start. But it’s gotten popular. And, in the past few years, some lunatics in California and Idaho and Washington State have taken this British Israel stuff and gone off into an even more radical direction.”
“How?”
“They don’t seem to be content to wait for Jesus to return in the end times,” he said. “Not that they think Jesus was Jewish, by the way. In their propaganda, Christ is this militaristic figure who uses violence to kill Jews.” He paused. “They want to speed up Armageddon. They don’t want to wait for the end times.”
“So what has that got to do with some Portland kids who are into punk rock?” she asked, feeling uneasy. “What have we got to do with that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “But Marky was found in the same position, with the same wound, as Christ. And Jimmy, as everyone knows, was crucified … It’s like someone wants to make us atone for something. And that we are the Antichrist, for real.”
“Like Rotten sang on ‘Anarchy’?” she asked him.
“Maybe,” he said. He looked tired. “I don’t know. It’s all insane, I know.” He tapped the book in his lap. “But these people are real. And I think they’re the ones who have taken some kind of interest in us.”
C H A P T E R 33
X stared at the blank sheet of paper in his typewriter. I stared at X.
He had planned to write a review of the Boston performance by the Clash for The NCNA after school, but the assault on Ken Haslam was difficult to put out of our minds. It was blasted across the front of the Press Herald his father had left on his bed that morning. The maiming of the retired broadcaster had again left all of us feeling shocked. The neo-Nazi skinheads were getting bolder, and more violent.
X looked up at the walls of his almost spartan room. On one, he had pinned up a poster of Iggy Pop and the Stooges from an early Michigan show, when they were starting out. On the other, above his bed, he had recently placed a framed, enlarged photograph of himself outside a community hall gig we did the year before, featuring me, Danny Hate, and Jimmy Cleary, smiling along with a few of the Social Blemishes. We had thrown our arms around each other’s shoulders. It looked like it had come from a different life.
The phone rang. X’s mother called out. “It’s for you, Christopher,” she said.
“Who is it, Mom?”
“No idea,” she said. “A boy. He wouldn’t give his name.”
X picked up the receiver outside his bedroom and signaled me to stand close so I could listen. It was John Chow, one of the two young punks we had met downtown a few weeks before. The boy sounded out of breath and was almost whispering into the receiver. “X, is that you?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s me,” X replied.
“It’s John … Chow.”
“What’s up, John?”
John spoke quickly. In the background, X could hear his brother talking. “I can’t talk for long,” he said. “Our dad was saying that something is going down with the skinheads. It looks like they’re getting ready to charge them with the murders.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” X said. “They didn’t do it. They’re the scum of the earth, but they didn’t do it.”
“That’s what our dad says, too,” John said, whispering now. “He says it’s all about politics. It looks like they may take them in to court to be charged today or tomorrow.”
X peered at the clock on the wall facing the stairs. It was late in the afternoon, probably too late in the day for anything to happen in court. Besides, if the skinheads were going to be charged, we knew that the police and the DA would want to generate as much hype as possible, as they had done with Bauer and Babic’s bail hearing. It was more likely that the skinheads would be charged when the police had attracted the media’s interest.
“Got to go, X,” said John hurriedly. “Be careful.”
X sat on the arm of the living room couch a moment, running his fingers along the scar on his head.
He looked at me. “It doesn’t make any sense, “ he said. “The skinheads are going to be acquitted. Why risk that?”
I didn’t have an answer; I said nothing. X fished a slip of paper out of his wallet. It contained Ron McLeod’s phone number. He dialed it.
They skipped the small talk. “So,” McLeod said to X, as I again listened in, “I presume you heard? That they’re going to charge them tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” X said. “Is it true?”
“Yes,” McLeod said. “It’s true. But it certainly is bizarre.”
“Why?” X asked. “What’s changed? My friends and I were in Boston for a few days. Did something happen?”
“I don’t know,” McLeod said. “I’m not sure what caused it. The attack on Ken Haslam certainly got the story going again.”
“Is he all right?” X asked.
“Well, he’s been blinded in one eye for good,” McLeod said. “But he and his wife are with family back in Canada. They didn’t feel comfortable staying in their home.”
“Can’t blame them,” X said. “It’s sickening, attacking an older man like that. Was that what convinced the cops to charge Bauer and the others, you think?”
“Maybe,” McLeod said. “There’s been a fair bit of media pressure, as I’m sure you’ve seen. Our paper’s editorial board has written a big piece and demanded that the police and the city devote more resources to solving the murders, among other things. There’s also been a lot of discussion about it all on talk radio. Maybe the Haslam attack, plus the media pressure, has gotten to them.”
“No offense, but I don’t think anybody cares about a newspaper editorial,” X said. “It has to be the attack on that old guy.”
“You’re right, and no offense taken,” McLeod said, laughing. “You’re probably right: no new leads, no charges for weeks, and then they suddenly decide to charge these skinheads? But unless some incredible new piece of evidence has been found that I haven’t heard about, it all seems very odd.”
X and McLeod made plans to meet very early the next morning, again at the Dunkin’ Donuts. X returned to his room, pulled on his thrift store hunting sweater, and threw on his leather jacket. Reaching the front door, he called up to his mother, telling her we were heading out to my place.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
Outside, we started in the direction of my place. X tapped my arm and pointed up the street. I saw a dirty late-model sedan, parked further up. Its occupants, plural, seemed to be watching us.
X was looking, too. He spoke.
“They’ve been following us since we got back from Boston.”
C H A P T E R 34
“SKINHEADS TO BE CHARGED IN PUNK MURDERS,” the front page of the Daily Sun screamed the next morning.
Portland police plan to charge a trio of jailed white supremacist skinheads with the murders of two youths late last year, police sources have confirmed. The three young men, who have been in custody for several weeks on assault charges, will be arraigned in court today for the murders of James Cleary and Mark Upton. An investigation into the near-drowning of a third Portland youth, Danny O’Heran, continues, but sources say that the police believe the incident was an attempted suicide.”
A very unhappy-looking Ron McLeod was hunched over a copy of the paper when X and I joined him at Dunkin’ Donuts. When he saw us, he threw down the tabloid with obvious disgust.
“What a load of crap,” he said, sounding indignant. “Have you guys read th
is?”
“The suicide suggestion is total bullshit,” I said, and asked McLeod why the police were leaking to the Sun and not to the Herald.
“Because they’re pissed off that we’ve been critical of them editorially,” McLeod said. “And I suspect that Murphy and Savoie also don’t like the fact I’ve been talking to you.” He paused, frowning. “Hey, don’t you have school today or something?”
I shrugged. “When we get there, we’ll just tell them that the cops wanted us downtown to question us about the murders. These days, they don’t seem to care if we’re there or not.”
“Well, my editors certainly care that the friggin’ Daily Sun, of all papers, is beating us on this story. Have you guys got anything you can tell me that would explain why they’re suddenly rushing to charge these guys after doing nothing for weeks?”
“That’s your department, not ours,” I said. “We don’t have a clue what the police are thinking. Or if they even think at all.”
X looked down at McLeod and said, “There are a couple things.”
Here we go.
McLeod leaned forward. “I could sure use something.”
“The religious symbolism at the murder scenes, I think it might have something to do with a religion called British Israelism or Identity.” X pulled out a couple of the leaflets he’d picked up in Boston and handed them to McLeod. “And I think we’re being followed. Or, at least I’m pretty sure I’m being followed, anyway.”
“Really? By who?” McLeod asked.
“No idea,” X said. “I’ve spotted a dark brown four-door two or three times since we’ve been back from Boston. It always stays far enough away that I can’t see who’s in the car. But it looks like more than one guy.”
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