The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Poor man,” Wilona said.

  “He’s probably happier than most of us,” Omar said.

  Omar and Knox had been discussing the situation at the A.M.E. camp when Wilona got off shift. Knox had been full of ideas. Knox really knew his stuff, Omar thought. Omar would never have thought of half those notions in a million years.

  As Wilona spoke of her day, Knox sat in the back of the police cruiser without speaking. Omar could hear the faint sound of Knox’s fingertips tapping on his knees. Some part of Knox was always in motion, tapping to the furious speed of his mind. His distinctive scent—not just sweat from wearing flannel in hot weather, but maybe some weird kind of cologne, too—floated faintly to Omar in the front seat. Knox was like a weapon, Omar thought. It was as if he was purpose-built. Knox had nothing but his cause: no property, no family, no job, no hobbies, no one to love. He hardly seemed to sleep at night. It was as if God had made Knox solely for Spottswood Parish.

  Or maybe, Omar thought, it was the other way around.

  “And the people who were there!” Wilona said. “Mrs. Hall. Jamie FitzWalter. And Judge Moseley’s daughter, the middle one… Amanda! Everybody from Mrs. Ashenden’s bridge club.” It was as if she’d attended a garden party at Clarendon, not spent a day tending the wounded. “There we were, all working together!” Wilona put her hand to her heart, looked at Omar. “Do you think I’ll be invited to join the bridge club after this is over?” she asked. “Do you think that might happen?”

  “You already belong to a club,” Omar said.

  “Oh, that!” Wilona said. “That’s not the same thing.”

  Wilona wanted to play bridge, Omar thought, and drink tea off the Wedgwood and eat pastel-colored petit-fours with tiny ladylike bites. Instead her club played poker on Wednesday afternoons, drank beer, and met in Lillie Hutley’s double-wide trailer on the highway north of Hardee.

  “Won’t none of Miz LaGrande’s ladies ever vote for me,” Omar said. “I’d keep visiting Lillie Hutley if I were you.”

  “I would not drop any of my friendships,” Wilona said. “I never drop my friendships, though sometimes they drop me, like Amy Vidor did when her husband got his new job with Allstate and didn’t have to depend on your pull with the parish. But I don’t see anything wrong with making new friends.”

  “Well,” Omar said, “if any of your new friends drop any information about who they’re going to run against your husband in the next election, you let me know.”

  Wilona sighed. “Oh, darling,” she said, “do we have to talk politics?” Omar drove to their house in Hardee and drew the car up in front. David’s car was in the driveway, parked carefully out of the reach of any falling branches from the magnolia. Knox waited in the car while Omar went inside with Wilona.

  David sat on Omar’s easy chair, a can of Bud in his hand. There were some empties on the table next to him and an open case of Coors by his feet. He looked up. “I helped Ozie shift his stock this afternoon. He gave me a reward.”

  “So I see,” Omar said. Wilona ruffled David’s hair and kissed his cheek.

  “Nothing much else to do,” David said, “since Ozie ’n me are both off duty for shooting people. For doing our jobs.” David’s tone was resentful, his face sullen. Omar felt a warning tingle run down his spine.

  “Might as well just take it easy,” he advised. “Or if you get bored, you could work with one of the groups that’s cleaning up.”

  “Oh,” waving a hand, “let the niggers do the sweeping.” He grinned up at Omar, eyes lazy with drink.

  “Dang it, I was starting to get a taste for law enforcement. You want a beer?” The thought of beer made Omar’s stomach queasy. He’d spent the day living on Akla-Seltzer, but it wasn’t doing him any good.

  “I’ll have a dope instead,” Omar said. He got a Coke from the fridge—the electricity was back on, finally—and took another for Knox.

  When he returned to the front room, Wilona was telling David all about her lovely day at Clarendon. Omar watched them for a moment, then let himself out and rejoined Knox in the car. He gave Knox his Coke and turned the car around to drive back to Shelburne City.

  “That was interesting, listening to Mrs. Paxton,” Knox said. “I guess everybody in this parish knows everybody else, huh?”

  “Pretty much,” Omar said.

  “The thing that really surprised me is how blacks and whites mix down here.” Omar frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought this was the land of segregation!” Knox said. “But you people mix with blacks a lot more than we do up North. Back home in Detroit, folks who hate the niggers don’t have nothing to do with them. We don’t live with ’em, don’t talk to ’em, don’t hire ’em, run ’em out of our neighborhoods if they poke their noses in. But you Southerners—you say you hate the Mud People, but you got ’em everywhere!

  You live right alongside them. You talk to ’em like they were people. You hire them instead of whites!

  You let them in your house! You let them raise your children!”

  “I don’t,” Omar said.

  “Well, that’s because you have vision, Omar! You know how things can be made better for the white race. But the others—I bet that Miss LaGrande lets the Mud People right into her home.”

  “She’s got servants.”

  “I wouldn’t trust a black in my home! My God, and she’s a leader in this town. What kind of example is that?”

  Omar gave a little smile. “Miz LaGrande and I have never seen eye to eye.” Knox’s busy fingers tapped a rhythm on the car seat. “That’s cause you’re a man of vision, Omar. You fight for the race.”

  I fight for my son, Omar thought.

  “This is going to be famous, Omar,” Knox went on. “This is going to really wake people up. Just like in Hunter. I wouldn’t be surprised if this started the war to liberate America.”

  “No one’s going to hear of it,” Omar said. “Nobody’s going to hear of it ever. I’m going to bury it all right here.”

  Knox considered this for a long moment, his only sound the tapping of his fingertips on the car seat. “I don’t see it, Omar,” he said finally. “There are a lot of people in this county—parish. I don’t know how you’re going to keep the lid on this thing.”

  “Let me worry about it,” Omar said. “You just help me do the necessary.” Omar suspected that Knox had no real idea why Omar was doing what he was doing. Omar was defending his family, not his ideology. But Knox had no way to view actions other than through his beliefs, or through fantasies like Hunter or The Turner Diaries. Knox wanted a revolution, a race war throughout the U.S. Omar figured that was desirable, just not very likely. The cause of the white race was lost. Omar just wanted to suppress a killing. If keeping David safe meant killing other people, that was okay. And if word got out, he’d take the rap himself rather than let David take the fall.

  Omar wondered if Knox had a family, if he even knew what a family was.

  And then he thought, who would miss Knox if he were to vanish? Who would miss any of the Crusaders?

  Maybe Omar wouldn’t have to take the fall. Knox, he thought, was made for this.

  “Well, Omar,” Knox said. “You know the territory. You’re the Kleagle.” Omar only hoped that being Kleagle was going to be enough.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tuesday 17th—I never before thought the passion of fear so strong as I find it here among the people. It is really diverting, or would be so, to a disinterested observer, to see the rueful faces of the different persons that present themselves at my tent—some so agitated that they cannot speak—others cannot hold their tongues—some cannot sit still, but must be in constant motion, while others cannot walk. Several men, I am informed, on the night of the first shock deserted their families, and have not been heard of since. Encampments are formed of those that remain in the open fields, of 50 and 100 persons in each.

  Extract from a letter to a gentleman in Lexington, from his friend at New Madrid,
dated 16th December, 1811

  The day after the fish cleaning was devoted to cleaning up. Nick shoveled offal into trucks, to be carried off and used as fertilizer on the food crops that Frankland’s people had planted, after which Nick was then carried off with the rest of the Thessalonians to the Rails River for a bath. He was given soap, but it was intended more to clean his clothing than himself. Feeling like a Stone Age villager, he cleaned and pounded his clothes with a stick, then laid them out on grass to dry in the sun. Then he and the others washed the truck, after which Nick returned to the river to wash off the sweat. The smell of dead fish still clogged his nostrils. He felt as if he’d never get rid of it. After riding back to the camp, the Second Thessalonians were given the rest of the day off.

  Nick went in search of his family. The cooks had been up most of the night and hadn’t been excused their duties for the daytime, so he found Manon in one of the cook tents, wearily frying fish in a skillet. Stock pots full of fish bones bubbled on all sides.

  “Well,” she said, “at least we’ll have plenty of catfish to eat.” She looked up at Nick and lowered her voice. “I overheard some of them yesterday morning. Before the big fish kill, they were thinking of cutting way back on our calories. Except for nursing mothers, down to fifteen hundred a day. That’s over the line into slow starvation.”

  “And now?”

  “Now we’re okay. But it’s catfish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” I’ve got to get my family out of here, Nick thought. He didn’t like what he was hearing about the place from people like Tex and Olson, and he especially didn’t like what he was hearing from Martin, his so-called guide.

  There were too many guns in this camp, and too little sense.

  “The problem with massacres,” Knox said next morning, “is that they always have survivors. Always. Even if you set up machine guns outside and start mowing people down, some people will escape. It doesn’t stand to reason they should, but they always do. Somebody’s going to get away. Look at history.”

  Something twisted inside Omar’s gut. He put a hand to his stomach, grimaced. He needed more Akla-Seltzer, he thought.

  “What you’re telling me,” he said, “is that it’s hopeless.”

  “No, not at all. You can’t kill large numbers of Mud People all at once, that’s all I’m saying.” Knox flashed his jittery grin. “You have to sneak up on ’em. Just clip ’em in small groups, and with as much cooperation from the victims as possible.”

  They stood on the highway within sight of the A.M.E. camp. Omar had set up a roadblock here, and another farther down the highway. Any traffic between the two would move only under escort from Omar’s special deputies.

  Not that there was much traffic on the road to worry about. With the highway washed out to the north, there was no reason for anyone to travel in this area unless they were one of the half-dozen or so families that lived between here and the Floodway; and their movement was restricted, because there was so very little fuel remaining in the district, and any additional gasoline had to come in by helicopter. The roadblocks were Knox’s idea. He remembered something the Germans had done during the Holocaust. There was a Jewish ghetto in some big city, Warsaw or Prague or someplace, and an important tram line ran through the ghetto. The Germans couldn’t shut down the tram, because people needed it to get to their jobs, so they just painted the tram windows so people couldn’t see out, and made sure that soldiers were on board the trams to keep people from looking. What the people couldn’t see couldn’t bother them.

  Omar’s roadblocks operated on the same principle. People would pass the camp only when he wanted them to. He couldn’t paint over the windows of their vehicles, but he could keep them moving down the highway, under escort, at a brisk enough clip to keep them from seeing much.

  “You’ve got to control the information,” Knox had said. “Whatever story gets out, it’s got to be your story.”

  Omar’s story was that the camp was full of dangerous, armed felons. Camp inmates had shot a little girl and killed a local preacher who was only trying to help them. The killer of the preacher was still at large somewhere in the parish. People who got away weren’t refugees, they were escapees, or possibly even murderers. And for the good of the parish, these people had to be corralled by armed force. That was Omar’s story. And so far, no one had heard any other.

  A sudden pain clamped down on Omar’s midsection. He winced, put a hand to his stomach.

  “You okay, Omar?” Knox asked.

  “It’s the heat,” Omar said.

  “Hey, it’s only morning! That air-conditioning’s made you soft.”

  “I guess.”

  Knox looked at the camp again. “The question is, who’s going to be the most trouble,” Knox said. “It’ll be the young, healthy, unmarried men.” He grinned wolvishly. “Like me,” he said. “I’ve always been trouble. So what you do, see, is you separate the young men from the rest.”

  “How?”

  “Put them out on a work detail. And then when they don’t come back, you just tell everyone that they’re staying on site.”

  “It’s pretty boring in that camp,” Omar said. “Bet we’d get plenty of volunteers.”

  “You make sure none of your volunteers have family in the camp, and they won’t be missed.”

  “Tell them we’re building another camp,” Omar said. “For single men.”

  “That’s good,” Knox approved, “that’s good!”

  And send them, Omar thought, where the woodbine twineth.

  He would use Knox and the other Crusaders for that. Afterward Knox and his people could disappear. Either wherever they came from, or—if Omar needed a scapegoat—they would be found dead, killed in a gunfight with the last of the camp inmates.

  And David would be safe. Safe. Which was the only thing that really mattered.

  “Hi,” Jason said.

  “Hey there,” said Arlette. “Qa va?”

  He’d just come back from the river, and his clothing, the stains of which he had been mostly unable to remove by pounding, were still damp from having been washed. The crotch of his jeans was particularly damp and uncomfortable, and the wet seams scraped painfully along his thighs. At least he thought he smelled okay.

  Arlette sat crosslegged on the grass on the shady side of the church, supervising a group of small children at play. She wore a blue kerchief over her hair. Her birthday-present earrings dangled from her ears, though she wasn’t wearing the necklace—too valuable, he supposed, for a place like this, or too showy.

  “Locusts!” shouted Frankland over the PA. “Locusts with the faces of men! Right there in Revelations Nine!”

  Arlette’s eyes widened. “What happened to your hands?”

  Jason looked down at his wounds. “I never cleaned a fish before.”

  “That looks awful. Didn’t your guide help you?”

  “He didn’t seem to care.”

  “Cochon. Let me get you some bandages.” She rose smoothly, without using her hands, from her crosslegged position, took one of his wounded hands, led him into the back door of the church. There was a small storeroom there, free of the smells and sounds of the infants in the main body of the church. The room was filled with items taken from the church when it was converted to a refugee center: boxes of Sunday School texts, files, religious literature, a dusty box of sheet music atop an old upright piano. Arlette walked to a small table behind the side door, dropped Jason’s hand, and found a plastic box marked with a red cross under a small table.

  Jason watched as she browsed through the contents of the box. Frankland’s amplified voice went on about locusts going about the earth slaughtering its inhabitants.

  “At least you didn’t ask me about my nuclear reactor,” Jason said.

  “Mais non. Je reconnais des telescopes quand j’en vois un.” She raised her hands to mime a telescope, peered at him through her curled fingers for a laughing moment, then dropped into the box again.

  She be
gan to apply dressings to his hand. “Why are you talking French?” he asked.

  “I’m supposed to be in France right now, at school. I don’t want to get out of practice.” She watched as he tugged at the inseam of his jeans with his free hand. “You don’t look too comfortable in those clothes.”

  “They’re still damp from washing. Hey.” A thought occurred to him. “Don’t you have washing machines here? You were folding clothes yesterday—why did I have to wash my clothes in the river?”

  “We don’t have that many machines in working order—we have to pour the water into them with buckets—all we try to do is keep the towels and diapers clean. When eighty men get catfish all over themselves—” She grinned. “It’s the river. Give me your other hand.”

  “Where do the girls wash?”

  “The same place. When the men aren’t there.”

  Arlette peeled tape off the roll, eyed it, and cut it precisely with a small pair of scissors. “I don’t understand,” said a loud grownup voice, “why I can’t leave.”

  Arlette and Jason fell silent as the voice boomed through the side door. Jason caught Arlette’s eye, saw her surprised look, then a confirmation of his own first instinct.

  Listen. Be silent. If you don’t call attention to yourselves, maybe they’ll forget you’re here. Jason and Arlette knew these things. How to listen, how to hide, how not to be observed. Jason shuffled sideways, put the open door between himself and the outside. Arlette slipped farther into the storeroom to make room for him.

  The voice that answered was Frankland’s. “I never said you couldn’t leave, Brother Olson. What I said was—”