Hunter

by Andrew Macdonald

  “Some of them must realize it,” Harry replied, “but queers are really not rational. They’re a lot like Jews in some ways: they don’t know when to stop pushing. In fact, a lot of them are Jews. But you’re an optimist if you believe that the public is anywhere near ready to start stamping the vermin out. That business with the blood-throwing up in New York was given a big play by the media, and it horrified a lot of folks, but it was only a fluke. You just watch; they’ll hardly raise a squawk six months or a year from now when their kids are forced to take classes in which they’re told that the gender of their sex partners is irrelevant and that the very worst thing they can do is hurt the feelings of someone with AIDS.”

  “C’mon, Harry,” Oscar responded testily, “you don’t really believe we’re the only people in the country who give a damn.”

  “No, I don’t. Millions of people — maybe as much as a quarter of the White population — are very unhappy about the way things are going. Not everyone believes what he’s told to believe. A lot of them would cheer if the earth would open and swallow every queer, every Jew, and every Black — but not one in ten thousand has the gumption or the guts to do anything to make that happen. They’ll make no sacrifices and take no chances, so what they believe isn’t all that important. It’s not for lack of the right ideas that our race is going under; it’s for lack of character.”

  “I won’t argue with your last statement,” Oscar responded, “but I don’t agree with your statistics. I don’t believe that men like that secretary’s husband with the shotgun are as rare as you think. I believe that there’re thousands more like him, and that they’d respond just as forcefully if we could motivate them. And then, after those thousands had set the example, hundreds of thousands more would come out of the woodwork.”

  “Well, I may be a little too pessimistic, but you’re way too optimistic,” Harry came back. “The only time you’ll find hundreds of thousands of White Americans turning on their enemies is when they’re convinced that it’s absolutely safe to do so. When there’s a Jew hanging from every lamp post, and they’re sure there’s no danger and it won’t cost them anything, they’ll come out and spit on the bodies, but that’s about all you can count on them for.”

  “You know,” Saul spoke up, “it’s not entirely a question of how many White men still have any character. It’s the right conditions as much as the right stuff inside a man that make him do the right thing. Under the right conditions the most miserable coward may become a hero and the most selfish egoist may sacrifice himself for a cause. There’s not much we can do to improve the American character in the time we’ve got. That’s a job that’ll take generations — after the revolution. But we may be able to do something about conditions, and it seems to me that’s what we ought to be thinking about.”

  “Unless you know something the rest of us don’t, we’re going to have about as hard a time trying to change conditions in this country as character,” Harry replied. “What do you think we can do?”

  “Well, I’m not sure,” was Saul’s answer. “But we already have changed the ideological climate a little. Who would have thought just three months ago that we’d have nearly nine million Christian Fundamentalists, who’ve been taught for the last 30 years that God wants them to go to bed with niggers, actually beginning to feel proud that they’re White and developing a real interest in their racial roots in Europe? Have you seen some of the mail we’ve been getting?”

  “Yeah. I am surprised at how well those thumpers have taken to your message. I think the opposition is too, but it won’t be very long before they recover from their surprise and start taking countermeasures. I hate to knock success, but I think we’ve moved way too fast. We should’ve spent two years doing what you’ve done in ten weeks, and we should have been a lot more subtle about it. Most of your audience may be absorbing your message without realizing where you’re headed, but you sure as hell aren’t fooling the Jews. I’m afraid we’ve blown our cover now and are going to have a lot harder time expanding our media resources. In fact, we may have a hard time holding on to what we’ve got. Listen to this.” Harry then read a clipping he had cut from the latest issue of the Jewish Week. It excoriated Saul’s program, not only for its subliminal racial message but for what were called the “anti-Semitic overtones” of his sermon on Ezra.

  “Heck, I didn’t say anything that should be construed as anti-Semitic,” Saul protested.

  “Sure you did,” Harry replied. “You said, in effect, that if it’s good for the Jews to avoid intermarriage, then it’s good for us too. You’re elevating us goyim to the same exalted level as the Chosen People. They regard that as lese majeste, the very worst sort of anti-Semitism, and they’re not about to forgive you for it.”

  The discussion continued for another hour, but Oscar took a less vigorous part in it than was his wont. He found himself agreeing with Harry’s judgment that they had moved too fast. Well, damn it, he would have been more cautious if he hadn’t felt that Harry was dragging his feet on the whole concept of using Saul’s program for ideological indoctrination. Harry had made him get his back up and push Saul just a bit harder than he otherwise would have, in order to prove his concept.

  The program could hardly be doing better. The mail and the money were pouring in. They’d had to hire another dozen women for processing the incoming mail, and two more of the Alliance’s local members were now involved full time in preparing the printed material which was sent out in response, ranging from computer-generated thank-you notes that looked like they had been handwritten by Saul himself to more serious reading material for those members of the television audience who seemed ready to have their consciousness raised further. One of Oscar’s most vexing chores recently had been to figure out what to do with all the money. He put most of it into six-month certificates of deposit for the time being, while he considered various mutual-fund and stock investment possibilities.

  At the back of Oscar’s mind, however, was the nagging fear that the whole enterprise was in jeopardy. They had gotten themselves into an exposed position without having any clear notion of what to do next. Saul’s comment about changing conditions in the country intrigued him, but he was as much at a loss as Saul was about how to do it, other than to continue cautiously raising the racial consciousness of a few million Christians. He went home that evening mildly depressed and worried.

  XXXIII

  Although Oscar already had seen tapes of Saul’s latest sermon three times at various stages of its development, he watched it again when it was broadcast over WZY-TV at eight o’clock, propped up in bed beside Adelaide. The racial message was slightly more subliminal this time than it had been the week before. Saul took the worsening drug situation as his theme, blaming the growing use of drugs in part on the loss of a sense of racial identity by Americans — again without actually mentioning race.

  The essence of his sermon was: “People used to feel that they belonged to a group of other people who were related to them in some way, people who looked like them and thought like them, people they felt a kinship to, whether it was a village or a whole nation back in Europe. That’s the way God designed the world. And people felt that they had an obligation to the group they were part of, certain standards of behavior they had to uphold. The whole group had pretty much the same values, the same standards. That’s the way God wanted it to be. But it’s no longer that way in America, unfortunately. A few evil but powerful men didn’t like God’s way. They decided America ought to become a ‘mixing pot’ of all different kinds of peoples, with every kind of behavior you can imagine. And that’s what it has become, because these evil men were able to pull the strings to make that happen. They defied God. And the result is that there are no longer any standards. No one feels any obligations. Everyone does just what he wants or what he thinks he can get away with. And that includes taking drugs. And that’s why the drug problem will be with us as long as we remain a ‘mixing pot.’ We’ll have the scourge of drug
s until we go back to God’s way.”

  That message was reinforced by the national news program which immediately followed Saul. There were two unusually sensational drug stories. One was about a running gun battle in Washington that afternoon between drug enforcement agents and Black and Colombian members of a drug gang. When their headquarters was raided several members of the gang fled in an automobile, with government agents in hot pursuit. The chase led down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House, where the gang’s car, its tires shot out, jumped the curb and crashed into the White House fence. Two of the gang members leaped from the car, seized a group of gawking tourists as hostages, and forced their way through the broken fence onto the White House grounds, where they immediately came under fire from Secret Service guards. In the ensuing shootout, all captured by the television cameras, the gang members and five of the tourists were killed.

  The other story involved the arrests of four of the highest-ranking officers of the Florida State Police on charges of providing protection for drug smugglers in return for bribes. The arrests were the culmination of a yearlong undercover investigation by the DEA. The four had helped to keep open a route which brought an estimated three billion dollars a year in drugs into the state from the Caribbean by providing the smugglers with full information on all relevant drug enforcement operations, and for their help they were paid millions of dollars by the drug cartel.

  The timing of the news could hardly have been better, Oscar thought with satisfaction.

  The final news story of the night was about the Middle East. The Israelis had committed another atrocity. After a group of Palestinian children had thrown stones at a car driven by a Jewish settler, he had enlisted the help of other armed settlers and conducted a vigilante raid on a nearby Palestinian village, killing more than a dozen of the inhabitants. The raid was during the day, when the Palestinian men were away at work, and so the victims were all women and children. The Jews were as self-righteous as usual about the incident, saying that they would use whatever degree of force they thought necessary to keep their Palestinian subjects pacified and that it was no business of the rest of the world anyway.

  Comments on the atrocity were sought from various spokesmen. The White House and the State Department hemmed and hawed, said that they regretted any acts of violence, and refused to condemn the Israelis. Then, surprisingly, spokesmen for two groups hostile to Israeli policies were interviewed. One was a former U.S. senator of Lebanese descent representing an Arab-American group; he merely repeated his oft-heard call for a cutoff of U.S. economic and military aid to Israel. The other was a left-wing British cleric, representing a Christian-Islamic interfaith group, who announced an international boycott of American-made goods, which was to last as long as the United States continued to supply Israel with money and weapons. “Moral men and women, whether Christian or Islamic, will no longer tolerate the affront to their consciences that support, no matter how indirect, for those who slaughter and oppress Palestinians entails. As long as the U.S. government finances that slaughter, all people of conscience will take pains to avoid financing the United States,” the cleric said. The interviewer did not seem to regard this boycott threat as anything to worry about: the organization behind it apparently was neither large nor powerful.

  The clergyman’s words stuck in Oscar’s mind, however, and he felt the germ of an idea beginning to sprout, when Adelaide threw aside the sheet, crawled to the foot of the bed, and stretched to turn off the TV. The view thus presented of her bare, smoothly rounded buttocks a mere yard before his face immediately drove all thoughts but one from his mind.

  The germ remained, however, and at the breakfast table the next morning he asked: “What do you think would happen, baby, if ten million Christians suddenly announced that they weren’t going to pay their taxes and were going to buy imported goods instead of U.S.-made goods whenever they had a choice — that they weren’t going to file 1040s if they were self-employed, that they were going to file for full refunds of everything withheld if they were wage earners, and that they were going to buy Hondas and Datsuns instead of Fords and Chevrolets — until the government promised never to send another cent to Israel?”

  “I suppose you’re talking about Saul’s audience. But how’d it get up to ten million? I thought it was more like seven and a half million.”

  “That was a month ago, before Caldwell and the rest jumped on him. I think it’s pretty close to ten million now. Nine and a half anyway.”

  After brief reflection Adelaide responded: “In normal times I doubt that it’d have much effect. But with things as tight as they are now, if that many people stopped buying U.S.-made cars it might bump unemployment up another fraction of a per cent. If they really didn’t pay their taxes, that might also push inflation up a little. Overall, I don’t think it would hurt the government enough to cause a change in policy toward Israel. But it might generate a commotion, especially when the government started putting so many people in jail for not paying taxes.”

  “Well, suppose there were an international boycott of U.S. products at the same time. Don’t you think that six or seven million Americans joining the boycott would give it a big boost and persuade a lot more foreigners to support it too?”

  “Maybe. Probably. If it reduced U.S. exports as much as, say, 25 per cent, it would push unemployment up another couple of points, and that would really hurt the government. But you aren’t thinking seriously about doing that, are you? I thought you went to a lot of effort to convince the Jews that Saul was pro-Israel, so he could get on the air. Won’t they cut him off right away if he comes out against Israel?”

  “I’m sure they would. But they may cut him off anyway. All I’m doing now is exploring various possibilities.”

  Oscar dropped the subject and turned the conversation to more concrete concerns: “Sweetheart, I think you should give the Pentagon your two-weeks notice today. I’ve got so many things that I need your help with now that it doesn’t make sense for you to keep your job.”

  “That’s fine with me. But if you believe Saul’s program may not last, don’t you think it would be risky for me to quit now? Shouldn’t I wait until we’re sure the money will keep coming in?”

  “Considering the times and what we’re doing, we can never be sure of anything more than a few days down the road, baby. We’re playing for big stakes now, and the 30 grand a year the government is paying you just doesn’t count for much. I’ve got more than eight million bucks in CDs stashed away from Saul’s broadcasts so far, and even if the Jews tried to cut him off next week we’d get another four or five million in donations before everything dried up.”

  “But that’s the League’s money. If we have a baby, it’d be nice to have some savings of our own.”

  “Sure it would, sweetheart. Actually, the money belongs to the American Faith Hour, Incorporated. That’s a non-profit corporation we set up just for Saul’s program, and I’m the chairman of the board. So far I haven’t drawn any salary, because we haven’t needed it. But we could put you on the payroll at the same salary you’re getting from the Pentagon, and then you could put it all in the bank. The principal consideration is that we’re at a decisive moment in history now, and we can’t afford to spend our time on anything irrelevant, anything that doesn’t make a difference. We have a chance now, maybe just a slim chance, to change the way things are going, to change the whole outcome. We have to give it everything we’ve got.”

  As he went about his work during the day Oscar’s mind was on other, more predictable and familiar matters: writing checks, planning the taping schedule for the next few broadcasts, interviewing a prospective new employee. It took a call from Colleen in the middle of the afternoon to bring him back to the mood of reckless urgency he had felt earlier.

  “They’re shutting us down, Oscar.” There was a tone of despair and resignation in Colleen’s voice.

  “Like hell they are! Tell me what you know.”

  Both Colleen a
nd Harry had left their former employment and were spending all their time on Saul’s program and related work. Colleen was the liaison agent with the television stations over which Saul’s sermons were broadcast. Colleen gave Oscar the details: “I’ve gotten eight calls so far today: Los Angeles, WARJ in Chicago, Seattle, and a lot more; they all say that they’re terminating their contracts with us. The Jews apparently have launched a coordinated, surprise raid on us. They’ve actually sent people around personally to threaten the non-Jewish station owners. They’re all caving in.”

  “What about the Gospel Time Network? They’re still with us, aren’t they?”

  “I’m sorry, Oscar. I’m so upset I forgot to mention them. Carl Hollis was the first to call this morning. He was too embarrassed to say much, but he was quite definite: the Gospel Time Network will carry no more of Saul’s sermons. He did say that the Jews had threatened to bankrupt the network if they didn’t cut Saul off.”

  “Well, what the hell! They can’t unilaterally cancel our contracts. We’ve paid most of them in advance.”

  “Technically, most of them can’t. They’re bound to give us the rest of the time specified in the contracts; then they can cancel. But I’m afraid that they’ll go ahead and try to cut us off now anyway, even if we threaten to sue them. They’re really frightened.”

  “All right, dammit! We’ll have their asses if they try that. I’ll talk to Bill right away.”

  Bill Carpenter was the League’s legal counselor. He already had gone over the contracts Oscar had with the broadcasters at the time they were negotiated. Oscar explained the situation briefly to him by telephone and then headed for his office. By the time he arrived Bill already had called two of the broadcasters and spoken to their lawyers. “I was pretty hard on them. I told them that we’d use every means at our disposal to hold them to their contracts, and that we’d pursue their assets to the ends of the earth if they screwed us. WMAB in Los Angeles was pretty hard-nosed; some foul-mouthed Jew lawyer there essentially told me to go fuck myself. The Gospel Time people were more reasonable. Their lawyer said he believed the board of directors would be willing to honor the existing contract, which runs for eight more weeks. He’s supposed to call me back before five. Overall, though, I suspect we’re going to have a hard time making stations stick to their commitments; most of them would rather face a lawsuit from us than a boycott by the Jews.”