New Dark Ages

by Warren Kinsella

  Yet.

  We were sitting at a long table with two microphones in front of us that had been plugged into a cassette tape recorder. It wasn’t on, however. Across the table from us were Theresa Laverty, Pete Schenk, and FBI special agent Bembe Smith. We looked at Bembe.

  “How did you find out, guys?” Bembe asked us, looking very different in a collared shirt and tweed jacket. He still had his dreads, but his whole manner was different. Formal. Businesslike. Quiet.

  X shrugged. “Early on, I had a hunch. Called Stiff Records on the pretext of asking about the tour,” he said. “And they said they had never heard of you.”

  “Right,” Bembe said, grimacing. “Good detective work. Well done.” He paused. “I would hope you would give the FBI some credit for preventing any further loss of life. Special Agent Laverty and I feel that, by being with you on your tour, we helped to ensure there would be no more victims. Don’t you agree?”

  X said nothing. I shrugged.

  “So, boys,” Laverty said, sounding weary, and not so much our special super-duper cop friend anymore. “Danny O’Heran. What can you tell us?”

  “Not much,” I said. “A friend and then he stopped being our friend.”

  “Were you angry at him?” Schenk asked.

  X looked at him like he was mentally defective.

  “No, we thought it was fucking awesome that he joined the campaign of a racist,” I said, as sarcastic as I could muster. I paused. “What do you think, Detective? Of course we were unhappy. It was a huge fucking disappointment.”

  “Did you communicate with him after he joined Earl Turner’s campaign?” Bembe asked, looking right at X.

  X glared right back. “No,” he said. “Fuck him.”

  “Ever?”

  “Never.”

  “Boys, I am concerned you know more than you’ve told us. I’m concerned that you knew what was going to happen,” Laverty said.

  X had been waiting for this. “What could we have done, Special Agent, with your partner with us for every moment for the past few weeks? And, by the way, it certainly wouldn’t look good if the media found out that the FBI was right in the thick of it, would it?”

  Bembe and Laverty stared at him, astonished by his arrogance.

  X waited, then asked, “Are we under arrest?”

  “You know you’re not,” Laverty said, almost whispering.

  “Are we facing any charges?”

  “No,” Laverty said. “But we still have some questions.”

  “Here’s one,” Schenk said, clearly unimpressed that X and I weren’t in manacles and leg irons. “When you went to the State Theatre, did you go with the intent to harm Earl Turner?”

  “No. Hate and violence is Turner’s thing,” I said.

  “When you two were apprehended at the State Theatre, when we caught you, were you planning to do any harm to Earl Turner?” Schenk asked again.

  “Even if we wanted to, which we didn’t, how would we get anywhere near that Nazi rally? You guys had a million cops surrounding the place. We couldn’t have gotten near Turner if we tried. Which we didn’t.”

  Schenk was trying to intimidate us, but it wasn’t working. I didn’t feel intimidated in the slightest. In fact, I was now even feeling bit cocky. So, I asked them a question. “So, what happens to this crazy racist church, the Creators or whatever they’re called? Are you holding them somewhere, questioning them like you’re questioning us?”

  Laverty and Schenk exchanged a look. “Ben Klassen is under arrest for giving illegal political donations. He will likely face other charges,” Laverty said. “And most of the surviving so-called ministers in his Security Legions have been arrested for a string of assaults, weapons offences, and murder.”

  X smiled. “And the government gave them charitable tax status. Good work, feds.”

  They didn’t like that, of course, because they knew X was right. How the fuck could a bunch of racist, homicidal maniacs ever get certified as a “church” by the government? It was insane.

  Schenk was red in the face as he swore under his breath. Laverty and Bembe remained silent, knowing now they couldn’t touch us.

  When Laverty finally spoke, her question was directed at X. “So, when you left the tour, you came back to Portland?”

  X nodded.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “To see my family. To do some laundry.”

  Laverty looked completely miserable. She’d been outplayed. “You know, we plan to check everyone’s phone records. We will investigate where everyone has been,” she said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself. “Will we find anything you want to tell us about now?”

  “Check all you want, Special Agent,” X said. “Knock yourself out.”

  It was over. Everyone knew it.

  “Whatever happened is on you,” X said. “Not us. And now, unless you plan to arrest us, we’re leaving.”

  EPILOGUE

  Hello, you bastard.

  Hello, hello.

  It was the day before our little talk with Laverty, Schenk, and Bembe. It was before all that. It was still that night in fact — the night of our gig, the night of Earl Turner’s rally.

  And it was hard to believe, actually. It was like a bad fucking movie. But it was happening, right there, right then, right in front of our eyes. And my eyes hurt.

  It was that night. The night before the last day.

  I looked over at X, and his eyes — one pupil dilated, one not, as always — were kind of squinting. He looked seriously, seriously unhappy. Like he was going to punch the screen or something. I glanced down. He was clenching his fists. There was still blood on them from the fight outside the rally.

  The TV cast a bluish glow over our non-family’s family room. My mother had heard us come in, when we’d been dropped off by Theresa Laverty and Pete Schenk.

  My mother was standing behind us in the doorway to the kitchen, and she was watching the TV, too. She had her arms crossed, but she seemed to be nodding about some of the things being said. By him.

  I looked back at the TV, and Earl Turner was still behind the podium downtown. There was an American flag stuck to the front of the podium, and below that, in big block letters, was the word RIGHT. His slogan. His word.

  As usual, Earl Turner was wearing a white, button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up. As usual, his regimental tie was loose at the neck. Even though he had a jacket on, you could see he worked out. Behind him, an enthusiastic crowd of supporters were assembled. They were clapping and nodding their heads.

  X and me didn’t really watch Earl Turner. We mainly watched Danny O’Heran, just behind him. Danny was clapping and nodding his head, just like the rest of them.

  I could not fucking believe it. I hated it.

  And hate was what Earl Turner’s speech was all about, pretty much. It always was. Hate for refugees and immigrants and welfare moms and anyone, basically, who didn’t look like Earl Turner and his friends. Hate, dressed up in fine-sounding words about patriotism and family and country and all that bullshit. Hate was Earl Turner’s thing, and it had brought him to this, his big moment. The confetti and the balloons — all red, white, and blue — were ready to be dropped from above.

  Turner was coming to the big wind-up in the speech. He always ended it the same way.

  “America,” he said, his booming, macho voice a bit tiny on my mother’s old RCA television. “America is for Americans! America is for the righteous. America is for the bold. America is for those who believe in God, those who love God, those who fear God. America isn’t for everyone. America is for normal people, like us!” He paused, a big fist hovering above the podium. We couldn’t see them, but the crowd had started to chant: “RIGHT! RIGHT! RIGHT! RIGHT! RIGHT!”

  Midway through — and this had happened before — “RIGHT” changed, and they started to chant a different word: white.

  “WHITE! WHITE! WHITE! WHITE! WHITE!”

  Earl Turner smiled, that big square-jawed qu
arterback all-American douchebag smile of his, and waved for the crowd to settle down. “Right,” he said, then he paused. “Right is …”

  The crowd screamed as one, like a beast. “WHITE!”

  Earl Turner leaned into the gaggle of network microphones. He smiled. This was his moment. This was it. This was when he had won, and we all knew it. He knew it. Everyone knew it.

  He started to speak, the part of the speech about how God “created” America. At that point, Danny O’Heran stepped forward a bit. He was also wearing a dark jacket and white shirt and tie, just like Earl Turner. We could see his broad, still-freckled face clearly. At that moment, Turner saw him, too, and clapped a big hand on Danny’s shoulder. I held my breath.

  Watching him, I still could not believe it was my friend Danny. When he was drumming in my band, his stage name had been Danny Hate. He looked really different now.

  But I knew the truth, too. What was on his liver, ticking like a bomb.

  Danny and Earl Turner looked at each other and smiled, like a father and son, like some fucking Norman Rockwell painting. Behind me and X, my mother spoke, just one word: “Danny!”

  The crowd kept on cheering, calling out RIGHT and WHITE. They were screaming it.

  “Enough,” X said, as if Danny was there with us. “Do it.”

  And Danny did. It was like he had heard X, you know? It was like they were talking again, on their pay phones on the fringes of parking lots: planning and getting ready for this moment.

  Danny reached into his jacket and extracted his dad’s Heckler & Koch VP70. It was made of polymers, X had told me — plastic, basically — and was therefore pretty easy to get past the old metal detectors at the Earl Turner victory rally at the State Theatre.

  Danny still had one of those triangular Secret Service pins on the lapel of his jacket, too, and that meant he usually wasn’t even searched before getting onstage with his candidate. When he reached under his jacket, the little lapel pin flashed under the klieg lights. A little bright star.

  Earl Turner didn’t see it coming, but those of us watching on TV did. Danny quickly reached up and put the 9mm about six inches away from Earl Turner’s temple and pulled the trigger. There was an explosion of blood and brain matter, a cloud of gore, and Earl Turner dropped to the floor of the State Theatre. He dropped like the sack of shit that he was.

  There was a huge commotion, then, with people running, screaming. Lightning-fast, Danny pointed the gun down and fired two more shots into the prone Turner. At that point, the Secret Service guys started firing at him. He jerked around like a marionette and then disappeared too.

  The cameraman remembered why he was there, I guess, and he pointed the TV camera down and focused on the two bodies lying on the stage. At that point, you could see Danny’s face. He didn’t look like he was gone. He looked like he was sleeping. You could even make out some of his freckles. He didn’t look like he was sick or sad anymore. He looked peaceful.

  Earl Turner, meanwhile, had a section of his head blown away and his face was twisted into a grimace. He was as ugly in death as he had been in life. Earl Turner was dead.

  Goodbye, you bastard.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Ras Pierre; Rockin’ Al; Bjorn von Flapjack II; Snipe Yeomanson; the Hot Nasties; Shit From Hell; Davey “Shiller” Snot; Simon Harvey and Ugly Pop; Darryl Fine and the Bovine; Amrazment; Cherry Cola; the Linsmore; Jay Bentley of Bad Religion; John Tory; Kendra Martin and Allison Hirst and everyone at Dundurn; my students at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Law; Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!; Ed Tomwards; Scott Sellers; Jim Lindberg of Pennywise; Heather Barlow, Rob Gilmour, Arti Panday, Faaiz Bilal, Brittany Allison, Ashley Ramjohn and my film agent Andrew Tumilty and all the Daisy gang, past and present; Evan Solomon; Charles Adler; Lorna, my punk rock mom; our kids and their myriad partners — Emma, Ben, Sam, Jacob, Cheyenne, Ray, Jake and Lexi; and our punk rock grandson, Harry.

  And, naturally, thanks forever to Lisa, my best friend, my punk rock wife, and the carrier of my tiny black heart.

  W.K., TeeDot, 2018

  BOOK CREDITS

  Developmental Editor: Allison Hirst

  Project Editor: Jenny McWha

  Copy Editor: Catherine Dorton

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  DUNDURN

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  Production and Design: Sophie Paas-Lang