Vaughn
I crept out of the house. It wasn’t a new situation to me, but I was extra careful – like I was leaving a crime scene.
It took a while getting out of the maze of suburban boulevards. I’d grown up in places like this, but the tree lined placidity sure as hell didn’t suit me anymore. It was a relief to emerge back out on the street of bars. They lay deserted at this hour and I tugged my colors tight around me as I made my way back to the
Volcano
. Viper sat just where I’d left him, his headlights tilted my way accusingly.
“Ah, shut up,” I said, clambering on. “They’re never gonna know.”
Still, it wasn’t till I’d rumbled a dozen blocks away that the queasy feeling in my stomach started to settle. Then I bothered to actually check my cellphone. Calix had left four texts. Thurge, two this morning, and hell, there was even one from Pop, asking if I was ready for the ceremony.
Christ, Vaughn, What were you thinking
?
Of all the days, I’d had to pick this one. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten, and that made it worse. Or maybe that explained it, in some messed up way. Maybe remembering Mom’s death had driven me crazy.
I thundered down the ramp onto the freeway, the wind singing at my ears. You couldn’t beat the feeling of that morning gust, sweet and cool without the sun high enough to beat down on you. It was almost the best part of being with a girl, the proud ride away the next day. Not this day though, and definitely not with this girl.
I tried over and over to rehash the night. What exactly about her had driven me to agitation? Was it something she’d said? No, I’d perked up the moment we bumped on my way in.
Did she look close to white? Hell, no. This was no case of mistaken identity – that girl was either black or something else mixed with black.
It wasn’t caused I’d been drunk either. I hadn’t blacked out. I remembered every detail on her juicy little body.
I revved the engine and shot down the lane. Fuck it, I wasn’t carrying hot gear anymore. The speed could at least keep my mind busy.
Why hadn’t Thurge stayed chill? We would have left together and I wouldn’t be stewing in this mess. History turned on stranger coincidences, though. I knew that.
Maybe if it’d been a longer ride, I might have pieced stuff together, but ten minutes took me out of Atlanta, and a few miles after that and I was rolling up to the club bar. The Iron Crossroads stood on its own near a few plots of farmland. What they were growing around here, I’d never figured out, but the rolling acres gave us a nice buffer zone. Only Mexicans would venture anywhere near on the other side of the fence, and they sure as hell weren’t likely to run to the police at any misbehavior they might see.
They had a new boy out front, a prospect by the name of Leonidas. Not his given name, I assumed. He tossed a shaggy nod as I stalked in past him. The insides were a sore sight after the
Volcano
, all dank and dark and full of well-worn wood. The tables lay bare and mostly unoccupied at this hour. The bar counter was manned though. Our bartender Ernie was handing off a beer to the last person I wanted to talk to at the moment.
“Well, well, well. My hero has returned,” Thurge said, perched bright and bushy on a bar stool.
“Everything go ok last night?” I asked.
“Why, those were the words aching to spill out of my mouth.”
“I’m serious, man.”
“The gear is good, brother,” he said, taking a big draw. “Now tell me where I can find what I’m seeking.”
He peered in so keen, it made me wish I’d actually planned out a lie. “They live in a gated compound,” I said. “Cameras and crap.”
“Ok.” He waited. “Where is it?”
“Fuck it.” I edged my head away from him. “It’s not worth the trouble.”
“That ain’t your call to make.”
“What do you want with those weak pieces of shit anyway? They don’t measure up to you.”
Thurge just shook his head, and I realized why we’d even stopped at the
Volcano
last night.
“Shit,” I said. “You were just looking for a fight, weren’t you?”
“And now it looks like I’ve been robbed of that chance.”
I sat down and told Ernie to pour a pint. “What’s go you riled up?” I asked leaning into my glass.
“Just felt like hammering the natural order into a few skulls. Consider it my sympathies on the eve of your mother’s death.”
“My mom wasn’t killed by fucking Indians,” I said.
“No, but their very presence here indicates a state of affairs that counts your dead mother as one of its victims.”
“I guess.”
Thurge hung silent over his empty glass. He’d take any excuse to incite violence – but at least the lie was a thoughtful one. Besides, his intentions in no way absolved me of my own actions. We drank in blissful silence, but it didn’t last long. He grew a grin and peeked over.
“So what did you end up doing last night? Or should I say, who?”
“What?”
“Don’t play coy, brother. You practically confessed you didn’t think chasing those darkies home was worth your time. So who was?”
I had a sudden flash of chocolate skin, poured out in rich dollops over those clean white sheets. I shook my head. A man should stand by his truths – but this one left no ground to stand on.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” I said. “I drank a bit more. That’s about it.”
Thurge sniffed the air. “Don’t tell a pussy hound he ain’t smelling pussy.”
I shrugged. “None that I can recall.” That was true enough. Despite my relative sobriety, last night was like a hot, wet blur of pleasure.
“Ah, I see,” he said, and his smile sank. “It was her, huh?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“That Aryan goddess I was sizing up. You had your head in that slit. It’s ok, I don’t blame you for riding her in my stead. ”
“Something like that.”
Thurge blew air out at me. “Can’t get a straight word out of you today. It’s black and white, brother. Did you fuck the waitress or not?”
Our faces lay leveled at each other, both of us tense. I’d never had cause to hold back from him before, and it was a hard thing trying to get the ‘Yes’ out of my mouth.
Calix picked that moment to burst through the doors. He had on his jacket, black jeans with chains trailing out the pockets and a face like a raincloud. He also happened to be holding a wrapped bouquet of purple carnations. I owed him for this rescue, but all I could do was chuckle.
“You’re not ready,” he said.
“I’m presentable.”
“No you’re not.” He came over and plucked the pint that Ernie had already poured for him. “Wash up, you look like shit.”
I dusted myself down with a napkin and it came back grey with dust. I rolled it crumpled at Calix. “Happy?”
He stared me down over the brim of his glass. We shared the same crystal blue eyes, but not much else. Where my face ran long and sharp, his looked like the top of a railroad spike, square and bulky and rugged. He always had a stern look on, like he were my Pop instead of my big brother, and it looked as severe as I’d ever seen it.
“You really want Mom seeing you like this?”
“She’s not gonna see me, bro.”
His eyes tightened an instant, but then he shrugged. “You’re right. Fuck it. Why even bother paying our respects to dirt.” He faced the bar and took long focused sips.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “I want to be there today. That’s what I want to do. My intention’s got to matter more than this surface shit right? If you think you owe her a fresh face and a floral arrangement, then you do that. But that’s not me.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”
He went back to his thoughtful sips. This day had always been harder for him. He was eight when she died. I’d been three. He knew what he’d lost that day. I only had a lone memory of a bubbling woman’s laugh at my back as I rode a tricycle through the house. I’d run it through my head so many times these past twenty years, I couldn’t even be sure it was real.
Calix broke out of his thoughts and looked over me. “Fine. Do it for Pop then.”
There was no use making a fuss over this. I keep playing this game, and he might start asking just what exactly had resulted in me stepping into this day looking so worn.
I shoved off to the bathroom. My eyes were red and sat in dark circles. I smirked and wondered if that girl hadn’t just rubbed off on me when I buried my face in those pillowy breasts. A prick of heat lighted up below and I doused myself with cold water. What the hell was I thinking? Going after her had been foolish enough, and now my mind still lingered there?
On this of all days. Fuck, if it was my intentions that counted, then I was still a piece of shit.
Calix was at the door when I got back. He stepped out, and I knocked back the rest of my beer and followed. We straddled our hogs and rumbled through the farmland, past orchards and plantations. Lines of extra dark Mexicans bustled across the land, just throngs and throngs of them. Not another white face around.
The Storm’s Soldiers were to be vanguard of a new white nation, but we couldn’t even find a place for our headquarters without other races around. It was a quandary I’d often pondered, when Thurge or Calix or one of the others would boast about our ever approaching victory in freeing ourselves from the shackles of our mongrel society. It was gonna be a pretty small nation if it was anywhere around here.
We did run guns, but they were meant for protection, not attack. The distinction didn’t matter much to some, but for me it was everything. I would fight if it came to that, but only to preserve ourselves, not shove change on others. Otherwise we were no better than African warlords, endlessly murdering and raping. I’d studied war enough to know rebellion wasn’t a real option anyway.
The farms gave way to forest, and soon after we turned up a tiny two lane road and rumbled up towards cemetery gates. A couple other cars were parked in a dirt clearing outside, but then I saw Pop’s faded blue sedan. As we parked, the old man himself rose up off a park bench and came out. With his black suit, severe look and full beard, he could have passed for a mortician.
“Ya boys are late,” he said, as we strode up together.
“Time’s fuzzy on a Saturday morning, Pop,” I said.
“Hmph.” He eyed the flowers and patted Calix on the shoulder. “Those were her favorite.”
“I know.”
They set off into the greens together. I didn’t mind tagging back. I’d never really owned this moment like they did. I’d essentially come alive in a world without Dolores Black, but her loss had been a rebirth for these two.
Mom’s grave sat under a lone tree that was starting to shed orange leaves. Calix brushed them away and lay the bouquet by her headstone. We stood across them from Pop and breathed in the thick autumn day.
After a while, the old man began to talk.
“My dear Dolores, your sons and I are here today because we have not forgotten. We have not forgotten the warmth that left our lives with your passing. We have not forgotten that last morning, twenty years ago, when you were taken from our lives. And we will never forgot the lesson your murder so brutally taught us. Good folk will always be at the mercy of the bad, so long as we are forced to coexist.”
Calix’s eyes held shut in firm remembrance. I stared at the silent green earth and could only wonder about the woman who lay below.
“Thankfully,” Pop went on. “The good lord drew a distinction for us by marking those who should live together by the color of their skin. We only have to open our eyes and see the truth. The truth is spreading, my dear. I fear I’ll join your side before it reaches its end, but the boys here will surely live in a world, where the lines are drawn between black and white. Where no one will ever have to suffer as you did, and feel such loss as we did.”
The grass rustled in polite applause. Calix bowed deeper, scrunched his eyes shut tighter, maybe afraid of what might come out of if they opened. I’d used to copy his motions when I was young to try and feel sad, the same way he did. These days I just stewed in the swamp this anniversary made me feel. I wondered – not for the first time – if these were the words Mom would want to hear.
I’d heard the same speech in its many forms over the past dozen years, but watching the two of them finding peace in it just churned my own stomach even more. There was no room for what happened last night. The line was clear, and yesterday had been a transgression of the highest order. It would have to be a secret that I held till I died.
That wasn’t what bothered me though. What really made this into a mess was that despite this realization, despite the fact that I stood before the mother taken from me before I even really met her, despite the words I’d just heard, I hadn’t been able to help myself.
The whole time, I’d been thinking about that waitress. About what she might say if she saw just exactly who she’d gotten into bed with.
CHAPTER FIVE
Meagan
I groaned awake, but quickly sped up when I saw just how much we’d messed up Tara’s room. I was going to have to run downtown and call in the freaking CDC to decontaminate this place.