Listening to: Save Me, The Rigs
Drinking: Delator, Malbec, Argentina
There’s been a
lull in the writing that started during the holidays. Not writer’s block—if I
open enough documents I’m working on, I can find something to expand—but more
like I don’t want to get on my computer to start. More like, I’d rather read
Jennifer Egan or binge watch Fargo. My motivation to write has been zeroed out
and, if it wasn’t for writers’ workshop, I’d be hardly working at all.
Same with
queries. This publisher wants first 10, that agent wants first 50. A synopsis
that’s a long paragraph of 1500 words. A bio, three recent authors I’m
emulating, my marketing plan for the work I’m pitching, email or online form,
it’s all so depressing. I’d rather read and get lost than deal with that shit.
This excerpt is at
the end of chapter four, a dialog between two fascist white supremacists.
Since it was the business of
Pogoners to know everyone else’s business, it was no secret the Colonel had
succeeded in recruiting one soldier—Officer Randal Ossifer.
“What do you think of the hippie
scum ruinin this town? Our criminal spick mayor? Faggots and communists ruinin
everything?” Randal’s arm poked out of the window of his cruiser, a tube of ash
drooping toward countless butts in the rocks below.
“And he deceives those who
dwell on the earth,” the Colonel intoned, “by those signs which he was
granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth
to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived.”
“Whatever you said. Now, are you
going to answer my question?”
“Of course, it upsets me. As a
heterosexual White male, as a Christian. But I’m thinking of the big picture, a
real America where the sanctified rule over the subhumans who enrich them. You
know, Adam Smith. The way Jesus meant it to be.”
“I have no
idea what you’re talking about. I think you
think you’re going to take over the
country. Good luck with that. Maybe you should start small, though. Consider
starting with the town and work up from there.”
“Son, God wants the Holy Spirit at
war, not messing with the sinful business of politics. Evil must be punished.”
The Colonel had all the intensity of cold oatmeal. “‘Say to the land of
Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against you, and I will draw My sword
out of its sheath and cut off both righteous and wicked from you.’ A war is
coming and we’ll need brave Christian warriors, men not afraid to commit any
act in the service of the Lord. Lie. Cheat. Fornicate. Shoot a man in the back,
steal his water. “‘Therefore repent; or else I am coming to you quickly, and
I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth.’”
Randal sat with the Colonel’s
words for a moment. Not so much because the message resonated but because it
reminded him of why the preacher’s delivery had the effect of a tranquilizer
dart. “I guess you know your Bible. I never had time to read much. And
honestly, the Sword of God’s Mouth doesn’t make sense to me unless
you’re saying he has a sharp tongue. Believe me, I know plenty of smartasses,
deal with em every day. They’re punks. So what’s that?”
“A weapon that lays waste to
everything, instant death and desolation. The spirit of God vomited to cut down
his sinful creations. The Word in action.” Raising a finger as though preparing
to spin a round of pizza dough, it was the only gesture the Colonel knew to
tell others that yes, he was still talking, “Action.”
“Got it. But until you got God’s
mouth-sword in your hands, you probably shouldn’t be lookin down at the US
Government, at least not for your first stab at holy war. In case you missed
Waco or Ruby Ridge, they got you outgunned by a factor of… how many attack
helicopters do you have? Ships at sea? Jets in the air? Millions of guys
not paying for a week in the woods and not lookin like they spend the rest of
their time riding around in golf carts? None of them, but real soldiers?
You know, the guys who do the train-to-kill thing twenty-four-seven? Because
that’s what they get paid to do? Not fat-assed retards paying you
to pretend they’re badasses.”
“I’m not following you, now. ‘For the word of God is living and active and
sharper than any two-edged sword,’ you see. Active, not passive.”
“Right.” The Colonel wasn’t the
greatest company, but Randal decided his acquaintance was a holy man and
someone he could esteem on some level. While there were plenty of Pogoners
rabidly dedicated to law and order—most holding an
“it-was-better-when-people-knew-their-place” attitude—Randal hadn’t formed
bonds with any of them, mostly because he was uniformly disliked. At least the
Colonel sat and talked with him, offered him a cup of coffee, a sandwich, some
time to linger with and converse.
Throughout his life, Randal had
made a concerted effort to be utterly despicable. The kid who everyone agreed
smelled like pee, got off on tattling, a toddling schadenfreude indulged
gleefully and with feral malice. At first, the teachers at Pogo Springs
Elementary (actually, K-12) thought Randal was just a child who ratted out
other kids in order to please adults. They soon learned he was just as inclined
to turn around and tell on the teacher he’d just tattled to. “It’s the same
vodka my dad drinks. I saw the bottle in the drawer where she put Kenya
Sunshine’s stuffed Snoopy.” By the time he entered Pogo Springs High School
(actually, K-12), the entire town knew him for a sneak and a snake and someone
unaware of his own urine odor.
“Mr. Ossifer.” Principal Bill Angstrom stared
down his nose at Randal as though his beak were ready to pick up a mouse and
crush it. Randal had come to him about an English teacher smoking pot out in
the parking lot, and Bill was having none of it. “You’re a snitch and
everyone knows it. And while information is power, I don’t need anyone shining
a flashlight up my ass or giving my staff the same kind of proctological exam.
You have anything to tell me? Write it down and stick it in the suggestion box
outside the office along with all the ‘fuck you’ and ‘suck my balls’ love
letters I get. I’ll get to read your misguided missive, along with the
secretary and every student assistant in the office. Don’t sign your name, just
write, ‘Chickenshit’ and everyone will know who wrote it.” And then Principal
Angstrom leaned into Randal with every imposing six-foot-four inches of
himself. “And, if you let anyone know we talked? I’ll roast your nuts in a
toaster.”
When Randal told the school board
about the threat and “Chickenshit” and the image of stuffing a flashlight up
his principal’s ass, everyone laughed. “Well, hells bells boy, that’s just
Bill,” the superintendent responded while the rest of the board nodded and
chuckled. “He’s done more for this school for longer than you’ve been alive.
What have you done, you little sneak? You might want to reconsider what you
want in life while you still got skin to live in.”
Randal was livid, teenage hormonal
rage rattling him that justice had not been served. “Sneak?!? Another
threat! I’m reporting all of this to the state board! They’ll hear every word
of this so-called proceeding!”
“We went into Executive Session
the moment you leveled unsubstantiated allegations against a district employee.
There’s no recording.” Board members’ heads bobbed, grins of agreement cut into
their faces.
“Executive Session? No one told me about that!”
“Those are the rules, Mr. Ossifer.
Whether you like em or not.”
From an early age, Randal had
learned to like rules from a mother terrorized by a husband who held jobs as
poorly as his liquor. “Your father was supposed to be home by one,” his mother
would say as he stood next to her bed, wanting to snuggle but knowing it was
forbidden. “It’s three.”
“He gone be n trubba.”
“Yes. But not as much trouble as
we’ll be in if he finds us awake. Go back to bed. Get to sleep. And don’t get
up, no matter what you hear. Stay in your bed. Don’t get out of it until I say
you can. Those are the rules.”
Shouts, screams, things pounded,
all with mommy’s next morning black eye, puffy face, and cut lip made Randall
wonder what rules she must have broken.
After completing a state
law-enforcement course through the mail, Randal handed his certificate and application
to the Pogo Springs Police Department. As the secretary processed his
paperwork, she giggled thinking at how Bunny would react. With one cop
down—after the senile and incontinent 92-year-old Bear Barnstable unexpectedly
submitted his resignation—the mayor’s nuts were in a vice and Randal held the
grip. Faced with a significant loss of state and federal grant money for want
of a cop, Bunny had no choice but to hire the twerp.
Randal used his newfound authority
to compound the universal dislike and distrust of him. Within weeks after
Randal was hired, the mayor’s office was swamped with complaints about being
ticketed for laundry that blew off the line, fined for being in the park after
the posted hours, cited for having mud on a license plate.
“Get that weasel punk-ass bitch in
here!” Bunny screamed one morning after a delivery-truck driver was written up
for imperfect parking or something. “I want him in my office now! I know that little rat-fucker’s at
work because he followed my bike the entire way here!”
The mayor’s secretary/town clerk,
a cousin by his crazy Aunt Terri, made a call to PSPD to let her sister at the
cop shop know Bunny wasn’t prone to forget a new asshole for Randal was past
due. Within minutes, Randal was standing in the mayor’s office, looking at the
various pictures of people on, near, or completely apart from motorcycles.
“Listen, numbnuts. People in this
town get along because we don’t stick our noses up each other’s ass.” Bunny let
his long, black hair drape over beefy, tattooed arms.
“Yes mayor, sir. But there are laws.”
“Yeah, and you know em all. Codes,
ordinances… all that shit. And that makes it a huge pain in the ass for everyone.” The mayor raised his head and
narrowed his eyes as he burrowed his gaze into the cop standing before him.
“Which makes you a huge pain in the
ass for me. And, if I gotta deal with
a pain in my ass, I sure as shit don’t want it to be because of some bitch
weasel snitch I had to hire.”
Randal’s diffidence did nothing to
quell Bunny’s rage. “I’m just doing my job, Mayor.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one
before. Look, you’re a pig. And I don’t like pigs. Or you. And just when
I’d decided I couldn’t like you less, you turned in an application with some
bullshit certificate and became a pig and the biggest asshole in Swinger
County.” The mayor cracked open his Zippo and lit a cigarette, took a hard pull
on the butt then blew a huge cloud into Randall’s face.
“Can I get one of those?”
Randall’s voice gave no indication he’d heard the mayor’s rant.
In return, Bunny ignored Randall’s
request and instead growled, “You’re fuckin up and fuckin with the wrong
people.”
“Wrong people?” Randal’s eyes widened as his posture improved.
Bunny walked around his desk to
get right up in Randal’s grill, lifted the cop by his police-uniform shirt and
onto his toes, so he could look him straight in the eyes. “Get this. The last
person in the world you want to fuck with is me. Or my brothers.”
“Brothers? I heard you were an
only child.” Randal’s expression was grim but fearless.
“The Bandaleeros, dipshit. My
men. Affiliates, too. Goddammit, just any scooter trash. If he’s bad
news, I’ll take care of it. And shove your ticket book up your ass. Leave
people in town alone. The hippies say you’re constantly in their shit and
a lot of em are friends of mine. Quit bein a dickhead.” With the first
indication of a blubbering appeal, he tossed Randal out of his office with
force enough to send the pig stumbling past his cousin’s desk and spilling into
the hallway.
Pretty much banned from conducting
law-enforcement duties in town, Randal had taken to parking his cruiser in the
Colonel’s driveway, a well-groomed strip of gravel facing the frontage road
running along 144 and beneath the overpass. There, Randall found plenty of reasons
to pull people over, search a car and, at the very least, write a ticket. Given
the Colonel’s reputation as a religious lunatic who kept strange company and
greeted people with a shower of lead, Randal was surprised that several weeks
passed before the land’s owner paid him a visit. When the Colonel finally
appeared, he told Randal it was all about the cop’s direction.
“I knew your business wasn’t with
me but with that road down yonder. I’m glad for your service.” The bald, lank
Colonel kept his hands folded behind his back as he leaned into the cop
cruiser’s open window.
“And I heard you met everyone with
your guns a-blazin. Why not me?”
The Colonel took a deep breath
before mumbling his answer. “As I said, I could see your business was not with
me but with them.”
“Why would my business be with you? Whatcha done?”
Over the next two hours, Randal
missed two speeders and a truck with a broken taillight but began an odd
relationship with the crazed, white-supremacist preacher.
Raised by a pair of Jack Mormons,
Randal had never attended church much less claimed to be a believer. He felt if
there was any truth to it, there shouldn’t be a lot of mysteries
shrouding the explanation for how it all worked, that religion should be more
forthcoming and less furtive. What relationship he developed with the Colonel
had less to do with his own skepticism and desire to be a shit waffle than the
Colonel’s courtesy of not judging him but actually listening to and
giving him some respect.
However, after Randal returned from
Delaware, the dialog took on a new dynamic and it was Randal who mostly
directed the conversation’s trajectory. While Whisper’s post-Powerball
Thanksgiving soiree was in full swing, the Colonel got an earful of what
Randal’s new status wrought. “If what you’re preaching about comes down to a
personal relationship with Jesus, God, all that, let him into your heart and
you’re done, then I don’t understand why I gotta go somewhere every Sunday and
hear everyone else yappin about their
relationship with God. I couldn’t give two shits about someone else’s
relationship with God. It’s personal,
right?”
Stiff as the posts holding up his
roof’s overhang, the Colonel moaned out his reply. “It’s about The Word, son.
Sharing the light. Fellowship in tongues.”
“See? I don’t know what any of
that means. So why would I want to go somewhere every Sunday to hear a buncha that
shit when I could be out bustin some hippie faggot for sellin drugs? We all
serve The Lord in our own way, Colonel.”
Nearly a mile away across the valley,
the two could hear the revelers at Whisper’s Thanksgiving party, their whoops
and hollers and hearty laughs, their joyous appreciation of the moment with
each other. Standing on the porch of the Colonel’s modest cabin, the two drank
black coffee and stared across the cleft in the mountain, both grim-faced and
sour.
“Do you hear that bullshit?”
Randal spat, took a cigarette from his pack and lit it. “If I was to go over
there to start writin noise tickets? Check for drugs? Bunny would have my ass
ground into burger. Pounded by his criminal biker buddies because those filthy
hippies makin that racket are his customers.
See what I’m dealing with, here?”
“Son,” the Colonel’s voice taking
on no more emotion than a dry-cleaning ticket. “There’s evil everywhere, but
this is a trifle compared to what the Devil is using to pervert the purity of
our race. Weaken us and set the stage for war with demon aliens. These are
mostly White people up here. Race-traitors, every one of them, but they’ll see
the light in The Word. Leave them alone.”
Randal took a long draw from his
smoke, its glow lighting a face that was pinched and puckered. “I can’t.
They’re snotty, smart-mouthed perverts. They should all be locked up.”
“And they will be, one day. In
camps where they can be watched and preached to and made to work. But you’re
putting the cart before the horse, son.” The Colonel’s intonation had all the
range of a Jew’s harp. “The Lord has bigger plans for you, for us… for the
money He gave you. You’re rich. Glorify His name who gave you such bounty.”
“I got plans for this money, if
that’s what you’re sayin. And it includes you
and what you’re doin up here. We got some differences of opinion on some things
but the important stuff? On target.
In fact, there’s something I wanted to run by you. Which is I why I’m here. I
saw your lights on, that you was up, while I was on patrol.”
“Why do you do that, son? Stay on
patrol. With all that money you got, why don’t you quit the law-enforcement
business?”
“Because they’re all numbnuts down
there in my shop and if I quit, there’d be no one with the gumption or wits to
arrest folks. This town would become a goddamned drug orgy the moment I turned
in my badge. Filthy fuckin hippies,” pulling the cigarette from his lips,
Randal pushed a billow of smoke from his lungs to give himself enough space for
the emphasis of spitting. “And, I like
being a cop.”
“You like the authority? Upholding
the law? Seeing bad people brought to justice? Whatever justice means in this
sinful country of ours. And ensuring the safety of our White citizens?”
“Yeah. Plus seeing the stupid look
on faces when they don’t know the rules and gettin fucked for not knowin
em. All that. I’m gonna stay a cop and I’m even thinkin about using some money
to make upgrades to our department. But that’s not what my money is for.”
Randall sipped his coffee and then puckered his words. “And that’s what I came
here for, to talk about.”
“And what’s that, son?”
“I’m gonna buy you out.”
Randal sat satisfied with his
announcement and waited for the Colonel to respond, certain that the preacher
would ask what buy you out meant or
argue the sovereignty of ownership and rights and God’s plan. Instead, the
Colonel was taciturn, a null cipher of expression. Unable to wait the Colonel
out, Randal broke back in, “You rent from me.
And I get a huge tax break from it. You go from payin whatever you’re payin now
to a dollar a month and I write you off. We both
win.”
“But it’s my land. I own it.”
“No you don’t. The bank owns it.
Aliens and Jews, whatever. You’re always just a step ahead of foreclosure on
this place. I know because I learned how to find things out. I’m not just a
cop, I’m a detective.” The corners of Randall’s smirk lowered and mirrored the
dispassionate moon of the Colonel’s face. “Now, I’ll own it. And you can
do what you want with the money you’re not giving the Jews and aliens.”
The Colonel responded as though
he’d just been told that socks are nice, a good cushion between the shoe and
foot, sweat absorbent. “Why, son?”
Randal couldn’t contain his fire,
his blazing desire to burn the town down. “A mystery, Colonel, my mystery. I got enough money now. And I just might start playing God.”
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