Southern Cross Read online

  “Then what?”

  “The plate’s got nothing on it but eyes. A pair of honest-to-God eyeballs looking up at every guy who’s been giving Aldo shit about leaving the family business. Aldo goes to the door and says, “Arrivederci, paesani. I’ll be seeing you.” And walks out and keeps going. Ends up down where you are, I heard, living like a potentate. Gets no grief from anyone.”

  “Where’d he get the eyeballs?”

  “Owned an abattoir downstate—had his people collecting them for a month and putting them on ice. And that’s all I know about Aldo.”

  After some closing pleasantries, I hung up—it was time for the rally.

  The book indicated Hampton Park was in the north end of the city. What I hadn’t noticed until I was driving in that direction was that the park was right next to the Palisade. When I saw the gate was open to outsiders, I opted for a detour.

  Inside the fortified enclave, a series of alabaster buildings, topped by medieval battlements, ringed a parade ground whose accoutrements included a viewing stand, some Civil War canon, and even a vintage jet. The interior courtyards of the barracks quads were tiled in squares of red and white on which a handful of students were walking tours of discipline. The cadets striding briskly across the campus in their bright white shirts and service caps were sharp and shorn and stiff and serious—Prussian to the core. Despite their surface solemnity, they seemed happy to be just that.

  To an outsider like me, the place looked overly regimented and oppressively restrictive, but not necessarily sadistic. Behind the scrim of rectitude lay urges far less admirable, however, according to the school’s more current critics. Still, it was as easy to see why Alameda Smallings found the martial air alluring as it was why men didn’t think women belonged there.

  After two turns around the campus, I left the school and drove into the broad expanse of the adjacent park, the namesake of Wade Hampton, who had managed to be both a hero of the Confederacy and an enlightened racial healer thereafter, at least according to the guidebook. If Mr. Hampton’s history was apt, there wasn’t a city in the country that couldn’t benefit from his reincarnation.

  The park was huge, a series of grassy meadows surrounded by the hulking trunks of oak trees that loomed like brutal bullies above the more delicate physiques of magnolias and azaleas. Its amenities featured fountains and reflecting pools and footbridges, even a gazebo; its fauna seemed confined to ducks and pigeons. Several groups of people were scattered throughout the area, engaged in everything from sunning to soccer, but it wasn’t hard to tell where the action was—all I had to do was follow the cops.

  There must have been a hundred of them deployed in the park—afoot, on horseback, on motorcycles, in paddy wagons. A police helicopter hovered overhead; a bus full of reserves was stashed behind a hedge in case the day turned nasty. The foot patrols wore visored helmets and carried riot gear, their bearing alert but not provocative. For the most part, they seemed ready for mayhem and hoping for tranquillity, but the black Jewish police chief wasn’t taking any chances that ASP would start a riot.

  The police presence served as a flexible gasket between the two groups that had assembled in the center of the largest meadow in the park. The smaller was made up of the foot soldiers and sympathizers of the Alliance for Southern Pride, who numbered maybe thirty and were gathered around the gazebo. A hand-lettered banner strung between two trees advertised the event as sponsored by the Purification Brigade of ASP. An equally makeshift sound system buzzed and hummed in the background, whiny proof of its inadequacy. The swastika I’d seen on the door to Colin’s apartment and heard in the voice on the tapes was nowhere in evidence, proving that for all its fascist leanings, ASP was not without some savvy.

  The ASP adherents were the lesser of the adversaries, however. The larger number of participants were the curious and the counterprotesters, mostly young whites and middle-aged blacks, with a smattering of bearded and braless leftists sporting the clothes and cant of yesteryear sprinkled here and there for spice. The young people seemed more entertained than angered by the occasion, the blacks more sad than outraged; the leftists were content merely to be obvious. The opposition had both the gazebo and the racialists surrounded; the police were a smear of grape jelly between the layers of that unstable cake.

  Minutes after I arrived, someone started testing the sound system, and the protesters started singing “We Shall Overcome,” though not all of them knew the words. Careful to be perceived as nonaligned, I wandered through the crowd.

  The ASP adherents appeared to be mostly what is known as poor white trash—unlovely, uneducated, unhealthy, and conceivably unwanted by anyone but ASP. The women were either fantastically fat or reduced to skin and bone; the men were mostly brown and wiry, with narrow eyes and sullen mouths that bit down hard on cigarettes or leaked the dark brown blood of chewing tobacco. The children wearing camouflage costumes and holding tiny flags were the saddest sight of all—fanatics are best at subverting their kids.

  They seemed people from the fringe of the world, lacking the tools to change their station or even understand it. Estranged from everything but their dogs and their trucks and their guns, they must have looked at the families that frolicked on TV and the politicians who courted them every four years as creatures from another planet, or even as blood enemies. Which made it ironic that their anger was directed at the only sect in the nation more outcast than themselves. The subtext was sadly obvious—as bad as their lives might be, at least they were not black.

  I moved to the edge of the crowd, leery of assault from any source, including the police. After a while, I spotted Colin Hartman. He was moving through the crowd of allies, taking a collection from the hapless multitude, trying to pay the freight. The collection plate was a Nazi helmet; the pin on his shirt said THANK GOD FOR AIDS; the red letters on the black band around his upper arm read N.G.O.K. His head was shaved bald and his eyes were as bright as a beer commercial—this was as good as it got.

  As I neared the gazebo on my second pass, I found myself next to the last person I expected to encounter at a racist rally. She was dressed in slacks and a blouse and was wearing sensible shoes, but her makeup and coiffure were still out of haute couture.

  “Ms. Hendersen,” I said.

  “Mr. Tanner. What brings you out on such an occasion?”

  “I decided to see what the Klan’s been up to since Birth of a Nation. How about you?”

  She frowned at my flippancy. “My presence is not out of sympathy with the cause, I assure you.”

  “Then what is it out of?”

  Her instinct was to resist my prying, but she decided an explanation was called for. When it came, it was entirely lacking in the charm and chatter of lunchtime. “I’m a criminal lawyer, as you know.” She surveyed the crowd beyond us with what seemed to be distaste. “It will probably not come as a surprise when I tell you that several of my clients are in attendance this evening. I’m here in case they need me.”

  “Preventive justice. I like it.”

  “Let’s just say I’ve boned up on the elements of everything from police brutality to incitement to riot, and I’m prepared to offer assistance if called upon.”

  “Smacks a bit of barratry, doesn’t it?”

  For the first time, she exhibited the arrogance of the effective advocate. “Not even close.”

  We seemed about to get into a squabble when the sound system produced a squeak and a squeal, and a young man climbed onto the gazebo stage, grasped the microphone, manipulated it with the skill of a crooner, and prepared to begin his lecture.

  He was in his middle thirties, I guessed, an emaciated ascetic in army fatigues and combat boots, his hair shorn as close to his scalp as that of the cadets I’d seen just minutes earlier. Even from a distance, his eyes were bright with the ice of true conviction. He looked like one of those guys who hang around a college campus long after their class has graduated, locked in a fit of intellectual effort that has gone beyond all
bounds of sense. He wasn’t as young as I’d assumed when I’d heard him threaten me on the telephone, but after he’d spoken for a few minutes I decided he might have been smarter.

  “White Power!” he screamed suddenly, to introduce himself and his message, and jolted both groups to silence.

  After a moment of recuperation, half the crowd cheered and the other half jeered; the cops looked on with the impassivity that comes from leadership and training. When I looked to see the effect on Jane Jean, I discovered she was gone.

  “This rally is a demonstration of the strength and solidarity of the Alliance for Southern Pride,” he went on, his voice strained and urgent, his face contorted with the effort to make himself heard regardless of recalcitrant electronics or the dissents of his enemies.

  “Our movement is for white people only—colored are not welcome. How do you know you’re colored?” Bedford preened at his rhetoric. “It’s simple. If you can’t blush, you don’t have a conscience. If you don’t have a conscience—if you cannot show blood in your face—you Are. Not. White.

  “Let me be clear. If you’re not white, this rally is not for you, it is against you. Be on your way, mud peoples, and leave us to our business, which is to rescue the Southern Way of Life from the race traitors who seek to destroy it.”

  In his audience, pro and con expressions gave way to the rules of quantum physics. Human waves moved toward each other in silent surges, only to be pushed back by the police, who had lowered their face shields and raised their batons and closed ranks against their charges.

  After their assault was repulsed, the protestors began to sing “America.” In response, the ASP people roared, “White Power!” Onstage, the beaming interlocutor gave each group its head.

  “I am Forrest Bedford,” he shouted when the singing and chanting began to subside. “I am Commandant of the Purification Brigade and First Field Marshal of the Alliance for Southern Pride.

  “I am white.

  “I am Christian.

  “I am a patriot.

  “And I am mad.

  “Why am I mad? Because the Great White Race is under attack from alien, godless forces who are sworn to destroy it. Who is the enemy, you ask? ASP is here to tell you:

  “Your enemy is the traitorous politician who sells the white race down the river in exchange for bribes and payoffs from the investment bankers in Jew York City.

  “Your enemy is the shiftless nigger who lacks the intelligence and discipline to do anything but breed out of wedlock and suck welfare money out of the pockets of hardworking white people to finance his drugs and his degeneracy.

  “Your enemy is the lemon nigger from Asia who steals the white man’s genius to make cars and VCRs with slope slave labor, then insults us from behind a wall of money that was built with white men’s blood—maybe we should drop another one on them, people, this time in downtown Tokyo.

  “Your enemy is the banker who crushes God-fearing white people under a usurious load of debt so he can steal your property to finance the Zionist conspiracy to destroy our race.

  “Your enemy is the liberal dupe who shuts down military bases so America will lie helpless in the face of godless foreign devils while white Christian patriots are put out of work. Gorbachev is meeting with the Rothschilds even as we speak, people; Yeltsin is huddling with the Trilateral Commission while thousands of Russian Jews invade this country disguised as scientists and businessmen while in fact they are Zionist agents, determined to bring down our Christian nation.

  “Your enemy is the race mixer, the baby killer, the liberal, the queer, the tax collector, the debt dealer, the humanist, the environmentalist, the feminist, the peacenik. Your enemy is all around you, people—the niggers want your women, the Jews want your property, the slopes want your jobs, the feminists want your balls, and the Communists want your God.

  “How do we fight back? We fight with the sword of truth. Where do we find the truth? We find it in the Scriptures. The Bible tells us that White Power is God’s will. God does not want race mixing, ladies and gentlemen; God does not favor usury; God does not support the Communist Zionist conspiracy.

  “We know God is a racialist because we read it in Acts—‘And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.’

  “We know God despises the Jew York moneylender because we read it in Deuteronomy—‘thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother.’

  “We know He is sickened by the homosexual, because we read it in Leviticus—‘If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: They shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.’

  “We know feminism is evil, because Paul tells us so in Ephesians: ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.’

  “Heed the word of the Lord God Almighty.

  “What can you do to honor God’s Commandments? How can you save the Southern Way of Life? What you can do is join us. Wear our colors. Shave your head in mourning for your race. Heed the Lord’s instruction in Psalm 149: ‘Let the high praises of God be in your mouth, and a two-edged sword in your hand.’

  “The Purification Brigade of the Alliance for Southern Pride is the sword of the great Lord God. With God’s help, we have identified the enemies of the South, and we have warned them of their peril. If they do not surrender, if they persist in their evil actions, we will destroy them. One by one, they will fall. Little by little, the South will rise off its back and retake its place at the head of the bright white ranks of the warriors of Saxon Israel, the legitimate Sons of Adam, the chosen servants of the Lord.

  “Rise with ASP!

  “White Power!

  “Rise with ASP!

  “White Power!

  “Rise with ASP!

  “White Power!”

  Bedford’s chant was quickly taken up by the ASP adherents, only to be drowned out by counterprotesters singing hymns. The cops remained in the middle, brows knit with worry, bodies the wall keeping the antagonists apart. If an alien had dropped to earth from Mars, he would have assumed that the finest flowering of the master race was a black Charleston policeman with a helmet on his head.

  Minutes later, Bedford was losing his voice and the crowd was losing its ire. The counterprotesters began to wander off, satisfied that ASP was not going to become violent, disappointed that the rally had remained peaceful rather than erupting into something rash, which is to say something that would make the nightly news. Casting parting gestures of contempt, congratulating each other on the public proof of their morality, denouncing Bedford’s bunch as trash, the outer ring of opposition returned to their cars and drove off.

  The ASP supporters were past their peak as well. Bedford seemed to sense it, and his final flourish was an appeal for funds. It was an oddly pathetic request—whatever assets his flock might have possessed, money didn’t seem to be among them. When Colin Hartman made another sweep nearby, his helmet was less than half full.

  Bedford cast a final curse on the enemies of the South and a final paean to his race, then wrapped it up with a chorus of “Dixie.” When the song had ended and the cheers had died, he stepped off the stage to the plaudits of his brethren. He seemed to take them as his due, yet be somehow disappointed.

  As Bedford and his minions began to dismantle the sound equipment, I looked for Jane Jean Hendersen in the thinning crowd. When I didn’t find her, I strolled toward the site of my rendezvous with Bedford, still puzzled by her presence. She had said she was there to render legal aid. But if anything untoward had happened, she would have surely been a witness to it, which would have disqualified her from serving as counsel to a participant under the rules of legal ethics I was most familiar with.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The stadium was freshly painted, the outfield was trim and
lush, the banners were evocative of thrilling triumphs, and the nickname of the Charleston Rainbows frolicked in the mind. Spurred by the silent cheers of the invisible crowd and the pinstriped spirits that passed me on their way to the dugout, I drifted away from my days as a detective and back to my days as a first baseman.

  Seth was right—my suspension from school for stealing might have cost me a professional career. I’d been hitting .412 when I left, a dozen home runs, a bunch of RBIs, and I could dig a throw out of the dirt with the best of them. The scouts were definitely coming, not just to see me, admittedly, but I was on their list. And then I was banished for ten days, lost my stroke and my timing, the average dropped to .276 by the end of the season, and I was just another college jock whose athletic future lay behind him. But as with all such disappointments, I wondered if it mattered.

  The sound of footsteps crunching in gravel jarred me from my reverie. I turned to see the camouflaged figure of Forrest Bedford advancing on me like a drill sergeant in pursuit of a wayward troop. Swelled with righteousness, stoked by the adulation of his peers, wired by the contretemps he’d provoked, Bedford could have lit the Rainbows’ next night game with his eyes, and his stride could have carried him through a revetment.

  There was a scar on the point of his chin that suggested at least one object of his wrath might have taken exception. His skin suggested he lived below ground. His walk was stiff and ungainly, although the rolling shoulders and the elbows angled at his sides were an obvious attempt at swagger: Unlike the cadets at the Palisade, he wasn’t a congenital Prussian.

  He seemed less glad to see me than he should have been, given my imminent largess, so I tried to be ingratiating. “Ever play ball, Mr. Bedford?” I asked, glancing at the stadium at my back.

  Bedford would have none of it. “I haven’t played games since I read None Dare Call It Conspiracy when I was fifteen. Were you at the rally?”

  I occupied my role before I nodded. “I’m afraid your rhetoric was more impressive than your audience.”