"Shut up," Bode Gazzer slurred, " 'fore I puke on your shoes."
"Go right ahead, brother. I'm in love."
"Like hell."
"I'm in love, and I got a mission."
"Don't you start!"
"No," Chub said, "don't youtry and stop me."
To find out if the waitress was right about the militia's name, they stopped at a music store in a Kendall mall. Drowsily Bode pawed through the racks until he came across proof: A compact disc called Nocturnal Omission,recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, by the White Rebel Brotherhood. Bode was aghast to see that three of the five band members were Negroes. Even Chub said: "That ain't funny."
Bode shoplifted a half dozen of the CDs, which he shot up good with the TEC-9 after they returned to Chub's trailer. They arranged it like a skeet range, Chub tossing the discs high in the air while Bode blasted away. They quit when the gun jammed. Chub unfolded a pair of frayed lawn chairs and made a fire in a rusty oil drum. Bode complained that his beer buzz was wearing off, so Chub opened a bottle of cheap vodka, which they passed back and forth while the stars came out.
Eventually Chub said, "I b'lieve our militia needs a new name."
"I'm way ahead a you." Bode cocked the bottle to his lips. "The White Clarion Aryans. It just now come to me."
"Well, I like it," said Chub, although he wasn't certain what "clarion" meant. He believed it was mentioned in a Christmas song, perhaps in connection with angels.
"Can we call us the WC ... ," and then he faltered, trying to recall if Aryan was spelled with an Eor an A.
Bode Gazzer said, "WCA. Don't see why not."
"Because otherwise it's kind of a mouthful."
"No more 'n the first one."
"But hey, that's cool," Chub said.
White Clarion Aryans.He sure hoped no smart-ass rock bands or rappers or other patriot tribes had already thought of the name.
From the lawn chair Bode rose in his rumpled camos and lifted the now-empty vodka bottle to the sky. "Here's to the motherfuckin' WCA. Ready, locked and loaded."
"Damn right," said Chub. "The WCA."
At that moment the young man called Shiner, glazed by Valium, was admiring the letters W.R.B.that were freshly tattooed in Iron Cross style script across his left biceps. Etched below the initials was a screaming eagle with a blazing rifle locked in its talons.
The tattoo artist worked out of a Harley joint in Vero Beach, Shiner's first stop on his way south to Florida City, where he planned to hook up with his new white brothers. He had quit the Grab N'Go, leaving on a high note Mr. Singh, the owner, demanding to know why Shiner's Impala was moored in the store's only handicap space. And Shiner, standing tall behind the counter: "I got me a permit."
"Yes, but I do not understand."
"Right there on the rearview. See?"
"Yes, yes, but you are not crippled. The police will come."
Shiner, coughing theatrically: "I got a bad lung."
"You are not crippled."
"Disabled is what I am. They's a difference. From the army is where I hurt my lung."
And Mr. Singh, waving his slender brown arms, hurrying outside to more closely inspect the wheelchair insignia, piping: "Where you get that? How? Tell me right now please."
Shiner beaming, the little man's reaction being a testament to Chub's skill as a forger.
Saying to Mr. Singh: "It's the real deal, boss."
"Yes, yes, but how? You are not crippled or disabled or nothing, and don't lie to me nonsense. Now move the car."
And Shiner replying: "That's how you treat a handicap? Then I quit, raghead."
Grabbing three hundred-dollar bills from the register, then elbowing his way past Mr. Singh, who was protesting: "You, boy, put the money back! Put the money back!"
Yammering about the videotape Shiner had swiped, on Bodean Gazzer's instruction, from the store's slow-speed security camera in case (Bode explained) the cassette hadn't yet rewound and taped over the surveillance video from November 25, the date JoLayne Lucks bought her lottery numbers.
Bode Gazzer had emphasized to Shiner the importance of the tape, should the authorities question how they'd come to possess the Grange ticket. The camera could prove they didn't enter the store until the day afterthe Lotto drawing.
So, shortly after Chub and Bode had departed, Shiner obediently removed the incriminating video from Mr. Singh's recorder and replaced it with a blank. Shiner wondered, as he gunned the Impala past the Grange city limits, how Mr. Singh learned about the switch. Normally the little hump didn't check the VCR unless there'd been a robbery.
Shiner would have been more properly alarmed had he known that Mr. Singh had been visited by the same nosy man who'd accompanied JoLayne Lucks to Shiner's house. The man named Tom. He'd persuaded Mr. Singh to check the Grab N'Go's security camera, at which time they'd found that the surveillance tape from the weekend had been swapped for a new one.
Shiner's misgivings about the video theft were fleeting, for soon he was absorbed in the tattooing process. It was performed by a bearded shirtless biker whose nipples were pierced with silver skull pins. When the last indigo turn of the Bwas completed, the biker put down the needle and jerked the cord out of the wall socket. Shiner couldn't stop grinning, even when the biker roughly swabbed his arm with alcohol, which stung like a mother.
What a awesome eagle! Shiner marveled. He couldn't wait to show Bode and Chub.
Pointing at the martial lettering, Shiner asked the biker: "Know what WRBstands for?"
"Shit, yeah. I got all their albums."
"No," said Shiner, "not the band."
"Then what?"
"You'll find out pretty soon."
The biker didn't like wise guys. "I can't hardly wait."
Shiner said: "Here's a hint: It's in the Second Amendment."
The biker stood up and casually kicked the tattoo stool into a corner. "I got a hint for you, too, jackoff: Gimme my money and move your cherry white ass down the road."
Demencio was tinkering with the weeping Madonna when the doorbell rang. There stood JoLayne Lucks with a tall, clean-cut white man. JoLayne carried one end of the aquarium, the white man had the other.
"Evening," she said to Demencio, who could do nothing but invite them in.
"Trish is at the grocery," he said, pointlessly.
They set the aquarium on the floor, next to Demencio's golf clubs. The journey up the steps had tilted all the little turtles to one end of the tank. JoLayne Lucks said: "Meet my friend Tom Krome. Tom, this is Demencio."
The men shook hands; Krome scrutinizing the decapitated Madonna, Demencio eyeing the agitated cooters.
"Whatcha up to?" JoLayne asked.
"No big deal. One of her eyeholes got clogged." Demencio knew lying would be a waste of energy. It was all there, spread out on the living room carpet for any fool to see the disassembled statue, the tubes, the rubber pump.
JoLayne said, "So that's how you make her cry."
"That's how we do it."
The man named Tom was curious about the bottle of perfume.
"Korean knockoff," Demencio said, "but a good one. See, I try to make the tears smell nice. Pilgrims go for that."
"That's a fine idea," said JoLayne, though her friend Tom looked doubtful. She told Demencio she had a proposition.
"I need you and Trish to watch over the turtles until I get back. There's a bag of fresh romaine in the car, and I'll leave you money for more."
Demencio said, "Where you goin', JoLayne?"
"I've got some business in Miami."
"Lottery business, I bet."
Tom Krome spoke up: "What've you heard?"
"The ticket got lost, is what I heard," said Demencio.
JoLayne Lucks promised to reveal the whole story when she returned to Grange. "And I sincerely apologize for being so mysterious, but you'll understand when the time comes."