“I think so,” Omar agreed. He turned to Ozie and said, “Hey, I just wanted to say thanks. This is a great party, and I just wanted to thank you for your help, and for your support during the election. Everybody around here knows that there’s nothing like an Ozie Welks shrimp boil.”
“I just want you to do right by us now you’ve got yourself elected,” Ozie said. He was a powerful man, with a lumber-jack’s arms and shoulders, and the USMC eagle-and-globe tattooed on one bicep and
“Semper Fidelis” on the other. His customers cut up rough sometimes—pretty often, to tell the truth—but he never needed to employ a man at the door. He could fling a man out of his bar so efficiently that the drunk was usually bouncing in the parking lot before the other customers even had time to blink.
“I’ll do as much as I can,” Omar said. “But you know, with all these damn Jew reporters in town, it’s going to be hard.”
“I hear you,” Ozie said.
Sorrel touched Omar’s arm. “I’m going to be running an editorial this Saturday on welfare dependency,” he said. “It should please you.”
Omar looked at the newspaperman. “Welfare dependency, huh?” he said.
“Yeah. You know, how we’ve been subsidizing bad behaviors all these years.”
“Uh-huh.” Omar nodded. “You mean like if we stop giving money to niggers, they’ll go someplace else?
Something like that?”
“Well, not in so many words.” Sorrel winked as if he were confiding a state secret. “You’re going to like it.”
“So I’m going to like it, as opposed to all the editorials you’ve been running which I didn’t like.” Sorrel made a face. “Sorry, Omar. But you know a paper’s gotta please its advertisers. And the folks who pay my bills weren’t betting on you winning the election.”
Omar looked at the publisher. “You betting on me now, Sorrel?”
Sorrel gave his high-pitched giggle. “I reckon I know a winner when I see one,” he said.
“Well,” Omar said. “God bless the press.”
He tipped his beer toward Ozie in salute, then made his way toward the back of the crowded bar. Sorrel, he had discovered, was not untypical. People who had despised him, or spoken against him, were now clustering around pretending they’d been his secret friends all along. A couple of the sheriff’s deputies, and one of the jailers, standoffish till now, had asked him for information about joining the Klan. Miz LaGrande was more discreet about it, with her hand-written invitation on her special stationery, but Omar could tell what she was up to. People were beginning to realize that the old centers of power in the parish were just about played out, and that there was a new force in the parish. They were beginning to cluster around the new power, partly because they smelled advantage, partly because everyone liked a winner.
Omar was perfectly willing to use these people, but he figured he knew just how far to trust them. He stepped out the back door into the dusk. People had spilled out of the crowded bar and onto the grass behind, clustered into the circle of light cast by a yard light set high on a power pole. Wild shadows flickered over the crowd as bats dove again and again at the insects clustered around the light. The day’s heat was still powerful, but with the setting of the sun it had lost its anger. Omar paused on the grass to sip his beer, and Merle caught up to him, “I spoke to D.R. about that camp meeting matter,” he said. “I squared it.”
“Thanks,” Omar said. “I don’t want people scared of losing their incomes just ’cause I got elected.”
“Not our people, anyway.”
“No.”
“And I think I calmed Jedthus down. Though it’s hard to tell with Jedthus.” Omar frowned. “I know.”
Merle grinned. “Hey, wasn’t it nice of the Grand Wizard to turn up?”
“Yep.” Omar tipped his beer back, let the cool drink slide down his throat.
“He said he wanted to speak with you privately, if you can get away.”
“Yeah, sure.” Omar wiped his mouth. “Do you know where he is?”
“Talking to some folks over in the parking lot.”
“Right.” He put a hand on Merle’s shoulder and grinned. “We’re doin’ good, ain’t we?” Merle grinned back. “You bet, boss.”
Omar crossed to the gravel parking lot and found the Grand Wizard perched on the tailgate of his camper pickup, talking to some of the locals. He was a small man, balding, who dressed neatly and wore rimless spectacles. He was not much of a public speaker, and even the white satins he wore on formal occasions did little more than make him look like a grocery clerk decked out for Halloween. He had risen to his position as head of the Klan—this particular Klan anyhow—by virtue of being a tireless organizer. He ran things because it was clear that nobody else would do it as well, or as energetically. In his civilian life, he ran a bail bond agency in Meridian, Mississippi.
“Hi, Earl,” Omar said.
The Grand Wizard looked up and smiled. “Damn if it ain’t a fine day,” he said. “I was tellin’ the boys here how good you looked on television.”
“Knowing how to use the media,” Omar said, “that’s half the battle right there.”
“That’s right.” The Grand Wizard looked down at the ice in his plastic go-cup and gave it a meditative shake. “That’s where the Klan’s always been strong, you know. The uniforms. The burning crosses. The flags. They strike the eye and the heart. They makes you feel something.”
“That’s why I took the oath in front of the statue,” Omar said.
The Grand Wizard gave a sage nod. “That’s right,” he said. “Give everyone something to see and think about. The Mourning Confederate. The Cause that our people fought and died for. The Cause that still lives in our hearts. It speaks to everyone here.”
“Amen,” one of the boys said.
“We send signals to our people,” Omar said. “The media and the others read it however they like, but our people know the message we’re sending.”
“That’s right.” The Grand Wizard nodded.
“Merle said you wanted to talk to me or something?” Omar said.
“Oh, yeah.” The Grand Wizard slid off his tailgate to the ground. “Now if you gentlemen will excuse us…”
Omar and the Grand Wizard walked off to the side of the parking lot, where rusty barb wire drooped under the glossy weight of Virginia creeper. The sound of “Diggy Diggy Low” grated up from Ozie’s, where the fiddler was kicking up a storm.
“I was wondering if you could address our big Klanvention on Labor Day,” the Grand Wizard began.
“Sure,” Omar said.
For years, white supremacists had a big Labor Day meeting in Stone Mountain, Georgia. But the Grand Wizard had quarreled with the Stone Mountain organizers, and he’d started his own Labor Day meeting in Mississippi. He was always working hard to get more of the troops to turn out to his Klanvention than to the other meeting.
The Grand Wizard did not march to anyone else’s drum. He was the leader, and that was that. And if other people didn’t like it, they could just go to Stone Mountain.
Which brought to mind another problem, Omar thought. Whenever anyone in the Klan had challenged the Grand Wizard’s authority, the Grand Wizard had succeeded in cutting them off or driving them out of the organization.
Omar was now a good deal more famous than the Grand Wizard would ever be. If he wanted to take control of the entire Klan, Omar could probably do it.
But he didn’t want to become the new Grand Wizard. King Kleagle of Louisiana, as far as Omar was concerned, was quite enough work. Earl could stay in his office in Meridian and organize and speechify and push papers forever, and with Omar’s blessing.