Omar wondered if the Grand Wizard understood this. He should find the moment, he told himself, and reassure the man.
“You come to the Klanvention,” the Grand Wizard was saying, “we’ll get our message on TV. And every time we get media attention, we get more members.” The Grand Wizard grinned out into the night. His teeth were small, like a child’s, and perfectly formed. “The liberal media do us a favor every time they run a story on us. It’s only when they ignore us that people lose interest.” Omar nodded. “I noticed that there were a lot of people in this parish that didn’t care to know me till I got on television. It’s like being on TV makes you more real somehow.”
“It’s that symbol thing, like I said earlier. They see you standing up for something.” Omar suspected there was more to it than that, that maybe television had changed people’s ideas of what was real, but he was more interested in what the Grand Wizard was getting to. There wasn’t any reason to take Omar aside just to be talking about speaking engagements.
“I’ve got some other requests for you to speak, but they’re not from our people, so I can’t judge.”
“Just forward ’em to me,” Omar said.
“I’ll do that.”
The Grand Wizard paused, hands in his pockets, and glanced around.
“I met a fella the other day you might want to talk to,” he said. “His name’s Knox. Micah Knox. You ever heard of him?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
The Grand Wizard’s foot toyed with the butt-end of an old brown beer bottle half hidden in the creeper.
“He belongs to a group called the Crusaders National of the Tabernacle of Christ. He’s got some interesting views about, you know, the situation. Very well informed. He’s on a sort of tour of the country, and you might want to have him give a talk to your boys here.”
Omar vaguely remembered hearing about the Tabernacle of Christ—they were some kind of Western group, he thought—but there were so many little groups on his end of the political spectrum that he had trouble sorting one out from another. It was hard enough just keeping track of the sixty-odd groups that called themselves the Klan.
“He doesn’t charge or anything,” the Grand Wizard added, misinterpreting Omar’s hesitation. “He’s just trying to make contacts.”
“He can come by if he wants, I guess,” Omar said.
“This isn’t a matter for an open meeting or anything,” the Grand Wizard said. “No cameras, no reporters. Just you and Knox and Merle and a few of the boys you best trust.”
Omar gave him a sharp look. “Earl, is there a reason this Knox is under cover?” The Grand Wizard gave a little shake of his head as he rolled the old beer bottle under his sole. “No, no. What I’m saying is that this boy is radical. People who haven’t already given their lives completely to the Cause might misunderstand his message. We wouldn’t want that. That’s all.”
“Okay, then,” Omar said. “He can say whatever he likes, as long as he’s not planning on doing anything radical while he’s here.”
The Grand Wizard kicked the beer bottle. Restrained by the creeper, it hopped about three inches, then came to a stop, edge-side up. The Grand Wizard sighed, then began to amble back toward Ozie’s. “I’ll be in touch about him,” he said. “I don’t know what his schedule is, exactly.”
“Fine.”
“By the way,” the Grand Wizard said, “I saw that new sign—Hess-Meier Plantation Farm.”
“Inc.,” Omar added. Then, “Jews. Swiss Jews.”
“They buy the gin, too?”
“Of course,” Omar said. “If they took their cotton to someone else’s gin, they wouldn’t make so many sheckels.” Omar shrugged. “Well, at least there’s another gin in the parish, down to Hardee, and that one’s American.”
The Grand Wizard shook his head. “Wrightson couldn’t at least sell out to Americans?”
“Hess-Meier was top bidder. Now half the agricultural land in the parish is owned by the fuckin’ Swiss.”
“It isn’t our country anymore.” The Grand Wizard sighed.
It never was, Omar wanted to tell him. It’s always been owned by the wrong people, who traded land and money back and forth within their circle, and the people who lived on the land and worked it never figured in their calculations.
Omar and the Grand Wizard walked up to Ozie’s back door. Wilona was there, a plate in her hand. She was talking to Deb Drury, whose husband ran the towing service. “This fruit salad is so special,” she said. “I can taste something different in it.”
“Black cherry Jell-O,” Deb said. “Fruit and pecans, and Co-Cola.” Wilona leaned close to Deb and lowered her voice. “I don’t want to impose,” she said, “but could you send me the recipe?”
Omar looked at his wife and gave her a wink.
Just treat the people like they exist, he thought, and next thing you know, they put you in charge.
THREE
We are informed from a respectable source that the old road to the post of Arkansas, by Spring river, is entirely destroyed by the last violent shocks of earthquake. Chasms of great depth and considerable length cross the country in various directions, some swamps have become dry, others deep lakes, and in some places hills have disappeared.
Jason craned his neck up at the water tower and pushed his helmet back to give himself a better view. It looked much bigger now that he stood at its base, a metal mushroom that bulged out over Jason’s head, blocking out a sky filled with low dark clouds. Its surface was painted a glossy shade of vegetable green that Jason had never seen on any object not owned by the government. It was as if Cabells Mound had tried to disguise their water tower as something natural, as a peculiarly shaped tree, and failed miserably. The tower stood in a soggy little park planted with overgrown hibiscus. Pumps whined from the cinderblock wellhouse next to the tower. There didn’t seem to be any human beings in the vicinity. Jason hopped off his bike and examined the metal stair that spiraled to the top of the tower. A tall metal pipe gateway stood at the bottom of the stair, with a gate made of chain link secured by a padlock. There was a half-hearted coil of barbed wire on the top, and more chain link on the side, obviously to keep someone from climbing over the lower part of the stair.
Nothing that would stop a determined, reasonably agile young person. Jason had always thought of chain link as a ladder. The barbed wire had not been extended along the side of the stair, in itself almost an invitation. And from the state of the chain link, it was obvious that he was not the first person to think of climbing the tower.
That gate and the barbed wire, though, would complicate the dismount at the end of his ride. He couldn’t do a fakie or anything fancy at the bottom, he’d just have to jump off the rail. And he’d have to jump off onto the stair, because if he jumped off onto the soft turf under the tower, he might get hung up on the fence that was draped over the side of the stair.
Jumping off onto the stair might be a good thing, he finally decided. He could use the mesh of the gate to brake his remaining momentum. It would be like running into a net.
Jason parked his bike under the stair, hooked his skates around his neck by the laces, and then swarmed up the chain link and dropped onto the metal stair. He ran a hand along the pipe of the guard raiclass="underline" smooth, round, painted metal, a little scarred by rust. Nothing he hadn’t coped with before. He hiked up the first fifty feet or so, took the rail in his hands, and shook it, tried to find out if it was loose. It was solid. It would make good skating.