Leon Uris (30 page)

Hosanna Corner in the godforsaken outskirts of godforsaken Lubbock had ministered to the righteous and the sinner in its alternative histories. Hosanna Corner had come into being after the Civil War as the last watering hole before the wagon trains plunged into the southwest desert.

Nearly a century later, during the heyday of the West Texas oil strike, it naturally evolved into a saloon with gambling and prostitution amenities. When the oil patch collapsed, thousands lost it all and were left with land that could scarcely grow a crop.

Lubbock turned into a mean and nasty place where the American dream had betrayed the wild-catters, roughest of all men.

Hosanna Corner returned to a sense of grace as a local gathering house where a variety of Christian sects tried to gain a foothold among the discontent.

This was a big meeting night. Passwords and identification were required. Red Peterson entered and spotted a lone chair in the rear. The big main floor had been reconfigured with tables removed and chairs set up in auditorium style.

Red seated himself, alone, tilted his chair against the wall, and squinted at the cast of characters. On
one side of the bar, a poster of a lynched Negro. On the other side, a photograph of the Waco burning. The bar served as an altar, bearing a standing cross. Klansmen unhooded themselves, feeling relief to be among their own. More secret greetings.

Now a half dozen Oregon skinheads tacked a poster of Adolf Hitler on a wall.

Words across the back bar mirror told them that
YAWEH IS HERE
!

A dozen men wearing silk shirts adorned with an orange cross and an orange quasi-swastika took their seats in the first row. These were the new preachers to be sworn in to the White Aryan Christian Arrival, WACA.

The room lowered to dim light, a reminder that most of their work was carried out in darkness.

Members of the West Texas Militia, sporting tattoos and Uzis and gigantic mustaches and red bandanas, encircled the chairs.

“This is an important meeting,” a Klansman opened. “We are gathered to swear in a dozen new preachers of the White Aryan Christian Arrival.”

As the Klansman lay fist against heart, the room leapt to its feet and returned the salute. The chant of “White power!” resonated, shaking the Hosanna Corner to its foundation.

The dozen new preachers took their oath of office.

“…we will cleanse this nation of ethnic adulteration. We will defend the purity of our women against mongrel infestation and our children from heathen perverts and homosexuals. We swear all this in the name of Jesus Christ and the memory of His forgotten son, Adolf Hitler.”

“White power! White power! White power!”

“And now the moment has come to hail our spiritual leader, the moderator of the White Aryan Christian Arrival…Pastor Ed Jenkins…Pastor Ed.”

Cheers, half bows, arm-thrusted salutes welcomed Pastor Ed to the altar. They hoorayed a small bespectacled man, everyone’s Uncle Ed dressed in polyester civilian clothing, frayed and unkempt, a tireless worker for the movement.

Red Peterson snuck a drink, as did a fair number of flask carriers about the room.

“There are government spies here tonight,” Pastor Ed began. “Look at your neighbor. Is he one of them?”

“No!”

“As you know, brothers, I have been discharged from prison when the foul and dishonest government dropped their sedition case against me. But for six months I moldered in a stinking cell amid sexual deviates, drug addicts, Mexicans, rapists, and murderers, all for the crime of trying to defend my blessed wife and our four blessed children from a government terrorist raid in the middle of the night by the so-called Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.”

The hissing and booing zoomed round and round the room, and the stomping and pounding caused the place to rumble.

Pastor Ed held up his hands for silence.

“I was beaten unconscious by the ATF people, who then planted drugs and firearms around my house, ripped the place to pieces, and carted off my legal weapons that we must have to defend ourselves from governmental tyranny.”

The whiny-modulated voice now opened into that of a rasping serpent with flicking tongue:

“In that dark and dangerous prison cell, at the lowest point of my life, Jesus Christ came to me. Pastor Ed, Jesus said, I come to you in the name of my Father, and my Father wants you to tell the truth about the government conspiracy against the decent people of the white race.”

Pastor Ed drank from his water glass as he commanded silence. Red Peterson yawned.

“Listen up, Ed, Jesus told me. Jesus told me that at the beginning of 1900 the czar of Russia instituted a series of fake pogroms against the Jews…which never happened. It was a ruse to ship millions of Jews to America and infiltrate and infest our beloved country. When Jews got to New York or other hymie cities, all they had to do was draw cash from Jewish bankers and move into every town and village.”

“White power! White power!”

“
Seig Heil!”

“Them Jews took over the press, they own all the department stores, and they own Hollywood—and look where Hollywood has taken us. And the banks and financiers, the Goldmans, the Saks, the Lehmans, the Rothschilds, and television, and the web of secret Jewish societies has choked off the air from decent Christians. The Jews got ownership of companies to feed us poison any time they want to. And the Jews got the niggers all riled up so that the niggers were put into high places to do the Jews’ work…that is, when the niggers weren’t looking for white women.”

Pastor Ed held up his worn copy of
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
. “Here speaks the truthful exposé of the international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Got it? The kikes bought their way into American colleges. And the Jews won all the Nobel prizes because their committee was made up of Swedish and Norwegian Jews.”

Pastor Ed had brought the room to rage. Now to tears.

“See, they look down on you and me as scum. You don’t see no Jews as poor dirt farmers. You don’t see no Jews in the wasteland of a dried-up oil patch. No Jew kids picked cotton and peanuts or fished for shrimp…”

Now came the big sweat. Off came Pastor Ed’s wettening jacket.

“…and Jesus told me in my prison cell of the shiftiest conspiracy of them all. Adolf Hitler was a Christian, a nationalist, a man who loved his country. Rather than see his own country collapse by Jewish putrifaction, he sent his small and proud and humble and unarmed brown shirts into the streets to cleanse the nation. The Jews, children of the Devil and Eve, cringed as Hitler moved to rid the world of them by attacking Russia.”

“
Seig Heil!”

“Franklin D. Roosevelt, the greatest traitor this planet has ever known, sent American boys to war fighting on the side of Jews and communists. When the Jews vomited out of Europe at the end of the war, to set up an advance base for world conquest, it gave the world the biggest of all lies, the so-called Holocaust! By now the kikes had infiltrated every branch of the government. The only thing sad about the Holocaust is that it didn’t happen.”

He waited for a retort of rippling laughter.

“You are here,” he said, “because you’ve seen the plot unfold. With all the Jews and government traitors in place, farms of decent Americans like me and you, farms that had been in the family for a hundred years, were foreclosed in Nebraska and Kansas and the Dakotas. Them little shit-ass local banks done it on direct orders from the big Jew financiers. And they moved in with giant food-growing corporations. You got the picture! Jews control the press. Jews control the money. And soon they will control the food!”

Now the sweat of a hundred men gave their rage a smell. Pastor Ed was speaking of Yaweh again and his prison visit from Jesus Christ.

“It all comes down very plain. I’ve seen with my
own eyes, NATO trucks and artillery in a warehouse in Houston. I seen with my own eyes the interplanetary space people who landed in Roswell, who were snatched and hidden by the federal government. I’ve seen reports from our Canadian brothers that their border is filled with NATO and Russian troops…ready to move in the name of the New World Order. Brothers! There is only you and me to rise up and stop them and save this nation.”

PROVIDENCE—THE WEEK BEFORE
LABOR DAY—2007

What was it that annoyed President Tomtree about Labor Day? After all, he had once built a model workforce environment. Or was it Darnell Jefferson? No matter, it was the proper move to make at the time. T3 had felt far more at home in the boardrooms.

He’d travel to Detroit, make a “read between the lines” speech extolling the partnership of labor and management, and slip out of town without offending anyone.

Today, though, was a day to laze on the water, which was unusually calm near Noah’s Rock. The mini-yacht
Yankee Pride
was rigged for serious fishing. There were not too many days the President could drop a line in the water.

In a moment he heard the sharp report of the yacht club’s cannon, indicating that the sun was under the yardarm and, most important, the bar was open. The President ordered the outriggers to be reeled in and once again reviewed the report of his brother-in-law, Dwight Grassley.

In the years since Dwight Grassley had first bet on young Thornton Tomtree, he had risen from family donkey to family patriarch. Inside the Republican
Party, Dwight took on a role of what might be called a hatchet man.

Grassley was a superb fund-raiser who bent and twisted the soft-money rules to their limits. Not that T3 needed funds. He could draw from his own accounts, and legally. Tomtree insisted that the widest net was cast to have each and every individual CEO make their contribution.

Soft money had become a basic canon of American politics, protested by all but stopped by none.

Napkins with the presidential seal were laid on a cocktail table with assorted yum-yums. Eric, the steward, offered hot lemoned towels to deodorize the fish smell from their hands.

“Black Label on the rocks with a side of Black Label on ice,” Dwight said. His fringe of hair was white, yacht club white, a waxy silver white that growled at his plaid pants and startling crested jacket. Tomtree pontificated on the beauty of soft money…to let every big donor feel he had an insider’s look…soft money was just a way of covering bets…soft money was soft graft with a three-thousand-year history. Throw it out the front door, it will return by the back door. If Tomtree turned back soft contributions, the CEOs would hold his feet to the fire for the next five years. T3 knew them all. All of them had Bulldog networks operating from his great computer center in Pawtucket.

“Goddamned Labor Day,” Thornton growled and sipped. “My daddy was drowned on one of those Labor Day weekends. Seems to always bring bad news.”

“Well, the news can’t be better,” Dwight interrupted. “We have our coffers filled. We can channel funds on joint advertising to our candidates,
and
the economy is great. You’re going to be reelected in a landslide.”

Eric brought the news that the commodore’s skiff was on the way out with Mr. Jefferson aboard. Well, get on with it, T3 told himself.

“Dwight,” he began, “we are planning to formally announce after Labor Day. It is the best tactical time, before Christmas and the January doldrums. Announcing early will have any other candidates scrambling for money and key people. We’ll have it all. However, I want to enter the campaign with no lingering shadows hanging over my head.”

Dwight froze. In all their years, he had never felt fully comfortable with Thornton. In his years of serving the man, Dwight wanted only a small reward: second or third man at Justice or Treasury.

The President was fully aware of Grassley’s value. He commiserated. “There are things you cannot do,” he said, “even as president. I can’t keep the pope from overrunning the planet with scrawny diseased little brown people with perpetual hatred in their eyes. I cannot stop the annual flooding of Bangladesh. I can’t stop the corruption of Mexico and Indonesia.”

Thornton stalled out and scanned the ocean and his trappings of power: helicopter overhead, a picket of Coast Guard craft, the finest sailors and Secret Service the nation had to offer, electronic equipment that could reach Moscow in three seconds. And out there, a launch filled with media. He had positioned
Yankee Pride
so that the press boat would catch a nasty riptide and have them all green and queasy.

“You seem in a hurry to leave,” the President said. “Got a date?”

“That doesn’t sell papers anymore,” Dwight said. “Who cares?”

“I care,” Thornton answered. “Get rid of him.”

Dwight squelched his desire to scream out as he had always squelched it.

“Look, not that I’m gay bashing or have homophobia, God knows. We have a lot of guys who’ve done Trojan work for the Republican Party. So, God knows I’m not into gay bashing. You’ll thank me, Dwight. I personally have never allowed passion with either sex to rule me. You know, Dwight, I can tell the minute a man walks into the Oval Office if he’s into adultery.”

Dwight wept.

“I take it,” Thornton pressed, “that you do not want to resign as my financial chair.”

Right now, goddammit, Dwight thought, stand up and tell him to shove it! The sonofabitch has never felt anything in bed. Ask my sister!

“So, tell Bruce to move out of your New York condo.”

“His name is Randy,” Dwight whimpered. “I’ll tell him.”

The commodore’s launch pulled alongside. Darnell Jefferson, now a white-haired and distinguished gentleman, hit the boat’s ladder like a point guard slashing to the basket, quick and graceful. Darnell was greeted by a pale number in Dwight, who winced out a smile and greeting, then was helped into the launch.

Darnell downed a catch-up drink as T3 studied the political atlas.

“What the hell’s the matter with Dwight? He looks as though he was shot out of a cannon and missed the net.”

Thornton punched that sweet-sounding little bell and pointed at his drink. Darnell knew when Thornton had one drop more than allowable, sometimes drifting into forbidden territory. Darnell reckoned it was the President’s fourth.

“Christ, don’t glower,” Thornton said. “You’re getting like those Navy doctors. They’re on automatic. Cut down on the booze, Mr. President. You
know what the Navy doctors remind me of—a sidewalk filled with wind-up dolls all going in different directions and yakking, ‘Cut down on the booze.’”

“You and Dwight have words?”

“I had words for him. Get rid of that sweet thing, Rodney or Rudy or whatever the hell its name is, or resign the party.”

“Dwight Grassley is your devoted slave, and he is family.”

“Sure, the same kind of family Jimmy Carter had with that hee-haw brother of his.”

“What about me? I bring white girls to the White House banquets.”

“You are not currently married.”

“Dwight and Brenda have not had sex in a quarter of a century. Both of them are entitled to their lives. You know, fucking A, when Dwight suggested a divorce twelve years ago, you flipped out. For the first time in his life, Dwight has a sweet young man to love him.”

The President’s face screwed up in disgust. “That is very ugly.”

“Mr. President, the American people don’t give a big rat’s ass if Dwight Grassley is fucking rattlesnakes.”

“Oh, sure,” Thornton answered, “take a look at the press launch. You think the Clinton scandal has put an end to our prurient curiosity?” He changed the subject. “Anything in your reports that needs attention?”

“No. A few small blips. I don’t want to sound cocky, but unless there is an unforeseen disaster, you can’t lose the election next year. Neither volcano nor ice storm can knock you off the mountaintop.”

“That’s what George Bush thought after the Gulf War.” Lifting the phone to the bridge, “Captain, have we got a few rays left?”

“We should be heading in in forty minutes, Mr. President. The Secret Service wants us to land before dark.”

Thornton stared at the sea pensively. “We don’t get to see many sunsets, Darnell. It’s been a long time since we sat here watching sunsets with our daddies.”

“Why did you change your Labor Day itinerary?” Darnell asked.

“I didn’t like it. Besides, I like to outfox the press. From Detroit we fly to Kirkland Air Base in Albuquerque and helicopter to Glen Canyon. Three columns of Eagle Scouts are converging for a twelve-hundred Scout jamboree. We will sing, “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree,” pin on a few merit and bravery badges, and address them as the new leaders of the new generation.”

“What the hell has that got to do with Labor Day?”

“I hear say,” Thornton answered, “that architects will soon be redundant…obsolete. In fifteen seconds a Bulldog can put up on the screen detailed plans of every major structure that has been built in the last two thousand years.”

Thornton Tomtree stared at Noah’s Rock in puzzlement. To Darnell he looked like Orson Welles about to say the word, “Rosebud.”

“Architects are done. Writers are going. We can put every known piece of literature on the screen in seconds. Creative arts were once the beacon of civilization. But now the people have come to realize that the one perfect and infallible mechanism on earth is the computer,” the President said. “I am the man who can control the Internet. The people know that.”

*  *  *

In his Nanatuck study, the President etched out his Labor Day speech. Who could he offend by going to the Eagle Scouts? What the hell! These were lads who knew to get a sane haircut and wear a necktie and polish their shoes.

Eric brought dinner to his desk, and Pucky came in. She looked rather interesting. Thornton had never seen her in his office in exactly this kind of configuration.

Pucky had a gossamer-draped material over her breasts, which had remained surprisingly young. She was otherwise flashy and elegant, her height allowing her to wear whopping jewelry.

“I’m off to the Van Aldens’. Some new Vivaldis have been unearthed. The Juilliard String Quartet will be playing. Are you all right, Thornton?”

“I’ve a rotten week coming up.”

“You are always in a snit when you go out to Noah’s Rock.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Should I stay in with you? I’d like to.”

“No, no, you run along,” he said reflexively.