Sam waved for Trudy to bring them another round of drinks.
“Be right there, honey,” she said, pulling two glasses from under the bar, grateful for something to do.
“Just another refugee story,” Sam said to Ott. “Not very different from your own.”
Ott was thinking the same thing. He finished his beer, accidentally dribbling a little onto his t-shirt. “You know my story?” he asked, reaching across to another table for a bar napkin.
“I know all about you,” Sam said. “Brian and Holden told me a little, and I’ve done some research on the Rabuns too. I’ve spent a lot of time doing research in Germany, actually. People don’t realize it but Germans and Arabs have a lot in common. Das ist warum ich beginnen wollte, Sie zu kennen.”
A look of surprise flashed across Ott’s face. “Sie sprechen Deutsches?”
“Wenig.”
“Wieviele Male sind Sie nach Deutschland gewesen?”
“Ich habe ein ungefähr Jahr dort verbracht.”
They stopped speaking in German when Trudy brought the drinks to the table.
“You boys want anything from the grill?” she asked. “I can fix you some burgers.”
Sam shook his head, no. “You want anything, Ott?” he asked, “I’m buying.”
“No, thanks,” Ott said.
“You boys just let me know,” Trudy replied, a little disappointed. She returned to her stool behind the bar to watch the game.
“Too bad about Brian, wasn’t it?” Ott asked.
“Yes,” Sam said. “He was pretty young to have a heart attack, and in good shape. I guess you never know.”
“The funeral was tough; Tim and his mom took it hard. On top of everything else, I guess Brian had everything mortgaged to the hilt and stopped paying his life insurance. They have to sell their house and the mushroom farm to pay off their debts. Tim’s been staying with me for awhile.”
“He’s lucky to have you as a friend,” Sam said. “It must have been hard on you when you lost your grandmother. She was a great woman; I admired her a lot. It wasn’t that long ago, was it?”
Ott nodded uncomfortably, losing eye contact. “About a year now, I guess-less than a year after she got out of prison. Prison killed her. We were real close.” He looked out the window painfully, filled with grief and pent-up rage, then back again at the baseball game. “How come I never see you at any of the meetings?” he asked, changing the subject.
“I’m not exactly a member,” Sam said. “The Eleven supports what I’m doing, and I support what they’re doing.”
“What are you doing?” Ott asked.
“I’m making a documentary proving the Holocaust was a hoax.”
The Pirates scored another run on the television. Sam looked up, but suddenly Ott was no longer interested in the game. “So you’re the one?” Ott said, amazed. “Brian told me he knew somebody making a documentary about the Holocaust, but he wouldn’t tell me anything more than that.”
Sam turned from the television back to Ott and grinned like the player who had just scored the run. “It’s been a secret,” he said, “but now that I’m finished, Holden thought I should talk to you and maybe you could help. That’s why I wanted to meet with you today.”
“Can I see it?” Ott asked eagerly.
“Sure, soon.”
“Are you some kind of filmmaker? How many documentaries have you done?”
“No,” Sam said. “I was just finishing my Ph.D. in history at Juniata, actually-as a recipient of the Mijares Fellowship. The documentary is my first; it was supposed to be part of my dissertation, but the head of the history department is a Jew and, for obvious reasons, he wasn’t too happy with my subject or my conclusions. He gave me the option of picking a new topic or leaving school without the degree. I left. Holden heard about it and he and The Eleven have been funding the project for two years. Now all I need is some money to get it distributed.”
“Wow,” Ott said. “I give you credit for taking on one of the most controversial issues in the world. But it’s going to be pretty tough convincing people the Holocaust was a hoax. Don’t get me wrong…nothing would make me happier than finding out it was a lie, but I’ve seen the pictures and read the histories. I’ve been to some of the camps too. My family built the incinerators. There’s a lot of evidence out there to disprove.”
Sam frowned. “But you don’t really believe your family, or your countrymen, would murder millions of their own people in cold blood, whether they were Jews or not, do you? It doesn’t make any sense; the Germans weren’t barbarians, they were Europeans. I’m a student of history, Ott, and as a student of history, I’ve learned that the men who leave a mark on this world are the ones who turn black into white and white into black; it’s along the border between opposites that we find the energy to create and to destroy.” Sam crushed his cigarette in the ashtray on the table as if illustrating his point. “Atoms split and fuse into world-changing bombs; tectonic plates shift and new continents are formed; politicians make peace into war and war into peace; religions turn sinners into saints and saints into sinners. Have no doubt: the actions of men are good or evil depending upon which quality we choose to see.”
The beer was hitting Ott now, and he was beginning to enjoy himself. He felt a warm tingling in his lips and forehead. Sam wasn’t the extremist he feared after all; he was a rational thinker, a man who used logic and reason. Ott liked philosophical discussions, and the challenge of talking to educated people; he believed he could do well in college, and he was even thinking about going, maybe to a university in Germany. He hadn’t done much of anything in the year since he graduated from high school, except hang out at the mansion in Buffalo or at The Eleven’s training compound in the woods near Huntingdon. Most of The Eleven were just disgruntled local men, unemployed or underemployed; they drove pickup trucks, drank beer, loved guns, and hated Jews and blacks but couldn’t tell you why. Although Hurley was an extremist, he had taken Ott into his confidence and shown him how to use The Eleven’s sophisticated satellite telephones, encryption technology, and remote computer servers that would ensure secure communication when the race war Hurley dreamed of finally started. Maybe, Ott thought, he would study computers in college. He liked the precision and unambiguousness of math, and computers gave him the unconditional acceptance he craved.
“Think about all the great men,” Sam continued. “Einstein demonstrated that mass is energy and energy, mass-that’s turning black into white and white into black. Galileo demonstrated that the earth orbits the sun. Columbus demonstrated that the earth is round. Moses demonstrated that the Law is the only way, then Jesus came along and demonstrated that love is the only Law, and later the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, came along and convinced the world that the Law is the only love. All black into white and white into black. In the entire history of the human race, of all the billions of people who have lived and died, we remember only a few thousand at most. These are the men who demolished prevailing beliefs and formed new worlds using contradiction as their chisel. That’s why they’re remembered… and that’s how I want to be remembered.”
“Interesting,” Ott said. “I agree with you, but that still doesn’t prove the Holocaust was a hoax.”