"This country is going to hell," Boyce told his cousins Luke and Bud.
Luke and Bud each lifted a bottle of Coors in salute to Boyce's righteous sentiment. Luke burped.
"It's getting so a man can't count on worthwhile employment in the land of his birth no more," said Boyce.
"There are other gas stations," said cousin Luke.
"Not in Dogwood, there ain't," Boyce complained. "I can pump gas as good as anyone, but I ain't pumping gas in Dogwood no more."
"Move."
"Shoot, man. I was born here. Can you beat Old Man Shums up and firing a native son like that? I was with him, hell, all of a year and three months. I had seniority. "
"Old Man Shums said you also had your hand in the till."
"So what? I worked there, didn't I?"
"He said you had your hand in the till after closing," Luke pointed out.
"I was drunk," said Bovce. "How the hell's a man supposed to know what he's about when he's drunk? It ain't natural."
"I hear Old Man Shums got himself a replacement," Luke offered.
"Some Indian fella from Huntsville."
"Indian! Damn! That's what's wrong with this country. Too many damn furriners."
"I don't think he's that kind of an Indian."
"What other kind of Indian is there?" asked Bud, who had dropped out of Dogwood Elementary School after the fifth grade.
"There's two kinds. The turban kind and the bow-and-arrow kind," said Luke, who'd come within two months of graduating from high school. "Neither damn one of them any damn good."
"Damn straight," said Boyce. "They're lazy, don't like to work, and they sponge off this great nation of ours."
"Sounds like you, Boyce," the bartender called over.
Boyce threw the bartender a surly look. "When I want vour attention I'll piss on the floor."
"You did that last week."
"And this week I'm considering the other option."
"I had no idea you took in solids," the bartender said dryly.
"Which kind stole my job?" Boyce wondered aloud. "The turban kind or the other?"
"I hear the guy's name is Eagle," said Bud. "John Eagle."
"Must be the bow-and-arrow kind. If it were the other, his name would be John Cow," offered Lake, the historian. "They're big on cows over in India."
"It's un-American," Boyce complained to no one in particular. "Him taking my job like that."
"It's very American," said the bartender, polishing a glass. The bartender polished his glasses to get some use out of them. No one drank beer out of a glass in Dogwood. "The Indians were here before us. That guy's more American than any of you."
The revelation seared into the brains of the drunken trio.
"I think he's right," Luke whispered. "I heard something like that on The Rifleman once."
"Well, he's not white, is he?" demanded Boyce.
"That's right. They're red. They call 'em red men."
"Communists," said Bud, spitting on the floor.
"No, but they're no good neither," said Luke.
"I think we should do something," said Boyce Barlow.
"Do what?" asked Bud.
"Like let's take Dogwood back from the Indians."
"How many Indians we talking about?" asked Luke, who was a cautious soul.
They looked at Bud.
Bud shrugged. "I think there's only one of them."
"Good. We outnumber him."
"Not from what I hear. Them Injuns, they're tough mothers."
"We'll bring a hat with us," said Boyce Barlow, pulling his baseball cap with the Confederate flag down low over his mean eyes.
And that night, the three cousins pulled into Old Man Shum's gas station and yelled for service.
"No need to shout," a deep, rumbling voice said very close by. "I'm right here."
"Where?" dernanded Boyce, sticking his shaggy head out the driver's window of his four-by-four pickup. And then he saw John Eagle. The man stood nearly seven feet tall. He was as wide as a gas pump. In fact they had mistaken him for a gas pump in the darkness, which was why his sudden appearance was so unnerving. "You John Eagle?" asked Boyce Barlow.
"That's right," said John Eagle, leaning down. He smiled. It was a big, friendly smile, but it made John Eagle's wide Indian face look like the front of a Mack truck. "Something I can do for you?"
The three cousins stared at John Eagle with their mouths open and spilling beer fumes.
"He's whiter than us," whispered Luke.
"And he's bigger than us," added Bud. "All of us. Put together. "
"Fill 'er up, friend," Boyce said good-naturedly, vainly trying to match the big man's smile.
Driving off; Bud Barlow broke the strained silence.
"It was a good idea, anyway."
"It still is," said Boyce Barlow. "We gotta make Dogwood a fit place for white Americans."
"And Indians, white ones," added Bud, looking back furtively.
"Who else lives in Dogwood who ain't white?" asked Boyce.
"There's that pumpkin farmer at the edge of town," Luke said. "What's his name? Elmer something."
"Elmer Hawkins," said Boyce. "He's a nigger. Yeah, we can run him off."
"What'd he do?" demanded Bud.
"He ain't white, is he?" said Bovce. "Ain't this the idea? We gotta run off the ones what ain't white."
"But Elmer, he's pushing seventy. And who'd he ever bother?"
"You let one nigger in, soon you got a townful."
"Shoot, Elmer's been living here going on fifty years. He come into town by himself. He's the only nigger we got."
"He's leaving town. Tonight," Boyce said finally. They crept up on Elmer Hawkins' neat shack by moonlight, Boyce Barlow in the lead. It was easy going. There was no kudzu to tangle their feet. Elmer Hawkins' place was about the only open part of Marshall County that wasn't overrun with the indestructible weed. They knocked on Elmer's front door. The windows of the shack were unlit.
"Elmer, open up," Boyce called drunkenly.
When there was no answer after ten minutes of furious knocking; they gave up.
"Must be minding someone's kids," said Bud. "Elmer's always doing nice stuff like that."
"Shut up!" yelled Bovce. "I ain't coming back tomorrow night. I'm in a mean mood now. Tomorrow I might not be."
"Well, I ain't waiting all night, neither," said Luke.
"Who's got a match?" asked Boyce. "We'll burn this nigger out of Dogwood."
"I don't like this," said Bud, but it was too late. Boyce was holding a butane lighter under one corner of the dry wood shack.
The corner darkened, caught, and a line of yellow flame climbed the unpainted wood until there was no chance of putting it out.
Elmer Hawkins came running up the road not many minutes later.
"What's goin' on? What you doin' to my house?" he yelled. He was a lanky old man with peppercorn hair. Boyce Barlow yelled back at him.
"We're running out all the niggers in Dogwood."
"This ain't Dogwood, you fool. This is Arab."
"Ayrab?" said Luke dazedly.
"The Dogwood town line is up the road. What you want to go and burn down my house for?"
"We're getting rid of all the niggers in Arab too," Boyce said smugly.
And he did. But not the way he thought. Elmer Hawkins watched the shack he had lived in for most of his life burn to the ground. He did not get mad. He did not call the police, nor did he press charges. Instead, he hired a lawyer and got even.
The county judge at the trial awarded Elmer Hawkins seven hundred dollars in punitive damages for his shack and an additional fifty thousand dollars for emotional distress. Because Boyce Bariow was dirt poor and unemployed, he could not pay. So the judge ordered Boyce's house-which had been in his family since the Civil War-auctioned off and the proceeds given to the victirn. Elmer Hawkins took the money and bought himself a modest home in Huntsville. There was enough left over to put a down payment on a diner near the Marshall Space Flight Center, where Elmer Hawkins lived out the rest of his days in busy contentment.