David wore a plastic rain slicker over his deputy’s star and one of Omar’s spare uniforms. That morning, Tree Simpson had ruled that his shooting of the refugee was justified, and David had returned to duty as a special deputy.
Omar had made a point of assigning David to patrolling the highway between Shelburne City and the fallen Bayou Bridge, on the other end of the parish from the A.M.E. camp. He didn’t want David near the place. When David asked him why, Omar said, “because if you turn up at the camp, we’ll have a riot on our hands.”
Which was not the real reason, but it was a reason that would have to serve for David.
“Hi, Dad,” David said. He hung up the rain slicker and his baseball cap on the pegs by the front door.
“How was your evening?” Omar asked.
“Went out with the boys.”
“Which boys?”
David went into the refrigerator without answering, got a beer, returned to the front room to sit in Omar’s easy chair. Omar looked at him from his reclining position on the sofa. “Which boys?” Omar repeated.
“Knox and them.”
“I thought—” Omar was about to repeat his instructions to stay away from Knox, but then he saw David’s knuckles bruised and swollen, and he sat up.
“You been in a fight, son?” he asked.
David looked at his battered fists, then shrugged. “A little ramshagging, that’s all.” Anger snarled in Omar’s veins. “You just survived an inquest, sonny boy!” he barked. “Now you want to start getting into fistfights and maybe having people start thinking second thoughts about that killing you did? Who were you fighting with, anyhow?”
David gave a slow, drunken grin. “Nobody that’ll complain. We was down to Woodbine Corners.” Omar stared at him in shock. David took a swig of his beer.
“We decided, hell, we’ll save some bullets,” he said. “We’ll kill this batch with our bare hands. So we had a few drinks and got to business.” He looked at his free hand, flexed the fingers meditatively. “It was a lot more work than we thought. It takes a long time, you know, to kill someone like that.” Omar’s head swam. Revulsion squeezed his stomach, brought the tang of vomit to his tongue. He bit it down.
Then the anger hit, and he stood over David and slapped the beer from his hand. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “Just what in hell do you think you’re doing?” David stared up in amazement. Omar slapped him across the face. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from Knox?” he demanded. “Didn’t I?”
The beer bottle gurgled as it emptied itself onto the floor. “What’s the problem?” David demanded.
“What’s wrong?”
“Knox is crazy,” Omar shouted. “Isn’t that enough?” He clenched his fists and marched an angry circle around the room. Spilled beer soaked his socks.
“But Daddy,” David said, “Knox believes the same as you. He believes the same as what you’ve always taught me.”
Omar lunged across the room to stand over his son again, hand raised to strike. David flinched but didn’t raise a hand to defend himself. Omar didn’t bring the hand down; he left it in the air, in case he changed his mind.
“Knox is out of his head!” Omar shouted. “He’s been wandering around the country stealing and killing!
If you hang around him, you’ll get killed or spend the rest of your life in jail! Did I raise you for that?” Omar demanded. “Did I, Davy?”
“He’s a soldier!” David said. “He’s fighting a war against ZOG. Just like you!”
“ZOG, shit! Ain’t no ZOG and never was!”
Bewilderment shone on David’s face. “I don’t get it. If you ain’t fighting for the white, why are you doing what you’re doing?”
Blood flamed in Omar’s heart. He panted for breath. He looked at the hand he’d raised, and let it fall.
“It’s for you, son,” he said. “You did a killing. Can’t let no witnesses testify or they’ll hang us both.” He took a breath. “I’m not doing this so you can get drunk and beat niggers to death! I’m doing it so you’ll stay out of prison!”
David licked his lips as he tried to comprehend this. “Knox says we’re going to be famous. Knox says we’re going to liberate all America starting with Spottswood Parish.”
Omar straightened wearily from his crouch over David’s chair, turned, slopped through the spilled beer back to the couch. He sat down heavily, staring at the wall opposite with the blue flowered wallpaper that he and Wilona had put up when David was still in grade school.
“Do you really think a dozen killers are going to turn this country around?” he said. “Do you really think that?”
“You’ve always stood up for the white man,” David said. “That’s all I’m doing.”
“I’ve done what I can for myself in this place,” Omar said. “Our family has been here for seven generations and we’ve never had anything to eat but shit from the people who run the parish. The Klan’s the only answer for a man like me. But you—” He looked at his son. “You’re in college. You’ve got what it takes to make it outside Spottswood Parish. You can leave this used-up old place. And that’s what I want you to do.”
David was still bewildered. “I ain’t never heard you talk like this.” Omar felt cold beer seeping up his crew socks. “I want you to go away!” he shouted. “I want you to save yourself!”
“There’s no way out of town, Dad.” A reasonable tone had crept into David’s voice. “The bridges are down. Besides, I don’t want to leave. Not when we’re all going to be famous!” Omar stared at his son. “Famous?”
“With our pictures on TV and everything!” There was a drunken glow in David’s eyes. “Then we’ll disappear into the underground, like Knox does after he rescues some Jew money from a bank, and we’ll wait to strike again. And then after the Liberation—”
“After the what?” Omar repeated.
“After we win. After the white man’s in charge again.”
Omar’s heart beat sickly in his temples. His head whirled. He couldn’t quite seem to catch his breath.
“My God,” he said, half to himself. “My God in this world.” Micah Knox would pay for this, he thought. Would pay and pay.
David reached out, patted Omar in a comforting way on his knee. “Don’t worry about me,” he said.
“Everything will be fine. You’ll see. We’ll come through, and maybe you’ll even be President.” He laughed. “Won’t that be something! You and me in the White House.”
Omar threw his head back and felt anguish twist in his heart like a knife. He wanted to howl his pain aloud. “I wanted you to be better than me,” he said.
David looked at him with drunken amiability. “Nobody’s better than you, Dad,” he said. “Nobody in this world.”
Jessica’s helicopter lurched as wind shear tried to fling it into the invisible Arkansas Delta below. Water coursed over the windscreen in streams, and blinking red and green navigation lights reflected off the slanted raindrops like a thousand distant stars. The command radio channel hissed in Jessica’s ears, then crackled to the sudden flashes of lightning that lit the strange, featureless gloom in which the Kiowa traveled.
The rescue mission to Rails Bluff was underway. It was a little after two in the morning. Rivera’s Rangers, with units of Jessica’s engineers in support, were scheduled to be in position around the camp by five. The camp was due to be under new management, as Colonel Rivera had put it, by dawn. Brightly colored star shells flashed in Jessica’s left eye as the helicopter gave another lurch. She blinked, tried to will the flashing lights away. Gravity clutched at her stomach.