FRANCIS LIKES TO OPEN UP his home to guys in the Movement every other Sunday afternoon. Once the crews stopped roaming the streets looking for people to mess up, we hardly ever saw each other. You can reach a lot of people through the World Wide Web, but it’s a cold, impersonal community. Francis recognizes that, which is why twice a month the street is packed with cars with license plates from as far away as New Jersey and New Hampshire, enjoying an afternoon of hospitality. I’ll put on the football game for the guys, and the women congregate in the kitchen with Brit, organizing the potluck dishes and trading gossip like baseball cards. Francis takes it upon himself to entertain the older kids with colorful lectures. You can stand at a distance and almost see words blazing from his mouth, like he is a dragon, as the boys sit mesmerized at his feet.
It’s been almost three months since we’ve had a Sunday session. We haven’t seen these people since Davis’s funeral. To be honest, I haven’t really thought about it, since I’m still stumbling through the days like a zombie. But when Francis tells me to post an invitation on Lonewolf.org, I do it. You just don’t say no to Francis.
And so, the house is full again. The tone, though, is a little different. Everyone wants to seek me out, ask how I’m doing. Brit is in our bedroom with a headache; she didn’t even want to pretend to be social.
But Francis is still the happy host, pulling the caps off beers and complimenting the ladies on their haircuts or blue-eyed babies or the deliciousness of their brownies. He finds me sitting by myself near the garage, where I’ve gone to dump a bag of trash. “People seem to be having a good time,” he says.
I nod. “People like free beer.”
“It’s only free if you’re not me,” Francis replies, and then he looks at me shrewdly. “Everything all right?” he asks, and by everything he means Brit. When I shrug, he purses his lips. “You know, when Brit’s mama left, I didn’t understand why I was still here. Thought about checking out, if you know what I mean. I was taking care of my six-month-old, and I still couldn’t find the will to stick around. And then one day, I just got it: the reason we lose people we care about is so we’re more grateful for the ones we still have. It’s the only possible explanation. Otherwise, God’s a sorry son of a bitch.”
He claps me on the back and walks into the tiny fenced backyard. The young teens who’ve been dragged here by their parents are suddenly alert, awakened to his magnetism. He sits down on a stump and starts his version of Sunday School. “Who likes mysteries?” There is nodding, a general buzz of assent. “Good. Who can tell me who Israel is?”
“That’s a pretty crappy mystery,” someone mutters and is elbowed by the boy beside him.
Another boy calls out, “A country filled with Jews.”
“Raise your hand,” Francis says. “And I didn’t ask what Israel is. I asked who.”
A kid who’s just getting fuzz over his upper lip waves and is pointed to. “Jacob. He started being called that after he fought the angel at Peniel.”
“And we have a winner,” Francis says. “Israel went on to have twelve sons—that’s where the twelve tribes of Israel come from, you follow…”
I walk back into the kitchen, where a few women are talking. One of them is holding a baby who’s fussing. “All’s I know is she doesn’t sleep through the night anymore and I’m so tired I actually walked out the front door in my pajamas yesterday headed to work before I realized what I was doing.”
“I’m telling you,” one girl says. “I used whiskey, rubbed on the gums.”
“Can’t start them too early,” says an older woman, and everyone laughs.
Then they see me standing there, and the conversation drops like a stone from a cliff. “Turk,” says the older woman. I don’t know her name, but I recognize her face; she’s been here before. “Didn’t see you come in.”
I don’t respond. My eyes are glued to the baby, who is red-faced, waving her fists. She is crying so hard she can’t catch her breath.
My arms are reaching out before I can stop myself. “Can I…?”
The women glance at each other, and then the baby’s mother places her into my arms. I can’t get over how light the baby is, rigid arms and legs kicking as she shrieks. “Shh,” I say, patting her. “Quiet, now.”
I rub my hand on her back. I let her curl like a comma over my shoulder. Her cries become hiccups. “Look at you, the Baby Whisperer,” her mother says, smiling.
This is how it could have been.
This is how it should have been.
Suddenly I realize that the ladies are not looking at the baby anymore. They are staring at something behind me. I turn around, the baby fast asleep, tiny bubbles of spit on the seam of her lips.
“Jesus,” Brit says, an accusation. She turns and runs out of the kitchen. I hear the door to the bedroom slam behind her. “Excuse me,” I say, trying to juggle the baby back to her mother as gently and as quickly as possible. Then I run to Brit.
She’s lying on our bed, facing away from me. “I fucking hate them. I hate them for being in my house.”
“Brit. They’re just trying to be nice.”
“That’s what I hate the most,” she says, her voice a blade. “I hate the way they look at me.”
“That’s not what—”
“All I wanted was a fucking drink of water from my own sink. Is that too much to ask?”
“I’ll get you water…”
“That’s not the point, Turk.”
“What is the point?” I whisper.
Brit rolls over. Her eyes are swimming with tears. “Exactly,” she says, and she starts to cry, just as hard as that baby was crying, but even after I gather her into my arms and hold her tight and rub her back she doesn’t stop.
It feels just as foreign to be soothing Brit while she sobs as it was for me to cradle an infant. This is not the woman I married. I wonder if I buried that fierce spirit along with the body of my son.
We stay there, in the cocoon of the bedroom, long after the sun sets and the cars drive away and the house is empty again.
THE NEXT NIGHT we are all sitting in the living room watching television. My laptop is open; I’m writing a post for Lonewolf.org about something that happened in Cincinnati. Brit brings me a beer and curls up against me, the first contact she’s initiated since, well, I can’t even remember. “What are you working on?” she asks, craning her neck so that she can read what’s on my screen.
“White kid got body-slammed by two niggers at school,” I say. “They broke his back, but they didn’t get charged. You can bet if it were the other way around, the White kids would have been charged with assault.”
Francis points the remote at the television and grunts. “That’s because Cincinnati is in the ninety-ninth percentile of shit schools,” he adds. “It’s an all-black administration. What do we really want for our kids?”
“That’s good,” I say, typing in his words. “I’m gonna end with that.”
Francis flips through the cable stations. “How come there’s Black Entertainment TV but no White Entertainment TV?” he asks. “And people say there’s no reverse racism.” He turns off the television and stands up. “I’m headed to bed.”
He kisses Brit on the forehead and leaves for the night, headed to his side of the duplex. I expect her to get up, too, but she makes no move to leave.
“Doesn’t it kill you?” Brit asks. “The waiting?”
I glance up. “How do you mean?”
“It’s like there’s nothing immediate anymore. You don’t know who’s reading the stuff you post.” She pivots to face me, sitting cross-legged. “Things used to be so much clearer. I learned my colors by looking at the shoelaces of the guys my dad was meeting up with. White Power and neo-Nazis had red or white laces. SHARPs were blue or green.”
I smirk. “I have a hard time imagining your father meeting with SHARPs.” Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice are the biggest race traitors you’ll ever meet; they target those of us who are fighting the good fight by trying to get rid of lesser races. They think they’re fucking Batman, every one of them.
“I didn’t say it was a…friendly meeting,” Brit replies. “But actually, sometimes he did. You did what you had to do—even if it seemed to go against all reason—because you were seeing the big picture.” She glances up at me. “You know Uncle Richard?”
Not personally, but Brit did. He was Richard Butler, the head of Aryan Nations. He died when Brit was about seventeen.
“Uncle Richard was friends with Louis Farrakhan.”
The leader of the Nation of Islam? This was news to me. “But…he’s…”
“Black? Yeah. But he hates Jews and the federal government as much as we do. Daddy always says the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Brit shrugs. “It was kind of an unspoken understanding: after we worked together to bring down the system, then we’d fight each other.”
We’d win, of that I have no doubt.
She looks at me carefully. “What do we really want for our kids?” Brit says, repeating Francis’s earlier comment. “I know what I want for my kid. I want him to be remembered.”
“Baby, you know we won’t forget him.”
“Not us,” Brit says, her words suddenly hard. “Everyone.”
I look at her. I know what she’s saying: that typing a blog may indeed crumble foundations, but it’s far more dramatic—and faster—to blow the building up from the top down.
To some extent I’d been too late for the Skinhead Movement, which had its heyday ten years before I was born. I imagined a world where when people saw me coming, they ran away. I thought about how Francis and I had spent the past two years trying to convince crews that anonymity was more insidious—and terrifying—than overt threats. “Your father won’t go along with this,” I say.
Brit leans down and kisses me, softly, pulling away so I am left wanting more. God, I’ve missed this. I missed her.
“What my father doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” she answers.
RAINE IS PUMPED to get my phone call. It’s been two years since I’ve seen him; he didn’t make it to my wedding, because his wife had just had their second baby. When I tell him I’m in Brattleboro for the day, he invites me to his house for lunch. He’s moved, so I jot the address down on a napkin.
At first I’m sure I’m in the wrong place. It’s a little ranch on a cul-de-sac, with a mailbox that is shaped like a cat. There’s a bright red plastic slide on the front lawn and a ticky-tacky wooden snowman hanging near the front door. The welcome mat says HI! WE’RE THE TESCOS!
Then a slow grin spreads over my face. The smart bastard. He’s taking hiding in plain sight to a whole new level. I mean, who would ever expect that the dad living next door who power-washes his porch and lets his kid ride a bike with training wheels up and down the driveway is actually a White Supremacist?
Raine opens the door before I even get a chance to knock. He’s holding a chunky toddler in his arms, and poking out from between the towers of his legs is a shy little girl wearing a tutu and a princess crown. He grins, reaching out to embrace me. I can’t help but notice he is wearing sparkling pink nail polish.
“Bro,” I say, glancing at his fingers. “Nice fashion statement.”
“You should see how good I am at tea parties. Come in! Man, it’s good to see you.”
I walk inside, and the little girl ducks behind Raine’s legs. “Mira,” he says, crouching down, “this is Turk, Daddy’s friend.”
She sticks her thumb into her mouth, like she’s sizing me up.
“She’s not great with strangers,” Raine says. He juggles the baby in his arms. “This bruiser here is Isaac.”
I follow him inside, past toys that are littered like confetti, and into the living room. Raine gets me a cold one, but he doesn’t take a beer for himself. “I’m drinking alone?”
He shrugs. “Sal doesn’t like when I drink in front of the kids. Doesn’t think it sets a great example, and some crap like that.”
“Where is Sally?” I ask.
“At work! She does radiology at the VA. I’m kind of in between jobs, so I’m home with the hobbits.”
“Cool,” I say, taking a long pull from the bottle.
Raine sets Isaac on the floor. He starts stumbling around like a very tiny drunk. Mira runs down the hallway into her bedroom, her feet pounding like a round of artillery. “So what’s up with you, man?” Raine asks. “You good?”
I rest my elbows on my knees. “I could be better. It’s kind of what brought me here.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
I realize that Raine has no idea Brit and I had a baby. That we lost that baby. I start to tell him the whole story—from that nigger nurse to the moment Davis stopped breathing. “I’m calling on all the squads. From the Vermont NADS all the way down to the Maryland State Skinheads. I want a day of vengeance to honor my son.”
When Raine doesn’t respond, I lean forward. “I’m talking vandalism. Good old-fashioned fights. Firebombs. Anything short of a casualty, I figure. It’s up to the individual squads and their leaders. But something visible that gets us noticed. And I know it goes against what we’ve been working toward by blending in, but maybe it’s time for a little reminder of our power, you know? There’s strength in numbers. If we make a statement that’s big enough, they can’t arrest us all.” I look him in the eye. “We deserve this. Davis deserves this.”
Just then Mira dances down the hallway and drops a crown on her father’s head. He pulls it off, looking soberly at the cheap foil circle. “Baby, can you go draw me a picture? That’s a good girl.” He follows her with his eyes as she goes back to her room. “I’m guessing you didn’t hear,” Raine says to me.
“Hear what?”
“I’m out, man. I’m not with the Movement anymore.”
I stare at him, shocked. Raine was the one who had gotten me into White Power in the first place. Once I had joined NADS, we were brothers for life. It wasn’t like this was a job you could just walk away from. It was a calling.
Suddenly I remember the line of swastika tattoos Raine had up and down his arm. I look at his shoulders, his biceps. The swastikas have been repurposed into a sleeve of vines. You can’t even tell the symbols were there in the first place.
“It happened a couple years ago. Sal and I had gone to a rally that summer, like you and me and the boys used to, and everything was great except there were guys waiting in line to screw a skinchick in her tent. It freaked Sal out, taking our baby to a place where that was happening. So I started going to the rallies by myself, leaving Sal with the baby. Then we got called into preschool because Mira tried to bury some Chinese kid in the sandbox, because she said she was playing kitty and that’s what cats do with their shit. I acted like I was shocked, but as soon as we got out of the building I told Mira what a good girl she was. Then one day I was in the grocery store with Mira. She was, oh, maybe turning three. We were waiting to check out, with a full cart. People were staring at me, you know, because of my tats and all, and I was used to that. Anyway, standing behind us in line, was a black man. And Mira, sweet as could be, said, Daddy, look at the nigger.” Raine looks up. “I didn’t think nothing of it. But then the woman in front of us in line said to me, Shame on you. And the checkout clerk said, How dare you teach that to an innocent baby? Before I knew it the whole store was yelling and Mira started to cry. So I grabbed her and left the whole cart of food behind and I ran out to our truck. That was the moment I started thinking maybe I wasn’t doing the right thing. I mean, I thought it was my duty to raise my kids to be race warriors—but maybe I wasn’t doing Mira any favors. Maybe all I was doing was setting her up for a life where everyone would hate her.”
I stare at him. “What else are you going to tell me? You volunteer at the local temple? Your best friend’s a gook?”
“Maybe the shit we’ve been saying all these years isn’t legit. It’s the ultimate bait and switch, man. They promised us we’d be part of something bigger than us. That we’d be proud of our heritage and our race. And maybe that’s, like, ten percent of the whole deal. The rest is just hating everyone else for existing. Once I started thinking that, I couldn’t stop. Maybe that’s why I felt like shit all the time, like I wanted to fucking bust someone’s face in constantly, just to remind myself that I could. That’s okay for me. But it’s not how I want my kid to grow up.” He shrugs. “Once word got around that I wanted out, I knew it was a matter of time. One of my own guys jumped me in a parking lot after Sal and I went to a movie. He messed me up bad enough that I had to get stitches. But then, that was that.”
I look at Raine, who used to be my best friend, and it’s like the light shifts and I realize I’m looking at something completely different. A coward. A loser.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Raine says. “We’re still brothers, right?”
“Sure,” I say. “Always.”
“Maybe you and Brit can come up here and go skiing this winter,” he suggests.
“That would be awesome.” I finish my beer and stand up, make an excuse about having to get back before dark. As I drive away, Raine is waving, and so is baby Isaac.
I know I’ll never see them again.
TWO DAYS LATER I have met with former squad leaders up and down the Eastern Seaboard. With the exception of Raine, they are all active posters on Lonewolf.org, and they all knew about Davis before I even started to relay the story. They all have histories with Francis—they heard him speak at a rally once; they knew a guy he killed; they were personally tapped by him to lead a crew.
Exhausted and hungry, I park on the street in front of our place. When I see the flicker of the television in the living room—even though it’s nearly 2:00 A.M.—I suck in my breath. I’d been hoping to just slide into the house unnoticed, but now I’m going to have to come up with some fake excuse for Francis about why I’ve been running around behind his back.
To my surprise, though, it’s not Francis who’s got insomnia. Brit is sitting on the couch, wrapped in one of my sweatshirts, which reaches her thighs like a dress. I cross the room, lean down, and drop a kiss on the crown of her head. “Hey, baby,” I say. “Can’t sleep?”
She shakes her head. I glance at the television, where the Wicked Witch of the West is leaning close to Dorothy, making a threat. “Did you ever watch this?”
“Yeah. You want me to tell you how it ends?” I joke.
“No, I mean really watch it. It’s like a whole fairy tale about White Power. The wizard who’s pulling everyone’s strings is a little Jew. The villain is a weird color and works with monkeys.”
I kneel down in front of her, drawing her attention. “I did what I promised. I met with all the guys who used to run squads. But no one wants to take a risk. Your dad did too good a job drumming into them that our new approach is to infiltrate, I guess. They just don’t want to run the risk of going to prison.”
“Well, you and I could—”
“Brit, if something goes down, the first place the cops will look is anyone connected to the Movement. And we’re already named in the media, thanks to the lawsuit.” I hesitate. “You know I’d do anything for you. But you’ve only just started to come back to me. If I get sent away to do time, it would be like losing you all over again.” I wrap my arms around her. “I’m sorry, baby. I thought I could make it work.”
She kisses me. “I know. It was worth a try.”
“Come to bed?”
Brit turns off the television, comes into the bedroom with me. Slowly I peel off the sweatshirt she’s wearing; I let her tug my boots and jeans off. When we get under the covers, I press against her. But when I go to move between her legs, I’m soft, slipping out of her.
She looks at me in the dark, her eyes hooded, her arm crossed over her soft belly. “Is it me?” she asks, in a voice so small I have to reach for it.
“No,” I swear. “You’re beautiful. It’s stupid shit in my head.”
She rolls away. Even like that, I can feel her skin heat up, red with shame.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her back.
Brit doesn’t answer.
In the middle of the night I wake up and reach for her. I’m not thinking, which is why I do it. Maybe if I get out of my own way, I can find comfort. My hand snakes over the sheets, searching, but Brit is gone.
IN THE BEGINNING there were many of us, and we were all different. You could be Aryan Nations but not a Skinhead, depending on whether or not you bought into Christian Identity theology. White Supremacists were more academic, publishing treatises; Skinheads were more violent, preferring to teach a lesson with their fists. White Separatists were the guys buying land in North Dakota and trying to divide the country so that anyone nonwhite would be kicked over the perimeter they created. Neo-Nazis were a cross between Aryan Nations and the Aryan Brotherhood in prisons—if there was a violent street gang criminal element to the Movement, they were it. There were Odinists and Creationists and disciples of the World Church of the Creator. But in spite of the ideology that split us into factions, we’d all come together one day of the year to celebrate: April 20, the birthday of Adolf Hitler.
There were birthday festivals scattered around the country, kind of like the old KKK rallies that I went to as a teen. They were usually on someone’s back forty, or on a piece of conservation land no one ever monitored, or in whatever passed for an alpine village. Directions were by word of mouth, turns marked off with tiny flags no bigger than those used by electric dog fences, except these weren’t pink plastic but SS red.
I’d probably been to five Aryan festivals since I joined up with the White Power Movement, but this one was special. At this one, I was getting married.
Well, in spirit at least. Technically Brit and I would have to go to city hall next week and fill out the legal forms. But spiritually, it would happen tonight.
I was twenty-two years old, and this was the pinnacle of my life.
Brit didn’t want me around while she was fussed over by the girls, so I wandered the festival. Overall, there were far fewer people here than at the rallies I’d gone to five years ago, mostly because the feds had started cracking down wherever we congregated. But even so, there were the usual groups of drunks, some brawling, some pissing behind the portable tents where vendors sold everything from corn dogs to thongs printed with the words SKINHEAD LOVE. There was a kid zone with coloring books and a bouncy castle that had a big-ass SS flag draped in the back, like in the Sportpalast where Hitler used to give his speeches. At the end of the row of food and merchandise vendors were the tattoo artists, who were in high demand during festivals like this.
I cut in line, which I knew would piss off the guy I cut. We had the necessary scuffle, and I gave him a bloody nose, and then he shut up and let me take his place. When I sat down in front of the tattoo artist, he looked at me. “What’s it going to be?”
Francis and I had been working for six months now to convince squads to stop flaunting sun-wheel tattoos and shaved heads and suspenders and to start looking like ordinary Joes. Part of that meant wearing long sleeves or getting acid treatments to cover up the ink on our faces. But today was a special day. Today, I wanted everyone to know what I stood for.
When I left that tent, there were eight Gothic letters, one inked on each of my finger knuckles. On the right hand, when I made a fist, it read H-A-T-E. On the left, the side closest to my heart, was L-O-V-E.
At sunset, it was time. In the distance was the throaty roar of motorcycles, and everyone who was still at the festival formed two lines. I waited, my hands clasped in front of me, the skin still red and swollen from the new tats.
Then suddenly, the crowd parted, and I could see Brit, backlit in the oranges and yellows of the end of day. She wore a white lace dress that made her look like a cupcake, and her Doc Martens. I started smiling. I smiled so hard that I thought my jaw would crack.
When she was close enough to touch, I tucked her arm into mine. If the world had ended at that moment, I would have been okay with it. We started to walk down the makeshift aisle. As we passed, arms flew up, everyone Sieg Heiling. At the end of the line stood Francis. He smiled at us, his eyes bright and sharp. He had presided over dozens of Aryan weddings, but this one was different. “Ladybug,” he said, husky. “Aren’t you something?” Then he turned to me. “You fuck with her and I will kill you.”
“Yes, sir,” I managed.
“Brittany,” Francis began, “do you promise to obey Turk and continue the heritage of the White race?”
“I do,” she vowed.
“And Turk, will you honor this woman in war as your Aryan bride?”
“I will,” I said.
We turned toward each other. I looked her in the eye, unwavering, as we recited the Fourteen Words, the mantra David Lane created when he was running the Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.
I kissed Brit, while behind us, someone lit a wooden swastika to brand this moment. I swear I felt a shift in me that day. Like I really had handed over half my heart to this woman, and she had given me hers, and the only way we would both continue to survive was with this patchwork.
I was dimly aware of Francis speaking, of people clapping. But I was pulled toward Brit, like we were the last two people on earth.
We might as well have been.