was, Johnny said when Reagan died. Liked to talk tough about the unions over in Poland, but first chance he had he broke up the air traffic controller’s union over here. Goddamn hypocrite. Good riddance, I say.
Of course, the twin’s mother always told them not to listen to what Uncle Johnny said because sometimes he drank and when he drank he got mean. But their dad seemed to think Uncle Johnny was okay. Agreed with him on most things. Dad wasn’t real crazy about the Blake’s because they were Republicans and worse than that, they were conservative Republicans which he made sound like a disease you might catch off a toilet seat. Uncle Johnny said that the real problem with Republicans is that they were in bed with the Jesus-ers. Them Jesus-ers have their way, he liked to say, won’t be no more separation of church and state. Next thing you know we’ll be burning witches and starting the crusades again.
All of which meant very little to Rita and Rhonda.
The only thing that bothered them about being in the Blake’s house is that both their mother and father had warned them never to enter that house because the Blake’s were “gun freaks.” And guns and children don’t mix, they said. Which was something Rita and Rhonda pretty much believed anyway after Josh Denehew got hold of his father’s. 22 pistol and shot three of his toes off. Which their mother had said was “Getting off easy.”
So there they sat, Rita and Rhonda, across from Miriam Blake in that tidy living room with the trappings of the conservative Republican cult all around them, wondering just how and when they would be turned into “brainwashed flag-wavers” like Miriam Blake.
So far, they didn’t feel any different.
But both had noticed that unlike most people’s homes, the Blake’s had gun cases right in their living room.
Miriam said, “You know, I’ve been watching you two girls pound the beejeesus out of each other for years. And always, I’ve been wondering why. When my Roger was alive he said you two were always just too wild for your own good. But I told him you girls had a lot of wild oats to sow. And by the looks of things, you’re still sowing them. My goodness, you must have more oats sowed than Quaker Mills. But why, girls? Why do you fight?”
Rita and Rhonda looked at each other as if the question had never occurred to them before. “I don’t know,” Rhonda finally said.
Miriam shook her head. “Well, there you go, girls! Nobody in this country ever knows! Yet they fight and squabble and raise Cain on a daily basis! The whites don’t like the Jews and Jews don’t like the Chinks and the Chinks don’t like the coloreds. One nation under God! Hah! That’s a laugh! I think we’d all be getting along fine if it wasn’t for the liberals sticking their noses where they surely don’t effing belong. Are you with me on that girls?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison, though they had no idea what she was talking about.
“If the liberals have their way, there won’t be any ‘God’ in this nation. Tell me something, girls. Do you pray in school?”
“No,” Rita said.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s for church,” Rhonda said.
“Oh dear God, now who’s been poisoning your brain with that trash?”
They just looked at each other.
“Do you go to church?”
They shook their heads. “No, ma’am.”
“And why not?”
Rita had to keep her mouth closed so she didn’t say the things her dad did. No child of mine is going to one of those places. I’m raising my girls to think for themselves, not let someone else do their thinking for ‘em. Of course, their dad said this to their mother, but both twins had overheard as they overheard most things. Just like they’d overheard their dad saying, you know what those old deviants are doing to altarboys…just imagine what they do to the girls.
“Don’t you know you’re supposed to?”
Rita, a bit of color touching her cheeks, said, “Nope.”
Miriam just shook her head, but sensing she was running into a wall here, one that might fall right on her head if she pushed too hard, moved right along. “See, girls. The problems in this country mostly stem from the Jews. See, it’s because of the Jews that all those nasty A-rabs don’t like us. We protect the Jews and they hate us for it. The Jews killed Christ. Did you know that?”
“Nope,” they said together.
“Well, it’s true, the Jews killed Christ and here we are protecting them and getting mixed up in wars just to save them when we ought to be throwing those Yids right to the dogs. That’s something they won’t teach you in effing school.”
Rita and Rhonda figured most of what Miriam Blake was telling them they wouldn’t learn in school. And something was telling them that that was probably a good thing.
Miriam went on to explain to them that, again, it was all the liberals fault. Because good God-fearing Americans didn’t have any truck with Jews. It was the rich liberals who forced the government into protecting the Jews and that’s where all the trouble stemmed from. Rhonda was going to point out that she thought it was the oil companies that caused all the trouble in the Middle East, but she kept her mouth shut.
“Now, girls,” Miriam said, “what I’m going to do now is for your own good. What with the flooding, it’s only a matter of time before things get out of hand. And, I’m thinking, they already have. Have either of you girls ever shot a gun before?”
“No,” Rita told her. “We’re not allowed to touch them.”
“Why for heaven’s sake?”
“Because they kill people,” Rhonda said.
That made Miriam shake her head vehemently. “Oh, no, no, no. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
“Guns make it easier, though,” Rita pointed out.
Miriam didn’t like that one and was pretty much suspecting by this point that the Zirblanski’s were nothing but a stewpot of bubbling liberalism. She took the girls over to one of her gun cabinets and pulled out a matching pair of small, sleek. 32 pistols.
“It’s very easy, girls. You take the weapon off safety, pull back the slide to work a round into the chamber, then pull the trigger.”
The twins were shaking their heads, knowing they couldn’t possibly hold those guns, yet, they very much wanted to. Miriam finally put them in their hands.
“We’re standing guard tonight,” she said. “Any of those effing weirdos try to come through that door, we shoot the bejeesus out of them. Do you understand?”
But the girls just shook their heads. Maybe they knew and maybe they were afraid to admit as much.
“I mean we point our guns at them and shoot!”
“We kill people?” Rita said.
“No, honey, not people, just the bad ones. The bad ones that are going to be coming.”
“The liberals?” Rita said.
Miriam just made a face at that.
The girls looked at each other, then at the guns in their hands.
“How will we know?” Rhonda said.
Miriam smiled. “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll know them on sight.”
20
“The weirdest shit you ever saw,” Dave Rose was saying to Pat Marcus as they cruised East Genessee, the rain falling and falling, the patrol car’s wipers whipping back and forth madly. “Me and Eddie, we’re over at one of those tenements on Pennacott, right? Some call came in, kids were worried about their mother. So they send me and Eddie. Okay, what the hell? We get over there and these three kids meet us downstairs. Oh, shit, Pat, they
