But no man is totally bad, and Al Maiden did have a few good points, despite his open hatred of whites. He did want the best for his people, but if the whites suffered for it, that, to Al, was of no consequence. He wanted good schools for the blacks, but he insisted upon his teachers teaching myths and half-truths instead of fact. (cecil had once asked Maiden that if indeed there ever was a “great black center of learning located at Timbuktu,” where in the hell was it now-lying somewhere alongside Atlantis?)
In short, Al wanted everything for his people that he did not have as a child in south Alabama. And he did not care how he achieved that goal.
“I can’t do it, Cecil,” Mark had said. “Maybe Al will come around.”
“Doubtful,” Cecil had responded. “I had the same hopes for Kasim, back in ‘89 and ‘90, when I was attempting to build in Louisiana and Mississippi. Kasim’s hatred of whites had made him crazy, just like Maiden.”
“We have to try, Cecil.” Mark smiled. “You know that Al calls you a white man’s nigger?”
Cecil’s returning smile was not pleasant. “I am nobody’s nigger.”
Mark’s smile this time was genuine, knowing he had
riled his friend. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I know that for a fact.”
Ben watched the planes carrying his Rebels lift off and head south. His own people on the ground were mounted and ready to roll. The young people he had gathered at the college in Rolla were ready to move out also, but they would not yet be returning to the new Tri-States. Ben had personally checked them out with weapons-rifles and pistols-and found most of them better than average with each. He had given them plenty of ammunition with which to practice and was now sending them out into the countryside, half of them to the west, the other half to the east. They would spread the word about General Striganov’s IPF and their monstrous plan for a pure race. Each of them carried a signed statement from Ben Raines containing Ben’s condemnation of the Russian’s plan and urging all Americans to arm themselves and resist, to the death, if necessary.
“What are the odds of us succeeding, General?” Denise asked.
“I think they’re better than even,” Ben told her, thinking how young she was and how much she reminded him of Jerre. She wore a revolver at her waist and carried a 20-gauge shotgun.
Ben said, “Striganov was correct when he said a lot of people don’t like minorities. The man did his research well; no telling how long he’s had people in this country, reporting back to him. He’ll get some support-perhaps not as much as he believes, but more than enough, unfortunately.”
The young woman had a puzzled look on her face. “Why do people dislike minorities so, General?”
“Right and wrong on both sides, Denise. A lot of it has to do with arrogance, what the people were taught as young people in the home, and that which the minorities brought on themselves. I don’t think they did so knowingly, many of them, but they did. You’re far too young to remember the social programs designed to help people. They were badly misused, badly administrated and grossly over-budgeted back in the sixties through the eighties and caused a lot of resentment among the taxpayers who had to foot the bills.”
“I don’t understand, General,” Denise said. By now, quite a crowd had gathered around Ben, not just the new young people, but many of his own Rebels.
Careful, Ben silently cautioned himself. Many of these people-maybe all of them-think your words should be chipped in stone to stand forever, and for many of them, this will be the final mental imprint of an event that history might never record with the written word.
He looked at them. They waited patiently.
But I am a man, Ben thought. Therefore I am human, with all the frailties therein. So I have to tell it as I saw it and perceived it.
“The government meant well,” Ben said, choosing his words carefully, conscious of Gale’s eyes on his face, listening intently. “But in their fervor to correct a centuries-old problem, they went overboard with their efforts. The government and courts meant well, and much of what they did was right and just. I will never be convinced that a racially balanced school system
did one damn thing for or toward quality education. Do not-any of you-misconstrue my statement. I am not now and have never been an advocate of the so-called separate but equal philosophy. If one is equal, that is enough said. I believed very strongly in neighborhood schools. They were built so the children of that neighborhood could stay in that neighborhood and still receive a quality education. The courts changed all that by forced busing, and they created a monster; they created hard feelings and near-riots, undue expense for the taxpayer and unnecessary hardships for the kids who had to-were forced-to endure miles of riding a bus. Yes, they were forced. If the parents did not submit to the whims of the government, they faced jail. So much for personal freedom and freedom of choice.
“The government created a welfare state, up to three and four generations of people on welfare. The government took away the will to work among many people. Certainly not all the recipients, but enough of them to create one massive problem. The solution was simple to men like me: Make the people work if they were able to work. But the courts refused to do that. More hard feelings among many of the taxpayers who were picking up the tab-and the tab got more and more expensive. It got-along with the programs-out of hand.
“The great shame of our social programs was the way the government neglected the elderly and the very young. That was a shame I shall never forget. The government would give a community a half million dollars to build a goddamn swimming pool, yet in that same community, the elderly didn’t have enough to
eat, proper shelter or warm clothing. I don’t know how our politicians could shave in the mornings without feeling the urge to cut their throats.
“It seemed that for a while, almost everything the government did irritated somebody or some group. And sadly, rightly or wrongly, the minorities got the blame for it. Many people’s dislike of Jews turned to hatred because so many of the American Jews supported the social programs, were against the death penalty, headed drives in support of gun control. That did nothing to enhance the position of Jews in rural areas-and not just in the South, for the South had become the whipping boy for the liberal eastern establishment.
“The government-in the form of the courts-moved into the private sector, into the work place. Private industry was ordered to establish hiring practices that would include X number of blacks, X number of Hispanics, X number of this and that and the other thing. I’m not saying it was right or wrong, just that it created as many problems as it did solutions.
“And then we had the traditional haters on both sides of the color line. Whites who hated blacks but couldn’t tell you why-they just did. Blacks that hated whites and couldn’t tell you why-they just did. Both sides taught their kids to hate. We had teachers in private academies who would stand up in front of their all-white classes and proudly announce they would never teach or allow a damn nigger in their classrooms. And that is fact, people, not fiction.
“And in many-if not most-of the public schools in the South, and probably all over the nation, teachers became afraid to discipline blacks, and I mean literally
afraid. Fear of losing jobs, fear of having their tires slashed, fear of a lawsuit. All it produced was a couple of generations of badly disciplined and ill-educated blacks. But whitey wasn’t gonna do no number on me, man. You dig?
“Now … that was not the majority of blacks, but just enough to leave a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths.
“Anybody with any insight at all could have and should have seen what was coming: white flight. That became quite a popular word back in the seventies.
“It may seem to you all that I am being unduly harsh on the black people. But you new people, look around you-you don’t see any of the blacks in this command leaving, do you? None of them are leveling guns at me for what I just said. No, because we worked it all out. We agreed on every major issue. We of Tri-States don’t have bigotry and hatred for someone of another color. We don’t have it because we all realized that education was the key to removing it. Education, understanding, some degree of conformity, and patience. We understood that regardless of color, a child is going to need and get a spanking from time to time. That is up to the teacher and it begins and ends there. That is the agreement made between school and parent.
“We almost made it work in Tri-States. We came so close the taste of victory was on our tongues. But the central government in Richmond just couldn’t stand it. I thought they would applaud the achievements we made: all races and nationalities living and working together without one incident in ten years. I thought the central government might learn something from our experiment. But they didn’t. But we aren’t giving
