Son of Fletch

After a moment, Jack said: “I only hit him once.”

Fletch said, “I guess once was enough.”

Carrie was making sniffling noises as she walked.

As they approached the woods, a group of men Fletch had not seen at the bonfire came toward them. They were dragging something large and heavy on the ground.

It was the bull calf.

“Hey, Lieutenant!” one of them called to Jack. “You hungry?”

Fletch went to where the men stopped to rest. Dragging the bull calf by its hind legs and tail was tiring them.

They had shot the bull calf behind one ear. Executed it.

Fletch had not heard the shot over the music.

He looked back at Carrie, who had remained some paces away.

She was looking away in the moonlight. At her sides, her fists were clenched.

One of the men said, “We’re gonna have us some bar-b-que!”

In a low voice, Jack said to them, “I’ll be right back.”

He and Fletch continued.

Angrily, Carrie had walked into the woods ahead of them.

She screamed.

When Fletch got to her, she was slapping at a man’s legs dangling in the air. She had walked into them. The legs were swinging against her head and shoulders.

Fletch pulled her away from the dangling legs of the corpse.

He looked up.

He recognized the filthy apron.

“My God,” Jack said behind them. “They hung the cook!”

18

“Have you filled up your condom yet, son?”

The palms of his hands were on Jack’s bare shoulders. They slid to his neck and rubbed it, caressed it, gently, slowly, firmly.

“Not yet, sir.”

Nearing midnight, Jack, shirtless, sat at the computer console in the small office in one of the two front rooms in the log cabin headquarters of Camp Orania. When he heard someone coming, Jack had slid Tracy’s computer code book into a desk drawer, quit the modem, neatly stacked his disks and quickly typed on the blank screen, Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their Tribe.

The members of The Tribe had not waited long enough for the calf bull to be cooked over what remained of the bonfire. Having had their systems thoroughly voided, they were too hungry. After parts of the calf bull were seared only, in drunken he-man competition, mostly the members of The Tribe ate the bull in bleeding handfuls, raw.

The cabin had four rooms, two in front, one, the smaller used as the office in which Jack worked, the other, with a fieldstone fireplace, as a living/dining room, kitchen. Kriegel slept in one small room at the back of the cabin. Jack had thought Wolfe was asleep in the other. In the half loft over the back of the house, Tracy slept.

Despite the occasional yell, Jack thought nearly everyone else in the encampment was asleep, passed out, knocked unconscious, dead.

Using floppy disks he had bought at the mall, first Jack had copied every file from that computer: membership lists, names, addresses, ages, occupations, brief biographies, as well as the names and addresses of the subscribers to the monthly magazine The Tribe, names and addresses of contributors, locations, numbers and balances of bank accounts belonging to The Tribe under names various, and usually suggesting a charitable or religious nature.

One account in a Birmingham bank was in the name of Carston Wolfe. It had a balance of $53,285.12.

Again using Tracy’s code book, and using the modem, Jack then found himself in a huge computer network. He scanned the “billboard,” the messages headed “Attention All H.Q.’s,” for the previous forty-eight hours.

The big news was that The Reverend Doctor Commandant Kris Kriegel had escaped the federal prison in Kentucky and would soon be among them. Commandant Kriegel would take his “rightful place” of leadership in the “international Tribal movement.”

Kriegel was described as “a founder and organizer of The International Tribe, an important religious leader, historian, anthropologist, philosopher, professor, author, and activist, a leading international advocate of White Rights.”

It also repeated that he was “wanted for questioning” by the South African government and “most police agencies in Europe.”

Nothing indicated that Kriegel had arrived safely at the camp in Tolliver, Alabama. There were several statements that Kriegel’s “Freedom, Life and Safety must be protected at All Costs by Every Member of The Tribe, even at the Supreme Sacrifice of That Member’s Own Life, for The Good of All.”

In the “billboard” there were scores of messages to Kriegel, apparently from “H.Q.’s” in many parts of the country and the world, congratulating him on his escape from prison; most such messages were accompanied by personal statements from people expressing eagerness to work with him “in bringing a new energy, sense of purpose, dedication, discipline, and organization to The International Tribal Movement.” One apparently humorously intended message suggested Kriegel never again delay himself, and the movement, by “ever again stopping to strangle a black whore personally.”

Also in the “billboard” file were rantings, many not really comprehensible, concerning historic, universal, and immediate, local injustices committed by various nonwhite groups and individuals. The alphabet of derogatory names used for these groups and individuals in the “billboard” would make its own glossary.

Jack found the membership lists, et cetera, of groups around the country and the world all easily accessible from the little computer at Camp Orania in Tolliver, Alabama. Also, he found a list labeled “Those Targeted for Assassination.” To his great surprise, he even found particulars regarding Germany’s “Autonomen,” the hooded, masked force that “protects” white rights demonstrators from German security forces.

Clearly, The Tribe was proud of its ability to document perfectly.

Also clearly, Jack thought, probably because the members of The Tribe believed in the righteousness of their cause and in the purity of their own hearts, their security systems were as naive as might be The Sisters of Charity’s.

All this information Jack was copying onto floppy disks when he heard a man’s heavy tread approach the little office.

When Commandant Wolfe entered the small office, Jack was typing onto the computer screen, And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman. —Numbers 12:1.

Caressing Jack’s neck, in a low voice Wolfe asked, “You haven’t filled even one condom yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

At the console, Jack sweated profusely. His floppy disks were plainly visible next to the computer. He hoped Wolfe was sufficiently computer ignorant not to suspect what he was doing. “Haven’t had time yet, sir.”

“A beautiful Aryan boy like you has no interest in sex?”

“I have interest in sex, sir.”

“What are you working on?” Wolfe continued to massage Jack’s neck.

“I’m typing notes for Doctor Kriegel’s sermon in the morning, sir.” Jack thumbed the edges of the floppy disks. “And putting into the computer some of his writings, you know, his sermons, speeches. Some of the things he wrote while in prison. Very important I get them into the computer.”

“Kriegel had use of a computer in prison?”

“Of course,” Jack answered. “He worked in the library. You know about the computer billboard he established among the prisons?”