There seemed to be a grunt of agreement. “Bruce here is joining us,” he told her. “Right, Bruce?”
“Oh?” She looked back and nodded to the man in the shadows.
They left the wide avenues of the city and drove west.
“What’s this story you’re doing?” Ken asked.
“I don’t know yet. I want to see what happens at a meeting first.”
“You gonna write about a bunch of dumb hillbillies?” he jeered. “You gonna write about how dumb we are?”
“No.” She gave a small laugh.
“I joined about two years ago,” he said. “I was living in Tennessee. I work, uh, construction. There wasn’t any work there and there were too many niggers. Right, Bruce?”
“Yeah,” came the muffled voice.
They rode the next miles in silence, passing out of the city and into the beginnings of the desert. Suddenly, he pulled onto the shoulder of the road and stopped.
“Harry tell you about this?” he asked and moved toward her. Now she saw the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans
She felt the burning stab of fear in her stomach and gave a quick shake of her head. Damn, this was stupid. She had let it happen to her.
“It’s only for a little while,” he said, his voice husky. In his hands he held a yellow-print bandana.
There was nothing she could do, nothing. She couldn’t show fear, couldn’t babble at him, not if she wanted this story. She had no choice but to take the chance. She lowered her head and he tied the bandana over her eyes.
“Can you see anything?” he asked.
She wondered at his lack of smell as he fumbled at the knot at the back of her head. She expected the smell of sweat, a stale smell. He had no smell at all.
“No, I can’t see,” she told him.
She could sense the man in the backseat moving forward. She fought to control the fear. They would pull her out of the car, rape her in the desert and shoot her. Who would know? How long before anyone found her? Goddamn it, she didn’t want to die like this.
The car pulled back on the road. She took a deep breath.
Okay, okay, she told herself. Do the James Bond bit. How many beats of time were passing? Feel the road, the land around you. Was the road bumpy? Were there cattle guards? Were there strange noises? On the right? On the left?
“Check the map.” Ken ordered as the car slowed.
“It says Quail Road. This isn’t Quail Road,” came the confused backseat voice.
“Shut up, goddamn it,” Ken shouted.
She coughed and cleared her throat to show she didn’t care, didn’t realize the importance of the slip. Had it been a slip? Were they making motions to each other, signaling each other to make her think they were near or on Quail Road when it didn’t exist?
After a few minutes the car stopped and her door was opened. Someone placed a hand under her arm, helping her out. It was Ken who untied the now musty smelling yellow cloth. Over his shoulder, she saw the small stucco house with the wooden porch.
“Cover her face, damn it,” ordered the big man who walked toward them. “Cover her eyes. Ah, forget it, it’s too late.”
“I’m Harry,” he said. “Don’t look left or right. Look down.”
“Okay,” she said as he led her to the house.
A few people sat in the tiny living room. He pushed her through and into the cramped kitchen where a heavy woman in a nurse’s uniform stood talking to a thin man in loose blue jeans. A young boy sat at the kitchen table.
“What’s the number?” Harry demanded.
She gave him Brown’s office number. He punched it out on the wall phone and handed her the receiver.
“Okay,” she said to Brown. “Everything is okay.”
“Let me talk to him,” Brown said.
“He wants to talk to you,” she said, handing the receiver to Harry. “No problem,” he said to Brown’s words. “You keep your side of the deal and we’ll keep ours.”
In the living room, he introduced her as “the television reporter I told you about who’s going to do a documentary show about the new Klan.”
They stared at her.
“Let’s get started,” he said. “I know some of you are thinking about joining us. So, we’ve got this tape of what we believe in and what we think is going wrong in this country of ours. The guy who’s talking is one of our national leaders and he is a great man. I’ve met him.”
He turned in a small circle, including each of them in his head nodding. He wore a light blue sports coat, open over the start of a wide belly. His shirt was white, open at the neck. There was no trace of a beard on his fleshy face. His small eyes narrowed with the power and the importance of the moment.
“He’s a man who cares more about America than any of those politicians in Washington. Listen to this tape. Listen to what he has to say. I think you are going to be shocked.”
Ellen leaned forward, her notebook in her lap. Across from her a young woman with long straight hair sat on the couch next to the man from the kitchen, an obvious couple. The woman nodded with the drone of the tape while the man smoked.
A bearded man in the easy chair next to the couch puffed on his pipe. When Harry introduced her, he seemed to do a double take as though stunned. The nurse sat in a folding chair next to him. A big man in a denim shirt sat in another chair. An older woman with short gray hair sat on Ellen’s left. She assumed Bruce from the backseat was the man in the folding chair on her right. He had pulled the chair slightly behind their circle. She still couldn’t see his
