said.
“If I do, you guys can save me,” I said.
“Have to,” Nick said. “Joanie would kill me if I didn’t help you.”
“Hell,” Russell said. “She’d kill us all.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said.
Nick grinned.
“Owl patrol at the ready,” he said.
CHAPTER 22
IT was a mild winter. No snow. The temperatures were usually above freezing. The sun was usually out. It was out on Sunday morning when I got on my bike and road up County Road to Searsville.
Number 132 was a small white one-story building near the road with a few cars parked on the gravel parking lot in front. It looked like some kind of meeting hall. In back there was a house trailer parked next to the hall. The trailer was one of those smooth rounded silver ones, and it looked new. There was a wooden sign by the road that said “Church of America” across the top, and underneath that, “The Rev. Oswald Tupper. Service at 11, Youth Group at 1.” It was ten past eleven. I leaned my bike on the sign. My stomach was tight, and I felt like I was out of breath.
I looked at everything for a minute. Then I took in as much air as I could and went into the hall. It was small, with folding chairs to sit on. There were maybe fifteen or twenty people sitting down, and up front, there he was. He had on a dark double-breasted suit and a red tie. He was standing at some kind of lecture stand and behind him on the wall was a large American flag with a big crucifix on it.
I realized I was still holding in the breath I had taken. I let it out as quietly as I could and went and sat on an empty chair in the back. I knew he saw me come in. He had looked right at me. But he didn’t seem to recognize me. I was, after all, just some kid he’d chased away from his car once. He smiled when I sat down.
“Latecomers are welcome too,” he said.
His voice was very round and official-sounding in the church. It didn’t have that scary sound it had had when he told me to get away from his car. I looked down at my knees as if I were praying.
“As I was telling the others,” Tupper said with a smile, “‘we are face-to-face with both disaster and possibility. The disaster is that the war is over, and the white race lost. Franklin Delano Jewsavelt and the kike conspiracy managed to defeat that struggle for racial purity. But therein lies the possibility. The war is over, all is in flux, and the energies of white America can be focused on the preservation, at least here, in this free country, of the purity of the white race.”
Jewsavelt? Kike? What in God’s name was he talking about?
“The Communists and the Jews,” Tupper went on, “would have us coupling with niggers, and raising a generation of baboons who will do what the Jew commissars tell them.”
Niggers? Baboons? What in hell was a Jew commissar?
“That is why,” Tupper said, “it’s so heartening to see young men here. Young men who have not yet been corrupted, young men who are proud to be American and proud to be white. Young men in whom our future rests, if they will take the opportunity that lies before us. If they will stay true to what they are and what they came from.”
I looked around the room. The men were nodding agreement with everything Tupper said. As he continued, I nodded when the men did. There were three or four other kids in the room, sitting beside their fathers. They nodded too, when the adults did.
Tupper went on about this stuff for a long time. It wasn’t like he used words I never heard. Lots of people said nigger and kike in Edenville. I was used to it, although it always made me feel uncomfortable. But you never heard a minister say it in a church, like it was religious.
After the sermon we waited while Tupper went to the front of the church to greet everybody on the way out.
“This your first time here, son?” he said to me as I came out.
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name son?”
“Murphy, sir, Robert Murphy.”
“A fine old Irish name,”
“If I do, you guys can save me,” I said.
“Have to,” Nick said. “Joanie would kill me if I didn’t help you.”
“Hell,” Russell said. “She’d kill us all.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said.
Nick grinned.
“Owl patrol at the ready,” he said.
CHAPTER 22
IT was a mild winter. No snow. The temperatures were usually above freezing. The sun was usually out. It was out on Sunday morning when I got on my bike and road up County Road to Searsville.
Number 132 was a small white one-story building near the road with a few cars parked on the gravel parking lot in front. It looked like some kind of meeting hall. In back there was a house trailer parked next to the hall. The trailer was one of those smooth rounded silver ones, and it looked new. There was a wooden sign by the road that said “Church of America” across the top, and underneath that, “The Rev. Oswald Tupper. Service at 11, Youth Group at 1.” It was ten past eleven. I leaned my bike on the sign. My stomach was tight, and I felt like I was out of breath.
I looked at everything for a minute. Then I took in as much air as I could and went into the hall. It was small, with folding chairs to sit on. There were maybe fifteen or twenty people sitting down, and up front, there he was. He had on a dark double-breasted suit and a red tie. He was standing at some kind of lecture stand and behind him on the wall was a large American flag with a big crucifix on it.
I realized I was still holding in the breath I had taken. I let it out as quietly as I could and went and sat on an empty chair in the back. I knew he saw me come in. He had looked right at me. But he didn’t seem to recognize me. I was, after all, just some kid he’d chased away from his car once. He smiled when I sat down.
“Latecomers are welcome too,” he said.
His voice was very round and official-sounding in the church. It didn’t have that scary sound it had had when he told me to get away from his car. I looked down at my knees as if I were praying.
“As I was telling the others,” Tupper said with a smile, “‘we are face-to-face with both disaster and possibility. The disaster is that the war is over, and the white race lost. Franklin Delano Jewsavelt and the kike conspiracy managed to defeat that struggle for racial purity. But therein lies the possibility. The war is over, all is in flux, and the energies of white America can be focused on the preservation, at least here, in this free country, of the purity of the white race.”
Jewsavelt? Kike? What in God’s name was he talking about?
“The Communists and the Jews,” Tupper went on, “would have us coupling with niggers, and raising a generation of baboons who will do what the Jew commissars tell them.”
Niggers? Baboons? What in hell was a Jew commissar?
“That is why,” Tupper said, “it’s so heartening to see young men here. Young men who have not yet been corrupted, young men who are proud to be American and proud to be white. Young men in whom our future rests, if they will take the opportunity that lies before us. If they will stay true to what they are and what they came from.”
I looked around the room. The men were nodding agreement with everything Tupper said. As he continued, I nodded when the men did. There were three or four other kids in the room, sitting beside their fathers. They nodded too, when the adults did.
Tupper went on about this stuff for a long time. It wasn’t like he used words I never heard. Lots of people said nigger and kike in Edenville. I was used to it, although it always made me feel uncomfortable. But you never heard a minister say it in a church, like it was religious.
After the sermon we waited while Tupper went to the front of the church to greet everybody on the way out.
“This your first time here, son?” he said to me as I came out.
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name son?”
“Murphy, sir, Robert Murphy.”
“A fine old Irish name,”
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