Save Johanna! by Francine Pascal

to pull out his pad, but the nigger stops him. I get the picture right away. I know this fuckin’ black bastard is looking to give me pain. He wants my blood, but he’s going to have to get it all by himself. I don’t lick his ass, but I don’t give him anything to work with either. He’s looking at me, spitting abuse and saliva in my face, knocking in every insult with a hard slam at my shoulder, but I don’t move an inch. I can see the white guy’s getting jittery, he keeps telling him to take it easy, but this son of a bitch is getting his rocks off, and it looks like nothing’s gonna stop him.
    “Meanwhile, I’m staring into that big, ugly gorilla face and watching those swollen pink lips sliding up and down over his white teeth shoving foamy spit into the corners, and I don’t even hear what he’s saying. All I’m thinking is how come so many niggers have mustaches and why the whites of their eyes are always stained yellow and red and how they’re the ugliest, stupidest cocksucking pricks around and how beautiful it’s gonna be when the whole thing explodes and we wipe out every fuckin’ nigger in this country.
    “I can see his partner’s starting to get really scared because he gets my vibrations, and he knows where the nigger’s heading and he doesn’t want any part of that shit so he steps in and pretends to take over, but we both know nothing’s gonna happen except now he gives his partner a way out. They lay two tickets on me, and the black guy says how he’s going to be watching out for me.”
    The very pregnant Nellie nodded her head yes, she knew. “Those pigs are all the same,” she said.
    “Wrong, baby,” Avrum said, “it’s the black pigs. Those are the ones we gotta watch. They got big plans, but they’re not ready yet.”
    “What kind of big plans could they have?” Frank asked.
    “Only the world,” Avrum told him. “Is that big enough for you?”
    “Niggers scare me,” Imogene told Avrum.
    Swat put the plate of chili down on the table and looked disgustedly at Imogene. “You’re full of shit. What about what’s his name . . . Arnold? He scare you too?”
    “Cool it,” Avrum said, and Swat stopped instantly.
    “Hey, Avrum,” Frank said, “they only got about fifteen or twenty million people in this country. How are they going to do it? Take over, I mean?”
    “Easier than you think. There’s a lot going on that you don’t know about.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like that the blacks have been arming since the late sixties. Did you know that?”
    “Uh uh.”
    “Well, you’re not supposed to know. It’s a secret underground movement. In every city and any small town where they’ve got a dozen blacks they’ve got guns, and they know how to use them. The first time I heard about it was in prison about six years ago. Some guys were blowing off about how it was going to be after the uprising. Nobody took them seriously, but I began to listen. And the more I listened, the more I heard. I heard numbers and weapons, attack plans, finances, everything, and it struck me—this is too organized for bullshit. That’s when I started formulating my own plans.”
    Now Frank was fascinated. He wanted to know what kind of plans, but Avrum was cautious and all he would say was, “Against them first and then against everyone opposed to us.”
    But Frank wasn’t satisfied. “How are we going to do that?” he wanted to know. “We’re nobody.”
    “Right. And that’s our big advantage. They won’t be watching us.”
    That was confusing. Frank wanted to ask, who won’t be watching us, but everyone else seemed to know, and he was afraid to antagonize Avrum again. He was new to the group. Born and brought up just outside Salt Lake City, the oldest son of a druggist, he’d spent the first eighteen years of his life imprisoned within the thick-walled cocoon of small-town, middle-class living, doubly protected by his perfectly middle-class Mormon religion. Frank always seemed