David Robbins - Twin Cities Run

“Incredible!” Paul interrupted. “Praise the Lord! He has sent you to us.

Brother Joshua. We would never have expected that there is another group who believes as we do.”

“We believe in the Supreme,” Joshua said, selecting his words with the utmost discretion, “and we are taught that all men and women are brothers and sisters.”

“Praise the Lord!” Paul exclaimed happily.

“And I’ve already told you about the Family and the Home,” Joshua continued. “Now, I would be pleased if you would consent to answering some questions I have about the Twin Cities.”

“I would be glad to do so,” Paul said heartily.

“Can you tell me how the current situation came about?” Joshua inquired. “Do you have any idea of the history of the Twin Cities since the war?”

“I know it all,” Paul said proudly.

“You do?”

“Of course.” Paul gazed at the white ceiling, sorting his facts. “Each leader of the First Church has kept a journal of events, beginning with Reverend Jack Wilcox, our illustrious organizer, the man who established the First Church of the Nazarene.”

They had touched briefly on this subject the night before. “He was the one who refused to evacuate when the Government gave the order to leave the Twin Cities?” Joshua asked.

“Exactly. Reverend Wilcox was a true fundamentalist, and he was a great man, with profound faith in the Word. He knew his flock had nothing to worry about, and he called on them to stay here with him, to show the sinful world that there were Christians willing to commit themselves, totally, to their Lord, and to rely on Him to preserve them in times of crisis. Bless them! Most of them saw the light and stayed! Two hundred and ninety-four souls stood firm and stayed in the church, praying to their Maker, while panic filled the streets and the populace fled.

And here we have stayed, ever since, never leaving St. Paul. We have withstood the onslaughts of the degenerates and the wicked! We have stayed true to the Word!”

“How many of you are there now?” Joshua asked Paul.

“Let’s see.” Paul calculated a moment. “I would say upwards of four hundred.”

“You have prospered over the years, I take it?”

“Of course! The Lord looks after His own.”

“How many of the other groups are there? The Porns and the Nomads and the Wacks?”

“I can’t answer with complete certainty,” Paul said. “But I would estimate there are close to six hundred Porns, damn their souls! They’re filthy creatures, little better than an animal in their moral and spirutal status.”

Joshua noted that comment for subsequent deliberation. “What about the Nomads and the Wacks?”

“The Nomads were only formed seven years ago,” Paul stated sadly, his face downcast, “by one of our own brethren. Zahner is his name. He and I were close. I can’t understand why he did what he did.”

“How many follow Zahner?”

“Surprisingly, our estimates place the Nomad population at two hundred or so.”

“Why does that surprise you?”

Paul frowned. “It reveals that many apparently feel the way Zahner does.”

“How does he feel?”

Paul leaned on his right elbow. “He left the First Church because he said he was tired of the constant warfare between us and the Porns.”

“Which prompts another question,” Joshua said continuing his probe.

“Why do you call them the Porns? And why do they call you the Horns? And what about the Wacks?”

“Let’s see.” Paul idly picked at the blanket Joshua was lying on. “Taking them one at a time, in sequence,” he said, revealing his information, “starting with the vile Porns, our journals tell us that Reverend Wilcox was not the only one who remained in the Twin Cities. Another man, a dealer in pornography and other diverse wickedness, a man with an organized criminal empire, an owner of what were known as porno movie houses and massage parlors and a previously convicted dealer in drugs, also stayed. This man was named Creel. His businesses were established along Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, and he refused to leave. Many of his criminal cohorts stuck with him, his muscle men and the pimps and the whores and the addicts and the rest. There they are to this day, breeding like rabbits!”

“Fascinating,” Joshua said, amazed. “So Minneapolis was taken over by this pornographer, Creel, and St. Paul by the First Church, two groups with diametrically opposed views and lifestyles.”

“Precisely,” Paul confirmed. “At first, the two sides managed to live in peaceful coexistence, until the fateful day when one of the Porns raped one of our young women. The Porns refused to turn the culprit over for proper punishment, so the First Church retaliated, attacking their camp and destroying part of their food supply.”

“And let me guess,” Joshua finished. “The Porns then took revenge on the First Church, and the First Church had to have retribution, and reprisal followed reprisal until the two sides came to hate each other.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Paul said stiffly.

“If I comprehend this,” Joshua reasoned, “the pornographers became known as the Porns. Am I right?”

Paul nodded. “I don’t know who first started it, but at one point in his journal Reverend Wilcox began referring to Creel and his ilk as Porns.”

“But how did the First Church become known as the Horns?”

“They did it”

“The Porns?”

“Yes. Again, my information in this respect is sketchy, but evidently the Porns began referring to us as self-righteous, vain, and intolerant. Imagine that!”

“Yes, imagine that.” Joshua suppressed a grin.

“Anyway, at one point they began casting aspersions on our physical sharing…”

“On your sex life?”

Paul’s face reddened. “Yes. They said our morality had repressed our human sexuality.”

“They called you horny?” Joshua, at last, saw the light. The slang word was infrequently used by the male Family members, usually when the Warriors were gathered, reveling in their machismo humor. Telling jokes was a popular entertainment. Come to think of it, the last time he’d heard the word was when Hickok was telling a tale about a Warrior who’d encountered a beautiful woman in the woods and didn’t know what to do with her because he’d failed the Family course in Sexual Organs: Their Function in Reproduction, a course taught by a senior Family couple.

Joshua had overheard Hickok telling the story and, despite his initial embarrassment, he’d laughed his head off. Hickok was a gifted storyteller when he was in the mood. Where was Hickok at this very instant? And Blade, and Geronimo, and Bertha? Had the Wacks killed them? He realized Paul was speaking.

“…and we became known as the Horns to them. We never use the word ourselves, you understand?”

“Of course. Thank you for telling me this. It explains a lot. That leaves only the Wacks.”

“Ahhh, yes. The poor lunatics.”

“How do you mean?”

“From what the records reveal,” Paul explained, “when the Government called for everyone to evacuate, everyone did, as quickly as they could. The entire staff at the Minnesota Hospital for the Criminally Insane, set up a few years before the war in Bloomington, in south Minneapolis, deserted their charges and left them to fend for themselves.”

“Dear Father!”

“Indeed.” Paul nodded. “The mentally depraved inmates took over the Hospital, and have flourished, scrounging like savage animals, ever since.”

“But why are they called the Wacks?” Joshua still didn’t comprehend their name.

“The Porns started it.”

“How?”

Paul sighed. “The Porns have a remarkable faculty for devising quaint terms for everything. Part of their street heritage, I believe. They began calling the insane ones the Wacks, a derivative of the word wacky, possibly, or of one of their obnoxious gutter expressions, wacko.”