William Johnstone - Out of the Ashes

“Kasim? Piss on Kasim! His bread isn’t baked. He was a street punk and that’s all he’ll ever be.

“You’re going to look up one day, Ben—very soon, I believe—and the job of leader will be handed to you. Like me, you won’t want it, but you’ll take it because you believe in your dreams of a fair world, fair society. I read you like a good novel, Ben. You opened yourself up to viewing when you said you weren’t staying; you were heading west. You’re going for the states Logan is leaving alone for a time. And you’re going to form your own little nation. Just like we’re attempting to do here. Good luck to you—you’re going to need it. I—we—may join you out there.”

“You’d be welcome, Cecil. There are too few like you and Lila and Pal and Valerie.”

“And Salina,” Lila added, her eyes twinkling.

Ben smiled.

“And you’re right, Ben,” Cecil said. “It’s in the home. Root cause.”

Ben’s words.

“One of my earliest recollections is of Mozart and Brahms,” Cecil reminisced. “But you think the average southern white would believe that? Not a chance. He’ll put down black music—which I detest—while slugging the jukebox and punching out the howling and honking of country music.

“My father used to sit in his study, listening to fine music while going over his day’s cases, a brandy at hand. My mother was having a sherry—not Ripple,”—he laughed—“going over her papers from the college. My home life was conducive to a moderate, intelligent way of life. My father told me, if I wanted it, to participate in sports, but to keep the game in perspective and always remember it is but a game. Nothing more. No, Ben, I didn’t grow up as the average black kid. That’s why I know what you say is true. Home. The root cause.

“I went to the opera, Ben. Really! How many violent-minded people attend operas? How many ignorant people attend plays and classical concerts? How many bigots—of all races—read Sartre, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dante?” He shook his head.

“No, you find your bigots and violent-minded ignoramuses seeking other forms of base entertainment. And I’m not just speaking of music.

“Do you know why I joined the Green Berets, Ben?”

Ben shook his head.

“So I could get to know violence firsthand. We didn’t have street gangs where I grew up. To try to understand violence.” He laughed aloud, heartily, slapping his knee. “Well, I found out about it, all right; I got shot in the butt in Laos.”

“Enough,” Lila said. “Let’s don’t you two refight the war. I’ve heard all your stories. Tomorrow is a workday. Let’s go home.”

They all stood up, Cecil saying, “Both our peoples have a way to go, Ben.”

“Think we’ll make it?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll wager that with your ideas and my ideas we could give it a hell of a try. Think about that, Ben Raines.”

After they had said their good nights and good-bys, for Ben was pulling out in the morning, Ben walked into the bedroom. “Are you all right, now?”

“Of course, I am,” Salina said, her voice small in the darkness. “I always lie in the dark and bawl and snuffle.”

“You heard everything that was said?”

“I’m not deaf, Ben.”

“Well… you want to head out with me in the morning?”

“Maybe I like it here.”

“Sure you do. Stay here, and if you’re not killed by Parr’s mercs, you can marry Kasim and live happily ever after.”

“That is positively the most dreadful idea anyone could offer. Thank you, no.”

“I repeat; would you like to head out with me?”

“Why should I?”

“You might see some sights you’ve never seen before.”

“Ben, that is a stupid statement for a writer to make. If I haven’t seen the sights before, of course I’d be seeing them for the first time.”

“What?”

“That isn’t a good enough reason, Ben.”

“Well… goddamn it! I like you and you like me.”

“That’s better. Sure you want to travel with a zebra?”

Ben suddenly thought of Megan. “I’ll tell everyone you’ve been out in the sun too long. But let’s get one thing settled; when I tell you to step-and-fetch-it, you’d better hump it, baby.”

“Screw you, Ben Raines!” She giggled.

“I also have that in mind.”

She threw back the covers and Ben could see she was naked. And beautiful. “So come on. I assure you, whitey, it doesn’t rub off.”

Ben, Salina, and Juno pulled out before dawn, heading east, to Mississippi. Salina thought it best she tell no one verbal good-bys, so she left a note. Both Ben and Salina thought it best. Juno offered no opinion; he just liked to travel.

“I thought I was opinionated,” Ben said. Faint streaks of red mingled with gray in the eastern sky. “With some strong ideas. But Cecil lays it right on the line, doesn’t he? I like him.”

“You agree with him, Ben?”

“Yes, I do. We both agree that the root cause for most of this nation’s inner problems lies in the home. But… my solution—as he said—was Orwellian. Other than that, I don’t know how to correct it.”

“You could start by killing all the rednecks,” Salina suggested. Ben did not think she was joking.

He smiled, thinking: she may be half-white, and look almost pure white—with a dark tan—but she was raised among blacks. The next few months should be interesting. Or years; the thought came to him, and he was comfortable with it.

“Let me tell you something about rednecks, Salina,” he said.

“I know all I need to know about them. I saw pictures of them in Alabama and Mississippi during the civil-rights movement in the sixties. I saw them putting high-pressure water hoses on little children; saw them throwing rocks and bottles; saw the churches that were bombed and burned; and the bodies of black people who were killed. I’ve read many accounts of the KKK—night riders.” She shuddered. “Thanks, Ben, but no thanks.”

“If you’d have looked a bit more closely at those pictures, Salina, you’d have seen some fear as well as hate on those white faces.”

She glanced at him. She waited.

“Don’t you know that a lot of whites—many more than will admit it—are afraid of black people? The myth of the black man—subhuman species, only a few centuries away from being an ape.”

A very small smile creased her lips. She fought it back. Ben did not ask why the smile. But he hoped she was thinking of Kasim.

“As for rednecks, Salina, allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Back when things were normal, if you’d had a flat on the highway—”

“Don’t use me, Ben,” she interrupted. “I don’t look black.”

“All right, then, two black, black women. Your slick dude in the three-hundred-dollar suit, driving the fancy car is not going to stop to help those ladies—not ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But some ol’ boy wearing a cowboy hat or a ball cap and boots with mud on them, bouncing along in a pickup truck will stop. I’ve watched that scenario played out a hundred times over the years. And that ol’ boy will work and sweat and bang his knuckles and cuss under his breath. But he will change that tire for those black women.

“Traditionally—and unfortunately, this is changing—your good ol’ boys were the first to volunteer during a war. Call them rednecks if you will—I do—and many of them are. Point I’m making, babe, is this: you look closely at most people, you’ll find some good in them. Maybe not much, but some. Unless he’s a punk, pure, and then you can search forever and not find anything of redeeming value.”

“Kluckers—KKKers—have redeeming values?”