Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

Red scratched his head. “Bank a half million of the new money and give me the rest in cash.”

“I’ll prepare it, sir.”

You bet your sweet ass you’ll prepare it, you Swiss fart, Red thought to himself. “I’ll pick it up at six in the morning.”

Handshakes and curt nods all the way around.

Red smirked as he left the villa. Bunch of thieves, he thought. But then Coo-Coo and Du-Du would be ... waiting .. . and, he broke into his first smile in days, Greta would wear the G-string. Not a bad deal.

Hosanna Corner in the godforsaken outskirts of godforsaken Lubbock had ministered to the righteous and the sinner in its alternative histories. Hosanna Corner had come into being after the Civil War as the last watering hole before the wagon trains plunged into the southwest desert.

Nearly a century later, during the heyday of the West Texas oil strike, it naturally evolved into a saloon with gambling and prostitution amenities. When the oil patch collapsed, thousands lost it all and were left with land that could scarcely grow a crop.

Lubbock turned into a mean and nasty place where the American dream had betrayed the wildcatters, roughest of all men.

Hosanna Corner returned to a sense of grace as a local gathering house where a variety of Christian sects tried to gain a foothold among the discontent.

This was a big meeting night. Passwords and identification were required. Red Peterson entered and spotted a lone chair in the rear. The big main floor had been reconfigured with tables removed and chairs set up in auditorium style.

Red seated himself, alone, tilted his chair against the wall, and

squinted at the cast of characters. On one side of the bar, a poster

of a lynched Negro. On the other side, a photograph of the Waco burning. The bar served as an altar, bearing a standing cross. Klansmen unhooded themselves, feeling relief to be among their own. More secret greetings.

Now a half dozen Oregon skin heads tacked a poster of Adolf Hitler on a wall.

Words across the back bar mirror told them that YAW EH IS here!

A dozen men wearing silk shirts adorned with an orange cross and an

orange quasi-swastika took their seats in the first row. These were

the new preachers to be sworn in to the White Aryan Christian

Arrival,

WACA.

The room lowered to dim light, a reminder that most of their work was carried out in darkness.

Members of the West Texas Militia, sporting tattoos and Uzis and gigantic mustaches and red bandanas, encircled the chairs.

“This is an important meeting,” a Klansman opened. “We are gathered to swear in a dozen new preachers of the White Aryan Christian Arrival.”

As the Klansman lay fist against heart, the room leapt to its feet and returned the salute. The chant of “White power!” resonated, shaking the Hosanna Corner to its foundation.

The dozen new preachers took their oath of office.

“.. . we will cleanse this nation of ethnic adulteration. We will defend the purity of our women against mongrel infestation and our children from heathen perverts and homosexuals. We swear all this in the name of Jesus Christ and the memory of His forgotten son, Adolf Hitler.”

“White power! White power! White power!”

“And now the moment has come to hail our spiritual leader, the moderator of the White Aryan Christian Arrival .. . Pastor Ed Jenkins .. . Pastor Ed.”

Cheers, half bows, arm-thrusted salutes welcomed Pastor Ed to the

altar. They hoorayed a small bespectacled man, everyone’s Uncle Ed dressed in polyester civilian clothing, frayed and unkempt, a tireless worker for the movement.

Red Peterson snuck a drink, as did a fair number of flask carriers about the room.

“There are government spies here tonight,” Pastor Ed began. “Look at your neighbor. Is he one of them?”

“No!”

“As you know, brothers, I have been discharged from prison when the foul and dishonest government dropped their sedition case against me. But for six months I moldered in a stinking cell amid sexual deviates, drug addicts, Mexicans, rapists, and murderers, all for the crime of trying to defend my blessed wife and our four blessed children from a government terrorist raid in the middle of the night by the so-called Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.”

The hissing and booing zoomed round and round the room, and the stomping and pounding caused the place to rumble.

Pastor Ed held up his hands for silence.

“I was beaten unconscious by the aTF. people, who then planted drugs and firearms around my house, ripped the place to pieces, and carted off my legal weapons that we must have to defend ourselves from governmental tyranny.”

The whiny-modulated voice now opened into that of a rasping serpent with flicking tongue:

“In that dark and dangerous prison cell, at the lowest point of my life, Jesus Christ came to me. Pastor Ed, Jesus said, I come to you in the name of my Father, and my Father wants you to tell the truth about the government conspiracy against the decent people of the white race.”

Pastor Ed drank from his water glass as he commanded silence. Red Peterson yawned.

“Listen up, Ed, Jesus told me. Jesus told me that at the beginning of

1900 the czar of Russia instituted a series of fake pogroms against the

Jews .. . which never happened. It was a ruse to ship millions of Jews to America and infiltrate and infest our beloved country. When Jews got to New York or other hymie cities, all they had to do was draw cash from Jewish bankers and move into every town and village.”

“White power! White power!”

“Seig Heil!”

“Them Jews took over the press, they own all the department stores, and they own Hollywood—and look where Hollywood has taken us. And the banks and financiers, the Goldmans, the Saks, the Lehmans, the Rothschilds, and television, and the web of secret Jewish societies has choked off the air from decent Christians. The Jews got ownership of companies to feed us poison any time they want to. And the Jews got the niggers all riled up so that the niggers were put into high places to do the Jews’ work .. . that is, when the niggers weren’t looking for white women.”

Pastor Ed held up his worn copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “Here speaks the truthful expose of the international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Got it? The kikes bought their way into American colleges. And the Jews won all the Nobel prizes because their committee was made up of Swedish and Norwegian Jews.”

Pastor Ed had brought the room to rage. Now to tears.

“See, they look down on you and me as scum. You don’t see no Jews as poor dirt farmers. You don’t see no Jews in the wasteland of a dried-up oil patch. No Jew kids picked cotton and peanuts or fished for shrimp .. .”

Now came the big sweat. Off came Pastor Ed’s wettening jacket.

“... and Jesus told me in my prison cell of the shiftiest conspiracy of

them all. Adolf Hitler was a Christian, a nationalist, a man who loved

his country. Rather than see his own country collapse by Jewish

putrifaction, he sent his small and proud and humble and unarmed brown

shirts into the streets to cleanse the nation. The Jews, children of

the Devil and Eve,

cringed as Hitler moved to rid the world of them by attacking Russia.”

“Seig Heil!”