Meg Cabot - Sanctuary

As we got closer to the buildings we were approaching, I have to admit, I wasn't too impressed. I mean, compared to Jim Henderson's place, David Koresh's compound over in Waco had looked like the freaking Taj Mahal. Henderson's entire operation seemed to consist of nothing more than a ranch-style house, a few trailers, and one rambling barn. Sure, the whole thing had that army barracks, ready-to-mobilize-at-any-minute kind of lack of permanency.

But hello, where was the bathroom? That was all I wanted to know.

To my dismay, Red Plaid Jacket, tailed by the ever faithful Chigger, led us not toward the ranch house, or either of the trailers, but directly to the barn. My chances of finding a working toilet were beginning to look dimmer than ever.

You can imagine my delight then when Red Plaid threw back the massive barn door to reveal what appeared to be the True Americans' command center, or bunker, if you will. Oh, it was no NORAD, don't get me wrong. There were no computers. There wasn't even a TV in sight.

Instead, the seat of Jim Henderson's white supremacist group resembled photos we'd seen in World Civ of Nazi headquarters, back in the forties. There were a lot of long tables, at which sat a good many fair-haired gentlemen. (Apparently, we had interrupted their supper.) And there was a giant flag hanging against the back wall. But instead of a swastika, the flag depicted the symbol that had been carved into Nate Thompkins's chest, and spray-painted onto the overpass and on the overturned headstones at the Jewish cemetery. It was the coiled snake Chick had described, with the words DON'T TREAD ON ME beneath it.

But may I just point out that there the resemblance to the Nazi war machine ended? Because the gentlemen, fair-haired as they were, gathered in the large, drafty room, were neither as tidily dressed nor as intelligent looking as your average 1940s-style Nazi, and seemed also to prefer body art to actual hygiene, a choice perhaps thrust upon them by the lack of easily available running water, if what Chick had said about Jim Henderson refusing to pay his water bill was true.

There weren't only men gathered in Henderson's barn, however. Oh, no. There were women, too, and even children. I mean, who else was going to serve the men their food? And a fine, healthy lot those women and children looked, too. The women's garb I instantly recognized as typical of a local religious sect which, besides favoring snake-handling and coming-to-the-water-to-be-born-again, also forbade its female practitioners from cutting their hair or wearing pants. This made it difficult for girls belonging to this religious group to participate in physical education classes in the public school system, as it is almost impossible to climb a rope or learn the breast stroke in a dress, so many of them opted for homeschooling.

The children were a pasty-faced, runny-nosed lot, who seemed as uninterested in a man with a rifle dragging two perfect strangers into their midst as I would have been by cooking lessons from Great-aunt Rose.

"Jimmy," Red Plaid Jacket said, to a sandy-haired man at the head of one of the long tables, who'd just been presented with a plate of what looked to me—considering that I hadn't eaten since downing a turkey sandwich around noon—like delectable fried chicken. "These're the kids we found sneakin' around by the south fence."

Kids! I resented the implication on Rob's behalf. I of course am used to being mistaken for a child, given my relatively diminutive size. But Rob stood a good twelve inches taller than me. . . .

And, I soon noticed, twelve inches taller than the leader of the True Americans, that fine, upstanding citizen who had, if we weren't mistaken, killed one kid, abducted another, attempted to murder a law enforcement officer, and burned down a synagogue.

That's right. Jim Henderson was short.

Really, really short. Like Napoleon short. Like Danny Devito short.

He also seemed kind of miffed that we had interrupted his dinner.

"What the hell you want?" Henderson inquired, showing some of those exemplary leadership qualities for which he was apparently so deeply admired by his followers.

I looked at Rob. He appeared to be at a loss for words. Either that or he was doing one of those Native American-silence things, to psych out our captors. Rob reads a lot of books that take place on Indian reservations.

I felt it was up to me to salvage the situation. I went, "Gee, Mr. Henderson, it's a real honor to meet you. Me and Hank here, well, we just been admirers of yours for so long."

Henderson sucked on his fried-chickeny fingers, his sandy-colored eyebrows raised. "That so?" he said.

"Yes," I said. "And when we saw what ya'll did to that, um, Jew church, we decided we had to come up and offer our, um, congratulations. Hank and me, we think we'd make real good True Americans, because we both hate blacks and Jews, and stuff."

There appeared to be a good deal more interest in Rob and me now that I had begun speaking. Nearly everyone in the barn was looking at us, in sort of stunned silence. Everyone except Chigger, I mean. Chigger had found a plate of chicken bones, and was consuming them with great noise and rapidity. I noticed no one leapt to stop him, which proved that the True Americans were not only despicable human beings, but also lousy pet owners, as everyone knows you should never let a dog eat chicken bones.

Henderson was looking at us with more interest than anyone. Unlike Chigger, he seemed completely oblivious to the chicken on his plate. He went, "Why?"

I'd been prepared for this question. I said, "Well, you should take us because Hank here, he is really good with his hands. He's a mechanic, you know, and he can fix just about anything. So if you ever got a tank, or whatever, and it broke down, well, Hank'd be your man. And me, well, I may not look like it, but I'm pretty swift on my feet. In a fight, you wouldn't want me on your bad side, let me tell you."

Henderson looked bored. He leaned forward to pick a piece of chicken off the bone and pop it into his little mouth. He reminded me, as he did it, of a baby bird. Except that he had a sandy-colored mustache.

"That ain't what I mean," he said. "I mean, why do you hate the blacks and Jews?"

"Oh." This was not a question I'd been prepared for. I hurried to think of a reply. "Because as everyone knows," I said, "the Jews, they made up that whole Holocaust thing, you know, so they could get their hands on Israel. And black people, well, they're taking away all our jobs."

This was not apparently the correct answer, since Jim looked away from me. Instead, he stared at Rob. He appeared to be sizing up my boyfriend. I had seen this kind of appraising look before. It was the kind of look that little guys always gave to big guys, right before they barreled their tiny heads into the bigger guy's stomach.

"What about you?" Henderson asked Rob. "Or do you let your woman do your talking for you?"

This caused a ripple of amusement amongst the men at the dinner tables. Even the women, poised at their husbands' elbows with pitchers of what looked to me like iced tea, seemed to find this hilarious, instead of the piece of sexist crap it was.

Rob, I knew, was being tested. I had not passed the test. That much was clear. It was clear by the fact that Red Plaid Jacket still had his rifle trained on us, just waiting for the order from his boss to blow our heads off. Chigger, I was certain, would gladly lick up whatever mess our scattered brains made upon the barn floor.

It was up to Rob to save us. It was up to Rob to convince Henderson that we were a pair of budding white supremacists.

And I didn't have much faith Rob was going to perform any better than I had. After all, Rob hadn't liked this idea in the first place. He had objected strenuously to it from the start. All he wanted to do, I was sure, was book on out of there, and if it was without Seth, well, that was just too bad. Just so long as we still had heads on our shoulders, I had a feeling Rob would be happy.