The Lost Brother (14 page)

Kellogg: But what can we do in the meantime? I mean, we
want
to do something.

Kellogg is eager to make it clear to Joan Price that he and Passer, in their role as the Desormeauxes, are willing to go beyond politics.

Price: Keep organizing. Which is hard, now, because the media are blasting us.

Passer: That’s so unfair.

Kellogg: Blacks can join pro-black groups, but if we join pro-white groups we’re cooked.

Passer: How come you don’t talk like this more often in public?

Price, frowning: Jimmy Close. I’ll tell you, to Jimmy, race is an idea, not a reality. Living up there in West Virginia, he doesn’t know any blacks. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have your kids come home from school crying because some racist pig black was hitting them.

Passer, like Kellogg, keeps the point of this conversation, from their end, in mind and asks: But what
can
we do? I mean, really. What can we do? Just oppose affirmative action and stuff?

Price: For now.

Passer: It just doesn’t seem like enough. Not when we’re getting terrorized by black violence so much. Kellogg: Hey—
never
give up your gun. Price, nodding: That’s true.

Passer, lowering her voice conspiratorially: Mrs. Price, we want to do more.

Kellogg nods in agreement. Leans forward.

Price looks at them carefully. Her bodyguard, who hasn’t really been listening too much because he’s heard all this so often before, perks up now.

Price: Listen very carefully. America is a
victim-
oriented society now. Okay? Do you know what that means? It means whoever can paint themselves as the most victimized gets the most public support. That’s why I’ve been so successful. I
am
a victim. I don’t have to fake my tears, I have to control them. But if we attack back, even in self-defense, we lose public support. I understand the Oklahoma City bombing, for example. In a way I mean, what the government did at Waco was horrifying. But by blowing up that building, the militias just hurt themselves. They even hurt us a little.

Kellogg: Like that Richard Ells killer? Was he with you all? I guess you wouldn’t tell us.

Price: I’ll tell you. I met him. I remember him. I meet a lot of people, but I remember him because he acted funny. Very funny. Acted like he was up to something. Personally, I think somebody wanted to frame us for the murders, or at least make us look bad by association, and so they maybe brought him out to a meeting just to establish a little bit of a connection and get him some of our pamphlets.

Kellogg: I remember the
Washington Post
jumped at the chance to blame you.

Price: That paper’s done everything it can to hurt us. Fortunately, most people know what a diseased, self-hating bunch of white Uncle Toms are running it. Just like Malcolm most hated the Uncle Tom appeasers of his day, I most hate the Uncle Toms we have. The whites who fear blacks. Who say, basically, let’s give them money and job preference so they won’t riot. So they’ll like us.

Kellogg: Nothing I hate more than nigger-scared white people.

The blond bodyguard laughs. Nods agreement. Price: I warned you about using that word, sir. Kellogg: Okay, okay.

Passer: So you’re saying, really, we can’t fight back? I mean, take the fight to them? With all they’re doing to us?

Price: No. No violence. Violence is a black thing. When you meet a snake in the grass, do you get down on your belly and hiss? If you meet a rat in an alley, do you scurry on all fours and try to bite it? If you meet a bear in the woods, do you roar and grapple with him? Of course not. So when you meet a black, you don’t fight him. God gave the black man muscles; he gave us brains. I do believe in self-defense, but we can do this politically. We just have to mobilize the anger. The best revenge on blacks is to let them have their own country. Imagine how much fun it’s going to be, watching it become Somalia.

Passer: I guess. I just, you know, want to do more.

Kellogg: To tell you the truth, we came here hoping you could help us. See, I know security systems. I can get us into any building, just about. And Adelia, well, let me tell you, this Cajun girl can
shootl

Passer smiles shyly. The bodyguard, who is quickly developing a crush on her, smiles broadly.

Price: No, no. If we do that, we’re playing into their hands. Listen, the whole thing is to just unite ourselves and make ourselves scarier, as a race, to blacks, so that they feel more justified in their bigotry, more justified in their hate, and more justified in their claim for separation. And part of the way we do that is to oppose things like affirmative action. Affirmative action really isn’t very harmful to us. It is disgusting on principle, as discrimination always is, but there aren’t really that many of us losing that much because of it. I hate it mostly because it isn’t applied to the empowered class of whites who are the same sons-of-bitches who benefited from the discrimination it’s supposed to be making up for. But the thing about affirmative action is, it’s symbolic. And opposing it makes them feel hated. It makes them scared. And the more fear they have, the more anger they express, and the more violence they commit, and then the more truth we have to work with. Don’t you see the genius of my plan? I’m going to use black people’s sickness to destroy them. I can’t wait for them to get their own country. I can’t wait for their own police to have to try to control their sick young males. I can’t wait to see them starve because they won’t have Whitey to do their farming for them. I mean, who’s going to fly their planes, build their houses, manage their power plants? No, we don’t need violence to destroy them; we just need to give them what they want.

Kellogg and Passer drive out to Frederick to trade the truck back for her car, and to back up their role playing if anyone is tailing them. Kellogg has already taped a message on the answering machine at the real Desormeauxes’ phone if someone calls.

Passer: You worry me, Kevin.

Kellogg: Always have.

Passer: You get into that white racist role too easily. I think you enjoy it.

Kellogg: Tomorrow that bodyguard of hers is going to call you. I gave him your number, our number, in Frederick. He’ll leave a message, if he’s intelligent enough to figure out how answering machines work. You call up there, get the message, call him back, go out with him.

Passer: You think he’s a factor?

Kellogg: No. I think Joan Price is straight too. Obsessed, but considering what she’s been through, who can blame her? But I think this kid would love to impress you. If he isn’t really doing anything, if they aren’t doing anything, if
she
isn’t doing anything, he’ll impress you with hot air. But if there is something going on, you’ll flirt it out of him.

Passer: Easy for you to say.

They’re passing exits on the freeway, wipers slapping through the foggy night. They stopped for coffee at a 7-Eleven. Passer finishes her eight-ounce cup at the same time Kellogg finishes his twenty-ouncer; finishes her second cigarette at the same time he finishes his sixth; finishes her only doughnut as he bites into his third.

“And no,” Kellogg says, “I don’t enjoy talking like I did tonight. But I like some of what she says.”

“She’s a racist, Kevin.”

“Anyone saying anything blacks don’t want to hear is racist. It’s just a word used to shut whites up.” Passer sighs.

LONG RAY AND KHALID ARE IN KHAL1D
^J
S GRAND OFFICE in the New Africa headquarters. They’re watching a videotape of Joan Price’s speech the night before.

Joan Price: In Malcolm X’s autobiography, he writes the question, How can whites atone for brutalizing millions of humans over the centuries? What atonement could ever be enough?

We have nothing to atone for! Of what crime are we really guilty? Winning? Even if we say our ancestors committed crimes, what does that have to do with us? What sense does it make to punish a criminal’s descendant? If your brother robs a bank, should we
put you
in jail? And when you consider that black Americans are the wealthiest, freest, best-educated, longest-living, and most powerful blacks in world history,
they
should thank
usi
Every day they don’t wake up in Africa, they should thank us. But the egomaniacs can’t admit it, so they twist history around to make it seem like
we
owe
theml

Khalid laughs. Long smiles with him. Khalid: She’s good! I love her. Long: She
is
good.

Khalid: Did you ever see her on television for that meeting with the guy who killed her husband and child? Long: Where she really screamed at him? Khalid: Screamed. Cried. The whole bit. Long: Yeah, I saw it.

Khalid: As soon as I saw that, I knew she was the perfect foil. Exactly what we needed. Now listen to this.

He gets up, puts another tape in the VCR. Says: This woman is fascinating to me, really. And partly because she is herself so fascinated with Malcolm.

Price: Some have said that I am a segregationist. I am not. I am a separatist. As Malcolm X said, separation is something done voluntarily, for the good of both races. I agree with him. We whites can live with Asians, with Jews, with Latinos, with Arabs. But
not with blacks. Nobody
in world history has ever been able to live in peace, and prosperity, with blacks. Nobody. Ever.

Khalid fast-forwards on the tape. Says: This is my favorite part. Straight Malcolm. Check this out.

Joan Price: I charge the black man with being the greatest
murderer
on earth. The greatest
rapist
on earth. There is no place on this world that that man can go and say he brought peace and harmony. Everywhere he’s gone, he’s created havoc. Everywhere he’s gone, he’s created destruction. I charge him with being the greatest irag-abuser on this earth, the greatest
woman-beater
on this earth, the greatest
slave-seller
on this earth, the greatest
child-leaver
on this earth, the greatest
pimp
on this earth, the greatest jr/?öö/-destroyer on this earth, the greatest
con
artist. He can’t deny the charges.

We don’t have democracy in America, we have hypocrisy. Oh, I’ll say, and I’ll say it again, you’ve been lied to by the so-called civil rights movement. They were never against discrimination; they just wanted to dish it out instead of receive it. Black people lied to us. I’ll say it again: You’ve been had.

Took.

Hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Led astray.

You know, some people call this hate-teaching. This isn’t hate-teaching, this is love-teaching. I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t love you.

The black supremacists try to hide their guilt by accusing me of being a white supremacist, simply because I’m trying to uplift the mentality and social condition of my people.

We have been the victim of violence too long. You’ve got Uncle Tom whites who tell us we ought to love blacks, we ought to integrate with our enemy. But that wouldn’t be intelligent. We have the right to defend ourselves. That’s only natural. We’re not saying hate the black man; we’re saying love ourselves. Resistance is the secret of joy.

*

Khalid is nodding his head in time with Joan Price’s rhythm. Long is silent.

Khalid: Anyway, she’s about to make a break with Jimmy Close, because he’s too “reasonable.”

Long: The FBI tell us that?

Khalid: Yep.

Long: What do you think of that? Khalid: “Reasonable” is bullshit.

Long calls Kellogg Investigations. Leaves his number at the hotel, for Passer to call.

That afternoon, when she wakes and checks the office, she gets his message and calls.

Passer: Hey. What’s up?

Long: Who’s this?

Passer: Me. Passer.

Long: What’s up?

Passer: I got your message.

Long: I want you to tell me the truth about LTC. I want to know what you know about them.

Passer: You want a trade? Info on LTC for info on New Africa?

Long, after a moment: Your boss will go for it.

Passer: He thinks New Africa, or the Mayor, or both, have something to do with all this. Theoretically I could get into New Africa, passing for black, and in time, a long time, find some things out. But I doubt it. Big-time decisions don’t get spilled that easily to anyone, especially to newcomers.

Long: But I can find out anything at New Africa.

Passer: Yes.

Long: Okay.

Passer: Okay? Okay you’ll investigate your own people?

Long: I don’t need to investigate them. I can tell you straight, New Africa had nothing to do with my brother’s murder, and I haven’t heard nothing to implicate the Mayor, either. But I will keep asking questions, and if I find something, I’ll be straight with you about it.

Passer: Okay. That’s good enough.

Long: But if it’s at LTC, if the truth is at LTC, would you tell me?

Passer, sensitive to such things, hears a change in Long’s voice. Something’s different. Passer: What?

Long: You going to be straight with me? Passer: Yes! Long is silent. Passer, again: What?

Long: I’m going to find that boy. You understand me? I ain’t never done nothing my whole life for my mother. Just broke her heart over and over and over. But I’m telling you right now,
this
I can do. He’s disappeared into the streets of this city?
Nobody
knows this city better than me. You understand?
Nobody
. And if that boy’s out there, I’m going to find him. And I don’t care who gets in my way. You understand, girl?

Now it’s Passer who’s silent. Wondering what happened; sensing something has.

That morning, at Mrs. James’s house, when the mail came, her granddaughter got it. She looked through it absentmindedly, hoping only for a certain girls’ magazine she subscribed to, then she saw a letter addressed to her. Excited, she started to open it, then remembered (because of all the hate mail the family had received) that she wasn’t allowed to open mail until a grown-up checked it.

She took it downstairs to the basement, where her grandmother was doing laundry, and gave it to her.