Black Buck(98)
I laughed. “Right?” She got up and made her way to the door, but I grabbed her wrist. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah. It’ll be fine. Thanks for bein’ here.”
We stared at each other for a while, electricity crackling between us. I swore we were about to cross another line, but she quickly turned around and walked out. Her scent of cinnamon and cocoa butter lingered in the air—a cloud in the shape of her body.
* * *
The living room and kitchen were bursting at the seams. Happy Campers of almost every color, religion, sexual orientation, and gender presentation sat on tables, chairs, the kitchen counter, windowsills, and the floor, forming a circle. In addition to the faces that streamed in from our branches around the world, Happy Campers on the other floors of 84 Vernon also videoconferenced in. I swear, when you walked in and saw a bunch of Ugandan, Mexican, Jamaican, Chinese, Bolivian, Indian, Iranian, and other young men and women sitting in one room, you’d think you were at a Model UN meeting.
I put on my new glasses, stood behind a mahogany lectern in the middle of the circle, and said, “How are you?”
“Happy!” they shouted, like it was Christmas.
“Happy as what?” I asked, beaming from ear to ear as I swung around the podium like some overpaid, overnourished, and oversexed Southern preacher.
“A camper!” they replied, smashing fists into their chests twice.
“That’s what I like to hear,” I said, peering at the papers in front of me. “This has been an exciting week. With the expansion of our London chapter, we now have almost three hundred Happy Campers worldwide. Let’s give it up for Joe Knight, Jimmy Somerset, and Mary Prince for leading the charge across the pond.”
Three floating heads smiled from each of the many screens on the walls as the room exploded in applause.
“Okay,” I continued. “We’re growing at an insane clip, which is excellent. Almost all new recruits find a job within a month of joining. And from the looks of all of you, our diversity efforts, headed by Rose, are going well, so let’s clap it up for her.”
Rose kissed Dolores, a Mexican transplant from California, on the lips, stood, and bowed to applause before taking her seat.
“Question.” A tall Chinese girl stood, wiping black bangs out of her face.
“Wu Zhao?”
“What about the recent video?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure all of our growth has also attracted”—she paused—“hostility from others.”
“You mean white people?” a dark round Ghanaian named Kujoe said from the kitchen counter behind me.
I turned to Trey. “What’re they referring to?”
“I-i-it’s nothing, Sensei B-b-uck. Seriously,” he said, widening his eyes at Wu Zhao.
“Definitely something,” someone said through one of the screens.
“This is why we should let whites in!” Diego, an Afro-Colombian sitting on the floor, shouted. “It’s the twenty-first century. I get that we always say they had a head start, that—”
“That they created the game, like the Parker Brothers and Monopoly, while we minorities”—I stepped from behind the podium and walked toward him—“constructed the pieces even though we weren’t able to play. But when we were allowed to, we realized the game was fixed with all kinds of rules that were created to handicap us, to make us never able to win.
“But there was a certain knowledge imparted to the people who worked with their hands and built the game from the ground up, like our parents, their parents, and their parents, going back to wherever we come from. And now it’s up to us to fix the game and help others, like you, Diego, to learn how to do the same to get ahead. So what were you saying?”
“Just. Just that maybe that video, you know, uh, that group maybe formed because we, we didn’t let white people in.”
I walked back to the podium and nodded to Trey. “Throw it up.”
On the screens appeared a dozen almost identical white guys and girls sitting on miniature thrones, one leg crossed over the other; wearing red velvet jackets; and staring straight-faced into the camera.
“America is under attack,” a disembodied narrator bellowed. “But to be more specific, White America is under attack. Today”—the Ivy League–looking fraternity bros in ties and sorority sisters in skirts stared straight ahead—“it is a crime to be white. A crime to have money. A crime to be straight. A crime to be Christian and everything else our beautiful land was founded on two hundred thirty-seven years ago.”
“What the fuck is this?” I asked, looking around the room. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the screens.
“J-j-just keep watching, Sensei Buck,” Trey said.
“Every day, we who built this country with our bare hands, we who defeated the British with nothing more than perseverance and—”
“Enslaved people!” someone shouted.
“Yeah, fuck them!” someone else said until a wave of shushes silenced them.
“One of the arenas where we’re being majorly attacked is the world of sales. Yes, the very profession that many of us blue-blooded Americans have occupied for years in order to earn an honest living, provide for our families, and move up in the world. The main antiwhite proponent in this battle is an anonymous group called the Happy Campers, who hide behind a grotesque logo depicting a Black Power fist clutching a telephone receiver. Well, I say enough is enough. If they want war, we are going to give them war. And we’re not going to hide behind any logos.”