Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(36)
“You’re looking for a war, Brother Brown?” Gibson said.
“You’re damned right I am,” Brown said, his voice rising. “The climate is right. With all of the militant niggers out there feeling empowered by the liberal agenda that’s been stuffed down our throats for the past eight years, I think they’ll react violently if we lynch one of these football players and leave him hanging in a public place. The fight will be on, and white America is ready. I’ve been proud to be an American nearly all of my life. But in the past eight years, with that monkey in the white house, we’ve been neutered. At least, thank God, he wasn’t able to take our guns. We’re armed to the teeth and ready for what’s coming. I say we light a match to this powder keg we have right here under our noses. They think they sent a message in Ferguson? Wait until they see what kind of message they get from us when this steps off.”
“You really think you can start a race war, Brother Brown? Here? Over this incident? My understanding is that the girl is a stripper and may be a prostitute as well.”
“So? What difference does that make? She’s white, they’re black, they raped her, and that’s all that matters.”
“You’re expecting black militant groups to gather here, armed, and start a shootout with white people?”
“We’ll hold rallies in support of the lynching. I’ll send them emails and post on their websites. That’ll bring them out of the woodwork. They’re all over the country now: The Nation of Islam, The New Black Panther Party, All Eyes on Egipt Bookstore, Israel United in Christ. They’ll come, and they’ll be itching to fight. We’ll be itching to accommodate them. We have brothers all over Northeast Tennessee, chapters here and in Erwin and in Hampton and in Church Hill, and I have contacts all over the south.”
“And you believe the government will let this happen?”
“To hell with the government. They’ve been part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
“If you start a shooting war, Brother Brown, the police will shoot, too. The governor may call in the National Guard. If it gets bad enough, I wouldn’t be surprised to see soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg or the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell come rolling in.”
“White American soldiers are not going to fire on white patriots,” Brown said. “Besides, it won’t come to that. We’ll kill so many of them before the soldiers get here that they’ll crawl back in their holes and never come out again, and we’ll disappear into thin air.”
“After you bury your dead. What is it exactly you want from us?” Gibson said.
“A promise that when the shooting starts, you’ll bring as many armed men as you can gather and come a running. We’ll need to overwhelm them.”
Gibson looked at his brother, who hadn’t said a word during the entire exchange, and then looked back at Brown. He sighed deeply.
“While I understand your frustration and your anger, and while I sympathize deeply with you, I’m afraid that lynching will only take us backwards. Starting a shooting war will only take us backwards. Violence is not the answer. This fight has to be won in the halls of our lawmakers and in the hearts and minds of our young people.”
Brown was stunned. This was nothing like what he had expected.
“So you’re just going to turn us down flat?” he said. “You’re not going to help?”
“We’ll help,” Gibson said. “Just not in the way you’d like.”
“Well, what do you think about that, fellas?” Brown said. “The men from the birthplace of the mighty Ku Klux Klan are pacifist pussies. You’re no better than traitors.”
Brown pulled a long-barreled revolver from the small of his back and pointed it at Josiah Gibson’s head. The room went silent.
“I’m going to give you and your mute brother ten seconds to get out of here,” Brown said. “And if I hear another word out of that pie hole of yours, I’ll shut it permanently.”
The brothers scrambled to the door and disappeared into the storm.
“That right there is exactly what I’ve been talking about,” Brown said to the others after the door had closed. “They’re the reason we’ve gotten to this point, the reason we’ve lost all of our power. Literature. Education. Hearts and minds. What a bunch of bullshit.”
He looked around the room at his men.
“I can count on you when the time comes, right?”
Each man in the room nodded and murmured something affirmative.
“That’s good, because if one of you decides you don’t have the stomach for what’s about to happen, you’re gonna meet Mr. Smith and Wesson, and the meeting won’t have a happy ending.”
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
Jack, Charlie and I walked into Mike Armstrong’s office at 9:00 a.m. sharp on Friday. He’d been reluctant to meet with us, but when I told him I had something important he needed to see, he finally relented.
His office was a pig sty. It was dusty, there were boxes and files piled haphazardly all over the room. Nothing hung from the eggshell white walls, not even a law degree. The place smelled of stale coffee and there was an almost nauseating aroma emanating from a trash can next to his desk. It had to be some kind of rotting animal flesh. Unfinished chicken he’d eaten at his desk and thrown away, maybe? Whatever it was, I had to say something about it.