Jay and J.D. stood watching Dale walk back to the house. “Get the plates?” Jay said.
Dale shook his head.
“Same fuckers as last time, you think?”
Dale said he thought so, yeah.
At the moment Clyde was more worried about his mom than about a car the Smalls thought was FBI. He didn’t feel like he could leave before somebody said something, so he stood in the open door of his truck, watching Dale, J.D., and Jay talk in a circle. When Jay noticed Clyde standing there waiting, he said, “Oh, Clyde-san. Monday through Thursday class at six in the basement. It’s only two hours. Two-hour class for mama’s boys who got other obligations. Hope to see you.”
“Osu.” Clyde got quickly up into the truck, feeling pain in his fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, ribs, stomach, ass, legs, feet, and toes. He cranked the engine and shifted into drive when he heard his name, or a version of it.
“Clydus Twittus.” Jimmy-Don lumbered into the street, put a paw on Clyde’s open window, and handed Clyde a book. The Turner Diaries was the title. “Ever read this?” he said.
“Huh uh,” Clyde said. The paperback was tattered, worn, much used. Its spine broken, the book fell open to a page with several passages underlined and handwritten notes choking the margins. The cover was familiar. He might have seen it at a gun show.
“I hope you don’t mind, Clyde. Twitty. The book is used. I did not purchase this book new. I did not participate in our national pastime, I did not, I confess, stimulate the economy, and for that I will undoubtedly hang. From the neck. Until dead. Or maybe just sleepy.” Jimmy-Don tapped the cover. “Read it, Clyde Twitty, read it and weep, my tweety-bird friend. Do you tweet? Have I seen you on Twitter? Can I give you a titty twister?”
Clyde grinned. “It’s like a . . . novel?”
Jimmy-Don nodded and wagged his head at the same time. “I dare say you might find some of my notes insightful. Profound even.”
“Thanks,” Clyde said. He resisted the urge to check the time again.
Jay stepped to the curb and called out. “Think of that book as part of your training, Clyde-san. Read it.”
“There will be a quiz later,” Jimmy-Don said, slapping Clyde’s hood so hard Clyde jumped.
Clyde called his mom from Highway 50. She picked up on the first ring, her voice wet with worry until Clyde started in on his excuse. Concern flipped to fury and all Clyde could do was listen to her rant and rave about how many times are you gonna disappoint me? Finally she told him to forget the whole thing, just forget it. She hoped he was happy. Clyde told her he’d pick her up in ten minutes and he did, breaking the speed limit from Boonville to Strasburg, punching the wheel, cursing Jay Smalls, praying for luck. He honked pulling up and helped her in the passenger side. She never could lift herself up. He put her hair kit, a big pink tackle box, in back. The four miles to the Omega she didn’t say a word, just sat there looking beaten down and worn out, Clyde knew that he was the cause of it. He hated to disappoint people who depended on him.
At the Omega he went in after her with the tackle box. She told them who she was, apologizing all over herself to somebody who didn’t know or care. Clyde hung back, just inside the second set of doors that opened only from the inside with the push of the receptionist’s button. It was a jail. A tall man entered the lobby and said, Mrs. Twitty, in a way that didn’t hide his irritation. Clyde’s mom blamed him, her son, he could see very clearly by how often she looked over. Clyde resisted the urge to wave. The man shook his head, wore a sour expression, threw up his hands, shrugged, and crossed his arms over his thin chest while Clyde’s mom apologized and apologized and apologized, working herself near to tears. Finally satisfied that she had crucified herself enough for today, the man told her to follow him. It was almost like he’d gone out of his way to humiliate her in public.
There was no way that Clyde was going to stand around inside the Omega, it was depressing as hell. If he’d had his druthers, he would have gone back to Jay’s and trained the rest of the day like he was supposed to. He hadn’t felt the burn of a hard workout since baseball and he missed it.
In the truck he sat watching the Omega’s front doors. Every few minutes a resident appeared, hands on glass, staring with cloudy gray eyes—Let me out! Let me out! Clyde couldn’t sit there watching that; he went around to the back of his truck, stepping into the first stance he’d learned that morning. It hurt his knees but he did it anyway, going through every technique Jay had shown him, all the punches and strikes, the blocks that made his shoulders ache. He breathed the way he’d been taught—in quickly through the nose, out slowly through the mouth—and sweat ran down his face. Jay had said, “If you’re gonna punch, punch hard,” and Clyde executed every technique with as much power as he could muster. He kept count, then tried some kicks, but fell off balance too often and got frustrated. Jay could stand on one foot and raise the other to your face, gently tap your cheek, and bring it back to the ground. Clyde kept to knee kicks and threw a hundred. Sweating and tired but feeling strong again, he got back in his truck. He’d chased all the aches away. He opened the book that J.D. had given him.
September 16, 1991. Today it finally began! After all these years of talking—and nothing but talking—we have finally taken our first action. We are at war with the System, and it is no longer a war of words.
I cannot sleep, so I will try writing down some of the thoughts which are flying through my head. It is not safe to talk here. The walls are quite thin, and the neighbors might wonder at a late-night conference. Besides, George and Katherine are already asleep. Only Henry and I are still awake, and he’s just staring at the ceiling.
I am really uptight. I am so jittery I can barely sit still. And I’m exhausted. I’ve been up since 5:30 this morning, when George phoned to warn that the arrests had begun, and it’s after midnight now. I’ve been keyed up and on the move all day.
But at the same time I’m exhilarated. We have finally acted! How long we will be able to continue defying the System, no one knows. Maybe it will all end tomorrow, but we must not think about that. Now that we have begun, we must continue with the plan we have been developing so carefully ever since the Gun Raids two years ago.
Now Clyde remembered. He had seen this book at gun shows. Word was, the assault-weapons ban that passed in 1994 had been pretty much predicted by this book. At gun shows he heard the talk about the erosion of rights and the Second Amendment. He just never thought it would come to that.
The Omega’s automatic doors parted and his mom came through blinking, almost two hours after they’d arrived. It had been years since she’d worked this way, one customer after another, and it had taken it out of her. At home, she rarely had more than three appointments any given day, and only about a dozen clients total, a third of what she’d had when Mr. Longarm was open. After it closed, almost half of Strasburg’s population had left town in search of work, some left the state entirely. Clyde had considered leaving himself, had been given a golden opportunity when his best friend, Troy, moved to Nashville a few months back. In fact Troy and Clyde had talked about Nashville, or something like Nashville, for years. Troy played the drums and had always urged Clyde to take up guitar. Clyde had tried but he had no aptitude for it so Troy had told him he could manage the band instead. To Clyde, it had just been talk, the silly daydreams of a couple small-town boys, he’d never expected it to lead to anything and had always figured Troy hadn’t either. Between the announcement of the move and packing the car neither of them had mentioned Clyde riding shotgun. He guessed Troy had by then realized that there were certain responsibilities that would keep him right where he was.
Somebody once said that luck brought more luck. Clyde thought this must be true when a few minutes before six a.m. Monday morning he got the call from Walmart. Jerry Wilson wanted him at the store by