Needles, hair cropped short, tanned skin, larger than normal teeth, attended Ohio State University and hoped to become a historian. A historian, he had told so many people, transcends the role of a mere history teacher. Sure, Needles would teach, but he loved studying social history, the impact of deviant factions on society. For such a historian, the Columbus Veteran’s Day parade was a treasure trove. At the parade, Needles could watch dissident factions like the KKK, the AZP, and the Vietnam veterans all paint on the same canvas at the same time.
Marrian Thornbinge was a known Klansman, so Needles made a point of visiting his shop before the parade began. The confederate flag above the checkout counter both intrigued and terrified Needles at the same time. His father, Jacob Steiner, had been a rabbi at the Sinai Synagogue in South Euclid. Members of the KKK had burned a cross on the front lawn of the Sinai when Needles was a boy; that was the first act of terrorism the synagogue had suffered. Needles remembered the flames. He remembered the crescent of ghost men standing in the garden in front of the synagogue, some of them laughing. He remembered his father rushing him out of the back door and driving him to his aunt’s house. As a Jew, Needles felt sickened by the anti-Semitic marks in the pawnshop. But as a historian, he had learned to trade his personal views for professional objectivity.
Needles stood in a known Klansman’s place of business, looking at a confederate flag. The KKK had modified the traditional rebel X by adding an extra symbol where the two lines of the X intersected: a cross, embedded in a circle, a blood drop painted at its intersection. The blood drop represented the blood spilled by Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for the white, Aryan race.
Marrian, the shop’s proprietor, sat behind a checkout counter, cleaning a pistol, its parts laid out on the countertop. The man sat like a boulder, fat with a handlebar mustache and longish, steel-colored hair. His hands had a menacing, experienced look to them, chipped flesh, the tip of his left index finger missing. Those hands seemed capable of performing any number of unseemly acts. Marrian worked on the pistol, running a swab down the barrel, leaving a layer of oil on the steel rifling.
“Walther PPK,” Needles said, nodding towards the gun. “Same pistol that killed Hitler.”
“Hell, it did a lot more than that before he put it to his head. What can I do you for?” Marrian said, his voice high-pitched, chopped up, practically spent. Marrian looked at Needles with a sideways glance; the kid had dark hair, sharp features, a longish nose, sunken eyes; he had to be careful: the kid could be a Jew.
Needles glanced over his shoulder then back at Marrian. “Kigy,” he uttered the secret Klansman’s greeting. As a historian, Needles probably knew more about Klan symbols and protocol than Marrian.
Marrian’s eyes squeezed into slits. “Ayak?” he said.
“Akia,” Needles said.
A cool smile creased Marrian’s face; the antiquated Klan greeting had worked. Needles, though his guts churned in Marrian’s presence, felt confident that he could pass any ritual test Marrian could throw at him.
“Why aren’t you in your regalia with the others?” Marrian asked.
“I’m not marching. They wanted me on the sidelines.”
“That rips my chicken; there didn’t used to be any sidelines. I’m telling you, the Klan is loosing its stones.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Since Sam Bowers went down from that firebombing at the Dahmer place, there’s been nothing but radio silence.”
“We’re marching aren’t we?”
“Yea, we’re marching, but under that pussy-foot of a grand cyclops, Griffin. He’s a neutered paramecium. We can’t even demonstrate these days the way we used to.”
“We’re a phoenix, man.” Needles said, allowing a smile to gloss his face, hoping it appeared genuine.
“That’s what they keep telling me; but I don’t believe in just waiting around to come out of the ashes. Sure, Dahmer happened in Mississippi, but this is Ohio. Last thing that happened here was that synagogue in South Euclid.
Needles swallowed hard. “You were there?”
“There? Hell, I organized the whole shindig. You know, we tracked that rabbi down later and beat the shit out of him. Ha, what a time. But Griffin put the skids on the whole show—that pussy of a cyclops. At least I heard that old man, the Rabbi, left the clergy after we schooled him.”
Something fundamental shifted in Needles as he looked the bear-sized man in the eyes. Needles remembered visiting his father in the hospital. With a ruptured spleen and internal bleeding, it was a miracle that Rabbi Steiner had lived. As Needles listened to Marrian diatribe under the Klan flag, he found his ability to remain an objective historian slip away. He couldn’t remain aloof while his father walked with a cane and fought seizures at least twice a week, not while the man who had done it all sat right in front of him. Needles bit down his desire to leap over the counter and choke Marrian with both hands. “Maybe things will heat up yet,” he said, backing away from the counter.
“Damn straight things are going to heat up. If they don’t heat up soon, you can bet your ass I’ll turn on the fire.” Marrian winked.
Needles backed toward the door. He had to leave soon or he feared an ugly outcome. “Parade’s about to start; I better get out there.”
“Next time, tell that pussy of a cyclops that you are going to march with the show in full regalia. I don’t have the stomach for this cloak and dagger, keeping incognito, guys on the sidelines stuff. If we’re going to have colors at all, let’s wear them; lets all wear them wherever we are.” Marrian threw his arm up into the Nazi solute.
Try as he might, Needles couldn’t return the solute. He nodded once, wheeled around and walked out onto High Street to find a place to watch the parade.
“Nice kid,” Marrian said to himself as he went back to polishing his personalized Walther PPK, not knowing that his phoenix would rise in less than twenty minutes.
Chapter 8
It could have been how they looked; it could have been how they smelled; for whatever reason, parade spectators parted to allow Schecky and his friend, Arnold—a black man with a basketball sized afro and mutton chops—move to the curb, a prime seat for any parade enthusiast.
Schecky Lewis wore a pair of pants that he had sewn himself. His mother had taught him as a child to use scissors, pins, and a pattern to make clothes. His first project was a pink sundress for his little sister. He had given it to her for her birthday on a long ago spring day. Schecky’s father—on one of his few good days, on a day long before Schecky had sawed off the padlock on his father’s backyard tool shed, gone inside, and learned a new respect for his dad—had shot some footage of little Circy running around the back yard in her new, hand-sewn sundress. In the choppy, 8mm footage, she tottered about, holding a spraying garden hose, trying to douse the family cat, Roosevelt. The film always brought a smile to Schecky’s face.
He gave up sewing altogether when his father had gone to Korea to fight communism. By the time his dad had returned, Schecky had found a new group of friends: young revolutionaries with new ideas. A new movement was on the horizon and Schecky and his friends fought on the front lines. War could be turned into love. Tumultuous times could be refashioned into peace and tranquility. It was in the music; it was in the slogans; it was in the hair, the clothes, and in the mentally stimulating drugs that Schecky and his revolutionary friends smoked.
Schecky took up sewing for one last project in the fall of 1966. He took down the American flag—the one his father had brought home from Korea—and went to work with a pair of sewing sheers, some red, white, and blue thread, and his mother’s antique singer, which smelled like old furniture polish and grease. Four hours later he had a pair of signature, Schecky Lewis pants: one of a kind, star-spangled trousers. His feelings for America became clear each time he slid the Star-Spangled