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  The boys stood along the port side of the skiff, brushing their hands along the railing and looking back and forth from their father to the skiff. “Why can’t we keep her, Dad?” one of them said. He looked at Patrick sullenly.

  “The boys love this thing,” said Pangborn. An awkward silence followed. “Look, my listing price is thirteen grand but you seem like nice people, so I’ll let her go for twelve-five. Trailer, electronics, cover, everything.”

  “No!” the boys hollered in unison. Pangborn pointed to the house and the boys marched up the walkway, muttering and clomping their athletic shoes loudly on the concrete. Patrick saw a tall blond woman gather them in and close the big wooden door.

  Patrick thought of the fire, and his father turned down for Farm Credit loans, and the terrible financial shape the Norris family was in. How long would it take him to turn a profit on these eleven thousand dollars? In his mind he formed the sentence “I’ve changed my mind,” but when he spoke it came out differently. “I have eleven thousand.”

  “Ouch,” said Pangborn.

  “And another thousand in a month.”

  Pangborn rubbed his chin and studied Patrick. “You served our country.”

  Patrick said nothing.

  “I’ll take your eleven. That’s more than good enough.”

  Patrick felt his spirits start to rise and he heard an old-fashioned dial tone come from Pangborn’s direction. Pangborn pulled a phone from his pocket and checked the caller. “Patrick? Iris? I’ve got to take this. One of the elders. Give me five minutes, will you?”

  * * *

  Patrick backed the trailer and Fatta the Lan’ into the Norris barn. In the sideview mirror he could see Iris standing by the door, framed in the barnyard lights. Her golden hair shone. Jack and Spike were on scene by now, tails banging away, Spike sticking his nose up under Iris’s sweater. She nudged him away with one knee and a smile. When the boat was in place Patrick cranked down the steel wheel and unhitched the trailer. Iris helped him muscle it over and down.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “Right now you want to tear into that engine and see how it looks.”

  He smiled and shrugged. “I could wait.”

  “I’ll help. I’d rather do something than not.”

  “Take a walk with me, then. I’ll show you what’s left of the Norris Brothers groves. Just enough moonlight.”

  They walked the dirt road up the hillside to higher ground. In the moonlight the trees below stretched before them, thin and black. They stopped and Iris took his arm in both her hands. “That’s a hard sight to see.”

  “We’re hoping half of the burned ones live.”

  “Is that realistic?”

  “The fire was really fast. That was the one good thing about it.”

  She leaned her head against him. “It baffles me that someone set it. What kind of person does that?”

  “The Al-Qaeda magazine had instructions for setting forest fires in this country.”

  “You’d think they’d take credit.”

  “Other than a terrorist, I don’t know who would do it. A person who’s really pissed off? Totally crazy?”

  “They say angry, yes. And sexually underdeveloped.”

  “Hard to imagine how setting a fire solves that.”

  She nodded and Patrick felt the weight of her head against his shoulder. He freed his arm and put it around her and they stood for a long while, awkwardly, neither seeming willing to break off.

  Later, in silence, he drove Iris to her car downtown. Someone hustled down the sidewalk in the dark, hunched in a loose white wrap that for a second could have been a tribal garment, and Patrick’s heart jumped and his ears rang and his thoughts went AWOL, straight back to Sangin with Myers and Zane. He wished Iris would say something. Anything. Words in the air keep the devil gone. Sometimes. He stole a glance at her and caught her looking out the window, as usual, alert to who-knew-what? He was suddenly very aware of the space between them—he guessed it to be about twenty-two inches—and of the fine trembling in that air, which carried the weight of possibility in it, along with the chance, always present in his mind, that sudden violence would take it away.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In the purple dusk of the next evening, after ten hours of hard labor that displeased his father, Ted drove to Pride Auto Repair. Earlier that day in the grove Ted had been reassigned to the tree-painting detail because Archie and Patrick could more quickly wire the new timers. Ted had gone to the barn to get a smaller, easier-to-carry sprayer, but had not remembered to triple rinse it before pouring in the paint and water. The triple rinse was mandatory, Archie always said, because some of the sprayers had been used for a powerful weed killer just this spring. Even a trace of herbicide residue left in the sprayer could kill an avocado tree. Ted had already painted eighty trees when he suddenly realized he’d forgotten to triple rinse the sprayer.

  He ran and confessed the whole thing to his father. Ted could see the fury just behind the skin of his father’s face, and he waited for Archie to explode. But he didn’t. His father maintained patience. Archie put a hand on Ted’s shoulder and looked straight into Ted’s eyes and told him that all eighty of the newly painted trees were now much more likely to die. So, tomorrow’s first task would be to pressure-strip off the paint. His father had told him to “Get with the program, Ted. Please!”

  Ted pulled into the parking lot. Pride Auto Repair was a big brick building, set well back from Oak Street. Parked near the front door Ted saw a familiar ’57 Chevy Bel Air, glistening white with aqua insets and abundant chrome. He remembered it as Cade’s car from ten years ago. The shop had been boarded up for those years but now Ted saw that the plywood was gone from the window frames and the new glass was clean and clear.

  He got out and walked toward the front door on aching feet. The old neon sign was up again too, he saw, depicting a blue Ford Model T doing a wheelie, red flames coming off the rear tires. The letters over the car were white and said simply, PRIDE. As a boy he’d always liked that sign. Now it was lit up in the near dark and Ted watched its colors play across the polished hood of the Bel Air. The front door was wood and clear glass with blinds behind the glass. The blinds were rolled up. Ted looked through the glass and saw Cade Magnus looking back at him. Cade waved him in and Ted pushed through the door.

  Magnus stood behind the old counter, which was strewn with a computer, printer, and other peripherals, a new phone-fax, an answering machine, knotted cords, and surge protectors. He wore a light blue short-sleeve shirt with “Cade” embroidered over one pocket, tucked into a pair of navy work pants. He was thick and muscular, as Ted remembered, and had the same smugly engaging smile. Through the windowed double doors behind Magnus, Ted saw the repair bay out back, the high ceilings and the parts racks and the big lifts resting at floor level. “Ted Norris,” Cade said.

  “Are you going to move back to Fallbrook?”

  “I already have. I heard you lost your trees in the fire. Sorry. Those Lamb Haas avos you guys grew were the best I ever had.”

  “What about your father?”

  “What about him? He’s still up in Idaho. I got tired of it there. What about your father? Does he still believe you’re mentally defective?”

  Ted blushed. He’d confided certain things to Cade and Jed Magnus years ago, when he was fourteen and curious about the White Crusade, badly wanting to do something about the 9/11 attacks. He couldn’t remember specifics but apparently his relationship with his father had been a topic. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  Magnus gave Ted a just-you-and-me smile. “Good for you, then.”

  “Do you have a family now?”

  “An ex and two down in Oceanside, another ex and two more up in Coeur d’Alene. No more children for this white supremacist.”

  “I’m twenty-six.”

  “I saw your brother at City Hall Tuesday and he told me to go to hell.”

  “Pat’s capable of that. He just came back from Afghanist
an a few days ago. Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. The Dark Horses. ‘Get Some.’ He’s got an edge.”

  “You were sixteen when I left. Pat was just, what—”

  “Twelve. Why did you come back?”

  Magnus gestured with open hands. “I’m a good mechanic. Got plenty of child support to pay. So I’m going to pick up where I left off. And this was the last place where I really enjoyed living.”

  “That’s funny because most people here don’t like you at all.”

  “They don’t even like the idea of me. I’ve already pissed some of them off.”

  Ted looked around the big room. It had brick walls with framed posters of the Fallbrook Classic Car Show hung perfectly straight, the glass as clean as the windshield of his taxi. The windows were the old-fashioned frosted mesh safety glass except for the front door glass, and the transom window over the door, through which Ted saw the neon Model T kicking up its red flames. He read EDIRP.

  The pool table was there, just as he remembered it. He thought of seeing Jed and Cade playing one day when business was slow, and customers playing while they waited for their cars. The talk was all political. Ted remembered heated words about a new pseudoscience called global warming. He had always liked the sound of billiard balls hitting, so sharp and purposeful. Like the Glock. The cue rack, loaded with sticks, was bolted to the wall right where it had been. Ted saw the small blue squares of chalk in the bottom tray. Beside the rack stood the old jukebox, chrome with a wood-look trim.

  In the far corner of the room stood a pile of rubbish—flimsy metal shelving, defunct tube lights and fixtures, old electrical line, scraps of particleboard, a wooden desk with two broken legs, a rat’s nest built of twigs and bits of paper and cloth. “Lots to do,” said Ted.

  “Check out the bay.”

  Magnus lifted the counter panel and Ted followed him through to the open double doors. The repair area was large, with three lifts and plenty of shelves for parts and a big roll-up door in the rear. Ted remembered the new tires stacked halfway to the ceiling, scores of them. He smelled them now, though this was impossible. The old-time vending machine was still there, whitened with dust. The couch sitting along one wall he also remembered, and the lamp next to it. One day when he was young—nine or ten, and riding his bike around town—Ted had seen, through the open roll-up door, Jed Magnus sitting on that sofa, reading. The lamp illuminated him in the darkened interior of the repair bay. Jed’s wife, Ellen, sat close beside him, also reading. Jed’s hand was on her knee. The Magnuses didn’t look as bad as his parents—and almost everyone else in Fallbrook—said they were. Ellen was pretty. When Ted pedaled his bike by, they had both looked up and nodded to him. The couch had been covered in red paisley upholstery then, and it still was today.

  “I hear you drive a taxi. Bring your cab here for service so long as it isn’t Jap or Korean.”

  “It’s a Ford. I’m also helping Dad and Pat put the farm back together.”

  Magnus reached out to a wall panel and pressed a large black button. A motor groaned and one of the lifts rose on its great, grease-slicked piston. Ted looked at the steel stairs leading down into the workspace below, black with what looked like half a century of spilled engine oil and transmission fluid.

  “I’m starting out on my own here, Ted. Then I’ll hire as I grow. A shop takes at least two people, and someone on the books part-time. My father never liked car repair but I did. At least he took the time to teach me his trade. Your father shut you out, right? Bummer. But you know what I think? I think our fathers maybe aren’t so different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I was a boy I could never really please mine. Then, when our civil trial got going up in Spokane, the prosecutors came up with a letter I’d written to a guy up there who had written me, and he wanted to join the White Crusade. I mentioned to him that a like-minded young man I knew was heading up his way and the next thing you know, that letter is the smoking gun that proves my father and I sent agents to Spokane to kill blacks. The letter didn’t say anything about killing anybody. Dad didn’t know anything about that letter until discovery. I’d pretty much forgotten it. It was written to an inconsequential man about another inconsequential man. I was trying to give some skinheads some positive motivation. You should have seen the look on my dad’s face when they read that letter. He looked at me like I was the stupidest human to ever walk the earth, you know? Like it proved something he’d suspected all along. Like he’d finally had enough. He got over it. We got over it. But ever since then, when he looks at me I still see a little bit of that expression in him. So I know how you feel.”

  “I thought you two were tight.”

  “I’ll tell you a secret, too. You know why I came back here, besides that I like Fallbrook and think it’s a great place to live? I came back here to do something my father could never do. Something bigger and more important than he ever dreamed of.”

  Ted felt a ripple of energy inside him, a little bump of adrenaline. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m working out some ideas.”

  “I know that feeling. It’s my middle name.”

  Magnus hit the red button and the lift went down and clanked into place. “Well, don’t be a stranger. Bring that taxi in any time after next Wednesday and I’ll do you right. Tell your boss to bring in the other cars.”

  “There’s two other cabs, and a black town car for people who don’t want a taxi.”

  “Black, huh? Just kidding. Bring them all. I’ll give you a fleet discount.”

  They walked back into the shop. Night had fallen and through the windows he saw the Model T, still throwing red flames across the polished hood of the Chevy parked out front. Magnus took a flyer from the counter and handed it to Ted. It was a standard-size sheet of printer paper, white. The lettering was the Germanic Reich-style script favored by skinheads, death metal bands, and motorcycle gangs.

  Take Back Main Street!

  November 22 Village Square Fallbrook, CA

  • Speak Out for Legal Carry of Handguns!

  • Free Safety Inspections!

  • Wear Your Empty Holsters!

  • Exercise Your Rights!

  • Address by Cade Magnus!

  • Free Copies of Constitution!

  • Free Snacks/Punch/Gifts for Kids!

  • Drawing for 9mm. vintage Luger!

  • Browns, Blacks, and Jews Stay Home

  or Better Yet Go Home!

  Visit us at www.rowolf.com and like us on Facebook.

  “I got held up by a Mexican guy last week, driving my cab. He had a gun and he pointed it at my face. I believed he would use it. I could tell he thought I was a coward. He took most of my tips. At first I was scared, then later, I was mad at him. And at me.”

  Magnus put his hands on his hips and looked at Ted. “Get even.”

  “I went to the sheriff’s to report it but I couldn’t stay. Cops creep me out. I’ve seen him around town, the gunman. He said his name was Henry but I think it’s Edgar something.”

  “What kind of a small-town moron robs a cabbie where he lives? Maybe you should have filed a report.”

  “Probably too late now.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No. Just a high school kid, I think, maybe jumping in with the Fallbrook Kings. Some homies watched him rob me and they were smiling.”

  “Violent children, one and all. What’s he look like?”

  Ted described Edgar and his provocative girlfriend and the beat-up old Chevrolet Malibu he’d seen them in.

  “It’s okay you didn’t tell the cops. You’re almost always better off without them. Do you carry a gun in the cab now?”

  “I pick up my new gun next week. It’s a Glock.”

  “You’ve got a right to protect yourself. Even though spineless liberals, from the president on down to our own mayor, will tell you different.”

  “Evelyn Anders is a curse on this town.”

  “I sa
w your cartoon of her. Someone sent it to the Rogue Wolf site. Great work, Ted.”

  The next words seemed to come out of Ted’s mouth before he’d even thought them. “They expelled me from college for that drawing. I disagree with her politics, the way she throws public money around. Tax money. My money. She wants to control every thing I do. Actually, I like her face. She’s pretty in her own way. But I’m angry that privileged liberals like her have no idea what it’s like to be me.”

  Cade gave Ted a long, serious look, leaned back against the counter, and crossed his muscular arms. His eyes were the same blue Ted remembered from over a decade ago. “You know what happened to my mother here that night, don’t you?”

  “Everybody knows what.”

  “The government refused to let her carry a gun and she was murdered by a man she didn’t even know.”

  “I get mine in a few days.”

  “Everything happens for a reason, Ted.”

  “I never believed that. I think things happen for no reason.”

  “Listen. Everything is connected but people don’t always see the connections. Sometimes it’s risky to let connections be known. Let me give this Edgar fellow some thought. And here, you give some of these to your friends, will you? Put some of them up around town, maybe when you’re between customers. There’s the Web site at the bottom. Don’t stop drawing cartoons. Draw more. Post them, post them, post them. You’re allowed to do that—the United States Constitution says so.”

  Ted took the flyers, nodding. “Anders has no right to take our guns.”

  Again Cade Magnus leveled his eyes on Ted and again Ted felt the boost of something optimistic inside him, something that could fuel action. “Ted, we call ourselves the Rogue Wolves now. Go to our Web site and see what my father has to say about our brave new, post–nine-eleven, crash-and-recession republic—run by a half-breed socialist who wasn’t even born here. Our motto is ‘Live free, fight alone.’ We believe in the white race over every other. We are the opposite of big government. We do not ask you to vote for us, to pledge your allegiance, or pay taxes to us. Live free, fight alone, Ted. That way they can’t hurt us. Nobody connects with anybody else. No trail. They can’t rob our bank accounts, or our imaginations, hearts, or souls. Think about what you can do. What only you can do. And stop by, anytime. I’d like to see more of you.”