"There's two kinds. The turban kind and the bow-and-arrow kind," said Luke, who'd come within two months of graduating from high school. "Neither damn one of them any damn good."
"Damn straight," said Boyce. "They're lazy, don't like to work, and they sponge off this great nation of ours."
"Sounds like you, Boyce," the bartender called over.
Boyce threw the bartender a surly look. "When I want vour attention I'll piss on the floor."
"You did that last week."
"And this week I'm considering the other option."
"I had no idea you took in solids," the bartender said dryly.
"Which kind stole my job?" Boyce wondered aloud. "The turban kind or the other?"
"I hear the guy's name is Eagle," said Bud. "John Eagle."
"Must be the bow-and-arrow kind. If it were the other, his name would be John Cow," offered Lake, the historian. "They're big on cows over in India."
"It's un-American," Boyce complained to no one in particular. "Him taking my job like that."
"It's very American," said the bartender, polishing a glass. The bartender polished his glasses to get some use out of them. No one drank beer out of a glass in Dogwood. "The Indians were here before us. That guy's more American than any of you."
The revelation seared into the brains of the drunken trio.
"I think he's right," Luke whispered. "I heard something like that on The Rifleman once."
"Well, he's not white, is he?" demanded Boyce.
"That's right. They're red. They call 'em red men."
"Communists," said Bud, spitting on the floor.
"No, but they're no good neither," said Luke.
"I think we should do something," said Boyce Barlow.
"Do what?" asked Bud.
"Like let's take Dogwood back from the Indians."
"How many Indians we talking about?" asked Luke, who was a cautious soul.
They looked at Bud.
Bud shrugged. "I think there's only one of them."
"Good. We outnumber him."
"Not from what I hear. Them Injuns, they're tough mothers."
"We'll bring a hat with us," said Boyce Barlow, pulling his baseball cap with the Confederate flag down low over his mean eyes.
And that night, the three cousins pulled into Old Man Shum's gas station and yelled for service.
"No need to shout," a deep, rumbling voice said very close by. "I'm right here."
"Where?" dernanded Boyce, sticking his shaggy head out the driver's window of his four-by-four pickup. And then he saw John Eagle. The man stood nearly seven feet tall. He was as wide as a gas pump. In fact they had mistaken him for a gas pump in the darkness, which was why his sudden appearance was so unnerving. "You John Eagle?" asked Boyce Barlow.
"That's right," said John Eagle, leaning down. He smiled. It was a big, friendly smile, but it made John Eagle's wide Indian face look like the front of a Mack truck. "Something I can do for you?"
The three cousins stared at John Eagle with their mouths open and spilling beer fumes.
"He's whiter than us," whispered Luke.
"And he's bigger than us," added Bud. "All of us. Put together. "
"Fill 'er up, friend," Boyce said good-naturedly, vainly trying to match the big man's smile.
Driving off; Bud Barlow broke the strained silence.
"It was a good idea, anyway."
"It still is," said Boyce Barlow. "We gotta make Dogwood a fit place for white Americans."
"And Indians, white ones," added Bud, looking back furtively.
"Who else lives in Dogwood who ain't white?" asked Boyce.
"There's that pumpkin farmer at the edge of town," Luke said. "What's his name? Elmer something."
"Elmer Hawkins," said Boyce. "He's a nigger. Yeah, we can run him off."
"What'd he do?" demanded Bud.
"He ain't white, is he?" said Bovce. "Ain't this the idea? We gotta run off the ones what ain't white."
"But Elmer, he's pushing seventy. And who'd he ever bother?"
"You let one nigger in, soon you got a townful."
"Shoot, Elmer's been living here going on fifty years. He come into town by himself. He's the only nigger we got."
"He's leaving town. Tonight," Boyce said finally. They crept up on Elmer Hawkins' neat shack by moonlight, Boyce Barlow in the lead. It was easy going. There was no kudzu to tangle their feet. Elmer Hawkins' place was about the only open part of Marshall County that wasn't overrun with the indestructible weed. They knocked on Elmer's front door. The windows of the shack were unlit.
"Elmer, open up," Boyce called drunkenly.