"Must be minding someone's kids," said Bud. "Elmer's always doing nice stuff like that."
"Shut up!" yelled Bovce. "I ain't coming back tomorrow night. I'm in a mean mood now. Tomorrow I might not be."
"Well, I ain't waiting all night, neither," said Luke.
"Who's got a match?" asked Boyce. "We'll burn this nigger out of Dogwood."
"I don't like this," said Bud, but it was too late. Boyce was holding a butane lighter under one corner of the dry wood shack.
The corner darkened, caught, and a line of yellow flame climbed the unpainted wood until there was no chance of putting it out.
Elmer Hawkins came running up the road not many minutes later.
"What's goin' on? What you doin' to my house?" he yelled. He was a lanky old man with peppercorn hair. Boyce Barlow yelled back at him.
"We're running out all the niggers in Dogwood."
"This ain't Dogwood, you fool. This is Arab."
"Ayrab?" said Luke dazedly.
"The Dogwood town line is up the road. What you want to go and burn down my house for?"
"We're getting rid of all the niggers in Arab too," Boyce said smugly.
And he did. But not the way he thought. Elmer Hawkins watched the shack he had lived in for most of his life burn to the ground. He did not get mad. He did not call the police, nor did he press charges. Instead, he hired a lawyer and got even.
The county judge at the trial awarded Elmer Hawkins seven hundred dollars in punitive damages for his shack and an additional fifty thousand dollars for emotional distress. Because Boyce Bariow was dirt poor and unemployed, he could not pay. So the judge ordered Boyce's house-which had been in his family since the Civil War-auctioned off and the proceeds given to the victirn. Elmer Hawkins took the money and bought himself a modest home in Huntsville. There was enough left over to put a down payment on a diner near the Marshall Space Flight Center, where Elmer Hawkins lived out the rest of his days in busy contentment.
"At least I won," Boyce Barlow said when it was over. He was back at his usual table at Buckhorn's.
"But you lost your house, Boyce," Luke pointed out glumly.
"Dogwood is racially pure, though, ain't it?"
"Always was. Elmer lived in Arab, remember?"
"We're not stopping with Dogwood anymore," Boyce said, staring into the dark Coors bottle like a man gazing into a crystal ball. "We're going to expand." Expanding was not easy. The White Purity League of Alabama picked up a few new members who thought it was a crying shame that Boyce lost his house that way, which brought the ranks to exactly six. Because all six were temporarily out of work, dues were a problem.
"How can we expand without any money?" Boyce complained one night at Buckham's.
"We could all go out and get jobs," Bud suggested. He was ignored.
The bartender, who had long ago grown tired of the White Purity League of Alabama holding meetings in his establishment and forgetting to pay its tab, made a fateful suggestion.
"Go on cable TV," he said. "They let any group on the air now. It's called local access or something like that. It's free."
"We don't have cable TV in Dogwood," Boyce said reasonably.
"They do in Huntsville," the bartender countered. And so the White Purity League Hour was born. Within three months its message, "Take Back America," was reaching viewers in twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia. Membership rose from the founding six members to nearly three thousand nationwide. Boyce Barlow bought himself a nice white frame house in suburban Huntsville, a short drive from the national headquarters of the renamed White Purity League of America and Alabama, a former Boy Scout campground Barlow had purchased and converted into Fortress Purity, a barbed-wire compound off Route 431.
Barely a year after the groundbreaking of Fortress Purity, a man showed up at the electrified fence. The man was in a wheelchair.
"I want to join your worthy group," the man said. He was old, too old. And he had no legs.
"Go 'way," said Luke Bariow from the gate. "We got standards."
"Ilsa!" the old man called.
A blond girl stepped out of a bronze van.
"Hi," she said breathily. Then she smiled sunnily.
"Hi!" Luke said, staring at her chest.
"Can we come in? Please?"
"Sure," said Luke, who realized that recruitment among single women was distressingly low.
After he had unlocked the gate, he said. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Luke. I'm vice-corporal in charge of security."
"I've never heard of such a rank," said the old man in the wheelchair.
"I made it up," said Luke proudly. "It was either that or admiral of the gate. I liked that one best, but the other was longer."
The old man smiled. His smile was hideous. It was the smile of a rot-toothed corpse. "Of course."
When the old man was brought to Boyce Barlow, Boyce was three thousand dollars in the hole to his poker partners and welcomed the interruption.
"I'm calling the game. We split the pot," he announced suddenly, scooping up two handfuls of money. "What can I do for you folks?"
"You are Boyce Barlow. I have watched your program. We are kindred spirits, you and I."
"You and me is kin?"
"In spirit. I, too, believe as you do. America for Americans."
"Who're you?"
"This is Herr Konrad Blutsturz," said Ilsa proudly. "He is an Aryan. He is like you."
"The hell he is. I got both rny legs," said Boyce Barlow. "No offense," he added.
"I have a gift for you," said Konrad Blutsturz, tossing a book onto the poker table.
Boyce Barlow picked up the book and read the title. Main Kampf," he said aloud.