And I saw pro-lifers who weren’t overjoyed to have Phelps as the leader of their movement. Some of them were packing up, moving on.
The sight gave me a lift. I was glad to see people mocking Phelps. I relished the insults they threw at him. But still. It wasn’t smart for those protesters to disregard Mason Phelps and his friends. It worried me. They hadn’t been exposed to him for years, like I had.
A young woman stepped off the curb and flung an egg at the cab of one of the dusty pickups, shouting, “Hey, Dixie! That all you got? Bunch of losers!”
I had to smile at that. At that point, I even thought maybe I was wrong to have worried. It looked like the white supremacists’ attempt to lead the abortion protest was fizzling.
That was when I spotted the last vehicle in the motorcade. A huge box truck. Plain white, no flags, no slogans, no markings. It lumbered slowly up Prairie Street and came to a stop about a block from where I was standing.
The door of the cab opened. I watched the driver hop out. Aside from being white, he looked nothing like Phelps or his shaggy crew. No long, greasy hair. No baseball cap.
This guy was fit and muscular, with a short military haircut. Dressed in immaculate khaki pants and a red polo shirt.
He jogged to the back of the white truck and opened the doors.
“It’s Patriot Front!” someone called out. “They’re white nationalists!”
Suddenly, two dozen men jumped out and moved into formation.
To me, they didn’t look homegrown. Probably from out of state. Guests of honor, invited by Mason Phelps. He was probably thrilled to see them.
They were all fit white guys, dressed in the same red-and-khaki outfit that the driver wore. Some kind of uniform. Their faces were covered with white gaiters, like the face coverings during the height of COVID. These days, in my experience on the bench, those face coverings were used by people who were trying to avoid identification.
The men were all armed with assault rifles.
“Sweet Jesus,” I whispered.
I overheard frantic voices nearby. The neon-haired young people were all shouting, “Call the cops!”
One young woman followed behind the formation, screaming at them. “You can’t do this! It’s illegal!”
Clearly, the woman wasn’t from Alabama. If she was, she’d know that the men with assault rifles were not breaking any law. Alabama was an open-carry state. No permit required.
As the armed, masked men began their march down the street, I heard more frenzied shouts.
Sure enough. The “Dixie” melody started up again from Phelps’s truck speakers. He must have been expecting the reinforcements. At the sight of all the guns, people on the sidewalk started to scatter.
I’d seen enough.
It was time to get the hell out of town.
As I headed for the back of the courthouse, I was getting pushed and shoved from all sides. There was panic in the air—the kind of hysteria that gets people trampled and killed.
No way I could get to my car. The crowd was too thick. Instead, I grappled my way up the stairs of the courthouse and forced my way to the main entrance. Fumbled in my bag for the key ring. I was one of a handful of people in Bullock County entrusted with the key to the courthouse door.
When I got the key in hand, I got shoved so hard that I dropped the keys on the ground.
“Back off!” I shouted. Bending down, I picked the keys up. My hands were shaking as I jammed the key into the dead bolt lock and turned it.
As I grabbed the handle, I felt a crush of bodies behind me, pushing toward safety.
I was still holding the door when I heard the gunshots.
And the screams.
CHAPTER
48
