Shocked, I looked up at her, and saw her mouth twitch. I raised the ax over my head, flexed my muscles, and sent the ax hurtling into the piece of wood, which cleaved neatly. “I like to think I fall somewhere between the two extremes,” I said.
“Maybe I want to see for myself.” She took a step closer. “Next time your crew goes on the hunt.”
I laughed. “There is no way I’m taking Francis Mitchum’s daughter out with my guys.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re Francis Mitchum’s daughter.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Hell, yes, it was, even if she couldn’t see it.
“My father’s been taking me out with his crew my whole life.”
Somehow I found that hard to believe. (Later I found out it was true, but he left Brit buckled into her car seat, sound asleep, in the back of his truck.) “You’re not tough enough to run with my crew,” I said, just to get her off my back.
When she didn’t reply, I figured that was that. I lifted the ax again, and started the downswing, only to have Brit dart, lightning-fast, into the path of the blade. Immediately I let go of the shaft, feeling the ax spin out of my hands to wedge itself deeply in the ground about six inches away from her. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I shouted. “What iswrongwith you?”
“Not tough enough?” she replied.
“Thursday,” I told her. “After dark.”
—
EVERY NIGHT,Ihear my son cry.
The sound wakes me up, which is how I know he’s a ghost. Brit never hears him, but then she is still floating in a haze of sleeping pills and Oxy left over from when I busted my knee. I get out of bed and take a piss and follow the noise, which gets louder and louder and louder, and then disappears when I reach the living room. There’s no one there, just the computer screen, green and glaring at me.
I sit down on the couch and I drink a six-pack and still I can hear my boy crying.
My father-in-law gives me almost two weeks of grieving, and then starts dumping out all the beer in the house. One night, Francis comes to find me when I’m sitting on the living room couch, my head in my hands, trying to drown out the baby’s sobs. I think for a minute he’s going to deck me—he may be an old dude, but he could still take me—but instead, he yanks the laptop from its power cord and throws it at me. “Get even,” he says simply, and he walks back into his side of the duplex.
For a long time, I just sit there, the computer pressed up next to me, like a girl who’s begging for a dance.
I can’t say I reach for it. More like, it makes its way back home tome.
With the touch of a key, a webpage loads. I haven’t been here since before Brit had the baby.
When Francis and I teamed up to create our website, I read manuals on coding and metadata while Francis fed me the material we would post. We called our site LONEWOLF, because that was what we all had to become.
This was no longer the eighties. We were losing our best men to the prison system. The old guard was getting too old to curb-stomp and wield nunchucks. The fresh cuts were too plugged in to get excited about a KKK rally where a bunch of ancient yahoos sat around drinking and talking about the good ol’ days. They didn’t want to hear an old wives’ tale, like that black people stank when their hair got wet. They wanted statistics they could take back to their lefty teachers and relatives who got tangled in knots when they saidwewere the real victims of discrimination in this country.
So we gave them what they asked for.
We posted the truth: that the U.S. Census Bureau said Whites would be a minority by 2043. That 40 percent of black people who were on welfarecouldwork, but didn’t. That the fact that the Zionist Occupation Government was taking over our nation could be traced right to Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve.
Lonewolf.org quickly became something bigger than itself. We were the younger, hipper alternative. The fresh edge of rebellion.
Now, my hands move across the keyboard while I log in as the administrator. Part of the reason for running this site is the anonymity, the ability to hide behind what I believe. We are all anonymous here, and we are also all brothers. This is my army of nameless, faceless friends.
But today all that is about to change.
Many of you know me by my blog posts, and have responded with your own comments. Like me, you are a True Patriot. Like me, you wanted to follow an idea, not a person. But today, I am going to step into the light, because I want you to know me. I want you to know whathappenedto me.
My name is Turk Bauer,I type.And I am going to tell you the story of my son.
After I hit the post button, I watch the story of my son’s short, brave life hover on the computer screen. I want to believe that if he had to die, it was for a cause. It was forourcause.
