Two hours later, they reached the fire road that intersected the creek trail. At the juncture was a view of a small valley and beyond the trees and stream, a steep forested hillside and taller mountains mottled with lodgepole pines. They turned on the fire road that rolled along the ridge.
Beside a quartzite boulder, Justice Jenkins stopped. The boulder was cracked into two symmetrical V-shaped halves with a wedge large enough for a large man. This was the entrance to the camp. On the other side of the rock, a path led to a hollow where trees had been cut to make a clearing. Beyond the stumps in the shade of Western red cedars, firs, and an Engelmann spruce were a dozen tents, two majestic tepees, an M4A2 Sherman tank, picnic tables, portable outhouse, folding chairs, and electric generator.
Two youth lay on blankets listening to a portable CD player. The only distinguishable sound was “Heil Hitler!” Whenever they heard it, they mumbled lazily, “Heil Hitler!”
“Are you prepared to defend yourselves?” Justice Jenkins bellowed.
They jerked, jumped, stood, saluted. “Yes, sir!”
Jenkins returned the salute, signaled for a chair, and pointed a finger at a girl with a pinched joyless face.
“Breakfast,” he barked. “Rations for the spies.”
“We aren’t spies!” Ruby defended.
“We know what you are.” Jenkins’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints.
The girl assembled cups of water and a plastic plate of graham crackers for rations. “Who are they really?” she asked.
“They helped Hazel. They helped her get the boy away.”
Another girl emerged from a tent, balancing a tray and walking slowly so the water in the bowl didn’t spill. Beside the bowl was an heirloom shaving brush made of silvertip badger bristles, a cup of granulated lavender soap, a washcloth, and a large bottle of Listerine. She held a mirror as Jenkins scrubbed his skin with the cloth, lathered the soap, shaved the stubble around his beard and muttonchops, gargled, and spat the mouthwash on the ground.
“They came up in the woods spooking and spying. Ain’t that right?”
“No, sir,” Ruby interjected.
“But I believe we can use them,” Jenkins said.
His comment elicited a murmur of approval from the cadets. Use spoke to fantasies of both pleasure and pain.
“I heard this was once a free country. Maybe you heard the same? One nation under God. These days, it’s only free if you born nigger, Mexican, queer, or Jew. You listening?”
Quinn and Ruby listened intently.
“Tell you a story,” he blinked. Where there should have been eyes were two fringed dashes. “First time, I set foot in Idaho, the roads were closed because of snow. More snow than the continent of Antarctica. Which tells you something, don’t it? What’s it tell you?” His eyes riveted on the cadets.
They shook their heads.
“Ignorant scum,” he said.
“I’m not a drinking man now but I was drinking then. I headed to a bar to sit out the storm.” Jenkins’s eyelids lifted slightly. “You listening?”
Everyone looked alert.
“They got pizza in this bar. Thick pizza, thin pizza, pizza with wop names like Neapolitan and Sicilian. I eyed them, trying to decide which to eat. I like to know what I’m putting inside me. That’s a good thing.” Justice Jenkins patted his belly. “I asked the bartender if the thick crust had more yeast. He thought a minute and then said something that changed me forever. They call that ‘epiphany.’ You boys heard of epiphany?”
The cadets had not.
“He said, ‘Yeast is life and salt is the antithesis of life.’ You boys know what ‘antithesis’ means?”
They did not. They were clueless when it came to Justice Jenkins’s questions. Hawk-faced and crank-skinny with muscles like knotted socks, dressed in camouflage fatigues, Red Wing boots, soiled wife-beater T-shirts, they’d run away from home, enticed by a pamphlet which claimed it would train them to defend white people against invaders.
They’d been in Jenkins’s camp for a week. So far, they’d washed dishes and listened to him blabber. They’d been forced to read the Bible. Much to their dismay, alcohol and drugs were prohibited. Although they had fair expertise at getting around rules, their smoke and drink had been confiscated at the V-shaped boulder. There was nothing to puff on but wild weeds. Promised training in weapon handling and martial arts, they’d not been permitted to shoot once.
“I was once a bona fide corpse. You listening?”
The cadets had already heard this story. They’d been told it was one of Justice Jenkins’s teaching stories. They didn’t know what that meant either.
“Declared dead by the U.S. of America, White House, Pentagon, and the rich Jews in Hollywood.”
The cadets hooted their disdain.
Quinn scrutinized the pimpled rubes. One had shaved his head and on the crown was a swastika tattooed in the center of a ring of fire. The other resembled an Easter chick, covered in bright blond hair that sprouted along the rim of his ears, the back of his neck, over his head and face, and on his fingers. His arms were matted with yellow tufts. He had a swastika on his arm and H-A-T-E and L-O-V-E on his knuckles.
“My bride got the news I was a goner. Army reported to my folks they had a hero for a son. Jet plane sent them a body to bury and a big flag as a souvenir. They put a nice gravestone in the dirt where I went under. My wife remarried. My folks hung my photo over the TV. They thought that was the end of me, but I came home.” Jenkins parted his two scrolls of moustache. “I resurrected like the Son of God. I reckon I maybe got three more lives to go. What you boys think we should do with these mutts?”