Tom Janos drummed his fingertips against each other as he endured the girl’s babbling. He already knew where her story was headed when she told him where she had gone for dinner, but she never used ten words when she could use fifty. Tom had learned long ago that the best way to keep his people in line was to let them tell stories in their own ways. Even so, it took him every ounce of effort to refrain from throttling her. He nodded with concern, never taking his eyes off hers, as she continued prattling breathlessly.
“So I finished my chicken sandwich,” Marissa Meyer said. “I didn’t get a hamburger, because I don’t eat meat, even though they’ve sold billions of them, so I guess they must, like, be okay. The chicken sandwich wasn’t as good — I mean, it probably wasn’t as good — as the ones they sell at the place across the street, but that place has the most awful policies about reproductive health care for their employees, and how could I in good conscience eat food that, like, oppresses women, you know?”
“Of course,” said Tom, with beatific patience.
“Well,” she continued, “I stepped out and was looking right at that other place, and thinking about those poor women who work for them and can’t get abortions or even the pill, when two buses started unloading. And I was just offended that they were going to make so much money from that crowd, when there was a perfectly good hamburger place across the street that served chicken sandwiches and even hired black people. And I wouldn’t have gone over there at all, except I saw…”
Here she started to chew on her fingernail nervously. Tom pursed his lips. “Marissa,” he said. “Go on. What disturbed you so?”
The girl, Marissa Meyer, looked up at the serene face of the leader of the protest group — the man who had offered her a place in line, a sign to hold, and twenty-five dollars a day plus meals and lodging, so she and others could demand justice — ‘justice’ coming in the form of removing a one-hundred-year-old statue of a Confederate soldier.
Tom Janos’s dark hair was slicked to one side, and his blue eyes looked not so much at her as through her. But he was a good man, she knew. Such a good man, in fact, that she couldn’t make sense of what she had seen.
“What did you see?” Tom asked.
“I saw the buses unloading,” she said meekly. “And those people on the bus, they were — they had shirts, and those awful red hats that said ‘Make Patriotism Fashionable Again.’ Some of them even had little flags with them — and not rainbow or Mexican ones, but actual American flags! Well, I knew right away they must have come here to cause trouble.”
“They probably did,” Tom said.
“That’s why I couldn’t figure out why you were with them,” she said.
Tom Janos arched an eyebrow. “You must be mistaken,” he said. “I’ve been here all evening, meeting with other marchers, making sure they know when things happen, what they can say and do, and how to avoid getting arrested. It must have been someone who looked like me. You were across the street, after all.”
“I was,” she said. “But then I wasn’t. I mean, I went over because I knew that it couldn’t be you — I mean, it couldn’t — but I had to be sure. And I stayed quiet because I didn’t want to let any of them know I was here to have that awful monument to racism removed, because there were just so many of them.”
“You went over to them,” Tom repeated, trying to keep Marissa from veering off-topic again. He stood and walked to the window of his room, and looked out over the parking lot of the hotel. The city of Little Rock was clearly visible to the west, not so much as a skyline but as a cluster.
The Man Upstairs had been right. These southern cities were powder kegs, ready and waiting to be lit. That was what made protests in the South different from protests in New England or the Pacific Northwest — the people of Dixie actually cared about their flags, statues, and way of life.
“Yes sir, I did,” she said.
“And then what?”
“Well, I went up to the man that looked like you, and he turned around, and then I was sure it was you.” Marissa wrinkled her nose up in confusion, widening her nostril in the process so that the back side of her nose piercing was visible. “So I said, ‘Excuse me, Mister Janos?’ And he looked at me and — and he said, ‘Can I help you, darlin’?’ He said it just like that, like he was from Texas or something.”
“He did, did he?” Tom said. “Well, that’s very strange.”
“Do you think they know we’re here?” Marissa said. “Maybe they know you hired us, and they went out and got a lookalike to confuse people?”
Tom Janos spun around, displaying a theatrical shocked expression. “Goodness, do you think they might be that clever?” he asked, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Maybe!” she exclaimed, caught up in the energy of his performance. “Do you think we should let everybody know, just to be careful?”
“Oh, definitely not,” Tom said. He walked over and squatted down in front of her. “You haven’t told anyone else so far, have you?” His eyes bored into hers, so pale and clear blue.
“No,” Marissa said. “I ran straight back here to the hotel to tell you. And here you were, so I guess it really couldn’t have been you.”
“That’s right, Marissa,” Tom said. “It wasn’t me. Now, listen carefully. Don’t tell anybody. You’re probably right about their plans. But they don’t know we know, do they?” He winked. “If we keep this secret, keep it from getting out, we can turn it back on them, throw them into disarray, right?”
Marissa’s eyes widened. “Oh, that’s brilliant, Mister Janos! They could think you were their lookalike! You could tell them to turn around and go the other way, or to let us up in front, or even send them all back home! You are so, so smart!”
“Well, I get by,” he said modestly. He took her by the hand and stood her up. “Now, Marissa, it’s important we keep this a secret, you understand? I want you to go straight to your room for the night. Talk to nobody. In the morning, go with everyone to the park as though none of this happened.”
“Okay, but can’t I help with —”
“Shh.” He put his finger to her lips. “You don’t have to do anything but focus on holding signs and chanting lines,” he said. “Leave everything else to me.”
Marissa Meyer flushed, a pinkness spreading across her cheeks that almost matched that of the homemade crocheted cap she wore. She paused in the expectation of something more. But Tom went briskly to the door and held it open. Obediently, she left and went straight to her room without speaking to another soul.
When she was out of sight, Tom Janos put out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and turned the deadbolt. Then he took a sticky note with the logo of the hotel chain from the desk and placed it over the door’s peephole before taking out his cell phone and tapping in a number.
After a few rings, the screen lit up to a streaming video, and a face identical to that of Tom Janos.
“What’s up, little brother,” the face said.
Tom smirked. “‘Little’ by four minutes, Bob,” he said. “And only because you pushed me out of the way.”
“Still counts.”
Tom’s face quickly turned serious. “We have a small problem.” He recounted the story Marissa Meyer had told him in a matter of moments.
“They do have the best chicken sandwiches,” Bob Janos said when he was done.
“I know,” Tom said. “Next time, you get this group. I had to eat kale salad with pine nuts.”
“I can send you over a spicy chicken sandwich,” Bob offered.
Tom considered the offer for a brief moment. “Maybe later,” he said. “What should we do about the girl?”
“I remember her,” said Bob. “Figured she wanted to sleep with me, but got too intimidated.”
“Pretty sure she wants to sleep with me,” Tom said.
“Then let her,” Bob replied. “But better do it quick. I say we remove her, just to be safe. If you want, I’ve got a few ‘true believers’ on this side who are just itching to put a Fascist Fighter in a hole in the ground. Of course, we should get clearance on that first.”
Tom nodded. “My thoughts exactly. I’ll call you back.”
He disconnected the call and dialed in another number from memory. This one answered on the first ring. There was no video.
Tom related the story again, even more tersely than he had with his brother. “What would you like us to do, sir?” he asked when finished.
The electronically-masked voice gave a two-word response, then disconnected.
Immediately, Tom called Bob again. “We have clearance,” he said. He unfolded his map of the park where the protests were planned. On the other end, Bob was doing the same. “Here’s where she’ll be.”
· · ·
Roger Whitman was hard core. If you did not believe him, he would show you his fists. He had had the words tattooed onto his hands, one letter per knuckle. Unfortunately, he had done it himself, and so what read HARD CORE to him when he looked at his fists read CORE HARD to anyone else who saw them.
Roger Whitman believed in America — the real America he was trying to take back; the white America, before all the Blacks and Mexicans came over to take all their benefits and jobs; the good America where men worked, women made babies, and pansies and fairies were taken on rides from which they did not come back. He believed that even today, even after his wife got infected with feminist ideas, like that he drank too much and hit her too many times, and took it into her head to run off with the kids — his kids.
These thoughts ran through his mind as he looked out over the dashboard at the crowd of hippy-dippy faggots trying to erase the history of his America. Most of these self-styled Fascist Fighters were too chickenshit to even show their faces, hiding behind bandanas and plastic Halloween masks. But Roger was not being paid to look at them, so he forced himself to look past them, toward the grove of trees just beyond the curb. Just as he had been told, there was the girl. She was holding up the big pink sign with white letters — white letters, of all the nerve! — proclaiming her message: MAKE AN IMPACT ON RACISM.
Making an impact is exactly what Roger had in mind, as he stomped on the gas pedal and shifted the SUV into drive.
Roger knew the plan. Spot the girl. Hit the girl. Hit the tree behind the girl. Get cushioned by the airbags. Get arrested. Plead self-defense.
It was a perfect plan.
And it was a perfect plan. Roger just did not know all of it. The crowd scattered as he accelerated into it. Some of them screamed, some of them smacked his hood as he plowed through, but they all got out of the way. Roger laughed as they ran, the way cockroaches skittered away when a light was turned on.
Yards ahead, Marissa Meyer held her sign just the way she had been told, surrounded by others who were peacefully throwing glass bottles at the police and counter-protesters. She stared with disbelief at the approaching vehicle. Surely someone was going to stop it, right? It could not be allowed to just drive over the curb…and onto the grass…and into…
…her.
And then the tree.
Roger carried out the plan to the letter, playing his part perfectly — even the part he did not know about, which involved flying through the windshield.
As his face smashed through the glass, he briefly wondered why the airbags had not gone off the way Bob Janos promised they would. That was supposed to be the plan, after all.
As Roger Whitman lay bleeding out, yards away a crowd quickly formed around Marissa Meyer. Her mouth gaped open, as the grill of the SUV squashed her midsection against the thick trunk of the tree behind her. Her blood pooled at the roots and tires.
Across the street, Bob Janos grimly observed the chaos. The plan — his plan — had worked just as expected.
Now there was nobody alive who would learn Marissa Meyer’s secret, and nobody alive to learn why Roger Whitman was instructed to mow her down.