Santane would not agree to meet with me at her apartment or at her husband’s restaurant, and she would not permit me to take notes on our conversation. Instead we met in an Albuquerque diner, face to face in a booth with red imitation leather seats. She put a manila envelope on the table between us but kept her hand fixed upon it.
I ordered a chocolate milkshake, and Santane ordered tea. I had not been this close to Santane physically before, and perhaps this was some of what my brother had felt: an attraction to her opacity. She was probably only a few years younger than me, ten at most, but even with my face-lift I looked older. For the first time, I wondered how she had gotten from Vietnam to America.
After the waitress left us alone, Santane said, “I’m still not sure what you want from us.”
“If Royce is alive, I want to find him. I hold him responsible for what has happened. And I want to help Ruby too, if she can be helped. But, Santane, I’m not sure why you think I’m intruding. Am I putting you in danger? Could that possibly be true after all these years?”
“How do you imagine your presence is helping? We would have gotten a lawyer without your intrusion. And please don’t use that technique on me, addressing me by my first name in an attempt to foster false trust between us. That was a favorite of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Your BATF.”
“My BATF?”
“They had a Korean woman question me first, before they realized I did not speak Korean and was not reassured merely by the sight of another Asian female.” She smiled without any warmth. “BATF had some very bad people in it, but they were also quite stupid.”
“Were the FBI people stupid too?”
“No. They seemed to want to protect Ruby and me. They were not using us in an attempt to find Royce. Or not only using us.”
The milkshake was too thick to drink, so I picked up the long spoon. “I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for a long time, but I still have this sugar thing.”
Santane blew on her tea. “Yes, and you are probably a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have several clients in AA. You all have a certain gaze.”
I felt even more unsettled. “What do you mean?”
“Your eyes have a quality of serenity. But is it real?”
I held steady on her gaze, which was not easy. “No, it’s not. Not always. I used to have an AA bumper sticker on my car that said SERENITY, but I had to take it off because of several episodes of road rage.”
When she smiled again, I studied her tea-stained teeth.
“I forgot how beautiful you are,” I said.
She looked away. “You look too much like Ruby for me to be comfortable. Your skin is a different hue, and you’re much older, of course. And you do not have Ruby’s eyes. I believe the cast of your skin is called ‘olive,’ is it not?”
“No, it’s called ‘pink’. I think of myself as a pink person now because ‘white’ has become too contaminated. Is that envelope for me?”
She did not hand me the envelope but began to answer my questions in surprising detail. She said she had arrived in the United States with the first wave of refugees after the fall of Saigon; the Anglican mission in San Francisco had recruited her because their diocese had received a letter praising her virtues and devotion to the faith. This letter had come from her keeper—keeper was the word she used—a defense contractor who had required her to accompany him to Anglican services after every time they had “intimate relations.” Santane had understood, even at fifteen, that she was not sinning, and she did not hate this man, who had been kind and who prized her British-accented English, but when an abortion became necessary, it left her with a sense of ruin she could not easily overcome. She had started going to a nearby Buddhist temple where she met Royce. He was young and hungry, and his eyes were as open as windows.
She pushed the envelope across the table and said, “Who knows why anybody loves anybody?”
Back at my hotel room in Gallup, I ordered a second milkshake from room service and opened the envelope she’d given me. Two papers were inside. The first was a note scribbled in Royce’s cramped handwriting, in pencil on blue-lined paper.
My dearest Santane,
A writer I admire once wrote that if we could hear the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, we would die of the roar that lies on the other side of silence. The first time I saw you, I heard that roar. Do you understand what I am saying? How much I love you?
The second letter had been printed on computer paper.
Santane,
I’m sorry I hit you. I do regret what I said to Ruby, but, as you must know by now, you and Ruby have become a source of anguish for me. I am a white man, and the white race is being eradicated. Without large-scale resistance, there will be no more of us, only this disastrous mongrelization that Ruby embodies. Caucasians are the core of civilization, and we must seize the future now, whatever the personal costs.
As I had speculated, a bizarre religious experience was at the root of Royce’s personality change. His letter tried to describe this event in some detail because apparently he needed Santane to “understand.” He explained that the second time he’d gone to the Brotherhood compound, an evangelist named Billy Valentine had been preaching. During the speaking-in-tongues part of the service, which Royce had at first found ridiculous, he had raised his arms.
And this is what happened to me. Soon after I raised my arms a current of energy began to flow down my right hand. It was as real as water pouring over my skin. Then my feet got hot, and when I opened my eyes—I hadn’t known they were closed—my legs were being transformed into black and yellow lights. What looked like luminous jewels were replacing my feet and ankles, and diamond and gold snakes were wrapping my legs and rising up me. I don’t remember shouting, but it seems that I did. “Ecstasy” is not the right word because there is no right word. When I awoke several hours later, I was lying on a sofa, and William Luther Pierce, who later became my friend and mentor, was waiting in an armchair beside me. “You have a great gift. I have been looking for someone like you for a long time.” Because this is what I had been shouting: “I AM THE ONE. I AM THE ONE.” I don’t remember much about how Ruby and I got back home, but it wasn’t Joe who drove us. I was still confused by what had happened, and when I carried Ruby inside I whispered, “Don’t you worry, baby, I love you more than God.” I assumed she was asleep. In any case, what I said to Ruby was not true. I AM THE ONE, and I have to accept my destiny.
I did not know what to make of these letters. Royce had clearly loved Santane and Ruby, and it had mattered to him to attempt to explain his transformation. But what was it that had happened? I knew from my own experience that there are strong energies not yet understood—early in my sobriety I’d had powerful encounters with a shaman in Peru and a guru in Vermont—but I had never heard of anything as patently psychotic as Royce’s vision. Maybe Joe Magnus reappearing in his life while he was living so peacefully with Santane had cracked Royce’s mind, or maybe all religious fanatics must break apart on their roads to Damascus.