That makes me madder than all else.
With a cry I hurl myself at it, the chants in my head rising to a fever pitch.
I land on the monster’s back, the blade sinking through flesh into the base of its neck. Before it can throw me off I clutch at ridges on its pointed head and with my whole body push the blade up and deep. The Ku Klux jerks once before collapsing facedown, like its bones turned to jelly. I fall with it, careful not to get rolled under, still gripping the silver hilt of my sword. Regaining my breath, I do a quick check to make sure nothing’s broken. Then, pushing to my feet, I press a boot onto the dead thing’s back and pull the blade free. Dark blood sizzles off the black iron like water on a hot skillet.
Catching movement out the corner of my eye I spin about. But it’s Chef and Sadie. Relief forces my muscles to relax and the chanting in my head lowers to a murmur. Chef lets out a low whistle seeing the two dead Ku Kluxes. Sadie just grunts—closest she comes to a compliment. I must look a sight. Somewhere along the way I lost my cap, and my undone hair is framing my coffee-brown face in a tangled black cloud.
“Called up your little pig sticker?” Sadie asks, eyeing my sword.
“The one up top?” I ask, ignoring her and breathing hard.
Sadie pats Winnie in answer. “Took a mess of bullets too.”
“And this knife when things got close,” Chef adds, patting her war souvenir.
Outside the parade’s moved on. But I can still hear the brass band and fireworks. As if a whole lot of monster battling ain’t happened just some streets over. Still, somebody over there bound to know the difference between firecrackers and a rifle.
“Let’s get moving,” I say. “Last thing we need is police.”
Macon’s constables and the Klan not on good terms. Surprising, ain’t it? Seems the police don’t take well to them threatening to run one of their own for sheriff. That don’t mean the police friendly with colored folk, though. So we try not to cross them.
When Bruh Bear and Bruh Lion get to fighting, I remember my brother saying, Bruh Rabbit best steer clear!
Chef nods. “C’mon, yella gal—say, what you doing there?”
I turn to find Sadie poking at a cotton bale with her rifle.
“Y’all ain’t ever worked a field,” she’s muttering, “so don’t expect you to know better. But July is when the harvest just starting. Warehouse like this should be empty.”
“So?” I glance nervous at the alley. Don’t got time for this.
“So,” she throws back at me, reaching inside a bale. “I want to see what they hiding.” Her arm comes back, holding a dark glass bottle. Grinning, she pulls out the cork and takes a swig that sets her shivering.
“Tennessee whiskey!” she hoots.
Chef dives for another bale, digging with her knife to pull out two more bottles.
I give Sadie my own grunt. Tennessee whiskey worth a pretty penny, what with the Prohibition still on. And this little monster-hunting operation costs money.
“We’ll take what we can, but we need to hurry!”
I look down at the dead Ku Klux. The monster’s bone-white skin is already turned gray, scraps peeling and floating into the air like ashes of paper, turning to dust before our eyes. That’s what happens to a Ku Klux when its killed. Body just crumbles away, as if it don’t belong here—which I assure you it does not. In about twenty minutes won’t be no blood or bones or nothing—just dust. Make it feel like you fighting shadows.
“You need help with—?” Chef gestures at the dead Ku Klux.
I shake my head, hefting my sword. “Y’all bring the truck. Nana Jean been expecting us. I got this.”
Sadie huffs. “All that fuss over a dog, and this don’t make you blink.”
I watch them go before fixing my eyes back to the dead Ku Klux. Sadie should know better. That dog didn’t hurt nobody. These haints evil and need putting down. I ain’t got a bit of compunction about that. Lifting my sword, I bring it down with a firm swing, severing the Ku Klux’s forearm at the elbow. Blood and gore splatters me, turning at once to motes of dust. In my head the chanting of long-dead slaves and bound-up chiefs starts up again. I find myself humming along, lost to the rhythm of my singing blade, as I set about my grisly work.
TWO
The parade dies away as we leave downtown Macon in our beat-up old Packard, with its faded green doors, rattling engine, and patched-up wheels. But it runs good as the newer motor trucks, Chef insists. She at the wheel, filling up the cab with thick oaky cigarette smoke.
“Why come I always got to sit in the middle?” Sadie complains, scrunched tight against us with the Winchester between her knees. “And why Cordy always get to drive?”
“Because I’m oldest,” Chef answers around her Chesterfield.
“So? I made twenty-one last month. Six years more don’t make much.”
“How about this. I’m the one who drove these back in France. And if I can dodge German mines I can avoid Macon’s potholes.” She swerves as if to prove her point.
“Well, why Maryse get the door? She ain’t but four years older than me.”
“Because I don’t hang out the window trying to shoot rabbits?”
Sadie rolls her eyes. “First you sweet on dogs, now rabbits.”
“If you like, could ride in the back.” Chef jerks a thumb to the truck’s bed covered by a bulging tan canopy. Sadie grumbles and hunches down with a miserable look. Nobody wants to sit with what we hauling.
I take to gazing out the window, reading advertisements plastering the walls of downtown Macon. One is for Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum. There’s another with the Uneeda Biscuit boy in his yellow raincoat, carrying a box of crackers. But what my eyes fix on is a poster taking up the whole side of a building. It shows two Civil War soldiers—one in blue, the other gray—shaking hands under a gaudy American flag. D. W. Griffith presents is printed in red, then in big white letters, THE BIRTH OF A NATION. “Come see the rerelease of the film that thrilled the country!” a caption reads. “Sunday, at Stone Mountain!”
Sadie leans over me, stretching out the window to hurl curses at the poster.
Can’t say I blame her.
* * *
You see, the Second Klan was birthed on November 25 back in 1915. What we call D-Day, or Devil’s Night—when William Joseph Simmons, a regular old witch, and fifteen others met up on Stone Mountain east of Atlanta. Stories say they read from a conjuring book inked in blood on human skin. Can’t vouch for that. But it was them that called up the monsters we call Ku Kluxes. And it all started with this damned movie.
The Birth of a Nation comes from a book. Two books really—The Clansman and The Leopard’s Spots, by a man named Thomas Dixon. Dixon’s father was a South Carolina slaveowner in the Confederacy. And a sorcerer. Way I hear it, a heap of the big ups in the Confederacy was into sorcery. Dark stuff too. Jeff Davis, Bobby Lee, Stonewall Jackson—all in league with worse than the devil.
The first Klan started after the war. Nathan Bedford Forrest—another wicked conjurer—and some spiteful rebels sold their souls to the evil powers. Started calling themselves Night Riders. Witches is what the freed people named them. They talk about them first Klans having horns and looking like beasts! People think it’s just Negro superstition. But some of them ex-slaves could see what Forrest and those hateful rebels had become. Monsters, like these Ku Kluxes.