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But when one turned to two and two somehow turned to eight, yeah, I started asking.
"Duke, we need to protect ourselves," he had went on, nodding at one of the men who walked past carrying wood. "And there ain't no way to do that all spread out in twenty different locations when shit hits the fan."
"You're moving our people to the farm?" I asked, looking out at the small buildings, not understanding how any single person could live in one, let alone families. And our people, yeah, they had families. The men knocked up the women until they couldn't squeeze any more babies out.
"Things going the way they are going, our people will be looking to us for guidance, for answers, for help. Besides, this way, the next generation can grow up around their own kind. They won't be subjected to all that racial intermingling and bastardization of our history."
That 'bastardization of our history' meant things such as the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the negativity toward the south in the Civil War, the fact that we all but annihilated an entire indigenous race, and that Hitler was, well, anything other than a bright and shining star.
"We're going to get homeschooled?" I asked, fifteen and not overly adverse to the idea of not having to sit my ass in a class room six hours a day learning shit that I would literally never need to know in my adult life.
"You? No, son," he said, shaking his head with a smile. "No. You're a man now. You will be put to work around here."
And I was.
One day, I was just a normal fifteen year-old going to school and hating it.
The next, I was pulled out under the pretense of religious reasons, and I was suddenly in charge of overseeing the construction of the stock pile barn. Never mind that I didn't know shit about building and that all the men working under me knew that as well. I was the son of their leader. It was a position owed respect even if I didn't do shit to earn it.
Leader.
My father was the leader.
My grandfather was a past leader before his heart went bad.
There was none of that Grand Wizard shit that my family scoffed at.
"All for show, the lot of them," my grandfather said as we watched a row of white sheets picket outside the courthouse the day a young black man was being charged with the rape of a young white woman.
See, the charge was bullshit.
I knew this because I had listened to my father coach her on how to sell the story to the cops. I had watched my mother tear her clothes and press bruises into her thighs.
I also knew that the kid was going down for it.
They always did.
The system was rigged against them, something my family delighted in.
"Did nothing to take the bastard down, but show up here like they were there from the beginning. Fucking pussies," he said, spitting a wad of chewing tobacco on the ground and walking away.
I had been the only one to stay and watch the confusion, the hurt, the betrayal, and the fear cross that eighteen year old's face as he was handed his sentence and hauled off to jail.
But even if they had been there, I doubted the image would have bothered any of them. Why it bothered me, to this day, was a mystery. Maybe it was because I had gone to public school for so long in an age where diversity was celebrated. Maybe I lucked out that I had a decent head on my shoulders, not a brain full of fear and ignorance like the rest of them.
Regardless, something inside me changed that day.
The following birthday, I was pulled into the barn and had a swastika tattooed on my shoulder. Because that was just what was done. I was the only one out of the lot of them who didn't have more than that. Half the guys were sporting hand and neck tattoos showing off their hatred. By that point, all our little houses were occupied. Men, women, and especially children, were every-fucking-where. You couldn't walk two feet out the door without bumping into one of them.
"Nothing better than a community of like-minded men and women," my grandfather had said after informing me that there were plans to build on, to have more families come live on the farm.
I'd love to say I hated every minute of my life; I really would.
But fact of the matter was, life wasn't always about hate and fear and preparing for some inevitable (they thought) race war. Life was just life. And for people with such a strong capacity for hate, it was surprising how much love they could give people they considered of the same mind. If you were sick, there was soup for you. If you were hurt, your chores were handled without you even having to ask. If you were struggling learning how to shoot, fish, fight, tie knots... anything, someone was happy to lend a patient hand. Mothers helped the other mothers so everyone got time off. The men provided for their families.
