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'We'll lie low for a few years. Call me "Seth" again and I'll hurt you. I can do tattooing work for cash. You can teach Sunday school. Little by little we can reemerge. New identities. The AFFC's over now, but maybe it's just as well - we'll move on. Start a new movement. And do a hell of a better job. We'll do it the right way. We'll place our women into schools - and I don't just mean church schools. I mean public and private. Get the kids young. Break them in. We men will run for office, low level, cities and counties - at first. We'll start local and then move up. Oh, it's going to be a whole new world. You don't think that way now. But you'll be proud to be part of it.'
He lifted the machine off her leg, looked over the work and returned to inking her.
'My uncle was backward in a lot of ways. But he had one moment of genius. He came up with the Rule of Skin. He'd lecture about it all over the country - at other militias, at revival meetings, at churches, at hunting camps.' Billy's eyes shone. 'The Rule of Skin ... It's brilliant. Think about it: Skin tells us about our physical health, right? It's flushed or pale. Glowing or dull. Shrunken or swollen. Broken out or clear ... And it tells us our spiritual development too. And intellectual. And emotional. White is good and smart and noble. Black and brown and yellow are subversive and dangerous.'
'You can't be serious!'
He made a fist and Pam cringed and fell silent.
'You want proof. The other day I was in the Bronx and this guy stopped me. A young man, I don't know. About your age. Black. He had keloids on his face - scars, like tattoos. They were beautiful. A real artist had done them.' His eyes looked off slightly. 'And you know why he stopped me? To sell me drugs. That's the truth about people like that. The Rule of Skin. You can't fool it.'
Pam laughed bitterly. 'A black kid tried to sell you drugs in the Bronx? Guess what? Go to West Virginia and a white kid'll try to sell you drugs.'
Billy wasn't listening. 'There's been an argument about Hitler: whether he genuinely hated Jews and Gypsies and gays and wanted to make the world a better place by eliminating them. Or whether he didn't actually care but thought that German citizens hated them, so he used that hate and fear to seize power.'
'You're holding up Hitler as a role model?'
'There are worse choices.'
'So? What is it for you, Billy? Do you believe in the Rule of Skin or are you using it for power, for yourself, your ego?'
'Isn't it clear?' He gave a laugh. 'You're smarter than that, Pam.'
She said nothing and he dabbed the tears of pain off her cheeks. And she did know the answer. And something occurred to her, hit her like one of his blows. It had to do with the blog she and Seth had worked on together. She whispered, 'Our blog? That's the opposite of everything you're saying. What ... what did you create the blog for?'
'What do you think? Everybody who posts a favorable comment is on our list. Pro-abortion, pro food stamps, pro immigration reform. Their day of judgment's coming.'
There were probably fifteen thousand people who'd posted something on the site. What was going to happen to them? Would Billy's followers track them down and kill them? Firebomb their houses or apartments?
Billy set the tattoo gun aside, smeared Vaseline on the ink on her thighs and blotted.
He smiled and said, 'Look. What do you think?'
Reading upside down, she saw two words on the front of her thighs.
PAM
WIL
What the hell was he doing? What did he mean?
And he p
ulled his jeans down. She read similar tattoos on his thighs, in matching type fonts.
ELA
LIAM
When read together:
PAM ELA
WIL LIAM
'We call them splitters. Lovers get parts of their names tattooed on each other. They can only be read when they're together. It's us, see? Separately, we're missing something. Together, we're whole.' What passed for a smile crossed his sallow face.
'Lovers?' she whispered. Looking at his inking - it'd been done years ago.
