Red-faced in a fume, Big Bob paced the sidewalk in front of his double-block house where his late mother and father once lived. With his parents gone, he lived on one side in a non-swinging bachelor pad and kept the other side of the house like a pristine 50s museum. He had decided to marry Betsy and knock down the wall between the two sides of the structure. All hope disappeared when the woman of his dreams died in a cloud of toxic aerosol droplets at a double-feature drive-in movie. All Big Bob wanted now was to build a bigger wall around his heart and the southern border of his nation.

Never married, he finally fell when he met Betsy over free rabies shots at the animal shelter. Their pets needed inoculation, not them, although a few syringes loaded with distemper medicine might have done them both the world of good.

Big Bob glared at Vic, who had shown up unexpectedly at the house with his buddy, Buck.

I thought you were one of us, Big Bob said.

Vic frowned.

I know you’re mourning my sister-in-law and her going back with that prison guard goon but don’t take it out on me. I’m grieving, too. Before she died she sold the T-Bird I wanted my wife, Gina, to try to get from her estate.

You practiced shooting for the revolution and everything, Big Bob said.

The dead horse was an accident, Vic said.

Big Bob raised an eyebrow.

Now I wonder if you might be one of them rather than one of us.

Vic tried his best lame counterpunch.

One of them?

We’re getting ready for the boogaloo and you’re walking around like Goodfellas, Big Bob said.

Buck’s jaw dropped.

You’re Robert De Niro again?

Would you shut up, Vic said.

The Minutemen at Valley Forge didn’t dress up like some Mafia godfather, Big Bob said.

Vic spit on his fingers and brushed back his wavy black hair.

What’s a boogaloo?

Not a boogaloo, the boogaloo, Big Bob said.

Vic shimmied his shoulders and shook his butt.

Like the 60s dance?

Like the coming civil war.

Boogaloo, huh?

Yeah, they’re coming for our guns, Big Bob said.

What’s the name mean?

Buck perked up.

I heard about that from the guys at the fulfillment center. That’s what Amazon calls the hard labor warehouse. My old boss said it was in some 80s movie title that got changed into a code word for the shit storm. That’s what I call the race war. The shit storm.

Vic cocked his head like a cat that’s not sure whether a wind-up toy is a real mouse.

Now it’s a race war? I thought it was a civil war.

Big Bob explained.

Same thing. We’re protesting the government using the coronavirus against us to shut down our freedoms. Boogaloo, get it?

No, Vic said.

Big Bob continued.

Remember James Brown back in the 60s dancing them sex machine moves demanding civil rights and black power? Today the coloreds got all their rights and we’re losing ours.

Us and them?

Exactly.

Black people, you mean?

Bingo.

A light flashed in Vic’s head.

So the coronavirus is black?

Might as well be for all the accommodating the government’s doing to take our independence from us, Big Bob said.

Now Buck jumped into the fever jive of the boogaloo.

Our birthright, right?

You got it, Big Bob said.

Buck couldn’t leave well enough alone.

You ever see germs under a microscope, Vic? What color are they?

Black.

I rest my case, Buck said.

The government’s fighting for the germs’ civil rights over our God-given right to own machine guns, refuse to get vaccinations and make America great again, Big Bob said.

I never thought about it like that before, Vic said.

Thin the herd, Buck said.

Survival of the fittest, Big Bob said.

Only the strong survive, Vic said.

Big Bob crossed his arms across his chest that bore black letters on a new T-shirt that read, “GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME COVID.”

You in?

I’m in, Vic said.

Big Bob seemed relieved.

Godstock’s on for Saturday. Thousands of patriots coming to the church parking lot. JayJay Bone’s doing his radio show from there live. We’ll be armed to the teeth and standing right up front as security. I can’t wait for the rapture and our picture in the newspaper.

Inspired at the thought of brandishing loaded firearms in public, Vic exerted a little subversive leadership.

You see the Jews?

Big Bob got testy.

Where?

About seven of them on Peach Street outside the rabbi’s house sitting on the steps and leaning against the porch railing. Beards, no masks, huddled together. Bare-faced women bunched up on the porch in their own little world talking with their hands.

They make their women stay apart from the men, Buck said.

I wish Gina and her mother were Jews so I could keep them away from me, Vic said.

Big Bob cracked a smile.

Off the hook, Vic lightened up.

How’d the old people at the supermarket like the horse meat?

Big Bob beamed.

The store sold out in an afternoon. They want to know when the next shipment’s coming in.