Rotten eggs smelled like tulips compared to the gas stove and oven in Capt. Jones’ double-wide trailer. Turned up all the way, the filthy oven released a sharp odor into the tight kitchen into the small living room and down the narrow hallway to the “Master Race Bedroom” Jones decorated with swastika flags and framed photographs of famous Nazis. As pungent as moldy macaroni and cheese, the gas hissed like a locomotive engine slowing to a stop on rails leading to a concentration camp.
A dozen make-shift figures Capt. Jones carved out of baking potatoes stood single file on the toast crumb-laden kitchen counter. He spent Friday nights at home crafting Jew effigies from huge potatoes using black peppercorns for eyes. Picking up another figurine he made from a thick orthopedic sweat sock, he stuck his hand inside the puppet on whixh Capt. Jones drew a tiny red arm band complete with a swastika he inked in black marker. The effigy wore a tiny clear monocle Capt. Jones made from a piece of broken beer glass and stuck to his make-believe Nazi puppet.
My name is Franz Himmler. I am the Obergruppenführer of this camp, Capt., Jones said with a mock German accent puppet voice.
March, he said.
Laufen, he said.
Go!
Run!
When Obergruppenführer Himmler had slapped around and pushed all the Jewish potato prisoners into the oven, he slammed the door. After opening a Beck’s beer he poured himself a shot of schnaps. Then he pulled up a chair for a good seat from which to peer through the glass oven door and wait for his prisoners to burn.
When the first greasy head erupted in flames, Obergruppenführer Himmler cursed.
Du Hurensohn!
You sonofabitch!
By this time other potatoes were burning as he screamed.
Die!
Die!
Capt. Jones finally had enough. Pulling the pan from the oven he threw a towel over the smoking spuds. Picking up a hand masher, snickering because German soldiers in the war called their hand grenades potato mashers, he pounded the tubers to a pulp, squashing and mixing them with milk, a jar of bacon bits and a whole unpeeled onion he hacked to pieces with a replica Third Reich bayonet. Throwing the mixture into a sizzling pan, he fried the pancakes and ate them with heaping gobs of chunky applesauce.
This act of twisted defiance remained the last ancestral ritual he reserved for himself.
Pretending to be a Nazi used to be fun. Black leather trench coats, German Shepherds, strudel and bitter beer all made existence meaningful for him and a small group of friends who hated together, bonding over tribal bigotry until Valhalla. Fighting a lonely battle to rid the world of vermin brought joy. But nowadays all the ingrates who deserved an oven made the work tedious, even dangerous.
Jews especially.
Most people said in surveys they held nothing against Jews even if they didn’t know any Jews. Mostly they saw them on TV. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld helped destroy the natural animosity people used to feel about the shyster sheeny bastards, including Bruce Springsteen who refuses to admit he’s Jewish and swears he’s Catholic and a self-professed Obama lover. Born in the USA? Springsteen was born in New JEWsey, kike capital of the world. To tell the truth, most white liberals distrusted Jews. Ask a white Democrat father of Italian, Irish or Polish descent if he wants a Jew to marry his daughter. Tell a guy shalom in aa neighborhood bar. Most real white people, working class white people, even hated bagels.
Capt. Jones knew the truth, He patrolled a long hard road alone. Big Bob’s Boogaloo Boys might as well have been the Bagel Boys for all he cared. You’d never see Hitler wearing a Hawaiian shirt the way this pathetic pack did, all the while calling themselves race war proponents. As for the Holocaust and six million Jews, yeah, right. Who even had an oven that big? I mean, really.
Capt. Jones’ so-called white power peers didn’t amount to a matzah ball between them.
Even with the blacks, white people fell apart at the seams in confusion if you asked them about a black professional like Mike Tyson. Here is America’s most notorious rapist and white people flock to his shows and treat him with respect. Capt. Jones would never forget when Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off and then denied he was a cannibal.
Local white supremacist Big Bob stood alone as the biggest hypocrite. Nothing but a pest, a WASP redneck bully and insecure nobody, he sat at home on disability from his job since he caught his leg in a stone quarry truck hauling rock back and forth from the pit to the pile.
Vic was a Dago loser gypsy. Buck was a limp-wristed fag. Even dead Betsy was loose scum, below him figuratively and literally until she caught the disease and died at the drive-n movie.
White power had gone kaput and Big Bob was the worst.
All Capt. Jones could do was target deserving societal offenders and do what he could to get even with the bastardization of his Aryan race. Poison a black inmate every now and then at the penitentiary. Kill a Rican or Chinaman like he did with the fire-bombing. He had to admit he was proud of Lt. Smith, strangling that coon with his bare hands in the prison infirmary. But Lt. Smith hadn’t committed to the cause the way Capt. Jones pledged his loyalty to the New Reich.
The full-scale race war was off. White people just weren’t up to the job. More enemies of the state existed than friends.
Yep, Big Bob had to go.
Betsy would have moved in with him had it not been for feeling sorry for the big goof and his dog, Clancy, another big goof. If that wasn’t bad enough, two crazy superheroes were now running around like that oldie-but-baddie record Ebony and Ivory, a black man and a white man, fighting for justice in the name of interracial brotherhood.
At least the paintball bruise was healing nicely. Capt. Jones had to admit he thought he was a goner when that terrorist shot him with the high-velocity paintball. Worse was when the spook seemed like he wanted to give him a hug when the team ran past him making their escape.
A hug from a Mau Mau?
What’s the world coming to?