Fiji’s family had never been big in any size pond.
“So I thought I was hot stuff, all the way through high school and into college. But I also came to realize—it took me long enough, I was so dumb—that my grandfather’s political and social views were right up there with Hitler’s.”
Whatever she’d expected, that hadn’t been it. “Really that extreme?”
He nodded. “Really. He would have joined something like Men of Liberty if none of his old golf buddies would have found out. I loved the old guy; since I was the oldest grandchild, oldest grandson, he made a lot of me. When he was still physically able, he took me out shooting and hunting, introduced me to lots of his cronies, encouraged me to make friends with their grandkids . . .”
“What did you think of that?”
“I never questioned it.” Bobo laughed, but not happily. “It just seemed natural to me. He would tell me why we shouldn’t let black people—of course, that wasn’t what he called them—live in the same buildings with us, date us, intermarry with us. He never got over integration, for God’s sake. He was still pissed that black people could eat in the same restaurant as him and Gram, go to school with me and my brother and my sisters. He practically screamed at Mom and Dad to get them to send us to some private school in Little Rock or even farther, maybe Memphis, but to give my parents the credit they’re due, they wanted us in town with them.”
“Good for your mom and dad. You didn’t buy what your grandfather was selling?” Fiji asked. She was painfully conscious that she must not cross any number of lines. “How did you keep from being totally messed up?”
“I’ll tell you something weird. Football and karate saved me. Football, because we were all one team and we were all colors.”
“Karate?” Fiji said. “Really?”
Bobo actually laughed. “It was great. My sensei was this amazing Asian guy who could kick major butt before breakfast, and one of my favorite class buddies was a black guy named Raphael Roundtree. And a white woman named Lily Bard. She could knock me down with her little finger. My grandfather revered women—as long as they were dependent and decorative.”
“So your class was a revelation to you.” She used the extravagant word with some hesitance. But Bobo hopped on it with glee.
“Yeah. No one in the class thought about what color or sex they were. Gaining the knowledge was the thing. So I knew from karate and football and my own common sense that there were just as many nice black people or Jews or g*y people or whatever as the white people my grandfather thought were all so wonderful.” Revisited resentment made Bobo’s face look curiously young again.
“I’m assuming your grandfather didn’t have a good end.”
Bobo sighed. “When he was well into his eighties, he began using the like-minded employees who worked in his sporting goods store to start stockpiling guns illegally. He was siphoning them from the stock. But my dad . . .” And here, for the first time, Bobo faltered.
Fiji waited patiently.
“My father suspected his dad was up to no good. He hired a private detective to work in the sporting goods store, keeping watch and digging stuff up. The guy’s name was Jack Leeds. Jack couldn’t stop them from bombing a black church. People died. A child. Other people.” Bobo took a deep breath, almost a sob. “One night—I can’t remember how—the men working for my grandfather found out that Jack was working undercover, but they didn’t know who he worked for. They thought it might be the government, and as you might expect, they went a little nuts. They really hurt him.” Another deep breath. “They tortured him. Right in front of me. My grandfather made me go with him. I was too young to say no and call the cops. I was too scared and weak.” Bobo’s voice was full of scorn for his younger self. “I was looking for a way out when Jack’s girlfriend came to rescue him. She was the great fighter from my karate class.”
That was a lot to figure out, and Fiji wasn’t totally sure she had the story straight, but she put that behind her to puzzle over later. “So she rescued Jack?” Fiji liked that part.
“Yeah. I’m simplifying, but she did. And I just carried my grandfather out of there. He was cursing up a storm, but I couldn’t let him stay there and keep on . . . being evil.”
“What happened?”
“All the men involved got arrested, including my grandfather.”
“That’s terrible.” While Fiji’s family had never been rich or influential, none of them had been arrested. Oh my gosh, I pick jail terms to be snobbish about? she thought. She said, “What happened after that?”
“While my grandfather was out on bail, he had a stroke. He never had to go to jail. But he never spoke again, and he died within three months. All the other men who were charged got prison sentences; the ones who set off the bomb in the church got life with no parole.”
“Which was right,” Fiji said. “Those sentences.” She stared at Bobo’s face. She couldn’t discern how he felt about these events.
“Which was right,” Bobo agreed. “Which was what Grandfather deserved, too. But he dodged that, like he dodged all the responsibility for what he’d done, by having the stroke.”
Fiji found it easy to decipher her friend’s emotion now; he was bitter.
“The point of this story is that after the stroke, supremacist groups began to circulate the rumor that Grandfather had a huge secret cache of all kinds of wonderful weapons. And the rumor turned into a legend, which then became accepted as fact. I’ve visited some of the websites, from organizations like Men of Liberty to After the Apocalypse, and it’s just horrible, the way the story gathered bulk and momentum on its way downhill.”
“So why do they—the nutcases—think you know about the location of this fabulous treasure trove of weapons? I suppose this was why Aubrey was here?”
Bobo looked as though he’d swallowed something bitter. “Since it was my dad who blew the whistle on his father, the nutcases cast him as the villain. They figure my grandfather would have been too smart to tell his evil son where the arms were stowed, they say. Instead, since I was with Grandfather the evening everything fell apart, obviously I was the chosen successor. So I must know where the cache of guns is. Only now it’s not just guns, it’s rocket launchers, grenades, mines . . . whatever can kill lots of people at once, that’s what I’m concealing. That’s the story.”