Lancelot

sexual relations with a man other than her husband, or that the man was a Negro. “I see,” said my ancestor. “Well, I’ll tell you what I propose. You and I will meet in four hours, which is dawn, on the Vidalia sand bar, which is outside the jurisdiction of both Louisiana and Mississippi. With one Bowie knife apiece. No seconds.” They met. Seconds did come but were scared and hid in the willows. They fought. My ancestor killed his man, was badly cut on the arms and face, but managed to grab the fellow, turn him around, and cut his throat from ear to ear. Then he sent for an ax, beheaded, dismembered, and quartered the body, and fed it to the catfishes. He washed himself in the river, bound his wounds, and he and his friends rowed over to Natchez-under-the-Hill and ate a hearty breakfast.
    I could live that way, crude as it was, though I do not think men should butcher each other like animals. But it is at least a way to live. One knows where one stands and what one can do. Even defeat is better than not knowing.
    Or I could live your way if it were true.
    What I can’t stand is the way things are now. Furthermore, I will not stand for it.
    Stand for what, you ask? Well, for that, to give an insignificant example. What you’re looking at. You see the movie poster across the street? The 69ers? Man and woman yin-yanged, fellatioed, cunnilinged on the corner of Felicity and Annunciation Streets? What would I do about it? Quite simply it would be removed.
    Come here, Percival, I want to tell you something. It is not a confession but a secret. It is not a sin because I do not know what a sin is. I understand that before you can sin, you must know what sin is—Bless me, Father, for I have done something which I don’t understand. I know what a trespass or an injury or an insult is—something to be set right. So I’m telling you this and, confession or not, I consider you bound by the seal of friendship if not the confessional.
    Come over here. Never mind the window. Look at me. We’ve been through a great deal together: school, war, talk, whoring, football, nice girls, hot girls, so since you understand me and my past—if you don’t, nobody does—I’m going to tell you my plans for the future. There is going to be a new order of things and I shall be part of it. Don’t confuse it with anything you’ve heard of before. Certainly not with your Holy Name Society or Concerned Christians Against Smut. This has nothing to do with Christ or boycotts. Don’t confuse it with the Nazis. They were stupid. If in fact there was a need to clean up the Weimar Republic and if in fact they did in part, they screwed everything up by getting off on the Jews. What stupidity! The Jews were not to blame. The Nazis were clods, thugs. What they should have done was invite the Jews. Half the Jews would have joined them—just as half the Catholics did. Don’t confuse it with the Klan, those poor ignorant bastards. Blacks, Jews, Catholics—they are all irrelevant; blaming them only confuses the issue. We’ll invite them and you. Don’t confuse it with Southern white trash Wallace politics. It’s got nothing to do with politics.
    It is none of these things. What is it then?
    It is simply this: a conviction and a freedom. The conviction: I will not tolerate this age. The freedom: the freedom to act on my conviction. And I will act. No one else has both the conviction and the freedom. Many agree with me, have the conviction, but will not act. Some act. assassinate, bomb, burn, etc., but they are the crazies. Crazy acts by crazy people. But what if one, sober, reasonable, and honorable man should act, and act with perfect sobriety, reason, and honor? Then you have the beginning of a new age. We shall start a new order of things.
    We? Who are we? We will not even be a secret society as you know such things. Its members will know each other without signs or passwords. No speeches, rallies, political parties. There will be no need of such things. One man will act. Another man will act. We will know each other as gentlemen used to know each other—no, not gentlemen in the old sense—I’m not talking about social classes. I’m talking about something held in common by men, Gentile, Jew, Greek, Roman, slave, freeman, black, white, and so recognized between them: a stern code, a gentleness toward women and an intolerance of swinishness, a