It was back in '88. I was fourteen. Even since then I've believed in something. Well, maybe not just something: the fabric of the universe wrapping around us, enveloping us with meaning.
Some call it Fate.
“Mexicans and nigger tits!” a voice behind me spat. He didn't like regular profanity. He said it was “degenerate.” Ben thought we should make our own curses and not use the dead words. I didn't consciously know what he had uttered so harshly had meant then, but I did sense it. In fact a part of me, deep down, embraced the ponderous import of it all. One day the those dim, heavy feelings Ben had stirred in me would be pure white light and hard as steel.
Turning I found a man just beginning middle age dressed in the finest Klan regalia, the hood tucked under his belt. His face was aquiline, intelligent-- and, frankly, remorseless. His large, deep black eyes were focused on me. He was focused on my nose, to be exact: sizing it up just to be absolutely certain. Ben was always thorough. His large hands, veined like fine marble, were folding a newspaper. Something in it was the cause of his outburst which had startled me to knowledge.
A light breeze blew, fluttering the paper, and it wafted the hoary edges of his robes which were almost blindingly white. Was he an angel, perhaps? He seemed to have come out of nowhere.
“They're trying to put a Jew job on old Benny, my boy.”
