The Pinocchio Syndrome. David Zeman

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      An invisible electricity held the crowd in silence.

      ‘But that’s all over now, isn’t it?’ Goss concluded. ‘The age of fear, the era of trembling, is over. No longer will we go about the business of freedom like victims. No longer will we wait like sheep in a pen for the wolf’s next attack. This time it will be us attacking. And when the butcher runs for cover, we will run faster. We will catch him and destroy him. And when he falls to his knees and prays for mercy at the eleventh hour, what will we do to him?’

      ‘KILL! KILL! KILL!’

      ‘GOSS! GOSS! GOSS!’

      The crowd surged this way and that, held in check with difficulty by the local police who were working alongside Goss’s security staff. They shook their fists at the cameramen and reporters on the periphery of the crowd. Decades of downsizing in American business, along with the recent recession, fueled their rage. So did countless headlines about terrorist attacks, gang warfare, street crime, welfare fraud, school shootings, illegal drugs, and sexual permissiveness. Not to mention six months of nuclear terror on a scale not seen since the worst days of the Cold War.

      The crowd did not have to sort out the manifold sources of its rage. Colin Goss focused it for them. With a sure touch developed over many years, he aimed their anger at a faceless mass of dirty, lazy, selfish, violent, and ultimately inhuman creatures who were responsible for the ills that beset society in the new millennium.

      ‘GOSS! GOSS! GOSS!’ came the chant, louder than ever now.

      At the end the chaos was so great that Goss had to be escorted to his limousine by security men. It took forty-five minutes to disperse the crowd. Scattered incidents of violence would be reported in the nearby inner-city neighborhoods overnight, all of them directed at minorities.

      Colin Goss was gone now, en route to his private jet and a speaking engagement in another city. But his message of hate remained behind him, as he knew it would. The legend ‘Time for a Change’ loomed on the enormous video screens.

      

      In a pickup truck on a back road in rural Tennessee, three men were listening to Goss’s speech on the radio.

      ‘Fuckin’ A,’ the driver said.

      ‘No shit. Put that fucker in the White House and our problems are over.’ Rafe, riding shotgun, said this.

      ‘Fucker knows what’s happening,’ said the passenger in the middle, a slender out-of-work auto mechanic named Donny.

      They were all unemployed, though Donny had been laid off only last month. Dick, the driver, was a construction worker who had not earned a cent in over a year. Rafe was an air conditioner repairman, out of work since the end of summer.

      ‘Look,’ said Dick. ‘Look at this.’

      A young black boy, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, was walking along the shoulder of the road. He wore overalls and oversized running shoes. As the truck approached he looked over his shoulder without much interest.

      Dick brought the truck to a sudden halt on the shoulder, scattering gravel into the weeds.

      ‘Fucker,’ he said.

      ‘Fucker!’ his friends echoed.

      They were all drunk. They had spent the night pouring down boilermakers at a country tavern. Their search for girls had been fruitless, and they had left in the truck with a bottle of cheap vodka and some Cokes, in time to hear Goss’s speech on the radio as they cruised the farm fields.

      They didn’t need to talk over what was to happen. Rafe leaped from the passenger’s seat and seized the black boy by his shoulders. Donny kicked the boy between the legs, whooping excitedly as a cry of pain came from the boy’s lips.

      ‘What did I do to you?’ the boy cried. ‘Leave me alone.’

      Donny’s fist crushed the boy’s nose before he could say another word.

      The boy fell to the gravel shoulder. Donny and Rafe crouched over him, fists flying, while Dick aimed kicks at his crotch, one after the other, methodically.

      ‘Nigger.’

      ‘Fucker.’

      They would not have done it if they had been sober. Even drunk they would not have taken the risk had it not been for Goss’s speech and their frustration at the tavern. But now they were out of control, beating the boy with all their strength. He squirmed and flailed under the blows, his struggles already getting weaker.

      ‘Kill the fucker,’ said Dick.

      The boy’s eyes were beginning to glaze over. Rafe aimed a powerful kick at his undefended temple. Dick was kneeling to undo the boy’s fly.

      Then something happened.

      Dick’s hands froze in midair. His face, contorted in a grimace of hate, suddenly went blank. Off balance, he teetered and fell to the ground, his arms and legs rigid.

      ‘Dick? Are you all right?’

      Rafe and Donny paused to look at him. Rafe, assuming the black boy had injured Dick in some way, aimed a hard punch and hit his unprotected stomach. The boy screamed.

      Donny bent to look at Dick. ‘Fucker passed out on us.’

      Rafe pushed Donny aside to get a better look at Dick, whose eyes were wide open. They were not the glazed eyes of a drunken man.

      ‘Bullshit,’ Rafe said. ‘No way. He’s not passed out.’

      The two men stood swaying over their friend, swearing inconsequentially as they wondered what had happened. They did not notice the black boy as he crept away into the thick brush.

      ‘You don’t think …’ Rafe was scratching his head.

      ‘Come on, don’t bullshit me.’

      ‘You know … that thing … that sickness.’

      Donny looked closely at Dick’s eyes. ‘Jesus.’

      ‘Let’s get him to a hospital.’

      Rafe had jumped back in alarm. He seemed afraid of the inert body of his friend. He shook his hands as though to rid them of a contagion. ‘Fuck that. Let’s get out of here. We’ll call an ambulance.’

      They hopped into the truck, suddenly sober. Rafe gunned the engine. Spinning the wheels on the gravel, he got the truck onto the road and hit sixty within a few seconds.

      The roar of the engine subsided. The only sound was the wind in the weeds. The black boy was nowhere to be seen. The motionless white man lay on the shoulder, where a passing farmer would notice him before dawn.

      Rafe would fall into drunken sleep before dawn. When he failed to awaken by mid-afternoon, his brother would become alarmed and call 911.

      By then Donny would already be in the hospital, a victim of the mystery disease like his two friends.

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