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goddammit.”
    “I mean, my God, we’s millionaires,” Chub went on. “Millionaires, they don’t do b-and-e’s!”
    “No, but they steal just the same. We use crowbars, they use Jews and briefcases.”
    As usual, Bode had a point. Chub hunkered down with a Budweiser to think on it.
    Bode said, “Hey, I don’t wanna go to jail, either. Say we go up on charges, who’d take over the White Rebels?”
    The White Rebel Brotherhood is what Bodean Gazzer had decided to call his new militia. Chub didn’t fuss about the name; it wasn’t as if they’d be printing up business cards.
    Bode said, “Hey, d’you finish that book I gave you? On how to be a survivalist?”
    “No, I did not.” Chub had gotten as far as the business on eating bugs, and that was it. “How to Tell Toxic Insects from Edible Insects.” Jesus Willy Christ.
    “I didn’t see no chapter on prime rib,” he grumbled.
    To ease the tension, Bode asked Chub if he’d like to make a bet on who was holding the other winning Lotto numbers. “I got ten bucks says it’s a Negro. You want to take Jews, or Cubans?”
    Chub had never met a white supremacist who said “Negro” instead of “nigger.”
    “Is they a difference?” he inquired sarcastically.
    “No, sir,” said Bode.
    “Then why don’t you call ‘em what they is?”
    Bode clenched the steering wheel. “I could call ‘em coconuts and what’s the damn difference. One word’s no better than another.”
    Chub chuckled. “Coconuts.”
    “How about you make yourself useful. Find a radio station plays some white music, if that’s possible.”
    “S’matter? You ain’t fond a these Negro rappers?”
    “Eat me,” Bode Gazzer said.
    He was ashamed to admit the truth, that he couldn’t speak the word “nigger.” He’d done so only once in his life, at age twelve, and his father had promptly hauled him outside and whipped his hairless bare ass with a razor strop. Then his mother had dragged him into the kitchen and washed his mouth out with Comet cleanser and vinegar. It was the worst (and only) corporal punishment of Bode Gazzer’s childhood, and he’d never forgiven his parents. He’d also never forgotten the ghastly caustic taste of Comet, the scorch of which still revisited his tender throat at the mere whisper of “nigger.” Uttering it aloud was out of the question.
    Which was a major handicap for a self-proclaimed racist and militiaman. Bode Gazzer worked around it.
    Changing the subject, he said to Chub: “You need some camos, buddy.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “What size pants you wear?”
    Chub slumped in the seat and pretended he was trying to sleep. He didn’t want to ride all the way to Grange. He didn’t want to break into a stranger’s house and steal a Lotto ticket.
    And he sure as hell didn’t want to wear camouflage clothes. Bode Gazzer’s entire wardrobe was camo, which he’d ordered from the Cabela’s fall catalog on a stolen MasterCard number. Bode believed camo garb would be essential for survival when the NATO troops invaded from the Bahamas and the White Rebel Brotherhood took to the woods. Until Bode opened his closet, Chub had had no idea that camo came in so many shrub-and-twig styles. There was your basic Trebark (Bode’s parka); your Realtree (Bode’s rainsuit); your Mossy Oak, Timber Ghost and Treestand (Bode’s collection of jumpsuits, shirts and trousers), your Konifer (Bode’s snake-proof chaps) and your Tru-Leaf (Bode’s all-weather mountain boots).
    Chub didn’t dispute Bode’s pronouncement that such a selection of camos, properly matched, would make a man invisible among the oaks and pines. Having grown up in the mountains of north Georgia, Chub didn’t want to be invisible in the woods. He wanted to be seen and heard. He especially wanted not to be mistaken for a tree by a rambunctious bear or a randy bobcat.
    He said to Bode Gazzer: “You dress up your way, I’ll dress up mine.”
    Bode peevishly scooped a fresh beer off