is what he's doing. Shall we call them the LeBowites? They're itching to go to war with the devil. Heaven knows what happened to the original pastor. Rob Davis probably knows the story. I'll try to remember and ask him, or maybe you can go talk to him yourself, if you want."
Raff was breathing hard and sucking air through his teeth. This discourse was not helping him relax at all. He pushed back his chair to get more leg room and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Anyway," Robbins pressed on, "it's an old evangelical tradition with a military twist. Ever heard of Billy Sunday, the big-time evangelist back in the twenties? He'd say--I actually heard him on an old record--'I'll fight sin till I can't use my arms no more, and then I'll bite it, and when I got no teeth left, I'll gum it.' Great stuff! There's a difference here, though, and I don't want to make too much light of it. The radical fringe folks like the Sword of Gideon are always dangerous. A few of them can turn violent on a dime. Either that or they're violent nutcases from the start. There have been quite a few murders and even mass suicides in this country and elsewhere. The Sword of Gideon fits the pattern another way, at least for down here. Like a lot of religious fringe groups, it recruits mostly from poor whites who feel that they've been cheated some way or other. They're the most alienated group in the South right now. Basically, it's the same old same old. They'll get justice any way they can, even if that means getting violent. Social justice anyway, if you can't get economic justice."
"Now that you mention it," Raff said, opening his eyes and pulling himself up in the chair, "the guy with LeBow looked like a real thug. I just assumed he was a bodyguard, or a muscleman of some sort. I wondered why he was there. He sure wasn't any altar boy."
"Yeah, let's make a distinction here if you haven't already thought of it yourself. The way I see it, there are rednecks and then there are redneck white trash. The large part of the population who call themselves rednecks, and laugh about it, are good people--really solid, mostly working-class citizens. But the white trash, they're the underclass. They're the ones with the abandoned automobiles in the front yard and mongrel dogs living off kitchen scraps and running around all over the place--the kind you accidentally squash on the highway and nobody cares. The men like to hang out at strip joints, drink a lot of beer and whiskey--anything they can afford for the night. They'll pull out a knife and cut you if you insult them--which, by the way, you can do just looking at them or their girlfriends too long. They're racists, of course. But mostly they're just proud, and broke, and mad all the time."
"Yeah, I guess the best way to get in big trouble with one is either to kick his motorcycle or come on to his girlfriend. It's part of our tradition down here."
"But, you know," Robbins went on, "and maybe this is your point. They're proud but they're not monsters. Make friends with one of them, he'll give you the shirt off his back--maybe. My point is that they got no education, and they're easily led by anyone who says he speaks for God. If you want to see a big concentration of them, go to the Monroeville Prison. They've all been saved by Jesus up there."
Raff added, "The Klan comes to my mind--you know, these people from the same breed that made up the foot soldiers of the old Klan. The difference, I think, is that the Klan preached raw racism, and groups like the Sword of Gideon are more into religious bigotry." Robbins affirmed his agreement by pointing both index fingers at Raff. He said, "Except the Klan and the fighting Born Agains you're dealing with are racial and religious bigots both, just in different proportions."
"Anyway," Raff said, "the question I need to put to you right now is, should I worry? Are LeBow and his gang going to be dangerous for me personally, with all that 'Jesus kills' stuff? What do you think, should I do anything, go to the police? I've been guessing maybe not. LeBow didn't actually threaten me with anything. He just gave me a hellfire sermon."
"Rob Davis tells me that LeBow's given that little spiel