Puzzle Man

I am not crazy, no matter what people say. I have valid reasons for everything I did, and I am at peace. My complete story will never be told, but when my heart is stopped by Uncle Sam's pharmaceuticals, my spirit will ascend like a white balloon over the Wabash River and fly up to heaven. God will welcome me into his house, saying, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. You followed your beliefs and acted on them. You have been a steadfast patriot to your cause, and I hereby place you at my right hand."

Life isn't so difficult here, but I do face a few problems. Especially when I try to sleep, because the children always appear in my dreams and ask me to play with them. They have Tonka toys and coloring books and Nerf balls, and they pull me toward the puzzle that lies scattered on the big table in the day care center.

That puzzle bothers them a lot. They want to complete it. They circle around it and ask me for help. "What is it supposed to be?" they ask me. They laugh and push the pieces of the puzzle around on the table and look at me with hopeful eyes. And at that moment in my dreams, I know these children are alive and at play in the fields of eternity. Their deaths are not final. They have simply traveled beyond us, and I will join them soon.

I cannot tell the children they will never finish the puzzle. Never. Because I hold the piece that is the key to it, and I will never let it go. No one outside of a limited circle of privileged people will decipher this puzzle without this piece. Only a chosen few know the entire story, and they are not talking, either. Silence suits us all.

Truth to tell, Uncle Sam and I are perpetrating a hoax on the world. I am loyal to my cause and will silently go to my death and implicate no one. I will not talk about the Holy City or my Aryan Nation brothers or the coming destruction of my country or the masses of mud people who infiltrate our borders and who will soon overwhelm us with poverty and disease. I will not talk about the training I received or the reading I did or the comrades I joined in the organization that saved me and gave me a purpose.

I claim that I built the bomb myself, delivered it myself, chose my target at random and am sorry there were deaths, including those of the children. I try to clarify that I did not call the children "collateral damage," as has been claimed, but I will not make too big a point of it, either. I want to appear professional at all times, including my final moments. I will die an honorable death, and I will be remembered. Meanwhile, Uncle Sam plays his part in the hoax by denouncing me—and only me—while urging his minions to execute me as soon as possible. It is not in his interest to say a word about the totality of the matter, either. That's our deal, Uncle Sam's and mine. He keeps his secrets and I keep mine, and the puzzle will remain unassembled forever.

In my dreams, I want to help the children complete the puzzle so they can comprehend why I did what I had to do. I believe they would forgive me if I could explain things to them. They would understand that I sacrificed them for the greater good. "Kids," I would tell them, "I obliterated a highly secret government task force that morning. It was my specific target. It could not have been destroyed as effectively in any other time or place. I had one shot at it, and I took it. I want you to understand. I am giving you my piece of the puzzle. The entire task force was meeting there at nine o'clock that morning. You happened to be there in the day care center at nine A.M. as well. You became expendable commodities in a supersecret war. The task force was pursuing me and my people, tracking us down like wolves in the night, and it was kill or be killed. Secret government personnel, secret files and secret computers went up in smoke. We are safer now because of it. We earned more time for ourselves. Mission accomplished." Those are some of the things I will tell the children when I meet them. Then I will take out my five-string banjo and put on my clown makeup and we will sing songs together forever. They will love me, and I will love them, and we will be a happy family.

In my dreams, I can see the government goons with their mirrored glasses and black suits and steel-toed shoes standing in the back of the day care center. They are watching me at all times. They have the dust of Waco in their throats and the blood of Ruby Ridge on their hands. They betray their own country to the Russians for diamonds and silver and then feel free to kill any American citizens they choose.

You talk about my killing children and despise me for it. Remember David Koresh and his children? Remember Randy Weaver and his son? Uncle Sam's goons track and assassinate children, don't they? They will stop at nothing, which is why we will stop at nothing.

The nights here are not easy. Sleep comes, but it is fitful. Almost every night a huge iron rat, big as a whale, walks into my dreams. He frightens the children in the day care center. They scramble like puppies and try to hide behind me. I shield them as best I can.

"Come on, wise guy," the rat goads me. He sounds like W.C. Fields. He stands up on his hind legs and takes a swipe at the ceiling with his metal claws. Sparks spit and fly as he rakes the walls. The children are captivated by his fireworks.

"Come on, you noble sentry on the wall of freedom," the rat says mockingly. "Tell the public what you know. Save your ass. You're a private in the army of iniquity. You didn't make that bomb alone. You never knew about that special task force until the Brotherhood told you—and they got it from their Kraut sources. What is their connection with forces in Germany? No one's talking about that, are they? Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, right? Sing it like you used to sing it with your Aryan colleagues in the meeting halls and around the campfires. Belt it out, baby!"

The rat stops talking for a minute, his eyes shining like spotlights. "Your target was classified as genuine Top Secret Cosmic," he says, laughing. "He got it somehow, didn't he? He's the miracle man, not you. Think about it: Oklahoma City! You would never have looked there for your enemies. How innocuous a town did Uncle Sam choose for that task force's headquarters? A joint FBI-CIA Antiterrorist Task Force in Okieland, set to run right up your ass and eliminate you. Who would ever expect such a powerful task force to be installed there? Nobody! That's the point. Oklahoma City as an antiterrorist center? No way! Maybe New York City or Los Angeles or Miami, but not Oklahoma City." Suddenly, a stream of homemade napalm hurls out of the rat's huge mouth. It ignites in flames as he strikes the ceiling one last time. Everything explodes around me. I am disassembled. It is not a good dream.

One of Uncle Sam's shrinks always asks me whether my service during Desert Storm ever bothered me. "Why would it bother me?" I respond.

I like talking with him. It helps pass the time. And I am more trained for interrogation than he is, although he doesn't know it.

"I meant the killing," he says. "Did the killing bother you?"

"I didn't see that much killing."

"What about the man you killed?"

I smile. "You mean my favorite Iraqi?"

"Yes," he nods.

"It was a good shot. It took his head off. He was wearing a uniform. It was a war. I saw him and I shot him. End of story."

"But how did it make you feel?"

I lean forward in my orange jumpsuit and smile like a shit-eating dog. "It made me feel good," I say. "It made me feel like I was saving lives, like I was worth something. I had a mission. I fulfilled it. That's what life's all about."

"Do you feel the same way about the bombing?"

I lean back in my chair. He brings us here whenever we talk by whatever route he can. I understand. It is his job. He has been tasked to learn what I know, why I chose that building in that particular city. It's his mission.

Uncle Sam also needs to know: Was my target chosen strictly by chance? Or am I privy to a secret so classified that only a handful of people knew about it? And if I am, who leaked such precious intelligence? Who is the source? How could I, a simple country boy if ever there were one, know what was in that building at that time?

"I was just doing a job," I say finally. "I wanted any government building I could find. It was a symbol, you know? That place was as good as any other."

"You were protesting government power?"

"I was protesting government power misapplied."

"Anything else?"

"No," I say.

This is my cover story, and I stick with it in every one of my interviews: I am a lone antigovernment nut who (continued on page 163)Puzzle Man(continued from page 106) rode into Oklahoma City like a wandering minstrel, my truck packed with fertilizer and oil and fuses, and I unwittingly dismantled one of Uncle Sam's most important units in my clumsy fashion by choosing the first place that looked good to me.

The shrink and I amuse each other. It is like a chess match. He moves, I move, we play the game. He believes he is compiling a psychological profile that will eventually tell them everything Uncle Sam needs to know about me. So I let them have their profile, because I have greater things to protect than my psyche.

"You're on a mission from God, then?" the shrink asks in that soft voice he likes to use when he is trying to con me.

"You could say that," I smile.

He pauses. "So it's a religious thing?"

"Not exactly."

"You protested. You blew up a building and killed a lot of innocent people, many children included. What have you gained?"

I always give him the same answer, and it always baffles him. "I gained world enough, and time," I say.

The shrink flinches in confusion, but he cannot hear my interior laughter. His thoughts collide as he tries to figure out if I stumbled on that phrase or if I have actually read it. What are the limits of my knowledge, and how can he chart them? Is he talking to a smart man or a fool? How can a geek who knows how to fieldstrip a .50 caliber machine gun quote an English poet who has been dead for 323 years? And how could a homer like me have access to the most highly classified information Uncle Sam possesses?

He shifts gears. "Yesterday, you said something about a lifeboat."

"I did," I nod.

"I don't think I understood it, exactly."

"I said the world is a lifeboat."

"And the problem is?"

"It's filling up."

"Filling up with?"

"People."

"Good people? Bad people?"

"Good, bad, it doesn't matter. Just too many people: black, brown, red and yellow people. All of whom need food and water and land and air."

"And that's bad?"

"It is for us white people," I say.

"For me, too?"

"You're white, aren't you?"

"But I'm Jewish," he says.

"No problem," I laugh.

"Are you sure?"

I blow right past that one. "Where will your children be in 2010, 2020, 2030, 2040? Where will your descendants be in the year 3000? Will they be in the lifeboat? Or will they have been pushed out of it by then?"

"You are saying the earth's resources are finite and there is not enough to go around?"

"Roger that," I say, smiling.

"And white people forget that fact?"

"Most of them. Most white people want to be liked. White Americans, especially. They want to let everyone into the lifeboat. But our sentimentality is killing us."

"So the next war will be a racial war?"

"The next war is already here," I say.

That stops him for a minute. His voice gets even softer and he strokes his beard. "And you are a soldier in that war?"

"That happiness is mine."

"How does that make you feel?"

What can I tell him? That I am tired of that question and I wish shrinks would think of another one? That I wish the children would leave me alone at night and let me sleep? That World War III is taking place right here, right now, under our noses, and only a few people recognize it? That the rat sits like a monster in my cell every night and threatens to smother me if I move?

"How does it make me feel? It makes me feel like Ishmael," I say.

He winces again. "Meaning?"

"That I alone have escaped to tell you."

Confusing him makes my day. "Take that one back to the feds and see how it complicates my profile," I want to say to him. "You have a blue-collar boy here who has read a few things. How do you like them apples?" But there is so much I cannot tell him: That each race needs to live with its own kind exclusively. That the white race will soon be extinct. That I have been prepped and trained for my role in this struggle. That my allegiance now is to the Aryan Nation and the Aryan Brotherhood, not Amerika. That if I had not been captured on this mission and had escaped intact, he was going to promote me and send me to Germany for a vacation. That there are plans among certain groups at the highest levels of the world to counter the degradation of our racial purity. That I am not crazy, and my name will one day be listed on a Wall of Honor, and the children of the future will read about me and salute my image and the world will never forget me.

Be advised: My death will be noble. Whether you are in the execution chamber or watching on closed circuit, stay focused on my face as I die. It will be impassive, peaceful, a puzzlement, and the secrets I take with me to my grave are proof enough of how victorious and valuable my life has been.

"Who's winning? Uncle Sam or the Aryan Brotherhood?" the shrink always asks me as the guards handcuff me to take me back to my cell. It is a polite little joke between us.

"That's for us to know and Uncle Sam to find out," I smile. Enigmatically, of course.