Chapter 8: KKK

The next three weeks were a joy such as I had never before experienced. During the day, I worked on guns, but, at night, I worked on Leah! Both of us were pushing hard (pun intended) for her to become pregnant. Leah was no longer sore the next morning, but I was showing signs of aching muscles. Thank God, I had time to recover at my day job.

During the fourth week of my new job as an apprentice, the trouble started. Somebody tossed a rock through a front window of the shop. The rock had a note attached: "Get out of town, you filthy Jews!" Of course, I was not a Jew, but the person who threw the rock apparently did not know that. In any case, I considered it beside the point. It did not take much effort to figure out that the local KKK chapter was behind the insult and the rock.

I had been wearing my guns as I walked to and from work, but I had been taking them off while I worked. They did not interfere with my work, but I thought it might make a better impression on our customers if I was not so obviously armed while I was serving them. However, after the incident with the thrown rock, I kept my guns on the whole time I was away from home.

Yes, Aaron carried a gun, but it was a derringer he carried in his pocket. I had no idea how competent he was with that gun, but his derringer was a single-shot pistol with a very short barrel. I am not even sure why he carried it—it would have been totally ineffectual if he really needed a gun. Anyway, I made a point of accompanying him whenever he left the shop. That really worked out alright because he usually sent me to do the routine errands while he remained in the shop. In there, he had so many guns readily to hand that anybody would have been a fool to threaten him in the shop.

Ten days went by without incident after the rock was thrown. Aaron had replaced the broken glass, and he kept telling me that the incident would blow over, but I strongly doubted him. I had rearranged my workbench so that I faced the front of the shop, and there was a wide passageway for me to use to reach the door in a hurry. I wanted a chance to catch the next rock thrower.

This time, the attack was not with a rock, but with a bucket of whitewash. A man walked up to our shop and threw a bucket of whitewash at our front door. The man who did it was pretty dumb because he stood too close to the shop when he dumped the bucket. The whitewash splashed against the door and the wall on either side. Some of it hit the man's clothes and stuck, and the man walked through the spilled whitewash on the sidewalk to try to paste a sign to our door. His footprints were obvious in the spilled mess, so he would be easy to identify when I started looking for him.

I reacted almost the moment that the whitewash hit the door, and I dropped what I was doing and jumped up to rush to the door. Aaron tried to stop me in order to protect me from whoever had made the attack. That might have been the way to act back in Europe, but it sure as Hell was not the way to act in America! I had to pick him up bodily and move him out of my way so that I could run to the door.

I drew my gun as I rushed the door, and I got outside just in time to see a man running away. The man had white splotches on his clothes and his boots were covered with spilled whitewash. He was about 20 yards away and there was nobody else nearby, so I took careful aim and put a bullet into his back. I hit a little lower than I had aimed, and I cussed at myself for being so careless.

Nevertheless, I hit the man in the back just to the right of his spine. The bullet tore into him and sent him onto his face in the dirt and horse shit that covered the street. I ran up to him and was about to put a bullet into his head when somebody grabbed my arm. It was Aaron. He said, "Do not kill him like that. You do not want a murder on your conscience." I did not say anything, but I would have been delighted to murder the bastard who was trying to cause harm to me and my friends.

I took the time to reload the spent chamber and to holster my pistol just as a deputy marshal ran up and demanded to know what was going on. I told him about the whitewash being thrown on our shop and pointed out that the man had a number of fresh whitewash splotches on his clothes. Not only that, his boots were covered with the stuff.

The deputy said, "Humph! It looks to me like you were justified in shooting the bastard. I will write it up that way. However, he ain't dead, yet. Who is going to look after him until he dies?"

I said, "I do not know the answer to that, but it sure as Hell will not be me! Do you know who he is? Maybe he has a family that will look after him. I am all for letting him lie in the street and bleed to death. I could not care less what happens to him!"

"Well, we cannot do that. It might scare some horses or some old ladies." The deputy turned to the gathering crowd and shouted, "DOES ANYBODY KNOW THIS WOUNDED MAN? HE NEEDS SOMEBODY TO TAKE CARE OF HIM! THE TOWN AIN'T GOING TO DO IT, AND MR. HOOVER, HERE, AIN'T GOING TO DO IT!"

A voice from the crowd said, "That there is Asa Whitehead. He ain't got no family that I know of, but he is pretty thick with the KKK. Maybe, they will look after him."

The deputy said, "Thanks, Mister, for the help. If any of you people know of a KKK member, please tell him about Asa. We will just leave him where he is until they pick him up." The deputy and I did drag Asa up to the edge of the sidewalk where he was not likely to get stepped on by a horse, but we could not do anything to keep dogs from pissing on him. By this time, Asa had regained consciousness and was groaning in pain. He was not bleeding very much from his wound, but I was willing to bet that there was a lot of internal bleeding. The flies had already started to collect around the wound, so it would probably be covered by flies in a few minutes. Oh, well, I still had work to do, so Aaron and I headed back to the shop to clean up the mess.

The paper that Asa had tried to stick to the door said: "Get out of Tucson, you filthy Jews, or next time somebody could be killed." All Aaron would say was, "Well, now it has started here in America. Will it ever end?"

I washed off the whitewash with a lot of water and some elbow-grease. This was a pain in the ass, but I was worried about that implied death threat. Was it serious, and did it apply just to Aaron? I could protect him and the rest of the family, but I would be hard pressed to protect every Jew in Tucson.

Within the hour, some men showed up to pick up Asa Whitehead. I wish that I had seen them so that I would have a lead on a few members of the KKK. I was still so pissed off about the whole incident that I did not pay attention to what was important. I figured that I would probably regret that later.

This was Friday, so I hoped to be able to find out more when I went to services with my family tomorrow. We dressed for the walk to the service, and you can bet that I put on my guns, albeit, under my coat. I was wearing the yarmulka that Leah made for me under my hat, as many of the Jews did as they walked to the service.

This week, more of the service was conducted in English for my benefit, and I appreciated that. With the English presentation and what I had been told by Leah, I was able to follow most of what went on. Several of the men and all of the women complimented me on my new yarmulka. Leah beamed when I told everybody that she had made it for me.

The rest of Saturday was a quiet day, but Sunday was a different matter. I had spent most of Saturday thinking about the situation and how much of a threat the Jewish community really faced. After a lot of thought, I figured that I was going to have to treat these KKK bullies the only way that bullies understood: I had to make them afraid of us!