Hall off North Interstate 5 just a few minutes before the program began. As he entered, his heart sank at the sight of a packed room. Not a jovial looking bunch, he mused, then quickly noted that he was the only one wearing a business suit. He felt as if six hundred pairs of eyes were staring at him, their faces reflecting suspicion and tenseness. He started sweating. Once seated, Darren pulled his return plane ticket from his coat pocket and pretended to read in hopes he could fade from sight. After a few minutes he glanced up to find others chatting with their neighbors or staring straight at the front. He wiped sweat from his forehead, face and neck.
Whew, he thought, what a crew. Most needed to go on a diet. Balloon-like stomachs and sagging jowls adorned the large frames of most. Men sat quietly, arms crossed and resting on their bulging stomachs, eyes fixed straight ahead and squinting threateningly, while their women chatted noisily with each other and tried to control the kids. Most of the men wore suspenders to keep their blue jeans or khaki pants from falling. Darren thought the women had bought their clothes at rummage sales. A fiftyish looking couple sat at the far end of the row in front of him. The woman’s broom-skinny frame, which Darren judged to be about five foot eleven, stood out in the obese crowd. A faded scarf covered her light brown hair in an attempt to hide rollers. A short, bald and pudgy guy, wearing a gray sweatshirt and overalls sat next to her. Darren assumed he was her husband. Right arm encircling his neck, she patted and stroked his bald head and fondled his right ear. She whispered to him as he sat stoically, eyes transfixed on something at the front of the hall. Her eyes kept glancing down Darren’s row as she whispered. She had a number of teeth missing. A good old snaggle-toothed mountain gal. All solid working class Americans.
Children of all ages abounded. A runny- nosed toddler occupied the seat in front of him and kept turning around to stare. The middle-aged mother, sans makeup and hair in a bun, scolded the tyke and made her turn around. The girl kept ignoring her mother’s warnings, so she finally got smacked pretty hard. The ensuing screaming almost gave Darren a headache.
Then he noticed Agent Fred Blaylock enter and cautiously survey the crowd. “Oh, crap,” Darren said under his breath. “The guy looks like an FBI agent right out of the catalog,” Darren gasped silently. He reached down to re-lace his shoes in hopes Blaylock would sit somewhere else.
No such luck. Blaylock found him. As he entered the back row to sit with Darren, he boomed in a voice loud enough to be heard in Seattle, “Hi! You must be Darren Hopkins. Didn’t know if you made the trip.” Darren hit his head on the back of the seat in front of him as his head jerked up in shock. As he raised his hand in greeting, he noticed people staring at them. Oh, boy, the fat’s in the fire now.
Blaylock sat down and turned to Darren. “Sorry I’m late. Planes aren’t running on time.”
“Glad to meet you,” replied Darren in a pronounced hush tone as he furtively eyed the crowd around them. The little girl in front, now with tear-stained cheeks, stared up at Darren once again, her mouth firmly clamped to the back of her seat as she chewed away. He heard a loud slap as the mother administered another dose of love to the child’s backside. Again the screams pealed forth. Thank goodness for the distraction.
He leaned toward Blaylock, cupped his hand over his mouth so others wouldn’t hear and asked, “Are we in trouble here?”
“I hope not! This is a public gathering, right? And we’re part of that public.”
“Yeah, true.”
“My only task is to report on what takes place. I suspect there’ll be some in attendance that have outstanding warrants, but I’m not going to pursue ‘em in this crowd.” Blaylock couldn’t have been more relaxed. His calm manner stunned Darren. The people in the rows ahead could clearly hear everything the man said. Hell, doesn’t this guy understand what this crowd could do to us? Nonchalantly, Blaylock asked, “Have you been to many of these shindigs?”
“Nope,” he replied. “I’ve read reports about them, but I’m just now getting my feet wet in the field, as they say.”
Ole Reverend Jim Petsch took the microphone and quieted the crowd, much to Darren’s relief. Petsch’s white suit, red carnation in the lapel, set off by a black shirt and bright red tie, got Darren and Agent Blaylock’s attention. Darren craned his neck to see Petsch’s black and white wing tipped shoes over the edge of the rostrum. Petsch then led the group in singing “God Bless America” and offered up a prayer. Blaylock whispered to Darren, “Who’s this nut?”
Keeping his head down and cupping his mouth to prevent others from hearing, Darren said, “I’m told he has some little off-beat church in Pennsylvania. At least he says he does. To my knowledge no one’s checked. The national Christian patriotic bunch sucked him up when he helped organize the Pennsylvania state militia. He’s all showman! Makes up his theology as he goes along. Like Jim Jones and all these other TV evangelists.”
When Petsch finished, James Robert Earl, a local Whatcom county deputy sheriff, took the mike and set the stage for the night’s program.
“Ladies and gentlemen, let me thank ya’ll for coming. I know you’ll not regret bein’ here. All of us know somethin’s bad wrong in our country. They can’t protect us from those stinkin’ Arabs, and they keep gettin’ more and more of our money, and if yer a white male yer mak’in less and less. Things in this country are gradually being taken over by foreign types and minorities who can’t do things the way they should be done. They’ve taken over our schools and ‘bout everthin’ else, and now we oughta do somethin’ to take the thing back ‘fore we ‘come another one’a them banana republics. Pretty soon our children won’t be prayin’ to Jesus Christ but to some foreign God.”
A few amen’s echoed throughout the hall. Earl acknowledged these with a nod of his head and continued.
“Weaver’s family’s dead because of them government people. And they killed all those God-fearing folks down in Waco. And the killin’s continued, but you won’t read about it. The little people across this country are startin’ to get together and armin’ themselves to keep from bein’ wiped out. Tonight we’re fortunate to have us several who have helped others organize and they’ll tell us why and how to do this.”
Earl then introduced Ron Chapmann, a lean, wiry man in his late fifties.
And who’s this guy?” asked Blaylock, in a louder than necessary voice.
Darren, wishing Blaylock would shut up, whispered irritably, “He’s a fairly successful business man from Georgia that moved his family to a remote area of Washington fifteen years ago. His brother and brother-in-law followed with their families. Reportedly they dusted off an old eighteen fifty-four state law regarding squatter’s rights to build on fifty acres inside the Okanogan National Forest. They supported Randy Weaver during the siege at Ruby Ridge, then created their own state militia, and they did such a good job that other states asked for help. Ron and his brother reportedly spend their time raising funds for all these groups. Militias are now active in at least twenty states and membership is around five thousand. And growing fast.”
“Ummm,” murmured Stevens. “I thought the movement was larger.”
“Could be,” Darren responded. “There’s a lot of secrecy among these people.”
Ron Chapmann’s speech mesmerized the Bellingham crowd as he told about his family’s experiences fighting the federal government and his vision of an international Zionist conspiracy. He warned of black helicopters cruising the skies preparing the way for an invasion of UN forces that would enslave all true patriots and turn the country over to foreign rabble. A lengthy diatribe against NAFTA, GATT, World Affairs Council, Trilateral Commission,
