Governor Gaines was becoming increasingly irritable after he met with Rodney Greene. He didn't like being threatened and he increasingly had realized that despite his more moderate approach to segregation, his belief in keeping things separate but equal, with an emphasis on equal simply never went far enough. He also increasingly saw the Ku Klux Klan who considered themselves the vanguard of Christianity and America to be increasingly more averse to what both were about. They were false prophets and not unlike the brown shirts, just with white hoods. He desperately wished they were not such a force in Tennessee politics.
He looked at one of the many murals in his home, Nathan Bedford Forrest was depicted on a mighty looking horse charging headlong to wherever he was going. Gaines may have grown a lot, but Forrest was still someone he admired, despite his distaste for the Klan and checkered legacy. Gaines also knew that Forrest later disavowed the Klan, and someday he would have to, would it be that day or the next.
Gaines was going to go to the rally and speak to the Grand Cyclops who would be present, Russel Asher. Asher was a veteran, like Gaines, and he also was a local prosecutor, thus well-educated and smarter than Rodney Greene.
As Gaines took out his white robes, holding them like they were a turd he saw his wife who said, "Lon, you need to stand by your race. I know you are friends with Silas and don't think of anyone as less, but you said it yourself, the whites and blacks have a different purpose in God's plan. Therefore, we need to be separate. I can't believe it myself, but if you looked at the paper you''ll see that a doctor and a Senator from Connecticut, some Russia fella, he's married to a Jap! Now do you really want families like those springing up all over this country? Strange exotic tempresses with there dark and narrow eyes and sickly yellow flesh seducing white men and corrupting white women? It's sickening. Connecticut has got to be God's blind spot!"
"Yeah, I read all about him, Constantine Aleskevitch, man's a doctor and supposedly is a smart guy, but one with almost no political instincts. Guy's a war hero too, ran into mortar and machine gun fire to pull marines out of harms way in the Philippines and elsewhere. I honestly don't know why he had to go marry someone so different, at least she's supposed to be a Christian," the Governor stated. He admired his wife, she was high-born, comely, very WASPY, having elegant nordic features that would make the average brown shirt jealous, something distinctly southern about her existed that he found pleasing.
"Christian?" said Mrs. Gaines, "but not a Protestant, not even Catholic, that crazy Russian rituals, dirty priests with big beards mumbling strange spells in Russian and Greek, throwing incesnes around. It's vulgar. Probably explains his love of the exotic. It stinks of sorcery! I can't believe anyone elected that man as their Senator. I suppose it could be worse, he could be a Jew or her a Negro. At least Silas had the good sense to marry a black woman."
"And me a whtie Southern belle, of high birth," said the Governor to his wife in a somewhat romantic tone, "I don't know what the guy saw in her, maybe his eyes got a little burned in the war."
"I would think so," said the Governor's wife, "now you've got to go to that rally, I'm not going to stop being first lady because some educated black pastor from Alabama has started making you soft. Just keep remembering, if a Senator can marry a Jap, it's only a matter of time until white people can marry Negroes."
Gaines had Silas take his Klan robes out to his car and ensure they were concealed but not wrinkled. He apologized to Silas the whole time, but Silas said, "I'm not the Negro in danger, Governor. But it's others who are. You're eventually going to have to choose, do you want to be a statesman or a Klansman." The Governor said, "I need to stop, I just have to survive this election, Silas, then we can expose guys like Asher and Greene. I don't care how rich or educated they are, they're all trash, but they're going to find someone to come after me, so I have to bide my time a wee bit longer."
"Sometimes I think it was for the best the black man isn't in politics," Silas said, "we are different in that we don't join people like Malcoln X to get ahead. We're friends and I respect you, but I wish you knew how to stand up to the Klan."
"I do too, Silas. I do too," said Gaines.
Silas knew that the Governor was increasingly soft, but considered it his loyal duty to occasionally keep him straight. Silas was nothing if not loyal, and he had quietly been encouraging the governor to reconsider his past segregationist views and had played a subtle role in softening him.
The Governor said goodbye to his butler and had his white chauffer take him to the rural area outside Nashville where he would convene with the group he called "America's brownshirts" and he would don the white robe as he did many times before. He thought to himself that it only made sense it concealed the face, it made it easier to play a character and to hide who he really was, as he was increasingly ashamed of his role in this organized he had grown to dispise.
