Republican Party Reptile(65)

That spring the four other military commanders and I sat in parlay to plan a final attack, a complex action along converging lines, which is the hardest type of battle plan to make. The strategy, drafted by myself, was, if I may say so, excellent. It would take too much time to detail it here, but, briefly, the plan was to use our cavaliers not as the primary fighting force (such as was then the custom among high schools) but for the purpose of continual short feints to turn the Negro flanks between poised companies of our five-school infantry, which I had drilled. And while our archers held the colored center pinned down, we would cut their troops to ribbons from each end. By means of this battle we intended to wipe out all the remaining colored people in Sandusky, for we planned to slaughter the prisoners and children.

I held precedence at this council, by virtue of my inheritance and tactical ability, but I knew that with the end of the colored war we would all fall back to quarreling with each other. And I also knew that some of the other high school commanders had no love for me. At least two, in fact, wanted to command a united army of high school students and use it to take control of the city just as I planned to. Therefore I made a diplomatic move unbeknownst to my comrades in arms. I arranged a secret meeting with the leader of the colored forces. I told him of our intention to massacre his people, and he was very upset about it. But I offered to make an arrangement with him. If he would ensure that his troops killed each of my four co-commanders, then I would allow him to surrender on liberal terms with no massacre or rape or looting by the white armies. He agreed, and I showed to him the exact position that each commander would be occupying during the battle. He swore that he would do his best to see that each was killed.

It was a terrific fight. Every Negro person in Sandusky had armed himself as best he could with knives and shovels and rocks and bottles, and the police had cordoned off that whole part of town so that we could fight without tying up traffic. Of course, the colored troops were no match for our mounted knights, and our archers and crossbowmen cut them down in waves. But they fought well, giving no quarter and asking none. And, while they fought, the captain of their high school’s guard fulfilled his promise to me and sent his best knights in at just the place I had told him so that by midafternoon three of my rivals were dead and the other so badly wounded that he had to go home. I alone was left in charge of the field, and when the Negros at last began to wave white bedsheets attached to broom handles and garden rakes, I called a halt to the killing. I gave the colored people a place to live, between the freightyard and the river, on the edge of downtown as far south as the Delco battery plant, and they remain loyal subjects to this day.

Now I was in uncontested command of a battle-seasoned army of three thousand men, and I could have turned them at any time against my stepfather’s Royal Guards and won the issue, I had no doubt. But the time was not yet ripe. For one thing it would have been against the law and I might have been sent to reform school if the police caught me doing it. And for another thing, my uncle, though not so popular as his father had been, still had public opinion on his side. The thing to do instead, I thought, was to force King Bob to make me head of the Royal Guard, as was my birthright. But that was impossible so long as my protector and stepfather, Count Ralph, lived. Nor did I trust my younger uncles, either of whom might be made protector in his stead. So I had Prince Fred and Prince Larry murdered and would have done the same for Count Ralph. But my stepfather was too well protected for that, and there would have been no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who had ordered it done. So I decided to pick a quarrel with him and kill him in a public duel.

It happened at the dinner table. Mom had just brought in the roast when Count Ralph, unhinged by my taunts while we’d been eating salad, drew his rapier and, made clumsy by his anger, thrust into a bowl of potato salad. I leapt on my chair and, grabbing the pull-down light fixture in my left hand, slashed at him with the heavy saber I had carried to the table for just this purpose. I missed and cut one of the dining-room drapes in half. Ralph parried my backstroke and cut me beneath the arm. I kicked a gravy boat at his chest and, as he flinched, caught him with a glancing blow that cut off his ear and killed my sister Jill. He had his dagger out by now, but dagger and rapier were no match for my heavier weapon, and I backed him into the family room, slashing furiously at his bleeding head. He did me some damage, I must say. I was wounded again in the thigh and lost a finger of my left hand to his knife. But I laid open his chest right through the sport shirt so that a strip of flesh fell open like a flap. Ralph ran out the back door onto the patio. I could have skewered him then, from behind, but I wanted a death that was face to face. He poked through the screen as I came out after him, and I stumbled off the steps. He would have had me if he’d been quicker, but he was too fat from beer and too soft from sitting watching TV every night. I regained my footing and we went at it for a moment more until I had him backing away into the yard. It was then that he tripped on the lawn chair and fell backward into it like he was sitting down. His head went back, and I gave a mighty slash and severed it from his body.