Eddie glided along on his e-scooter intent on enjoying the experience of not trudging along expecting to be rolled by the pigs for vagrancy. The breeze rustled his gray cargo shorts and over-sized Dave’s Famous Bread T-shirt, with the guitar playing hippie, ex-con baker’s likeness stamped on the new black cotton. That dude made sure graduates from jail got his shirt.

‘Maybe I should have stayed,’ went the monologue in his scattered brain.

As he cruised into the rather nice subdivision and felt the weight of his entire accumulated value sagging lightly in his backpack, his heart sank.

‘Your bike, cracker? This is the Man’s tracking device you’re riding. You are a hamster on a wheel.’

It was early, on the Monday morning that he would hope turned his life around as he cruised along under heavy, leaden skies. The clouds in Virginia Beach were the same they had been all across the country. From the front door of the King County Jail in Seattle, through Saint Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, York, Baltimore, every God danged place he had been on the Greyhound bus, he had been oppressed by what he called the Undersky. The weather reports were always off. Everybody said it was cooler than usual. A man but barely ever saw the sun—it was like the Pacific Northwest in the rainy season everywhere across this creepy country. Now, on June 16th, two days before Koon 18th, the world was still a soggy mess.

Beating that Honest Scheming Injun, Harlow, at dominoes and winning this job lead instead of a food tray last week, had been a tactical decision. The extra food tray would make him a target for bullshit and that could have made him a target for guard bullshit. Besides, losing weight was in the plan. If fat, if he had still been fat, this whining e-bike would be dying under him right now… as it did.

“Seriously, bro?” Eddie complained to the bike.

It was dead on the historic trail he was riding on the east side of this not-too-busy road. A creek seeped down over the hill to the left, oozing under the road.

‘What is east and west here?’ he tried to orient his mind before breaking a bullshit law with out-of-state I.D. and a record.

‘The Ocean is on the right, I think.’

He paused as a red SUV carrying a black lady driver and an old white passenger cruised by and splashed him, soaking his cargo shorts. Rather than get angry and toss the scooter down the hill, he simply walked off of it and left it behind. According to the paper map Harlow had given him he was close. He’d make a left on Winter Berry, then…

In this, almost the 25th year of his life, for it was 2025 and he had been born on 9/11/2001, Eddie felt rootless and alone. Not only for not ever having a dad, and for Mom passing of The Vid when he was locked up for resisting arrest during a case of mistaken identity three entire years ago, Eddie was lonely for having a fake birthday. That served him right for going down that 9/11 Truth rabbit hole in search of his unique chronological nobility. In jail one had time to read. Some conspiracy theory guard might even pass a book he had been reading, only for the reader to discover that the big deal Mom had made about delivering him while the twin towers were going down, was the Big Bullshit world’s platform Deep Fake.

Such were the hauntings that echoed in the mind of Eddie Peale in a way that distracted him from the feeling that he was walking into a trap. This was a residential area, maybe not upscale, but nice scale. Besides, the street names were too strange. A left on Winter Berry then, there it was, “Winter Wheat! No shit, another demonstration of American lack of civic planning imagination!”

‘Quiet, cracker, you can’t be talking to yourself in front of middle class houses. Cops will be called for sure. Wish I had a rake or broom to look like a worker. The back pack feels like a target on my back.’

Turning right on Winter Wheat, Eddie nervously marched three doors down in his Converse sneakers, stepping gingerly a round one puddle. He was there, before a modest, white ranch house, at 1814 Winter Wheat. A white Tesla with Maryland plates was parked nose out on the parking pad.

‘Please God, not a scam, a narc or a stash house. I just want a job.’

Eddie gathered his courage and walked up the short parking pad. There was some weird looking doorbell, with a light. He pressed the button expecting a ring and hoping he was not late. Harlow had said 8:30 AM was when the job started. But his capering brain would not rest.

‘Is it legal?’

‘What kind of jails do they have in Virginia?’

A voice came through the doorbell and he realized it was one of those video gadgets that Harlow said made burglary increasingly risky, why that Northern Cheyenne criminal crawled through doggy doors to get Granny’s silver and gold.

“Eddie,” came the smooth, even voice.

“Yes Sir, Eddie Peale,” and he held up his Amish call only phone, looking like a small calculator.

The inner door opened to reveal a buff white dude of about 35, a man of striking appearance: blond buzz cut with an even inch on the top, about six feet, 190. The man was dressed in black boots, slacks and tie and white shirt—standard company asshole attire. His eyes were icy blue, his chin clean shaven, not even a mustache, his eyebrows blond, his forehead and nose making a pale T, something of the cave man about those thick eye sockets.

The man pushed open the storm door and said, “Welcome, Eddie. It is an honor to have a brother Cascadian. The bus must have been an ordeal.”

They shook hands, with the man also cupping his shoulder with his left in a warm manner and saying, “Will White. Welcome Eddie.”

Will locked the door as the large clock in the corner, in this home that was painted and furnished entirely in white, rang with the toll of the brass clock mounted within its tall grandfather clock, the cabinet, curiously, painted white.

“Eddie?”

“Oh, oh, sorry, never saw such a clock.”

“A triumph of Our Fathers, Eddie. Please step into the kitchen.”

Will stood, hands on hips, in what looked like a commercial bakery, complete with oven, walk-in and proofer, just like he had worked on at Safeway, so long ago, right before everything got so gay in 2020.

He blurted, “Is this even legal here?”

Will smiled, if an eagle could smile, looking down his nose into Eddie, not at him, “Eddie, I like an honest man who speaks his mind. Speak it only to your brothers—not to the muds, the traitors or money changers.”

Eddie swallowed hard and the man spread his arms and smiled, “Eddie, of course this is illegal—we’re making white bread! There was a time when white bread was a quality center of our father’s lives—no more rat shit in the rough wheat, no more ergot corrupting the rye. Now white bread is debased, and sold to Negroes for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! Eddie, Our Fathers knew best. No more poison for our people. Our head baker, Mrs. Martha White, has her quarters in the back bedroom. Your quarters will be in the guest room to the left down the hall, across from your bathroom—she has her own. The children’s room on the right, that is used for storage. The family room there, as you can see, has been equipped with packaging, racks, etc. You have a small fridge in your room for your chow, microwave and coffee pot on top—clothes too, work clothes, aprons. She does the wash—Eddie, you never do the wash.”

“Yes, Sir,” he marveled.

Will then stalked through the kitchen, his shoe heels ringing on the white ceramic tile, motioning him through, past the stainless steel equipment, pointing right, “This door is to the garage. Your Tesla is there, ready for delivery of the bread. All loading must be conducted in the garage.”

“Yes, Sir,” he smiled in relief. For Eddie had discovered, after spending four years of his 24 year life inside, that being out in the open made him nervous.

Eddie followed the other hand left, pointing to a white curtain. Pulling this aside, Will exposed a sliding glass window to a flagstone patio encompassed by white stockade fencing and to a grill. Will’s voice softened and deepened in tone, “Eddie after hours, that patio is your domain. There is plenty of meat in the fridge. I will keep it stocked. No alcohol, except what Mrs. White brews in the garage. No guests. No smart phone. No worries. Your room is stocked with a library of books concerning Our Fathers. You will use the training equipment in the yard to make them proud. You will be my sparring partner. You will thrive. Do you understand, Eddie?”

The man was amazing. Eddie looked wide-eyed up into those icy blue eyes which were not crazy, darting or peering, but open and inviting.

“Eddie,” assured his new boss, “we are breaking laws obscene. I have lied to the beast—have convinced your drunk King County parole officer that you are working at Dave’s Famous Bread. We, since we are white, are breaking every law but those set down by Our Fathers. Speak truth between us—lies we hurl into the mind of The Beast. No more slave names, Eddie—here, this will pass, a Maryland, authentic, real, REAL I.D. Yours is compromised. Swap, Brother?”

Eddie looked at his own image, in photo and hollogram, with his signature, somehow there, his D.O.B. 9/11/2001, and the name, rather than Edward J. Peale, Eddie A. White. Behind this shocking I.D. was a fold of $20s.

Will held out the other hand.

“Andrew Jackson, Eddie, the only stepfather we spend. Our rules are few and simple, not written in reptile wise, but spoken from the heart. The bills are just in case I get busted—save them if you need to make a break.”

“Just bread—really?”

“Yes, Eddie. No drugs, no booze, no cracker-killer Chink poison.”

“Okay…” and Eddie exchanged his government pass for his White I.D., placing the plastic card in that unshaking hand with his own jittering paw.

“Miss Martha!” softened the granite jaw as a soft swish of a dress brought Eddie half around. She was short and white haired, in a long white dress, under a white apron, her aged face still soft under her white bonnet, a very old lady. Yet for her obvious age, Miss Martha smiled from under big, youngish, blue eyes, sleepy-like appraising him over tired pink bags.

“My Honey,” she whispered, “Will has been so good to us, bringing us together. I so miss my grandchildren.”

Her hands were silky soft as she looked up to him from her short, not hunched, 4 feet and 10 inches, and then smiled more steeply up to Will as if he were the President or the Pope, “Will is bringing you all back to me—HE can do anything!”

Their mutual benefactor, his muscles almost breaking out of his white corporate shirt, put his arms across their shoulders and drew them into the most cozy group hug the dominoes champion of the King County Jail, never thought he’d be a part of.

‘Long way for a hug, cracker. I’m in, whatever IN is.’

Will assured him, “Whatever you need, Brother, Miss Martha and I are here for you.”

A calming chill cascaded down his spine as Martha cooed, “Oh, My Honeys.”

The balance of the installments will all be made on James Anderson's site, with each linked here under the Tag Being Will White.