![]() The rally is winding down, the rain is coming. Figures in white robes and pointed hoods stroll in clumps, talking. Parked cars are darkly visible off the edge of the field, and a 40-foot iron cross wrapped in gasoline-soaked rags is burning brightly. There's a smell of mowed hay, and another like fresh-cut chives. The bulb casts a yellowish glow over a ragged row of cornstalks behind. There is lightning, and thunder rumbles over the drone of a generator powering a single bulb suspended above a rough podium. This is happening at night, in a farmer's field somewhere outside Manchester, Md., just south of the Pennsylvania line. He keeps using the same words over and over, as if maybe he hasn't quite made himself clear. "Gimme that film, you little Jew bitch!" She is a photographer, he is a Klan member, and they are having a disagreement. The big man towers over the little woman. The Grand Dragon, Maryland Realm, Invincible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. At work, even, people began to ridicule her. And the time one of the Dobermans got loose and pinned her in her car. ![]() And the night they came home and someone had shot out the living room windows. Then there was the morning she found all the tires on the car had been slashed. No, it more or less started the day she was dusting the desk and opened his drawer and discovered his Secret. It wasn't the dual sixpacks every night - she got him to ease off on that. ![]() ![]() Then things began to go bad in the marriage. It would make him very angry if you'd, like, go to play with his hair, you know what I mean? He always combed it a certain way, that's the way it had to stay. Also "reserved." "Means well." "Loves animals." "Adored by his little nephews and nieces." And "shy," to the point where he wouldn't go dancing till she forced him, whereupon "you couldn't set him down." Though he could be stubborn too, "pretty bullheaded at times." And fastidious - "I could never touch his hair. Split four years and Gloria still obviously loves Roger, as who wouldn't? "Nice." "A very good husband." "Hard-working." Her words. And Daddy - just like always! - that big, lumbering guy sitting in front of the TV four or five hours a day ranting about the decline of America in a voice masterfully honed over the years into an incomparably high and sustained whine of utter dissatisfaction with everything, though not without its charm: "Now this here sexual harassment - three shows! - on 'Geraldo,' 'Dona-Whoo' and, uh, 'Raffy Jaffiel,' all three of them about sex today!" Friends you went to school with still around, dances in the American Legion hall on Saturday nights, brews with the boys at the Texas Lunch. Beautiful in the fall, a nice comfy world. When Camp David is foggy the president's chopper lands across from Thurmont Elementary, Kelly's alma mater. Now, middle-aged and beefier, he still rushes home from work at the brickyard at noon sharp for hot lunch in Mommy's kitchen. "Is this going to be in your article? I was supposed to be paralyzed for life." One day he just up out of the wheelchair and walked - "his mommy and daddy thought that was like majorly a miracle," says Gloria - and they babied him. "She was never checked, neither," says Roger Kelly, laughing. Anyway, couldn't have kids, never would get checked for it. His mommy backed a car over him when he was 5 and his ex-wife, Gloria, a spirited gal with a sense of humor, says maybe it gave him a low sperm count.
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