NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

I was having barbecue at Woody’s in Snellville, and across the table from me was Mr. Barney Fyfe.

He looked nothing like the character played by Don Knotts. If anything, he looked like less. He said he was in his mid-50s but appeared older, with big gnarled hands and a jaw that moved thoroughly while he chewed, as though he were gumming his food. He wore a flannel shirt over a t-shirt, a black baseball cap with a number 3 on it, and thick glasses.

We were sizing one another up. I was pressing him for more information about Georgiachristiansoldiers.com. I figured he was pressing me to see if I was a cop.

I mentioned the address he’d used to register his domain, which I now knew was the First Baptist Church of Snellville, a few blocks from his house. I said it was pretty clever. Did he know the pastor, or any of the church officers, I wondered?

Fyfe shrugged, and looked at me hard. “Nyaah, just a joke. I bought 10 years’ and by that time we’ll either be gone or they will.” He laughed at that. The church was the biggest building in town, by far. “That’s not to say some of our folks don’t worship there. Some do. But we take all kinds. Even Catholics.”

But certainly that address made him easy to track down, I said. I’d tracked him down that way. I didn’t mention that many registrars now make it easy to hide your address, even your name, when registering a domain. “Don’t matter, like I said,” he said laconically, picking at his teeth with a toothpick he’d grabbed at the cash register on the way in. “Want some pie?”

I nodded as Fyfe motioned toward the waitress. “So what’s all this about?” I asked as the pie came, with coffee. “What are we aiming to do here?”

“Support the President. Kick out the damned Chinee. We’d kick the ragheads but they don’t make nothing.”

“They make the oil that goes in your gas tank,” I said. “But I guess it wouldn’t be smart to do break-ins on bicycles.” He laughed at that…well, snorted anyhow. I took a napkin to wipe the snot off my plate, then pushed it aside.

Seriously, I asked. What’s our agenda? I emphasized the word our.

“Same as it ever was,” Fyfe said. “American independence. We don’t need no Chinee, don’t need no ragheads, don’t need no niggers or spics for that matter. We’ve been fighting this fight for 150 years, and losing. But now, we finally got us a leader who can take this to the next level. Kick the ragheads in the nuts, close up the borders real tight, depend on our own selves, on American ingenuity.”

“So we’re not protestors? We’re supporting the Administration? How does robbing stores support the Administration?”

“Oh, that.” He chuckled. “That was just Santa stuff. Most of our boys couldn’t afford what their kids wanted. It just snowballed.”

“Avalanche is more like it,” I said. “You have any idea how hot you boys are, as in hot, the cops are on your tail?”

Now Fyfe came out with it, a full-throated laugh akin to a roar. I noted that, indeed, many of his teeth were missing. “Cops on our tail? That’s rich. You have any idea how many?” Then, thinking better of it, he clamped his mouth shut.

I was still on probation. What could I offer to make him trust me, without doing something illegal myself? My heart was hammering in my chest. I wasn’t made for this undercover reporter stuff. “Well, what’s the short-term goal, then? Publicity? Don’t you want everyone in the state to know what your goals are, not just those who stumble on your Web site as I did?”

Fyfe nodded. “You can get that?”

“I know a few people,” I confided. “Like I said, I’m a writer. You ever hear of the ‘Lane Ranger?’” Before taking his job editing the Gwinnett edition, Joey Ledford had written a traffic column by that name.

“You know The Lane Ranger?” Fyfe asked. I nodded. “You get me a talk with The Lane Ranger and I’ll lay out everything, the whole plan.”

“Including your role in the burglaries?”

He nodded. (What a moron, I thought.) “I didn’t do nothing but point,” he said.

“I’ll give The Lane Ranger your number. I’m sure he’ll be interested in an interview,” I said, not telling him that he’d just had half of it.

An hour later I was on the phone with Ledford. “He thinks you’re the cat’s whiskers,” I said, “sitting at the right side of Dale Earnhardt. If you had a t-shirt he’d wear it. If you just took some time to chat with him, maybe gave him an autograph, I’m sure he’d work with anyone you assigned. He’d even come by your office. And this would be more than an inside Gwinnett feature, Joey. We’re talking front page of the main section, features, maybe even a Pulitzer. You know how many burglaries this guy’s been personally involved with? And now they’re going on everywhere across the country, he’s probably tied in with a whole network.”

“Don’t you want the Pulitzer?” Ledford didn’t want the extra work, I knew.

“I’ve got another offer,” I said. “An actual job, in technology.”

“PR?”

“Nope. Management.”

“You? A manager?” Now I imagined Joey Ledford having to get out a napkin to wipe snot from something.

“Staff, not line,” I said. “Think of it as the corporate version of doing a column, a sort of cellular Lane Ranger.”

“Really? Think you can get me in there?”