Minette Walters - The Shape of Snakes

Only pure White Christian peopleof non-jewish, non-negro, non-asian descent ... can enter the Knights of the KuKlux Klan

...The name Ku Klux Klan comesfrom the Greek word Kuklos, meaning circle ... Kuklos thought about inthis context simply means White Racial Brotherhood...

...The Klan symbol of the BloodDrop denotes: "the blood of Jesus Christ was shed for the White AryanRace"...

...The Fiery Cross "is usedto rally the forces of Christianity against the ever increasing hordes of theanti-Christ and enemies of... the White Race"...

..."The Knights of the KuKlux Klan does not consider itself the enemy of non-Whites ... (but)... willoppose integration in all its manifestations"...

UNRESTRICTED KKK PROPAGANDA ON THE INTERNET

Tics are categorized as Motor orVocal, Simple or Complex ... Complex symptoms include: Body jerking, Skipping,Hitting, Walking on toes, Talking to oneself, Yelling, Coprolalia vocalizing obscene or other socially unacceptablewords or phrases ... Tics increase as a result of tension or stress. Kansas City Chapter of the Tourette SyndromeAssociation

Unhappiness has a habit of beingpassed around. Margaret Atwood, BBC Radio 4 's Book Club, May 9. 1999

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I could never decide whether"Mad Annie" was murdered because she was mad or because she wasblack. We were living in southwest London at the time and I remember my shockwhen I came home from work one wet November evening to find her collapsed inthe gutter outside our house. It was 1978 the winter ofdiscontent when the government lost control of thetrade unions, strikes were an everyday occurrence, hospitals ceased to caterto the sick and uncollected rubbish lay in heaps along the pavement. If Ihadn't recognized her old plaid coat I might have ignored her, thinking thebundle in the gutter was a heap of discarded clothes.

Her real name was Ann Butts andshe was the only black person in our road. She was a well-built woman with aclosed expression and a strong aversion to social contact, who was known toenjoy a drink, particularly Caribbean rum, and was often to be found sitting onthe pavement in the summer singing gospel hymns. She had acquired the"Mad" label because she made strange faces and muttered to herselfas she scurried along in a bizarre dot-and-carry trot that suggested a childplaying "Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross."

Little was known about hercircumstances except that she had inherited her house and a small independentincome upon her mother's death and, apart from a menagerie of stray cats thathad taken up residence with her, she lived alone. It was said that her motherhad been madder than she was and that her father had abandoned them bothbecause of it. One of the long-term residents of Graham Road swore blind thatMrs. Butts senior used to shout obscenities at passersby and twirl like adervish when the mood was on her, but as Mrs. Butts had been dead some time thestory had undoubtedly grown in the telling.

I didn't believe it any more thanI believed the rumors that Annie kept live chickens inside her house, which shekilled by boiling, feathers and all, for her own and her cats' supper. It wasnonsense she bought her meat, dead, at the localsupermarket like everyone else but her close neighbors talked about ratsin her garden and a terrible smell coming from her kitchen, and the story oflive chickens was born. I always said she couldn't have rats and cats,but no one wanted to hear the voice of reason.

The same neighbors made lifedifficult for her by reporting her regularly to the local council, the RSPCAand the police, but nothing came of their complaints because the councilcouldn't force her out of her own house, the cats were not ill-treated and shewasn't mad enough to be committed to an institution. Had there been family andfriends to support her, she might have taken her harassers to court, but shewas a solitary person who guarded her privacy jealously. At various timeshealth visitors and social workers made unsuccessful attempts to persuade herinto sheltered accommodations, and once a week the local vicar knocked on herdoor to make sure she was still alive. He was always cursed loudly for histrouble from an upstairs window, but he took it in stride, despite Annie'srefusal to go anywhere near his church.

I knew her only by sight becausewe lived at the other end of the road but I never understood why the streettook against her so strongly. My husband said it had to do with propertyvalues, but I couldn't agree with him. When we moved onto Graham Road in 1976we had no illusions about why we could afford it. It had a Richmond postcode,but it was very definitely "on the wrong side of the tracks." Builtfor laborers in the 1880s, it was a double row of two-up, two-down terracedhousing off the A316 between Richmond and Mortlake, and no one who bought ahouse there expected to make a fortune overnight, particularly as council-ownedproperties were seeded among the privately owned ones. They were easilyidentified by their uniform yellow doors and were looked down on by those of uswho'd bought our houses because at least two of them held problem families.

Personally, I thought the way thechildren treated Annie was a better barometer of the adults' feelings. Theyteased her mercilessly, calling her names and aping her dot-and-carry trot in acruel demonstration of their right to feel superior, then ran away with squealsof fear if their pestering irritated her enough to make her raise her head andglare at them. It was a form of bearbaiting. They goaded her because they despisedher, but they were also afraid of her.

In retrospect, of course, I wishI'd taken up cudgels on her behalf but, like everyone else who stayed silent, Iassumed she could take care of herself. Certainly the children weren't alone infinding her intimidating. On the one occasion when I made an attempt to speakto her, she rounded on me angrily, calling me "honky," and I didn'thave the courage to try again. Once in a while afterward I would come out of myfront door to find her staring up at our house, but she scampered off theminute she saw me and my husband warned me not to antagonize her any further. Itold him I thought she was trying to say "sorry," but he laughed andsaid I was naive.

On the night she died a freezingrain was falling. The hunched trees that lined the pavements were black andsodden with water and made the street look very grim as I turned onto it fromthe main road. On the other side, a couple paused briefly under one of the fewlampposts, then separated, the man to walk ahead, the woman to cross on adiagonal in front of me. I pulled up my coat collar to shield my face from thestabbing rain before stepping off the curb to run through sheets of watertoward my house.

I found Annie lying on the edge ofthe yellow lamplight in a space between two parked cars and I rememberwondering why the couple hadn't noticed her. Or perhaps they had chosen toignore her, believing, as I did, that she was drunk. I stooped to rock hershoulder but the movement caused her to cry out and I stepped back immediately.She lay with her head cradled in her arms, her knees drawn up tight against herchin and I assumed she was protecting herself from the rain. She smelledpowerfully of urine, and I guessed she'd had an accident, but I shrank from theresponsibility of cleaning her up and told her instead that I was going home tocall for an ambulance.

Did she think I wouldn't comeback? Is that what persuaded her to uncradle her poor head and lift herpain-filled eyes to mine? I have no idea if that was the moment she died they said afterward it probably was, because her skullwas so badly fractured that any movement would have been dangerous but I do know I will never experience such an intenseintimacy with another human being again. I felt everything she felt sorrow, anguish, despair, suffering most poignantly, her complete bewilderment about whyanyone would want to kill her. "Was I unlovable?" she seemed to beasking. "Was I unkind? Was I less deserving because I was different?"