KILL THE DOVE!
A tale of the revolutionary ‘60s
By
Francis X. Kroncke
©2009
Contents
1 - THE RAID, JULY 10, 1970: Sauk Centre, Minnesota
3 - BEFORE THE COCK CROWED: Hennepin County Jail
“Look, motherfucker, the days of nonviolence are over!” Aaren sticks a stone hammer in her knapsack, then bends to tape a stiletto to her left ankle. “You warmed-over hippies might still think Jericho will fall if you march and march, wagging your fannies and farting Peace now! Peace now! Give peace a chance!”
Her tirade doesn't anger Jared, who falls under her benediction as hippie, for Aaren has ranted like this all during the three-day retreat. It’s her show of weapons that pulls the venom from her airy ideological ranting. They make her words poison darts.
“Put that shit away!” Jared bellows as he jolts from behind the couch to confront her. “You heard what I said. Put that shit away!” as he swipes her knapsack.
Aaren, at the other end of the same motion, effortlessly snatches her stiletto with practiced hand and presses its point against Jared's heart. The artfulness of the threat scares him more than the reality of the blade poised to slice him.
“Who the fuck are you, anyway?” he shouts at her. She doesn’t move. Sentry eyes, stealthy, eyes like death scope lining up her prey. “Who the motherfuck are you? You didn't learn that move in graduate school!”
Aaren lets the blade talk for her. She draws, uses it as a kid would a sketching pencil, slowly but in one graceful movement, circling down his rib case, across his stomach, up to
his throat. It stays but an instant before returning home at her ankle. All in the room are ensnared by the self-consciousness of the two, as if at a play, waiting for the next line to be uttered. Wondering who will prompt whom.
Jared falters, astonished at her swift, deathly move. He’s held spellbound, almost tottering in the air like a string puppet. She glares up at him. She, a mite of flesh almost obliterated by the weight of his shadow. He, a tornado of male power, sucking himself back into a vortex of straining muscle working a heart not lusting for murder. She spits rage upwards, aiming for the eye of the titan’s soul. “I've taken three days of your pacifistic bullshit, but I'm still here. I'm still going out.” Threateningly, “Are you?”
Aaren’s body arches arrogantly. It conveys her disdain of him. It holds him at bay. She quickly turns, spurns him. It’s an authoritative shirk that says to all that her actions are not to be discussed or weighed. Jared scans the group looking for support, or at least condemnation of him or her. No one moves.
“So it comes to this,” as if opening a lecture, hands addressing them with priestly invocation. “So it comes to this. The revelation of our thinly veiled violence. All this,” and his right arm sweeps the room, capturing all nine, freezing them with his words, halting their departure in small groups. “All you people, and our talk, and opening up and all that, is bullshit, like she says?”
Jared sees Sean turn and continue to gather his things. But no word. Sean? Sean his bud, his brother in nonviolent passion and civil disobedience—no word?
“No word, eh, Sean?” he expels. “No word from any of you guys?”
Disgusted, Jared drops Aaren's bag, pivots and returns slowly but resolutely to finish his packing. He stuffs in his tools and casing maps. Latches and slings a backpack over his left shoulder, and, not looking at anyone, avoiding all, strides towards his designated car.
Out on Highway 61 it’s all North Country Minnesota farms and picture-book animals. “C-O-W, cow. Cow is a moo-moo. G-O-A-T, goat. Goat is a nyaah, nyaah.” Jared has been doing this for about twenty minutes when Matt breaks in.
“Don't know why you're so pissed off. How Aaren felt was apparent from the start.”
“Oh, I suppose you mean I'm the only fuckhead who didn't read her right?”
“Yep.”
The simple truth stings him. Maybe Matt’s right. Maybe I didn't want to face up to our real ideological differences, is his internal criticism. Out loud: “I just thought all this Weatherman bullshit was just that, bullshit. Can she really believe all that Marxist-Maoist crap about The Vanguard?”
“Yep.”
Jared remembers one of the slogans she pasted up during the retreat: “Revolution grows out of the barrel of a gun!” He laughed at her when she threw it out as a challenge to the group. Jesus, how she had scourged him for that!
“After Kent State . . . after the Christmas Bombing of Cambodia . . . after the Chicago Seven trial . . . after all the black murders and the endless lies about ‘Light at the end of the tunnel’. . . you're still quoting me King and Gandhi and Jesus?!”
Man, she had really been turned on then. And it had turned him on—to her, not to her insane political rhetoric. He roundly denounced her “foolish macho posturing” and ridiculed her by dramatic exaggeration. He made her position seem buffoonery as he jumped around, wildly gesticulating and blaring, “And here’s America's armed Resisters, all steamed up and stampeding towards Suicide Cliff. I ask, How many barrels do you have, Resisters? Oh my! Twenty-five. And, How many barrels do you have, Uncle Sam? Oh my! Twenty-five million!” She stormed away from that confrontation. Jared remembers it with relish. “She's a pistol . . . and I'd like her to carry my barrel!” was his wry summation to the guys after all the women left.
Jared gave her a code name, one that he’s kept secret, especially from her: “Liquid Fire.” That's how he feels around her—as if his thighs drip molten desire. Not that she’s a beauty queen. On the contrary, she could evaporate into “average.” He, a full foot over her five-foot-five, and a ton more than her hundred and twenty-two pounds. Yet she’s quick, athletic. And he likes that. Likes her long raven hair and her dark black eyes. Alluring eyes that gleam when she gets worked up. Eyes that reflect a distant light, a tenebrous source.
Jared sighs as he feels Aaren’s strong, daunting, relentless energy. Not macho, as he often says as a put-down, but rather, piercing. God, how I'd like to wrestle with her, is his true desire, but one deeply repressed. Free love is something that Jared's strong Catholic upbringing thwarts. Plus he wants to be faithful to Char. He fails her now and then, although readily absolving himself with a confessional “I drank too much!” or “Just a one-nighter, I mean, we were stoned!” But with Aaren, something shudders at his core when his lips form her name.
“Aaren.” Jared loves the sound, shivers a bit. Yet an ethereal voice never fails to echo the warning, “Sleep with her and you’ll never wake up!”
“Wake up!” Sister Johanna claps her hands just a hair’s breadth from Jared's cheeks. Up and down the line titters and giggles hide themselves in the folds of the white surplices worn by the twenty-plus pre-adolescents, all of whom see themselves warned by Her clap. She who looms as Her, the omnipresence of female power, more foreboding than their mothers could ever be, would be. “Sister,” they call her, but they all know her as the power from beyond Death.
Sister Johanna, the drill sergeant for Christmas midnight Mass, that gathering resplendent with all the pagan pomp of Catholicism in its Roman vestment. The Holy Mass in memory of the Father God who gave divine birth to his own Son. The Night of the Forgetfulness of Her.
Ever chosen to be one of the special acolytes, robed in papal imitation, a white innocence among other black-robed acolytes, rosy-cheeked Jared carries a special torch as bodyguard to the newborn Babe. And at the crèche he’s honored to pull special time: holy hours in adoration, another privilege.
Yet, when Father is not looking, Sister Johanna enacts a conspiratorial role, that of spiritual terrorist. She takes Jared to the side altar, the one reserved for Mary, the “almost but not quite Divine” altar, and has him pray to Her. Yes, they are prayers that celebrate her “almost divinity,” praise her “mediating role,” address her as “co-Mediatrix of Grace.” Nevertheless, Jared learns Sister’s ardent lesson. “Pray to her, Jared. Every day. She is God’s Mother.”
“HOOONKKK! HOOONKKK! HOOONKKK!” Matt is arm-pumping out the window at a convoy of six big semis, jacked by the sound they love to unleash, especially in wide-open cow country. It spooks the bovines, gets them running and mooing. From a distance, dogs bark. It juices the boredom of their drive. The thunderous blare also snaps Jared back to the reality of the road.
“So, OK,” he asks, stung by this new insight into Aaren, “she meant all that shit when she called me, how's it phrased—lackey running dog of Imperialist Pigs?”
“Yep.”
“And you knew she was packing that blade?”
“Yep.”
“Jesus, why wasn't anyone else upset?”
“Because she's a solo. None of us can control her. It's just her karma.”
Oh, bejesus, Jared explodes within, Karma! Where the fuck’s Matt's head? This gal's going to bring down all the anti-war symbolism with her puny penis-envy dagger!
“She's going to ruin everything. I wish you'd've told me she was straight on that stuff.”
“Look,” Matt says as he checks the rearview mirror—not that he thinks they are being followed, just that they might. “Look, she'll get the job done.”
Jared blurts, “But the job's to create symbols of Resistance.” He flings the words at Matt as he did towards the others during the past several days. As if no one but he understood the purpose of the mission, the message of the raids.
“Damn,” Jared catches himself, pointedly embarrassed by his preaching at Matt. “Do I have to remind you about this? All we need is someone writing Maoist slogans on the walls and the media'll eat us alive.”
Matt doesn’t respond. What is there to say to Jared?
A quiet comes between them; acceptable. Matt kicks on the headlights. Jared half-reclines his seat, kicks back and broods. It’s a brooding whose edge he wants to cut, for he knows that he must be disciplined tonight, focused. Eyes closed, he searches for the flame of white light within.
“Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Lo, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.” This, the priest was ever fond of quoting. It was his opening slogan for every eighth grade sex talk. Imagery he wanted to seed in their young minds. “Woman is made in the image of man. Man in the image of God. Jesus is to the Church as the husband is to the wife.” He held a priestly cache of such spiritual bullets. “Always,” and he would physically dramatize, moving his arm in jerky punctuation, “always keep women on a pedestal. Always.”
Youthful Jared ponders, Where else is it possible to keep them? Mary herself is on a pedestal—off on a side altar. There for all to see and adore.Truly, Jared believes: woman flesh, if not to be worshipped, is to be revered, respected, protected and, if God so calls, to be preserved. Flesh unsoiled. Unspotted.
Matt's brain too is flashing on images of Aaren. He knows that she is a symbol. Matters have changed since Kent State. “Extra! Extra! Four White Kids Killed by Ohio National Guard!” Many of the Resisters are now questioning nonviolence, and Aaren’s starting to snare a few ears. Diverse rhetoric has always charged the anti-war Movement at every step. It’s not surprising that Maoist rhetoric now sways the fancy of those marginally committed to nonviolence. Matt always knew that “The Movement” was fraught with hangers-on, those who were there for the electric charge of the moment, the erection of the mass rally. Still, what does it matter? Karma. They either suck at the teats of the Peace Movement or find themselves being sucked blood-empty by Uncle Sam's Vietnam Vampire.
Just this May, five days after Kent State and five before a like incident at Jackson State—No Extra! Old Story: Nigger Students Bagged!”—while at the New Mobilization's mass “March on Washington,” Matt had seen them all: pathetics and empathetics, sympathizers and activists, and the weirdoes and crazies. Hundreds of thousands of protesters giving rise to a moral nerve network that Washington didn't want, and which most of the protesters were unaware they were creating. Longhairs, old hairs, old Reds, New Lefts, beads, and business suits. Each but a dash or sprinkle in the witch's pot. A pot flamed to a sizzling overflow by the chants, murmurs, prayers and sacred ejaculations of Catholics, Jews, Protestants, even Buddhists! What group wasn't there?
At first Matt stood back, sought a vantage point to assess whether the milling was a mob, a Movement or, what he spied for, a new Heart. At first, he felt only terror. The multitude was a swill. A gulp of humanity pitching like an unsettled stomach. Indigestion of soul. Patiently, he waited for the vomit. Yet, at some unmarked moment, It became a We. Maybe it was the influence of the Marshals for Peace that Jared had joined. The four thousand or so who lined the route and kept dousing the surge with spice of hope and vision, chanting, “Peace now! Give peace a chance!” Such were words of potency that day.
“All we are saying is give peace a chance!”
Maybe it was these few. Those who had to suffer the taunts of “Peace Pigs!” or “Fascist Pacifists!” from the indigestible mass. Matt had not been able to explain all that that day meant, but he knew it had grounded him in his commitment to clandestine civil disobedience.
So May 8, 9 and 10, 1970, would always stand as watershed dates for Matt, as they would for many others in the anti-war Movement. Days of the last of the great mass marches. Yet even when he came to this hindsight knowledge, Matt did not pause. He moved forward to describe it as a day of blossoming. That day when he saw himself as but one in a garden of burning wildflowers. More, knew that It became a We by the presence of each: the scared shitless, the romantic whacko, the forever brave. All the winners and losers who pressed their bodies together on that special day.
Yeah, “wildflowers” was the image that described the world, the big “r” Reality, for Matt after that day. The hangers-on, liberals, and other assorted babblers and soldiers of words only—Matt found not one to blame. More, he knew it was not for him to blame or not to blame. All had done it—waged peace!
Nevertheless, getting to this state of acceptance required facing his greatest struggle, one etched by a lingering smugness, dredged up by an unvanquishable memory. Once, while stoned on hashish, Matt had blurted to a room full of Movement heavies, “We're all just a bunch of young assholes, college punks, grad lab junkies.” Why his brain would not flush away that line even now he can’t figure out. My karma? Whatever. Now it draws him to look again at himself and Jared and the image of Aaren.
Jared. What can I say about Jared? Matt imagines him an Angry Angel. The one who probably carried out God's expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden. An angel seething with holy anger, faithfully obeying his God’s command through commiting an act of ”sacred violence.” He’s heard Jared speak about “Holy Nonviolence,” but Matt wonders, “Has he crossed the line? Like Aaren? This question lingers briefly and quickly fades, sucked down within the flowing country night blackness that has been slowly mesmerizing Matt.
Matt’s on mental cruise control because he has ridden Highway 61 many times up to his family's summer cabin on Birch Lake just outside of Babbitt. Once again he’s awash within that familiar cloak of darkness that quiets and settles the farmer, blankets him and embeds his dreams. It pacifies Matt, soothes him. Not even the snorts and teeth-grinding from slumbering Jared can ruffle his calm.
“. . . for I have sinned!” Oh, shame! Oh, withering flesh!
“Bless me, Father!” Oh, to live without this . . . this Thing!
“You are to be pure. You have a Vocation!” But how can he now? Ever spotted, hands ever guilty. “Having touched . . .” Not what would later be known as pleasure, for it was only
titillation, the gasp at the expanding “weenie balloon,” like the Balloon Meister at the Italian Festival, twining lengths of pencil-thin balloons into shapes, linking them, laughing at the sausage doggie. “How big’s your wiener?!”
Now his condemnation. Weeping. At his weakness of will. For without intent he has knocked Her off Her pedestal, so he confesses, for he has thought, “Janet Tremblay's soft breasts . . . ,” and his doggie went wild.
“Oh FATHER . . .”
“Bad doggie! Bad doggie!”
As Jared wakes, only the hum of the road, the hot kiss of rubber on warm cement, greets him. Oddly, all else is silent. No music on. Matt’s noiseless. Clearly in deep thought. Or something.
It’s a bit over two hours to get to their target. Matt’s never been much of a talker, Jared knows that, but he sure has the best road boat in the Resistance! Matt’s resurrected 1957 Chevy Bel-Air, with gleaming fins and all, is a true relic. Matt’s a natural talent when it comes to highway hogs, and has truly raised this clunker from the dead. Inside and out: glistening and meticulously clean. Matt's own type of shine and new. Junkyard retrofitted engine matched by down-home interior refurbishing. Paisley-robed bucket seats and beaded curtains. Fancy Hippie stuff, but not overdone; a soft sniff of incense.
Matt’s the type of guy who talks more to his machines than to people. Jared sees this trait expressed through Matt's immersion in music. Immersion is the correct word, Jared assures
himself as he checks the stacks of tapes Matt has stashed and secreted away in “Shiree,” as he calls her. It seems like Matt always has music in the background when he doesn't have it in the
foreground. He's like an acidhead, stoned on music all the time, though Jared knows Matt is mainly a light weed man, like himself. The Grateful Dead are his main guides. Matt’s truckin'—though he travels in touch with all who are sounding the magical thump and wail of the counter-culture.
As if reading his mind, just like that—click!—Matt starts to spin a medley of Led Zeppelin, the Moody Blues, Iron Butterfly, and a dash of the Beatles. As they get closer to their target, Jared knows Matt will switch into another cosmic channel. Minnesota's own hard-driving Bob Dylan, the sweet rousing Joan Baez, the soulful Janis Joplin, all leading up to the final sprint—wild Country Joe and the Fish, blaring Matt's draft raid anthem, “I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag.” The two will shout out. Scream it. Beat it with their fingertips on Shiree's forehead, but never, like a duet singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” belt it in key.
Come on all of you big strong men
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
'Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it’s one, two, three
What are we fightin' for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven
Open up the pearly gates,
Well, there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
His dad. What he always remembers is the sheer joy of walking next to his dad. Knights of Columbus parade. Holy Name march. Veterans of Wars, sacred and profane. There was the sense of doing something. Of carrying out in his own small way the War—against Whom was not necessary to know, for it was always against Evil, Satan in some guise. Against even the Protestants and Jews.
His dad in naval attire, a picture he long admired. A status he was eager to attain. But wherever he would go it would be where Dad said, “Go!” And from the first, it was to Him crucified. Following a pathway as uncluttered as it was cruel: “Thy will be done.”
“Say only that, Jared. 'Thy will be done.'”
To wage the battle so as to win victory, all that was required was to surrender one's will. It was this humbling act of submissive obedience that was seed to Jared’s character. Its flower was the act of offering oneself cruciform to the world, in imitatio Christi.
Ten miles later, with Janis cranking on “Ball and Chain,” a huge grin suddenly rises on Matt's face. “Did she tell you about her fantasy?”
Without waiting for an answer, Matt judges, “Of course she didn't. Not to you.” And the private joke keeps Matt amused for several miles.
Jared wants to probe but doesn't. He's not sure he wants to know about Aaren’s fantasy. Must stop thinking about her. He struggles to get back into his own space. So he chimes, “Sure, Matt, I know—it's her karma, right?”
Jared stiff-legs the seat back, reclines it as far down as it can go, and writhes for comfort. He painstakingly unfurls his six-foot-five frame, wiggling, toenail to fingernail, into a spot here, a twist there, capturing for bits of his two hundred forty-five pounds of lean muscle tiny niches of comfort. So laid out, he closes his eyes.
Matt mirthfully needles the slumbering giant about Aaren by inserting and raising the volume on Dylan's “You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows!”
“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Jared's thurible bangs against the pew but grief deafens all. He aches to lift the lid and converse with the dead. “Dad . . . Dad, do you know now? Is it true? Is He the Son of God?”
“Pit stop in 'bout two minutes,” tugs Jared back into Matt's world.
“This is taking longer than I remembered. By the time we get there the other four will have gone down.” Look, Man, paranoia doesn’t mean they ain’t following you. So you don’t drive straight, never. Take 61 to 95, hang a left, go through St. Cloud, hook-up with the 52, that way if they are following you, you’ll notice. Screwball driving, sure, but it’ll only add an hour or so, maybe less.
“Probably.”
Jared loves Matt, but his habit of tossing one-line answers never fails to irritate him.
“Okay, man, you've never really dug out your reasons for doing this. I mean, you sat in that retreat for three freaking days and you were as silent as a spy. Don't you think it’s time you at least let me know what's churning inside?”
“Nope.”
“Christ Almighty and bejesus! Cut me some slack, Jack. Here we’re about to commit yet another crime against Big Brother and all I really know about you is your short obituary.” Jared mimics being interviewed. “ ‘Yes, I risked my life with him many times. Yes, we were very close. What can I say about him? Sure, he did some Methodist seminary time, was a dedicated granola vegetarian, and a devotee of the Grateful Dead.’ Fuck, Man, that's not much of a base for long-term revolutionary commitment, is it?”
“Nope.”
“Is this the Theater of the Absurd, or am I bundled here with a renegade sage from some hilltop?” Jared laughs at himself and his smirking partner. “Wait—then I can say, 'Yes, I knew him, he was six feet tall, not too fat, not too thin, not too religious, but not too non-religious, not a Democratic but not a Republican . . . C'mon!”
“Matt, your father's dead.” And he runs and runs, looking for him all over the world, until he comes to the bedroom. Hoisting the whiskey bottle, he gags on its bitterness. Now he understands why his dad hid this vile liquid all around the house. He, at ten, now seeing that this bitterness kept his father alive, for it must be so—the sacred elixir which Matt reasons his dad must have forgotten to take today, and so he died. Matt squeezes his eyes tightly shut and braces his throat for the bath of fire. He gulps the fullness of his dad's bitterness.
“Okay,” Matt grabs the wheel with both hands, stiff-arming himself back, and speaks. His words are drawn from him not by a compulsion to confess or to satisfy Jared's curiosity but by the rightness of the moment. Karma.
Matt speaks as if quoting himself.
“To cause the least harm.”
“That's it? Absolute passive nonresistance?”
“Can it be non-absolute?”
“But why are you a raider? Isn't that non-passive?”
Matt brakes and slows as he takes a full, deep breath, inhale . . . exhale. “Think about this: To live causing the least harm, one must be prepared to suffer the most harm.”
“Sounds like a recipe for martyrdom or suicide.” As soon as he says this, Jared regrets it. Regrets its stupidity and insensitivity. Regrets it with a flush of embarrassment because the identical sentence has been flung at him so many times when he has testified to his own way of nonviolence.
Matt smiles, sighs, murmurs a soft, “Think about it.”
karma, is that it?”
Matt steadies himself—they have the time, so he figures he might as well try. “Karma is a tricky concept. It’s not shallow, man. Look, we all carry things from the past and into the future. It’s what we do with them now that counts. How we turn them into right action, moral action. What happens to us is less important than what we do with what happens to us. Get it?”
“I thought it meant fated, like predestined or some iron law, like gravity?”
Matt’s about maxed out on words, but he takes a deep breath: “No. Just that everything we do right now is related to what we’ve done and will do.” He chuckles. “Trying to figure what karma means might be your karma, but it ain’t mine. Get that?”
Jared wants to say yes but he really doesn’t get it. He’s about to press the matter, as Matt knows is his way, so, “Coffee time!” he blurts, like a ref calling “Time out!” Also, with the urgency of one long overdue for a piss.
It’s 11:30 p.m. as they pull into the lot beside the Bashful Viking Bar & Grill. They are on the outskirts of their target, Sauk Centre, Minnesota—Sinclair Lewis’s famous “Main Street.” The symbol Jared wants: “The Draft Board on America’s Main Street.”
“Am I a Conscientious Objector?”
“No.”
But how can it be that simple? Jared in his novice monk robes as Friar Otto pleads to the Master and the onlooker, “But . . .”
“No buts. Your role is to obey!”
Could it be simpler? “His will be done.” Wasn't this now his own father, dead, speaking through the Novice Master?
From within his heart, in testimony to all Fathers, he strongly voices, “Thy will be done.”
Auburn, Indiana, 1964. The post office. Friar Otto signs the Registration form—“Jared Jennings”—and hands it to the Selective Service clerk.
As Matt docks Shiree, Jared forces a hard look at him. Why have I been risking my life with a guy I don't really know? Why is he with me?
It's a sign of the times, these fucked-up times, he answers himself. An answer that accounts for his many oversights as he, as all students-become-Resisters, rush to end the war. Right now he realizes that he’s never even gotten Matt’s physical details together. White, truly white. Blond on blond. Hazel eyes. Taut body, like a seasoned tennis pro. But I don't even know if he works out! Maybe we're together because it is “just karma,” as he says!
Jared banishes any further musings. Especially those that draw out his hunger for the past. Those not-so-distant early Sixties: quiet days of monastic confidence when he had only to pray and fast to feel at peace with himself. He doesn’t want that hunger tonight. Yet he also doesn't want the pangs of starvation that throttle him when he thinks about now, the moment, this supposed “times they are a'changing” that charge the air of all the crazies and dopeheads and Flower Power kids who run amuck in the spirit of “these revolutionary times.”
No, he doesn't want yesterday, nor tomorrow, not even now. He just wants to act, to do something! Almost the frenetic “Do it!” of that asshole Jerry Rubin. Do it! Consecrate, immolate, expiate! DO IT! This strain of thought ropes him as he sits down at the counter, cups and welcomes the warmth of the steaming java.
Steam: the perverseness of a Minnesota bone-chilling winter day. Was it not sufficient that the Earth hardened her heart and refused to yield, had to be forced? So rudely pick-axed and back-hoed in rock screams. Bodies rest in tombs above ground in New Orleans. In Minnesota many must wait until spring’s tender thaw to inter their dead.
Joseph: brother. Eleven. Fourteen months older: almost twins. A memory of steam.
It’s the words of the priest, so silly and stupid, about “little angels” that draw steam from the ten-below air. Tears cloud all eyes and fog Jared's glasses, creating a slope of ice on his nose, consigning him to the taunts of small devils who laugh at him as his glasses keep falling off. Jared bends the sides so hard they stab his ears. He feels no pain.
Steam. Holy whispers. Evidence of prayers from the Communion of Saints. Even the casket exudes steam, as if Joey himself is praying, a young child’s prayers.
This is their beloved child who died at eight yet lived, entombed in a betraying body, for three more years. As then, now stand the inconsolable parents, brothers, sisters, all Jennings from far and wide around the cruel, cold hole. All ask, through their father’s spoken doubt: “How could God let this happen to an innocent child?” All hear, through his submission, his obedience, through his arms cast out and upward in cruciform surrender, through his uttering out loud a fiercely hissing steam of words: “Thy will be done!” Only then does the family, does Jared, hope again in their God.
Roses, as they are laid upon the casket, start to shrivel, curl up into dark scarlet lines and blackened clumps as the bitter, harsh, dry December cold transforms them quickly into rose crystals. Yet they die victorious as their steam rises in celebration. Jared hears, says to all, “Closely, listen closely . . . you can hear the hush of steam.” Yes, truly, a hiss, a rosy angelic ejaculation, “Thy will is done!”
With his second cup, Matt flips into his raider mode. “Let's go over this, a final time.” He pulls out a short yellow pad with a hand-drawn diagram. “This office is a lot like the one in Hastings. It’s on the second floor, and as planned, we climb this building here,” he pinpoints the spot with his spoon, “and then jimmy this window. As from my casing run, it's pretty well shadowed from the street. Once inside we go through this door, out into the corridor, score and torch the glass, and bingo! It's rock ’n’ roll time.”
Jared’s amused by how excited Matt gets about raids. The guy makes you feel like there's no danger. He really gets off ripping off the Selective Service.
Jared quietly chuckles. Some guys get cranked by cheating the IRS. Matt gets juiced stealing, defiling, burning, and shredding draft files. It's like watching a young priest robe for Mass. During the early years they still have fervor. They get lost in the ritual. Really meet their God in the drama of symbolic sacrifice. And crack open that special space and time called holy. Jared had always finagled a way to serve at their masses. Matt brings these old memories back. In his own way, he's a priest. Jared muses, immolator of symbols.
The purest of kerchiefs laid with sepulchral touch, the priest rises, eyes searching Jared's. Eyes that stand in terror of the Devil who must have possessed him. How else this desecration? For one instant Jared misjudged, and the Host fluttered to the floor. His stab to halt its flight only jostled the priest and caused two more Holy Wafers to be defiled.
It’s not Jared's awkwardness that irritates the priest. No, he himself has been as Jared, has done as Jared. Rather, it is the task he knows lies ahead. Canon Law is exactingly specific. The area must be scrubbed clean: scraped and scraped with the Paten, so that no crumbs are left. No microscopic Real Presences. “For the host is the Real Presence, Jesus here in the bread and the wine.” Not a molecule, nary an atom is to be defiled.
It’s a laborious task, one that almost inevitably yields tastes of floor wax, droppings of candles, grime from leather soles. As he blesses himself, Father knows this is the Sunday morning taunt of the Vile One. Verily, he will be strong and stomach the distaste. Only a priest knows God under such foul circumstances.
Jared watches in rapt fascination. Awed, yet knowing that he could not, no, really does not want to spend his life in service to the Hosts. For it is not the Host that he honors by serving at Communion—rather, he’s delighted by the rare intimacies it gives him with Her. She, Mary, Mother of God, present in the guises of young women to whom he could never in any other circumstance be so close. How ever otherwise to inhale the perfume that Janet Tremblay wears? Or spy the strap on Stephanie Woodruff's bra? Or confront the temptation of Martha Kennedy's oh so soft and inviting pink tongue!
“Bless me . . .”
“. . . are Called!”
Oh, Mary Mother of God, pray for me!
As they cut their lights and slip into the alley, the emotion of Country Joe's song sobers them:
Come on Mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on Fathers, don't hesitate
Send your sons off before it's too late
Be the first ones on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
Its imagery makes Jared think about the others, wonder whether all has gone smoothly. Right now the tally is three raids for the good guys, zero nabs for the bad guys. No one has gotten caught. Yet he fears to admit, Not yet, you mean!
“It's been six months since the Beavers, did you know that?”
“Nope, haven't thought much about it.”
“Seems like six years, six eons.” No one's gotten caught. Karma.
What about tonight? Lots of things have changed, rapidly, during the last months. After the Beaver raid, that St. Paul anti-war festivity, Hoover had sent in over a hundred FBI Special Agents. At that time Jared blustered, “Jesus, they must've been jacked. It must've blown their minds that the largest draft raid in Resistance history would happen in Farmland, USA! Jesus, what a gas, fifty-five boards and the State Director's office in one night!”
Their success swelled their bravado. “We're going to gnaw away until the tree falls! We're going to be busy beavers!” And the media image took, so they used it in their post-raid PR—the Beaver 55. Like other draft raid groups, they wanted a name that would irritate, annoy and miff the Feds. A name of silliness and ambiguity, but a name that could instill a fear that there were many, many raiders out there, gnawing away.
So, in time, neither satisfied nor patient enough to sit tight, wait out the Feds, Jared and a handful of Beavers plotted, upped the ante, decided to move out into the countryside. Knock off a chain of smaller draft boards, circling and creating a “Ring of Fire” around the Twin Cities.
Little did Jared and his city slicker comrades realize how different small towns really are. During their casing runs, their amateurish disguises only made them more visible to Our Town’s denizens. Old ladies watch everything, pass along rumors. “Hippies! Oh my, Millie, I saw two hippies in town today!”
Unaware of this, at this moment, Jared savors the Beaver 55 raiding footnote to American history. However, it also stirs another gnawing, somewhat somber afterthought.
“Matt, how did you feel when the Kenneth Legion posted those ten-grand bounties on us?”
“Part of the risk.”
“Yeah—now's not the time to think about that.”
Once inside the board, the night proceeds according to what is almost routine by this raid, the third for each of them. Matt tapes the office door’s glass pane, scratches a triangle, torches and pops the glass. In a sec, they find and are ripping the files marked “1-A”: Olly olly home free!
Jared's seasoned senses are charged by an edge of fright. He's perspiring like a fool. Maniacally reciting “Hail Mary, full of grace” over and over in his mind. Silent prayer.
“Over here,” Matt whispers. He’s crowbarring another lock when Jared hears the first sound out of place. He grabs Matt's arm.
“Hear that?” he breathes.
“Nope.”
Matt heaves and with one jerk snaps open the file cabinet. As practiced, Jared scans the drawer, quickly picks out the 1-A files, and throws others into a trash bag. They always steal some, just to fuck up the System as much as they can. “Thump, thump!”
“Hear that?”
“Yep!”
Neither looks at the other. Both move towards the door. Jared drags a chair, and Matt starts pushing a large desk.
“We need five minutes,” Matt says out loud, not whispering anymore. “Just five minutes.”
They blockade the door and swiftly return to the file cabinet.
“Plan B! Plan B!” Matt blurts, saying it over and over with escalating excitement. “Plan B! Plan B!” as he throws a bunch of files into a heap.
Jared’s dousing them with charcoal fluid.
“Open the door! FBI!”
“Shit, fire them up! Burn the suckers!” Matt howls.
“FBI!” once again. Then the blockade starts to heave and split like a ship battered by high seas. The files flare up quicker than Aaren's temper, but smolder into a thickening cloud of smoke just as fast.
“Jesus, where can we go?”
“Over here, in the corner.”
Both cough, move towards an open window.
What
they had not planned for was Plan B. Plan B was always a joke: “And if you get
caught, burn the suckers! At least go down in a blaze of glory.”
“Blaze of glory” was a humorous password among them. Now it rouses
terror.
“Put out your hands!” Like a turtle asked to stick out its neck. “Show me your palms!” Ah, will the sting ever be forgotten? The memory of the ruler: palms, not knuckles. Sister Johanna loved palms. It was the Brothers who later lashed the knuckles. But she, Dreadful She, watched, looking for signs of weakness.
She did not have to say it, he knew. “Don't cry!”
It was a hope, a prayer, a plea, “Don't cry!”
“Saved by the FBI! How humiliating,” Jared mocks himself as he’s pulled and pushed out of the choking smoke. It’s a scene he will long remember. They had smashed in what remained of the door, stuck their guns through the smoke, all the time yelling, commanding, threatening. “FBI! You're under arrest. Don’t move or we’ll kill you!”
Kill me, shit—I'm suffocating to death and I'm supposed to be worried about him killing me?
Later on, that memory never fails to get a laugh. But this night, it doesn't.
Jared at first was sure that it wasn’t really the FBI but locals. Mad-ass VFWers or some redneck bunch itching to kick their fag asses all over town. But Sweet Jesus, it is the FBI!
“Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
Jared's relief is short-lived. A boxing-gloved fist whacks him across the chin, implanting a spike of pain like he’s never felt before. Where's Matt? Is he okay? flicks through his mind. He’s answered by a jabbing stick, poking and snagging his belly flesh, sticking him with needles of pain that throw him into spasms. He would have retched, but nothing functions as his every sense scrambles for shelter from the attack. It's not the FBI! Holy Jesus! A final flurry of punches sends him reeling to the floor.
Before Jared can rise, a heavy book, thick and droopy—later jailhouse chatter names it the phone book trick! “Leaves no bruises, see, it’s magic!”—is slammed on top of his head and someone begins beating on it with a club. Heavily hard, heaving breaths hard, pounding a dull popping beat into his head. “God! What an unforgiving headache,” is how he’ll retell it later.
Thoughts of Matt have disappeared, replaced by a set of images that Jared has never let out, only now paroled from his nightmares.
“Don’t move or I’ll break your arm!” Jared stirs under the blanket of sticks and wads of newspaper paper as bully-boy Quinn strikes, then blows out the match. “I warned you!” Quinn hefts him up, a seven-year-old skinny as a twig, and yanks his left arm behind his back up to his ears, Crack! Crack!
“What did you do to get him so angry?”
What did I do? Dad . . . what did I do?
Why
doesn’t anyone believe me?
The beating drives Jared back so deeply into a repressed area
of his psyche that it releases a fury and a savagery that threatens his own
sense of himself. He, the preacher of nonviolence, the trainer in nonviolent
tactics, the spiritual witness to the nonviolent Jesus—explodes and attacks
with the savage violence unleashed by Quinn.
Now—he could never recall how it happened—Jared ejects himself up from the floor, throws out his arms as if scattering tall brush and swatting down a pathway, slaps his face to focus his eyes, and lunges towards the nearest human form.
For what seems longer than a chase dream, he holds on to this form, a form he does not take in as to size or weight or even gender. Off balance, he flings himself, so bundled, against the wall, bouncing back to the other side, holding on as if to a treasured packet, banging and banging, thumping and thumping till a chilled dark wind settles him down in a frontier town of the dreamless unconscious.
She smiles as they walk up. Monsignor Boyle says, “He’ll make a good priest.” She smiles, but it’s just to artfully cover the lie. Gracefully—her bitterness deeply hidden—she untethers the boy from herself. His tender hand she places in the hand of this ancient one, but his heart, never! This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that he—here Reverend Father!—will steal her treasures. But she knows how to survive. Her heart holds firmly on to the crucifix on her rosary, tapping “Holy Mary Mother of God!”’s strength to carry off this ordeal. The throb in her throat is but a repressed outlet for the grief she’s feeling at this theft from her loins. Her own mother had told her, “Marie, keep your eyes on the crucifix. It’s the only way!”Jared enters the “minor seminary” at thirteen years of age.
“Good evening, Mr. Jennings.”
The phrase, the salutation floats from somewhere and settles on the tip of his nose. “Good evening,” as he tries to focus on the shadow, “. . . Mr. Jennings.” He’s coming to, hearing other noises, voices.
“Good evening, Mr. Puglasi.”
“Matt—Matt, is that you?” Jared feels himself shout, but not so that others can hear.
Mr. Jennings . . . Mr. Jennings . . . Mr. Jennings . . . . the call for his name, as in the early days of the seminary, before he became Friar Otto. As regained in those days of college where
it was a sign of his forthcoming adulthood. His name—but who knows his name but Matt?
That naming reality shakes loose the grip of unconsciousness and his mind breaks through, bursts into the stillness of the moment. Four men are standing above him. He’s sitting on the hallway floor outside the draft office. No smoke, only odor. His body is so sore that he does not feel pain at all.
“Who are you?” he asks, his voice like that of a lost child.
“Mr. Jennings,” a fatherly voice begins to lift Jared, “I’m Agent Brennan, FBI.”
Agent Brennan, as he helps him stand up, begins adjusting Jared's clothes, tugging his shirt, smoothing out his slacks. Jared is really confused. How did they know? Who told them? He doesn't want the word to live, but it jumps up bawling, Betrayed! Betrayed! You’ve been betrayed!
He can't see Matt. Where have they taken him? Who does he suspect? No, no, she wouldn't—Aaren? Why had she gone solo? What had she meant, “What this Movement needs is more blood!” Could she? His thoughts are shattered as suddenly Matt's body is thrown up against his. Where’d he come from? How…? Later he’d hear, “FBI magic, voodoo, man, these guys are spooky!”
He touches her body. Softness, her smile. So inexperienced in images and words, her breasts defy his tongue but he adores, whispers, “Sweet breezes.” His soul licks hers. These, his thoughts the moment before the screen is pulled and he’s paralyzed. Netted in Confessional darkness.
Before he can muster, “Matt!” before he can express his concern about the welt on Matt's cheek, both are shoved, pushed with those tiny thrusts whose meager energy builds, like the first grains of a sand slide, from infinitesimal to infinite, initiating Matt and Jared's slog down a creaking flight of wooden stairs to the street and towards a harsh reality.
The Little Hoovers handle them according to their ritual. Speedily, each is spread across the trunk of an unmarked car, patted down, and handcuffed.
Off to the side an ambulance idles, lights flashing. What happened? Splayed on the trunk, Jared strains to see but can’t. “You son-of-a-bitch!” is heard as a hand grabs his hair and yanks his head back. A knee pounds an ungodly pain up into his butt, the blow placed expertly with full force on his anal sphincter. His head is thrown back down against the car’s rear window, a head thud! almost driving him back into unconsciousness. Word fly that he does not hear, “Stop!” “Jack, don’t!” “Get that motherfucking fag pinko bastard, good!” Actions happen that he does not see: Agent Brennan walks up and stops the pummeling. Only later will he learn, at trial, that he had broken this agent’s arm, that he was “the nearest human form” he bounced around the hallway.
Jared and Matt are spooked, scared, subdued, exhausted. They are not left alone for a second. Someone is watching them or someone is questioning them; relentlessly.
“Where are the other guys?” one agent keeps asking. He asks it about every other minute. He appears to be in charge.
“You guys are in deep shit, so you better cooperate,” he cajoles. Silence.
What’s Matt thinking? Is he listing names?
As if hearing his question, Matt, in the one moment they are left alone, smiles and says, “Karma.”
“Karma?” Jared snickers. A slow rumble of chuckling gathers and builds, then erupts. He’s roaring louder than he wants to, pain and ache and unplumbed tension fleeing on his sound. His attempt at self-control breaks down into a series of muffled snorts.
At the first sound, the head Agent practically leaps on them. “Quiet! You jerks think this is funny? You'll see how funny prison is! Separate these two.”
Jared can’t regain his composure, and when pushed into the FBI's back seat he writhes with the unseemly stabbing numbness of excessive giggling.
“Arise, Friar Otto!” In his father's eyes it can be seen: “Thy will be done.” Here, as for centuries, a son reborn as Son. In the denial of Her birthright name he now comes: Franciscan
Investiture, 1962. His father's middle name, “Otto.”
On the ride back to Minneapolis’s Hennepin County Jail, and as Agent Brennan barks, “Take these jerks to the Hole!” a tape begins to loop endlessly through Jared's mind: I am alive. I am alive. Leave your name and phone number and I will get back to you as soon as possible. I am alive. I am alive. This plays and replays all during his short clips of conversations with the Feds.
“We got you guys cold. You're not as smart as you think.”
“Don't you guys got anything better to do than beat up on nonviolent protesters?”
“Nonviolent! You call this raid nonviolence?”
“What do you guys think about the war?”
“I think it's great!”
“Are there any priests in your group?”
And so it goes, jabs of conversation, leading to no knockouts.
Jared lets the film reel roll. Acts his part. In the sole moment when he finds himself questioning the night, Did the FBI beat on us? he stomps on the urge. He doesn't want to analyze the evening. Doesn't want answers to that question. So he rewinds the reel and rolls it again.
He imagines Matt playing his role. Giving them his famous one-liner. That'll drive them nuts! Then he remembers all the other guys. Were we all betrayed?
He feels Aaren and her stiletto: agitation. If she’s not Judas . . . Would she really use that piddling dagger? If she has, did they shoot her? Would they shoot a woman?
As she reaches towards her ankle, a savvy agent cocks his gun and point-blank aims it at her. Jared lunges, throwing his body across hers. The bullet couples them. He’s fatally wounded. She lives.
She gazes upon him: he’s John Wayne. He looks at her: she’s Maureen O'Hara.
“Liquid Fire!” he gasps as he touches her tear. “Liquid Fire, I love you.”
Screen dissolves.
“Bejesus, how stupid!” Jared snorts. A comment without an apparent cause.
“Yes? Do you have something to say?” encourages Agent Brennan.
Jared doesn’t hear him. He's recasting the fantasy, realizing how enraged Aaren would be by such a scenario. If she got shot . . . Man, what would she think? What was her fantasy?
So taken by this fancy is he that Jared misses what distinguishes this night from any he’s ever had or will have. He wants a Revolution, and now he’s got one. But it’s certainly not his hoped for “Peace now!” world. No, hardly—rather, his life is about to start anew, and no one's singing “Happy Birthday.”
“The State is asking Your Honor to set a fifty-thousand-dollar bond for each defendant.”
Jared hears that concluding remark to the DA's rambling account of “The Great Catholic Conspiracy” and his charge of “sabotage of the national defense,” and his mouth drops.
Dismissively. “You guys must be nuts! Real loco!” The DA’s not flustered. He formally comments, “This will send a message to these types about the seriousness of what they’re doing. Your Honor, civilized society can no longer tolerate the dangerous few whose cult of violence is masked by a thin veneer of ‘nonviolent civil disobedience.’ These men are true radicals. They aren’t nonviolent like Martin Luther King. They aren’t moral leaders. Absolutely not. They are saboteurs!
“For that reason, they are being arraigned on the charge of sabotage of the national defense. I anticipate the defense's counter-argument. Yes, these young men do come from good families. One is even personally known to me.”
Of all the things said, this catches Matt and Jared off guard. Who? is shrugged back and forth.
“This is more the pity, and more a reason for making an example of these misguided few.”
“Your Honor,” Jared and Matt's public defender protests, “I do not at this time want to question the charge, but the amount of fifty thousand dollars! Your Honor, you know that's the range reserved for heinous criminals, for repeat offenders. These are draft resisters, not murderers!”
“Bond set as requested,” gavels the magistrate.
Jared and Matt, handcuffed and leg chained, are stood up by two bailiffs apiece and led, awkwardly, back to their cell.
“Can you believe that?”
“Yep.”
Jared’s not paying attention to Matt—he’s into a rolling monologue. The guards pay Jared no mind. Jail so often brings out the ravers and ranters.
“Bejesus, who'd ever think they'd believe that conspiracy bullshit! I mean, do we appear that organized to them? Sabotage of the national defense. Renegade Jesuits? Hell, I'm the only Catholic in this bunch! Shit, they fear us more than I thought. Their own imagination is scaring them. Maybe attacking the symbol of Main Street, USA, was more powerful than we thought? But, sweet Jesus, they're taking it out on my ass!”
Matt’s rarely seen Jared so stuck in self-absorbed silliness. Of course they believe it's a conspiracy. Aren't our after-raid letters to the press signed, The Midwest Conspiracy To Save Lives? Matt wants to say this, but surely it must be obvious to Jared. Yet somehow it’s not computing. Why the DA jumped on Catholic Radicals is beyond Matt, but it’s really bugging the hell out of Jared.
Uncuffed and unchained, Matt sits down on the cell’s lower bunk. Jared continues to ramble on, pacing the cell—six paces this way and turn, six paces that way and turn. The DA, identifying himself as “an active Catholic,” spoke with fervor and conviction about the “Catholic Conspiracy.” He named its Jesuit leaders, and detailed how they recruited at seminaries and through specific theological and spiritual journals. He harped on “the Jesuits” as the Conspiracy's ringleaders, and to the uninitiated, his case was ironclad.
The Catholic Conspiracy! Funded by Castro! Money from Moscow! The Jesuit Underground! They really believe it! Jared's internal monologue outpaces his external one.
Matt lays down and stretches. Stuffs a pillow over his head, muffling Jared's outpourings, and beckons the soporific kiss of sleep.
Doggedly, Jared goes on. Exclaims and gestures and paces for about twenty minutes. He can't seem to convince himself that they really believe in this conspiracy.
“They can't believe it. They must be setting a trap for something else.”
Then a familiar voice frees him.
“My man, Jared! You poor excuse for the savior of mankind, don't you love me anymore?”
It’s Sean!
Four of them. They’ve trapped four of them. Five slipped through. Five, including Aaren and two other women.
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn't mean anything,” Sean answers. “We don't know what went down. And let's not spend too much time spooking ourselves. Let's think about what the hell we're going to do about this outrageous bail.”
Sean is two cells down, bunked with Corey. That's who the DA must know! Until after the bail hearing, they’d been separated, each thinking they were the only ones caught.
“Four. Four out of nine. Not bad,” shouts Sean. “Means we're still ahead. Three and one-half to one-half. The Good Guys are still winning!”
“Big joke, Sean, but what good are we in here? We're politically dead. Can't do a damn thing with the action. With that crazy bail we have to get ten thousand apiece for deposit. We'll be here forever.”
“Maybe my dad will figure something out.”
“Sure, Sean—your dad, big Mister Republican Big Shot, is gonna risk his reputation helping us? Get real!”
“Maybe,” Sean mutters unconvincingly.
“On top of all that, now we've got to deal with the media. Shit!”
With so much going down, Jared doesn't broach the subject of Judas nor risk talking about the FBI beatings. These will have to be dealt with when, if ever, they get released.
Dealing with the media becomes agenda item number one. Who should speak? What should be said? The idea behind their style was to hit draft boards anonymously. Then political education could be done around draft resistance by anyone who supported the actions, not just by Movement personalities.
Across the country, other raiders had demonstrated in a more traditional nonviolent manner. Like the Milwaukee 14, who raided offices and burned files, intending to be caught. Their idea was to use their capture as a launching point for their personal public campaign against the war. Jared was not prepared for going public, what his group liked to call Plan C. It was a lot like Plan B. No one ever expected to employ it!
Fuck! they will have to deal with becoming media personalities. But how to prevent the media from taking control? Prevent them from making the four of them the issue, instead of the war? Like men in battle who don’t spend time working out the details of being captured or dying, so the group had not defined Plan C.
Like Matt's karma! the media is beyond their control. In the morning paper they see the theme that TV and radio will mimic. Front page: STATEWIDE SWEEP CRUSHES VIOLENT DRAFT RAID RING. Inside headline: FBI DEALS BLOW TO NATIONAL RADICAL CONSPIRACY. On the editorial page: PEACENIK VIOLENCE ON THE ROAD TO JUNGLE LAW. These and accompanying articles set up the raiders as idealistic youths duped by international Communist rhetoric and sympathies.
The tone is a blush shy of McCarthy era “Red baiting.” They’re granted “former pacifists” and “one-time nonviolence leaders” status, but now are labeled as “predators and purveyors of political violence.” They are kept practically nameless, referred to as “The Four” or “radicals” or “Viet Cong sympathizers” throughout. The message is, “We must make an example out of these guys.”
What’s curious is the lack of description as “Catholic.” For this had been the big point in the bail hearing. There, wild-eyed evocations of anti-Catholicism were slung around with phrases like “Catholic Underground,” “Jesuit rabble rousers,” “anti-American theology,” and similar rank stuff that Jared thought the presidency of JFK had laid to rest.
“Maybe they're afraid of going public with that? Maybe it's too hot for them to handle ‘religious civil disobedience’ and all that?”
Jared fails to realize how much the FBI has learned from tracking and putting down Martin Luther King.
Before they get around to discussing how to handle the press, Jared is told he's been “granted” a meeting with a reporter. Strangely, it's a decision made and personally delivered by Agent Brennan, who clearly felt no need to consult with Jared about the arrangement.
“What's up?” They’re all puzzled. Why would the Feds arrange their press meeting?
That something queer’s afoot becomes apparent right after breakfast as “The Four” are separated and scattered throughout the jail. Each is celled with a nonpolitical prisoner. No one is housed near the others. They can’t even communicate by shouting or passing messages. So when Jared is called out, he hasn't a clue about what to expect.
In the visiting room he’s sardonically introduced as “the ringleader” to Charlie Burston from the Tribune. Then the escort agent leaves. Both men sit down.
“You've read these?” Burston asks as he slides copies of the morning edition articles across the table.
“Yeah. Sure. Read ’em all.”
Burston lights a cigarette, drags, and in the cloud of smoke asks, “Mind if I smoke?”
“Nope.”
Burston flips his notepad open. “Okay, kid, give me your side of the story.”
Was he a friendly or what? “I thought your byline was Entertainment.”
Burston doesn’t lift his pen from the pad. “That's true.”
“Why are you interviewing me? This is a political case.”
Burston pencil-drums his pad, not looking at Jared; exhales. “All they want is the personal stuff on you guys—you know, bios. Where you were born, went to school, all that stuff. Glamour, if you have any!” He says glamour with a tiny chuckle.
“Ah,” Jared prolongs the “Ahh,” indicating that his secret plot has been exposed. “Ah, Plan C.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.” He pauses, then, “Look, who we are, who I am, is of no consequence. What's important is what we did, and why we did it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It is. What do you think we were doing, going on joy rides?”
Burston sizes up that this will go nowhere, fast. Contentious SOB! he mutters to himself while sucking a dying smoke and then stubbing it out. Within almost the same motion, he lights another. Quickly blows a stream, picks his pen back up, preparing for a more tedious drill than anticipated.
“Kid, if you want some press, you're going to have to follow my program. I'm not here as your propaganda agent.”
“Bullshit! Whose propaganda agent are you?!”
As a distraction, Burston begins to doodle. Jared watches him closely, thinking that he's going to start writing something.
“Kid, let me ask you some questions. First, are you part of a national network, some kind of conspiracy?”
“That's so much bullshit. I can't believe you'd even honor it with a question.”
“Maybe. But it's on the Feds' mind.”
“Yeah. Right. Sure. They wish there was something organized about the Resistance. What they can't handle is that things just keep happening! I mean, man, I hear about draft raids and blockades and actions, and all that just happens. What's frightening about all this nonviolent Resistance is that it is unorganized . . . Something powerful, something spiritual's afloat across America. And they can't stop it, because it ain't organized!”
Burston’s observing Jared as closely as Jared’s been following his every move, each trying to read between the lines. He wants more; much more. Characteristically, Jared responds to his silence by talking. Stands and walks, circling the table; compulsion.
“Conspiracy! Okay. I’ll tell you there's a conspiracy. Of the Spirit! Of the Will! This is a really strange time, let me tell you that. Who'd have thought so much nonviolent Resistance would just pop up, here and there around the country? And from white middle-class kids! Dig it!. Doesn't that make you stop and think? I mean, I could never figure it out. No one I know studied Nonviolence in America in school. And we sure as hell didn't learn about the Civil Rights movement in graduate school. There were no Martin Luther Kings in our pulpits!
“Hell, we were programmed for violence, not nonviolence. I was even in ROTC! Believe that, me!— Kill a Cong for Christ! So, who’s talking about a conspiracy? The only conspiracy's been the conspiracy for violence, and that’s well organized. The damn FBI knows that!”
As the kid talks—harangues!—Burston can't help but picture him as a soldier. A Big Mick, wild, with a touch of German in his logical intensity. In another life, a Hitler Youth?
Yes, another life—Burston’s memory is jogged. “Jennings, the Hermit Jock!” Headlines and titles: “All State,” “Minnesota Rookie of the Year,” “College of St. Clement's First Little All-American.” Sure, he’s seen this body of brawn dance and cavort and raise cheerleaders' nipples. But then, a stud gone spiritual. Just what those monks wanted . . . or was it?
Burston knows most of this story. In his senior year Jared made his own self-styled anti-war protest. He dropped out of basketball, refused to talk to any NBA scouts, killing whatever slim chance he had to advertise himself. Then took to the deep woods behind St. Clement's monastery. He finished his degree as a “commuter”—actually a hermit. A friendly faculty adviser brought him his tasks and his books.
He lived in a hut. No electricity. No plumbing. A veggie diet. Candlelight, but no broads. Few knew what he did. All was mystery and rumor. Dope? Talks with Jesus? Running away from himself?
For the whole senior basketball season, his was a running story, often a joke, lampooned. “Does the jock itch?” A pun on his woodsy sanitation, or lack thereof, and his vaunted—no, crazed love—no, addiction to basketball. But by spring, his was a story without ink, and a protest forgotten by most on campus, as “taking it to the streets” action was everywhere in the air.
As to the kid's politics, Burston believes he knows it—nonviolent Jesus and all that. Burston isn’t anticipating any great revelation on that topic. Also, he’s seasoned enough not to get pumped by the FBI briefing. He scoffed at them, “You’re really calling him a Benedict Arnold?” All told, he doesn't expect Jared will break and reveal to him some Pulitzer Prize–winning story exposing the workings of some “Secret Brotherhood of the Nonviolent Cross” or something really far-out like that. “Conspiracy?” he said to the Feds. “What hard evidence do you guys have?” They were noncommittal, but they pushed him to work Jared with it. He agreed.
Burston draws his line, questioning, “Second, where do you get your funding?”
“There's no funding. What do you think, we rent Rolls Royces to do these raids? Hey, man, maybe you should take some pictures of Matt's road boat. It's a '57 Chevy clunker. Show them we go in style! …But seriously, we just live simply, that's all.”
Jared sits down, revved now and jazzed.
“Should I say you're volunteers?”
With gritted teeth, Jared leans across the table, face-to-face, snarling, “Don't play the fool with me!”
“No, I'm serious. How should I describe you guys? You’ve been running around for six months terrorizing Uncle Sam, breaking into his draft boards. You certainly couldn't've been working all that time. Somebody has to be picking up the tab?”
There’d be no escape today. Ominously, his private guardians—young seminarians all in black with wicker baskets in hand—stand sentinel at the church’s entrance and exits. The habitually “early leavers” know they will be caught today. It’s hopeless. So they wait and watch as Father pulls himself up from his last prostration. Risen, he bows before the tabernacle and reverently turns, takes a step, almost begins to strut as each stride that takes him closer to the ancient, raised pulpit vitalizes him. Atop this promontory Holy Spirit fire blasts forth as he pleads, “GIVE! Give for the poor starving children of China! GIVE!”
And they give and they give again. Hard-rubbed nickels and bottom-of-the-purse pennies to the Fourth Collection. “For the pagan babies of China!”
There’s a hint of sincere curiosity behind Burston's questions that softens Jared a tad.
“Yeah. I see. Maybe that's what it looks like—from the outside. But here's how it is.” He sits back, legs crossed. “We're just a group of guys who've come together sort of spontaneously. Some met at the Draft Resistance Center, others at the Catholic Peace Center. Crazy as it might seem, only a few of us knew each other before the raids.
“For some, it starts out as frustration, mostly with their lack of political clout. For others, it’s with moral outrage just about war itself. Then, some are just pissed off in general about lots of things: racism, poverty—you know, lots of things. It sorta all just happens.”
Curiously, Jared stalls like a plane rising too fast. He’s self-conscious about dictating, uneasy at Burston’s rapid and intent writing. But he lets suspicion fly by, and continues.
“About six months ago we gathered—after Nixon's Christmas raid on Cambodia—and rapped for about a day. Most of us actually live communally. Like, we share most everything. Some of our friends give us a little money, some work part-time. We use food stamps. The whole line.”
Burston chuckles silently and quickly jots down “Food stamps! . . . Commune! Free love! . . . Aroma of marijuana!.” Hmmm, maybe there’s a sensational angle here after all! Despite his habitual instinct for the superficial, Burston is cooperating with the FBI because he wants a story, something truly radical, hopefully explosive! He desperately wants off Entertainment.
Tow puffs. Naw! He reconsiders, blots out the sensational imagery. There has to be something more to this guy. He fidgets a moment or two, trying to focus. He’s frustrated that he can't find a zinging focal point. But he can’t let on. Otherwise, he might spook Jared.
Burston sticks his pen’s tip into his reporter’s pad. He does this once, twice. He’s aware of being both stumped by and fascinated with Jared's innocence.
Maybe that’s the story?
“The guy's sure no dope,” the Fed's assured him, briefing him fairly deeply on Jared's background—his education, his theology, and the list of raids and protests they’ve tracked. Taking their slant, Burston came prepared to meet a type of warrior or mercenary, not an altar boy. Nevertheless, that’s what he finds. It’s as if he’s seeing Jared in his papal white acolyte robes. Burston remembers others of this type. A type that fascinates him, draws forth his admiration, but from whom he distances himself as if they were aliens from another planet. Possibly it’s their physical contradiction that leaves him restless. Possibly he’s afraid.
He has no doubt: Jared is one of these, the Baby Face Nelson type. Brutes with cherubic demeanors. More, in Jared's case, an angelic air. Guys whose walk screams, “Savage! Animal! Ass-kicker!” but whose actions are rabbit-soft, cousins of Steinbeck's Lennie Small.
Burston really doesn't understand where “nonviolent resistance” comes from. At this point, he wishes the FBI's “Catholic Conspiracy” angle was true. It would easily resolve many, many of his long-standing unanswered questions.
Burston follows up on another objective listed during his FBI briefing. “Where’s all of this going?” He punctuates his question by vigorously snubbing out his fourth unfiltered cigarette on “going?”
Jared leans back, lifting the front feet of his chair. “Going? That's a truly philosophical question. Hmm. Well, here it is, man. Quote me: We’re stopping the war! Okay?”
“You gotta be kidding!”
“Well, who the hell is stopping the war?”
Burston doesn't want to get mired in that question. “Kid, who's gonna believe you? Do you think Nixon's going to read about your arrest and say to Kissinger, Oh, dear, let's stop the war, Henry, they're rioting in the North Country!”
Jared half-laughs, snorts. “Are you a jaded motherfucker or what, Burston? Didn't you learn anything from the Civil Rights movement?”
As if stung by a quick jab to the gut, Burston jams his elbows on the table. Sweat beads pop and dance along his brow. He’s fading towards pale. His face is a pasty pallor. The sudden change stuns Jared. He’s uncharacteristically slow in responding.
“What's the matter—ulcers?”
Burston wipes his forehead with his coat sleeve. Recovers. Stands up and starts to haltingly circle around the table. Jared eyes him, full circle once or twice, then drops his surveillance. Moved by a monastic habit, Jared’s brow tilts forward and he focuses on his own hands, giving Burston some private space. Burston completes five laps before replying, “I'm okay. Just an old problem. Bad coffee.” But he doesn't look okay.
“. . . killed the nigger.”
“You in?”
“Yeah. Okay. … Did you have to kill him?”
“Don't let it bust yo’ balls.”
The locker room wasn't ever empty. Others heard. Accepted this way. Knew “truth” would tie his tongue. Make it “one of the guns.”
No one would ever, ever print the Truth. December 4, 1969. The Pulitzer Prize “Fred Hampton Story” he never wrote.
Burston never faced the truth about racism in capital letters before the execution of Hampton. “Who would believe me?” he often asks himself when drunk and remembering. “Who’d believe that that big badass Black Panther Fred Hampton – Shit, more charismatic than King! -- was really into nonviolence and serving breakfast to kids?”
Everyone knew – I’m no one’s fool! Burston boasts—that when Chicago’s Mayor Daley had Hampton blasted while he slept—Ya know, one of his inner cadre drugged him with Seconal was the rumor—it was political and career suicide to go up against da Boss.
“Okay, our goal,” Jared coughs into his hands, shifts in the chair, continues in earnest, “is to create symbols of Resistance. We want the blue-collar kid, the farm boy, the college student, to see that The System is vulnerable. Our raids are sand in the machinery of the Selective Service System. It's all really just that simple.”
With an unintended air of thanks, Burston finally finds a workable theme. “So you’re just another chapter in Minnesota Populism!” Certainly not radical, not the pop he wants. But, hell, I gotta get some ink on this. Later. The kid’ll pop later.
Burston makes a personal mental note to keep this kid tethered to him, somehow. For now, Burston laughs to himself, nothing too offensive. His typical approach. For sure, this case is hot, and he knows his final editor is J. Edgar himself. “Will he let me print even this?” Burston scratches in the notepad's margin, circling and circling the “he.”
Flipping the pad shut, he gathers his things, grinds his umpteenth butt, and moves towards departure. “Kid, I'm going to keep a line of communication open for you from here. Don't get me wrong—I don't particularly like what you did. But I owe a favor to someone who might have been one of you, given another time and place.”
“What do you mean, line of communication?”
“I mean just that. You need to get something out of here, contact a trustee named Victor. He'll get it to me.”
In jail’s social order, trustees are the odd few who do long County time instead of going to prison. Jared didn't care to understand the legality of it all, just that trustees can do things. They’re either good guys or informers. You take a high risk with them, but they get things done. Move things from inside out and outside in. Power brokers. Princes of gray eminence.
Burston knuckle-raps a call to the guard. Speaks while looking for the guard, not at Jared. “Right now, Kid, I just need some fluff on you guys. Like it or not, the politics of your action’s a dead issue.”
“Free speech,” Jared slowly enunciates, sarcastically.
Burston steps back towards Jared, leans down to eye level. “Kid, I first went on the Entertainment page by choice. Things happen.” Pauses. Tenses his stare, “ I've been in many jails, more than I want to remember. What's happening to you, I've seen it happen before. When Hoover gets personally involved, there are long strings on a reporter.”
“Wow, man! So, there is a conspiracy, but just from the other end?!”
“Something like that. Let's just say, interests of national security are in control here.”
“Yeah, I can dig that, but where are you—I mean, personally—on all of this?”
Burston pulls back upright, reaches out to shake Jared's hand. “Kid . . .” but breaks off as the guard keys the door.
Jared’s puzzled by Burston. Is he a plant? Who does he “owe”? Did he mean to imply that his former jails were in the South during the Civil Rights days? Is he a guilty liberal? Or a closet “red diaper baby” from the 1930s? Jared knows they abound in the Midwest. But, shit, he didn't even get what he came for. Jared didn’t tell him anything glamorous about himself or the guys.
“Shit!” Jared’s interview has pushed his frustration to boil. He fist-bangs, palm-slams on the door, ordering, “Guard, take me back to my cell!”
Next day, the morning edition headlines show something about the reporter behind Burston's veil of smoke. Front page: DRAFT RAIDERS EXEMPLARY STUDENTS. Inside: MOTHERS SUPPORT SONS IN THEIR PROTESTS. While there’s no editorial on their behalf, the accompanying article, under Burston's byline, is sympathetic. It draws heavily on interviews with their mothers, and paints what Jared labels “our Little Lord Fauntleroy biographies.” He could see Burston's touch, making The Four seem like “your boys.” As expected, there’s no political commentary at all. But hell, at least it makes us look human, and it also dims the stereotype of “violent radical revolutionaries” that the DA was pushing.
All said, Jared feels it’s all a grand waste. Nothing will come of it. Maybe it makes Burston feel better, I don't know. In fact, Jared’s a bit embarrassed. The article plays up his “genius” and “voracious appetite for books.” It casts a romantically mystical aura to his year as a hermit. Not a mention of the demons and ghouls who infest the forest, hungering for wandering monastic souls! Jared tosses the paper aside. Closes his eyes. Murmurs to the ever-present Novice Master, “Maybe it’s good for my pride. This left-handed compliment, painting me—more than the others—as an idealistic fool?”
The only positive thread Jared sees is the mention of their fathers and brothers who have served in various wars. It places his raider action in the warrior lineage of his brother, Larry, the Korean War hero and his dad, a WWII patriot. It might, just might, move someone else to realize that Resistance is the only patriotic act left. Maybe!
But, as discussed in pre-raid retreats, the raiders never expected anything positive from the Establishment media. For they are, as to class and economic status, just part of the anonymous middle class. Maybe upper-middle for Sean and Corey? They are just “someone's kids,” all coming from conservative to middle-of- the-road white-collar families. Sean's is a lawyering family on both sides. Corey’s been president of the university's student body. All have been to college and taken draft deferments. But theirs is a story that only the anti-Establishment underground press, like Minneapolis’ Hundred Flowers rag, would write as it is. Sadly, that was, in sum, preaching to the converted.
The everyday citizen would never hear their story: Patriot or Outlaw? Never fully understand how the anti-war movement is fueled by their neighbor's kid who, over time, has step-by-step become angrier and angrier. Angry that the war’s never been officially declared. Angry that LBJ snake-oiled everybody with his Bay of Tonkin resolution. Angrier when troop deployments keep escalating. Mad and madder, as the damn Selective Service gets weirder. Maddest, as deferments are willy-nilly removed. And then they run a lottery, bejesus! Beyond maddest, when one after another leading liberal gets up and shows that the Emperor Has No Balls. Big fucking story!
“Fucked, things are just fucked here in Amerika. Got that, Mr. Reporter? Yeah, man, with a ‘k,’ as in Klu Klux Klan. Racists, dumbass, fucked-up Amerika. We hunt niggers for sport. We even have a limited open season on white kids now. See your local college or university for permits!
“We like to lie to ourselves daily. Just witness our wonderful Evening News, where flayed bodies of babies, some burnt to ‘crispy critters,’ are brought to you by our patriotic sponsors, Honeywell and Dow Chemical.”
But Jared knows even he himself can't say that, even if at times he feels that way. For his true story, and that of the others, he believes—except Aaren is a bitter, unvoiced interjection—is the story of nonviolent resistance. A long story going back to the eighteenth-century American anti-slavery Quaker John Woolman, up through nineteenth-century abolitionists and women liberationists, to Martin Luther King, our “dead King.”
Rolling up the newspaper, Jared starts to pound the bars with it. “No one cares! No one gives a royal fuck!”
Heavenly Father, why am I here?
The next morning, after his allotted weekly shower, as he’s being escorted back to his cell, the mind-fuck games continue.
“Hey, this isn't my cell!” Jared protests, resisting the push in. “What the fuck's going on. man?”
The guard ignores him. Just shoves him in and leave.
“Who . . . the fuck?” He’s not alone. On the far bunk sits a burly, tattooed, almost toothless, shit-ugly biker.
“Hi, cutie, c'mon ovah har 'n sets down,” his new cellmate entices while patting the mattress. Jared is at a total loss.
“Is this a motherfucking joke or what?” he swears, then turns, ignoring the guy and looking down the corridor. But he has to know! Over his shoulder, face pressed on the bars, “What's your name?”
The guy laughs: a small sound, almost a titter. Jared is buzzed. The stupid interview and now this!
Suddenly, he hears Matt's voice, rising uncommonly loud.
“Matt, where are you?”
“Hey, Brother J, I'm here.” Nervous—anxious.
“Where?”
“Next door I think.” Matt’s left arm appears through the bars of the cell to Jared’s right.
“Goddam, good to see someone,” Jared sighs in relief. Then, thunk! and Matt shrieks, “Stop!” The sound drifts off into a faint drone.
“Jesus, Matt, what's going on?” Only thumps, thuds, and grunts answer. Matt’s in serious trouble!
“Matt! Matt!”
“Rest raht don har, sweetie!” his cellmate coos.
Jared spins around and stares, wide-eyed at his mate. “What's going on?” he thumb-jerks towards Matt's cell. “What the fuck are they pulling on us now?”
The hulk stands up and takes one long stretching step towards Jared; arrives at arm's length.
“Cutie, c'mon, lats me shew yer a gud time.”
Fuckhead! Jared screams inside, shouting it over and over almost in unison with the grunts and bangs and curses from Matt's cell.
“Matt! Matt! Tell me what to do!”
Jared flings himself against the bars, jerks them, kicks and shouts frantically, “Guards! Guards! Riot! Riot!”
But no one responds. Not even echoes, as his cries fade. Jesus! With a chill he realizes that all the other cells in this strip are empty. There’s not one other inmate to pick up on his call. It's too late to be absolved for missing another survival clue: the quiet should have aroused his suspicion. In here, a TV is always blaring, but he was overwrought and missed the cue. Absolve me, Pater!
Out loud, desperate, “Jesus, Holy Mother—Jesus, what are they doing this for?”
As Jared slumps off the bars and turns, his shoulder bumps his cellmate's. He recoils, more in shock than fear. “Back off, motherfucker!”
The mate says, “Neme's Brooza, wat's yers?”
“Jesus, motherfucker, you must be kidding me!” Jared almost laughs in comic relief at finding a fucking polite biker! “You're a stone motherfucking fag!”
“Yespth,” Bruiser winks, feigning a lisp.
Jared sidesteps to the far side of the cell. Bruiser drops his trousers, clutches his big cock and starts rubbing it, then waves it towards Jared like a radar gun.
“I'se nit lek Hareld nixt door. He'za real ass bangar. Nit me. I catch.” And with that said, he crawls onto the lower bunk and sets himself up doggie style.
“Ef yer neece to me, I’se dun't snitch on yer.”
Jared can't believe this is happening. What's happening to Matt? Not another sound comes from that direction. What’s this asshole fag, homo, bitch queer doing here? Does he really expect me to bang him?
“Are you fucking crazy? I pitch only to broads!” Jared flings that remark, irritated but almost casually, as if waving off an obnoxious door-to-door salesman.
Bruiser doesn't move from his spot. “C'mon, yer leecky. Hacks mek funnie mestake. Tink I'se a bangar. I'se not.” Coos again, “I lek to git broozed. Dat's how’da I git mis name! So, c'mon Big Mon, geve mes all yas got. I cun teke it!” A request that’s almost pleading, desirous, fearful of a lost opportunity.
Ominously, “Ef yer dun't tekes me. Hareld gets en,” as he thumb-points to Matt’s cell. “’N yer wun't lek wat he'za doin’!”
The Novice Master draws prayerful, shaking hands together as Otto asks about the moans and groans late at night. “Is someone overdoing it with private flagellation?”
The Master sighs. Alien amidst their geography, Otto maneuvered past robes in heaps in front of dormitory beds as he stumbled without his glasses in disoriented nighttime piss runs quite often in the Seminary. Now, in the Novitiate, he’s “Sure, I'm absolutely sure!” that the closed cell doors, whose aperture width is defined with inches of specificity in the Common Rules, give absolute evidence and proof about a group of heretical extremists. “Definite flagellants!”
Ah, how the Master wishes it was so. He’d readily handle heretical Flagellants rather than roust and chastise catamites!
“Pray! Pray!” The Master assures Friar Otto that only prayer will chase this Evil One away.
“Matt!” Jared yells, frantically, “MattMattMattMatt!” No response. Matt! ripped from his heart, his soul, but there is no energy left. He’s mute. Senses the hopelessness of it all. Desperately craves a response, but no words or sounds come back.
Why what happens happens—what it is that moves from within him, what spiritual force capitulates him from the person Burston met to the force that Jared becomes, what is released by his capture and caging—Jared will only understand much later. For, as if responding to Matt's cries—and to Bruiser's siren invitation—Jared steps over to the bunk and kicks Bruiser hard in the ass. Quinn? It’s a rock-thud hard blow, tearing an inch of muscle. Bruiser squeals. The bleat ignites Jared. Quinn. Detonates a fuse, a long-distance detonation set off by remote depth control, a simple, small sound that draws forth avalanche and earthquake. “What did you do to get him so angry?” What did I do? Dad . . . what did I do? Why doesn’t anyone believe me?
With the swift and savage motions of a jackal upon a new kill, Jared repeatedly hits and strikes. Again and again. On the back, the neck. Grabs Bruiser’s head, turns him around, hard-drives a knee to his gut. Ceaselessly kicking and punching, Jared works up a steaming sweat. The cell is soon a steam bath: sweat dripping, piss odors, ancient crud and cum dust billowing up with each blow.
Jared is working like a blacksmith, pounding with thunder and intensity. Some part of him knows that he’s in the land of crazy, but no part fights against it. Without qualm, he rages against Bruiser's body, a lump over two hundred and fifty pounds. A lump of meat which he beats, hammers, fashions as if iron on the anvil. He molds Bruiser’s animal sounds, growlings from deep caves, into a frenzy of hurt. He clubs with all his might into manic exhaustion.
At last, fists powerless, fingers limp, right arm like a dead fish, there comes a deep echo: “Ite Missa est!” The Mass is ended. Finished. Consummated. Jared steps away, teeters, almost faints as he staggers and slams his own forgotten body against the toilet’s wall, sliding down into a puddle, left arm resting on the lidless shitter.
Bruiser is all whimper and sob. Jared is totally oblivious. His mind went blank with the last flailing blow. All that registers are the aches in his hands and arms. Before he can figure out what just did happen, Bruiser is at his side, unbuckling Jared’s belt and tugging down his pants. Jared defends not against this assault; cannot. Eyes can barely focus on Bruiser, yet a spark of awareness burns into his soul. Green eyes! . . . Char green!
“Pell 'em dan er tha hacksa wun't beleeves mes.”
Mesmerized, Jared robotically jerks at his pants and slides them off. Bruiser yanks off Jared's shoes. Then reaches up, twists and snaps a button or two from Jared's shirt with one hand while mussing his hair with the other.
Jared can’t will himself to move anymore. Bruiser stands, buckles his own pants, and before going to the cell's gate, turns to Jared and says cloyingly, “Tanks, sweet pee!”
The perversity of it all doesn't hit Jared until Bruiser has left and he gets up to lie on his bunk. Streaks of blood and several wads of cum are prima facie evidence of Bruiser's delights.
That night, Jared desperately gives the story of the staged rape to the trustee, Victor. Is Victor part of the plot? Regardless, he’s Jared's only hope. The story cannot convey Jared's pain over his powerlessness. His anger at himself. His sense of guilt that he drew Bruiser by chance. Matt was removed at the same time that Bruiser left. Jared couldn't imagine what had gone on, doesn’t want to. He wonders if Matt fought back or whether he yielded in passive nonresistance.
“Does it matter?” Jared asks himself, audibly. He can hear Matt's response: “Nope.” Fuck that karma shit, man! “Look, man, it’s about ignorance. No matter if you’re violent or nonviolent, what are you learning about yourself?” Fuck that karma shit, man! He can see Matt’s sly smile.
Jared knows that Matt's commitment to “passive nonresistance” is as profound as his many silences. What will he say about my actions? Have I betrayed the principles that bind us together? More, Jared cannot suppress his sense of relief that he had not had the opportunity to “lay down his life.” Quite simply, getting raped or being forced to suck cock were sacrifices beyond the pale, demands for a fidelity beyond his comprehension, a call for obedience more radical than he has ever conceived possible. No matter if you’re violent or nonviolent, what are you learning about yourself?
For Jared, it’s to be a long night of bad dreams.
There is one haunting dream that comes back again this night, comes back time and again after Jared escapes the dream, drenched in sweat, heart pounding. Time and again upon release back into sleep, it reruns. Through the main door of a medieval cathedral he goes, processing down the center aisle, drawn by the scent of frankincense and the lure of Gregorian chant, here the beauty of the Ambrosian Gloria. Met at the altar rail by a hooded monk, they proceed behind the altar to a hidden doorway that opens upon a blessing whose phrases are garbled. Down a swirling stairway they float, feet almost not on the ground, till they come to a second doorway, the entrance to a confessional. They enter and find themselves standing before a lectern from which a bodiless voice emanates: “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” This phrase repeats over and over.
He and his companion bow and leave by another door, foreboding in its massiveness, opening this time with words clearly understood, “Christus Victor!” They enter into darkness. Here refrains of “Kyrie eleison!” reverberate. The companion lights a candle that casts a misty glow about the room. Through the mist flow decapitated bodies, mutilated faces, and a stench of pungent lilac perfume, so dense that he gags. They wade through the carnage, slowly, like pilgrims sightseeing. His companion chants, “Christus Victor! Christus Victor!”
Then another room unveils upon the battle cry, “Milites Christi!” Within is a staggering squad of these “Soldiers of Christ,” in military dress of uncountable wars, each mutilating his own flesh. They do not scream or writhe in pain. One walks to Jared and cuts a chunk of flesh from his own arm, offers it on point's end. “Ad majorem Dei gloriam,” the soldier intones, “To the greater glory of God.” Two, three others approach him in like manner. Still Jared and his companion reveal only the curiosity of relic seekers.
They approach a fourth door, tabernacular in design, and upon entering hear “Hoc est enim corpus meum!”(“For this is my body!”) which is soon muffled as wild screeching racks his ears, loud martial music booms, and the two are suddenly in a vast hall, of grand Baroque design, filled with crying babies and mothers being raped, mothers of all colors, by men of all colors; the noise is cacophonous but glorious, itself one with the Gregorian swell.
Jared and his companion proceed, observing the utter terror in the eyes of the women, registering the frantic wails of the babes. They move towards a large divan at one end of the room, a gilded, plushly arrayed, silk and diamond-studded couch. Upon it reclines a fright-eyed young damsel, amply endowed, with flowing black hair, wild black eyes. An exultant voice rising in pitch repeats, “Hoc est enim corpus meum,” and, as if practiced in this ritual, Jared disrobes. Naked, his companion girds him with a golden cord, drapes his back with a cloak of moonlight white. Then Jared kneels on the divan, effortlessly parts the woman's legs; she is like the mouse trapped by the cat, narcotized by fear. As he lays his body upon her, whispers rise from her trembling lips, gaining in volume, “I am NOT your body. I am NOT your body!” Words that catapult him back in wrenching screams: “No, no, no . . . !” The sounds fade in echoes, as if falling into a bottomless well . . . and he wakes.
It’s almost a ritual by now, his waking response. Despite himself, he reaches for his penis, holds it gently and massages it, ever fearful that it is receding within, never to return. Once erect, fondling it, he falls into a deep sleep. It is hours before he wakes, again. Once awake, conscious of his dreamy adventure, Jared habitually reaches for his Bible. He holds it, yet never reads it. Sits there, holding it like a talisman.
Habitually, but not now. There is no Bible. Just him, holding this dream. Jared raises his eyes to heaven, utters not a prayer, rather angrily implores, “Why do you let your demons in here? Isn’t the monastic hermitage their den of pleasure? Wasn’t that enough? Am I never ever to sleep alone?”
Curse God and die! – the advice of Job’s wife glides through his mind.
What adds to the fright tonight is the appearance of Aaren's face. She’s the woman on the divan! What does that mean? Jared knows enough about dream interpretation to understand that all this is supposed to mean something about him, not her, not his mother, not his girl Char, not any other woman. But do I believe that?
He has shared only a fragment of this dream with Char. He can't bear to tell her the graphic parts, just an abstract rendition of the rape. He trusts her. She’s a comforting nurse, one with depthless compassion. Plus she shares his Catholic background.
Char’s take on it: “Men hate women. Catholicism teaches that. Adam really hated Eve, didn't he? And American males get a double dose with their macho cowboy culture. You have a lot of violence which you have to face. That's the road to nonviolence, isn't it, through violence?”
God, how she left him feeling like an insect wiggling on a pin! Am I violent when I avoid violence? If I accept my own violence, how will I ever get out of its clutch? Such questions just churn up his psychological water, and point to no harbor in sight.
Damn, what would she say about Bruiser?
Would she say that he did right? He knows why he attacked Bruiser. Violence—that, he knows how to give. He stated the same to Burston, underlined it: “We're programmed for violence!” Said it while standing, flexing his muscles like the famous body-builder, Charles Atlas.
Bruiser’s easy to please because he’s a sicko male. Just “Thwack!” and “Pow!” punches. He receives and, Jared figures, he probably can pitch, too. The baseball imagery fits. Pitch and catch. That's all there appears to be: fuck and come! It defines the satisfied male. And religion just raises it to a symbolic level. Bread and wine. Flesh and blood. Blood and guts. “YOU'RE GOING TO BURN FOR THIS!” is a banner dredged from the memory of his early Catholic formation. But he knows he won't. Or will he?
To the empty cell, “Hell, if I'm going to hell, fuck it all!” Moving around slowly, Jared makes his bed and attempts to sleep one more time. He has no idea what time of night or early morning it is. The row is quiet. Ominously quiet. Apparently he’s still alone. Strange.
Jared dips back into sleep, only to bolt awake again within minutes. He shivers, then shakes. Shudders into cold sweating without warning. The cell is freaking Midwest July hot, but Jared is ice-cold, chilled. He starts to dry-retch. Coughs and grabs his gut, dry-heaves until he prays he'll pass out.
He strips the blankets from the upper bunk, cocoons, curls to fetal. Hands, feet, lips and teeth shake, tremble and grind.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Mary mother of God! What's happening?”
His eyes burn, itching and on fire. His legs jerk up and cramp into fetal lock. His calves and thighs knot and spasm, like twisted fingers. He’s all ache and burn, then everything lurches downward, out of his control. Thoughts of They've drugged me! clamor inside his throbbing head. He’s never felt such seething pain. Hot stabs randomly occur at his joints, legs, wrists, ankles, and he continues to retch violently loud. Like a bullfrog with a bullhorn, “Gaaaoomph! Gaaaoomph!” But nothing is delivered, nothing born. Nothing propels out from within.
When Jared wakes in the morning, he feels glued to the sheets. Only the daylight convinces him that he survives. Had it been dark still, he might have surrendered all. Every muscle in his body is sore and twitching. This must be what it's like to get run over, crosses his mind as he lugs and drags his hands from his toes to the top of his head. He could not begin to count the aches, nor discern what happened. He's just grateful that at some point he passed out—or at least his mind can’t confront in memory what really happened.
Jared knows what he must do. “Beseech Jesus! Beseech His forgiveness with your groans! Groan loud enough to wake a deaf monk!” He kneels down by the side of his bed, folds his hands in worship, straightens up his back and tilts his face upwards, whispers, “Thy will be done!” Murmurs, “Thy will be done!” Then increasingly loudly, “Thy will be done!” Till he bellows. “THY WILL BE DONE!”
“Shut the fuck up, asshole, I'm trying to sleep,” lets Jared know that the jailors have returned this day to normal.