I
knew she felt me looking at her but she did not turn.
Sergeant
Mike was in his element. This was his moment, his own Kodak moment, and even as
he was congratulating everyone there were other soldiers, men and women, moving
among the crowd to corral the recruits, to guide them to a bank of tables where
seated men held forms and pens and documents of release.
I was
terrified.
I
thought for one awful moment that I might involuntarily stand, that I would be
whisked to the side, that I would be clapped on the shoulder, that I would feel
strange hands shaking mine, that a man with stern eyes and a sterner voice
would want to know my name, my age, my height, my weight.
But I
didn't stand.
I sat
like a statue.
I
barely breathed.
The
noise seemed to go on forever. An hour. A day. A week perhaps.
No-one
looked at me. There were no accusatory glances. No-one leaned forward to ask me
what my problem was, did I not care for my family's freedom, did I not care for
the American way of life?
For
that small mercy I was eternally grateful.
And
when the noise was quelled and the crowds settled I looked up and saw Sergeant
Mike had gone.
Serpent
Mike,
the little boy had said, and of all those who attended that night -
the fathers and mothers, the brothers, sisters, cousins and neighbors, those
from Myrtle Beach and Orangeburg who thought perhaps there was a circus in
town, the little ones who would go home and find their brothers' beds empty - I
believed that that little boy had spoken the real and only truth.
I
never said a thing.
Like
before, there are some things only to be known by yourself and God.
Later,
the tent down, the ground scattered with paper plates, chicken bones, brochures
trampled into the dirt beneath a thousand feet, Nathan and I stood and watched
as soldiers folded the vast canvas and packed it into a truck. The boys who had
become men that night had already left in buses.
Forty-six
of them in all.
By
Christmas all but twelve would be dead.
One of
them would return, having left much of the lower half of his body in Da Nang or
Ky Lam or some other godforsaken place.
His
name was Luke Schaeffer. He was a football player before he went, a good one, a
young man who would have walked a scholarship with the speed of that right arm.
He
told me stories I cannot bear to recall, even now - older, hardened, a little
cynical - there are images of which he spoke that threaten my sanity.
I did
not ask why then, I do not ask it now.
There
are some things that just are.
They
are part of being human.
And
that, if nothing else, was never a matter of choice.
The
priest who visited me at Sumter possessed an honest enough face. I would later
learn that this was a new gig for him, and I believed that perhaps some impropriety
or breach of conduct had brought him this position. Counsel to the dead. I
couldn't imagine anyone choosing to perform such a task.
His
name was Father John Rousseau, he was perhaps in his early forties, and he smoked
ceaselessly, one cigarette after the other. The Counselling Room, known as
God's Lounge
to those who still possessed sufficient humor to bother with
such things, was a narrow room with a single plain deal table, two chairs, a
one-way window through which interviews were video-taped, and a two-shelf
bookcase. In the center of the upper shelf were two books. A copy of the New
Testament & Psalms, and a Gideon's Bible.
John
Rousseau brought his own Bible, a beaten-to-shit leather volume which he clutched
as one would clutch the hand of a small child in a funfair crowd.
I
liked Rousseau's face, and despite our brief weekly meetings being neither a
matter of choice nor relevance, I appreciated the fact that I could spend an
hour talking to someone who seemed more concerned with my religious and
spiritual salvation than my lock-down time.
Our
first meeting was in August of 1982. It was a Tuesday, I remember that much,
and though I grew to like Father John Rousseau he began our first meeting on
the wrong foot.
He
greeted me, shook my hand, asked me to sit there at the plain deal table, and
then he told me he cared for neither my innocence nor my guilt.
A man
on Death Row thinks of little else but his own innocence or guilt.
He
then told me that he knew I was going to die, that he had spoken with
Penitentiary Warden Hadfield and there was little hope of any further effective
action being taken to either stay my execution or gain a reprieve. He said he
understood some of the details of my case and trial, that the issues raised had
cast it into the arena of politics, and once it had reached that point there
was little anyone would do to reverse the decisions made. It had become a
matter of losing face.
I
remember feeling the first stirrings of violence within. I was not a violent
man - never had been - but the almost complacent nonchalance with which he
seemed to pronounce my forthcoming death angered me. I clenched my fists
beneath the table, white balls of tense knuckles, and had I believed it would
serve any purpose I might have lashed out. If not physically, at least
verbally.
I
held my hands and my tongue. I was in no position to endanger the sole source
of human contact I might have.
And
then Father John Rousseau asked me about my faith.
'Faith?'
I asked back.
Father
John nodded. He gripped that Bible like a lifeline to the shore.
I
remember looking towards the one-way window; I smiled for the video camera, and
then I shrugged my shoulders.
'I
have faith, Father,' I said. 'But I don't know that I have faith in the same
things as you.'
Father
John smiled. I imagined he'd heard it all.
'And
what do you think I have faith in, Daniel?' he said.
I
shrugged, half-smiled. I was thinking more about if he would give me a
cigarette.
'God,'
I said. 'Jesus Christ, the crucifixion, the Virgin birth, Mary Magdalene,
Lazarus and turning water into wine. The loaves and fishes, and the parting of
the Red Sea, Moses coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments,
eternal damnation for me and eternal Paradise for yourself. I imagine those
things are what you believe in.'
Father
John smiled.
He
did exactly what I wanted him to do: he offered me a cigarette.
I
took one gratefully. I could not remember the last time I had smoked a whole
cigarette to myself.
'I
believe in some of those things,' Father John said. 'Though I don't actually
believe in eternal damnation for anyone.'
I
frowned.
'I
think Hell is allegorical,' he went on. 'I think Hell has been marketed as a
concept to obtain compliance from the people -'
'Marketed?'
I asked.
Father
John smiled sardonically. 'The Church has to market a product like anyone else,
Daniel.'
I
smiled, a little sarcastically perhaps.
'Anyway,
I don't think there's such a thing as Hell,' he repeated.
'And
Heaven?' I asked.
Father
John shook his head. 'I don't think Heaven is a location, I think it's a
spiritual state.'
I
didn't reply.
'So
what do you believe, Daniel?' he eventually asked. He lit another cigarette,
his fifth or sixth since he'd sat down.
'Believe?'
I asked. 'I believe a lot of things.'
Father
John did not say anything; he merely looked at me inquisitively.
'You
want to know what I believe?'
Father
John nodded affirmatively.
I
leaned back and thought for a moment. 'I believe there are still Cheyenne Dog
Soldiers in the Oxbow. I believe that The Rolling Stones killed Brian Jones. I
believe that Elvis is alive and well, maybe a hundred and seventy-five or two
hundred pounds in weight, and lives somewhere out west on a ranch. I believe
that they never really went to the moon, and all the pictures they sent back
were manufactured in a studio at NASA. I believe Gus Grissom was gonna blow the
whistle and they whacked him…'
I
looked across at Father John. His expression was intent.
'You
want me to go on?' I asked.
He
nodded.
'I
believe Kennedy was killed by some super-elite political and financial
fraternity like the Bilderberg Group because he was too popular, because he was
interested in white- black integration, because he was a wild card. I believe
Joe Kennedy made a deal with the Mafia, people like Sam Giancana and his crew,
to help get his son the presidency and in exchange promised that JFK would go
easy on organized crime, but when it got to the real deal JFK reneged and upset
everyone in Vegas and L.A. and Florida and New York. I believe Marilyn Monroe
was murdered because she slept with JFK. I believe Sirhan Sirhan was part of
Operation Artichoke or the CIA's MK Ultra Project, and he was brainwashed into
killing Robert Kennedy because it looked like Kennedy might make it to the
White House. I think Ted Kennedy was set up for Chappaquiddick so he wouldn't
even think of going that way. And I think Martin Luther King and Che Guevara
were murdered because they represented too much change and rebellion and
running against the grain.'
I
reached for another cigarette without asking. Father John made no comment.
'I
think Nixon was the golden boy, and then he went crazy, started talking to his
dead mother and thinking everyone was following him, and whoever it was that
controlled the government knew they couldn't whack the guy in broad daylight
like JFK, so they set him up with the whole Watergate fiasco. Bernstein and
Woodward were given all the help they needed by someone inside Nixon's
administration, and Haldeman and Mitchell and Porter and the others were just
the fall guys who happened to be around at the time. And I think that the Cuban
missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs and what happened in Dallas were reminders
to all Americans that their lives really meant nothing at all. They could go up
with an atomic bomb, or they could rise to the greatest position in the
country, and it didn't matter a fuck because they could kill you anyway. After
the early '60s it all went to hell, and with Vietnam and 35,000 men a month
flying into someone else's war, everyone kind of gave up and resigned
themselves to a life of TV and Prozac and calorie-counting and aluminum
sidings.'
I
paused.
'That's
what I believe, Father John.'
Father
John was quiet for a time, and then he said: 'You didn't go to Vietnam, did
you?'
It
was a question I had not expected, a question I never liked.
I
shook my head.
'What
happened?' Father John asked.
'It's
a long story,' I said, in a weak attempt at dissuading him from pursuing his
line of questioning. My sense of anger had passed, and in its place came a neatly
folded package of fatigue and frustration. I did not understand the point of
the questions. I could not see what purpose they might serve.
'I've
got time,' Father John said.
I
smiled. 'But I haven't.'
'You
have something better to do?'
I
shook my head.
'You
have today,' Father John said, 'and one today is better than two tomorrows.'
I
looked at him. 'Who said that?'
Father
John smiled. 'Benjamin Franklin.'
'One
today is better than two tomorrows,' I repeated.