I
turned away. I could not face him. My heart thundered in my chest. My fists
were clenching and releasing. My pulse raced like a derailed freight train.
I
opened my mouth to speak, not knowing what to say.
'Your
decision,' Nathan said quietly.
I
closed my mouth.
I
thought of my mother, the memory of my father. I thought of Eve Chantry, of Dr.
Backermann. I thought of Marty Hooper and Larry James lying dead and stiff and
cold in the middle of nowhere. I thought of Caroline Lanafeuille, of Linny
Goldbourne, of Sheryl Rose Bogazzi whom I had never touched, never kissed, but
still somehow managed to love from afar despite her ultimate betrayal.
I
thought least of all of myself.
'I -'
Nathan
raised his hand.
'Your
decision,' he repeated quietly.
I
looked at him, and for a moment I did not recognize the man who sat facing me.
He seemed a stranger.
'I
cannot let you go alone,' I said.
'That
isn't a decision, Danny,' Nathan replied.
I
felt like crying.
'I
haven't received my notice,' I said.
My
voice sounded unfamiliar.
Nathan
didn't reply, merely looked back at me with that same detached expression.
'My
ma…'
Nathan
started to rise from the chair.
'Wait,'
I said. 'Sit down, Nathan. Talk to me…'
Nathan
shook his head. 'I don't want to talk any more, Danny. We've done all the
talking we need to. I've made a decision, and the decision stands whether you
come or not.'
'I'm
coming,' I blurted out, and even as the words left my lips I realized that once
again there had been no self- determined decision.
My
response was involuntary.
I was
running on automatic.
'You're
coming?' Nathan asked.
I started
to nod my head. I felt as if someone was moving my neck from behind.
'I'm
coming,' I said. 'I'm definitely coming.'
Nathan
nodded. He did not smile. He didn't hug me or shake my hand, he didn't clap me
on the shoulder or anything else.
He
just nodded.
I
felt my insides turn cold and loose.
'So
get ready,' Nathan said matter-of-factly.
'Yes…
get ready,' I mumbled.
I
made for the door, my legs like lead, my feet like large wooden blocks
tenuously attached. I could see my father's face, that expression of
admonishment he wore when the Daniel he'd raised was not being the Daniel he
wished for.
I saw
my mother, her expression of quiet patience as my father scolded me, and then
her comfort afterwards, the way she would make me believe it was all for my own
good.
And I
had believed her, believed her so well I could never doubt her.
I
started upstairs towards my room. I felt the weight of the entire universe
slowing me down, and with each footfall on each riser the sound of my narrow
heart came in unison.
I
felt Nathan waiting downstairs.
I
felt pulled in all directions, and how much of that I could stand I had no
idea.
I
believed - perhaps for the first time in my life - that the real world had
arrived.
And
with it came all these things, and they weighed so much, and they bore down
upon me like a mountain and an ocean and a thousand fallen trees.
But
the greatest weight was the lie.
That
it had been my decision.
It
had not, and I knew it, and I believed Nathan did too.
I
closed the bedroom door behind me and started to pack.
Clarence
Timmons came down to speak with me today. I asked after his wife. He seemed
pleased that I remembered. He said she was doing a little better, that some
physiotherapy had been recommended and he would help her with that.
And
then he said: 'But I didn't come down to talk to you about my wife.'
He
said it as though I would have been surprised.
'They're
coming down to weigh you,' he said.
Clarence
Timmons nodded in an almost avuncular fashion.
'They're
going to weigh you every week from now on… they're also going to do a medical
check every month to make sure you're…'
'Healthy
enough to die,' I said, which was unfair, because Clarence Timmons was a good
man and he had difficulty dealing with this.
I had
learned that there were those who chose to work on D-Block and there were those
who were posted without choice. Such a man was Mr. Timmons. Perhaps he had
believed he could help, make some reforms, assist some convicts to recover a
sense of self-esteem and personal worth. Perhaps he even believed he could
return to the world some men who had been truly rehabilitated. Instead, he had
been charged with looking after them until they were killed by the State.
'I'm
sorry, Mister Timmons,' I said.
Mr.
Timmons waved his hand, brushed the comment aside.
'So
they will come down and weigh you today,' he repeated.
I
nodded, thanked him for telling me, and when he left I leaned back and closed
my eyes.
Perhaps
my weight determined the voltage.
That's
all I could think of.
Back
while I was in Charleston - the first year or so after Nathan's death, the
trial, all those things - America wrestled with its collective conscience.
At
the tail-end of 1960 they had given Jack Kennedy their vote over Richard Nixon.
In November 1968, only after Johnson said he wouldn't run again, only after the
death of Robert Kennedy, did they give Nixon his chance.
By
the time Nixon was inaugurated Nathan Verney and I were long gone, and in the
months following our departure from Greenleaf events took place that we only
caught on the hop. Nixon won the Republican nomination for President with Spiro
Agnew beside him, the August riots broke out in Watts, and then in October
Johnson said he had ordered a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam.
But
the most important thing was Nixon's victory.
Nixon
had promised that he would end the war, but Nixon was a crazy man. Nathan knew
that. I knew that. But at the same time we believed that his craziness might
make things different, that perhaps the law would change, that perhaps he
wouldn't be so harsh on those who'd refused to fulfill their apparent national
obligation to die in South- East Asia.
It
wasn't long before we realized that this was not to be the case.
In
September Nixon ordered the B52s to keep on bombing those gook motherfuckers
for as long as it took. Not in those words exactly, but the sentiment was
there.
In
November, Lieutenant William Calley, U.S. Armed Forces, would be tried by court
martial for the massacre at My Lai. An Army photographer called Ron Haeberle, a
witness to the killing of one hundred and nine people, the youngest of whom was
only two years old, said
the bones were flying in the air, chip by chip.
America
heard these words, asked itself what was happening in Vietnam, asked itself
what had become of its sons.
But
America did not act.
Father
John Rousseau would speak of these things, I would tell him what I remembered,
but what remains in my memory of those times is neither politics nor protest,
nor the growing awareness of just how many millions really believed that the
Vietnam War was a complete fiasco, but Nathan Verney standing at the end of
Nine Mile Road looking back towards Greenleaf.
To
describe how I felt at that time seems impossible now. Greenleaf had been my
home for my entire life. Everything I had ever been had been born in that town.
Everything I knew, every
one
I knew, was a part of that place just as
much as I.
I did
not know where we were going, and in my hurry to gather some things together
and leave the house I had almost forgotten why, but every article of clothing,
each postcard and picture and letter I sorted through… all bore some memory of
who I had become in this place. My childhood years, each of them encapsulated
within a thought, and within each thought an image, and within each image an
emotion that unfolded itself silently around me and reminded me who I was. This
place was who I was. And I was leaving. Forever? I did not know.
I
wanted to speak, I wanted to ask Nathan if there was any other way this could
be done, but I knew such questions were pointless. Nathan would look at me -
not with the eyes of the child he was, but with the eyes of the man he had
become, and in becoming that man he had worked through all of his own fears and
doubts and reservations about where he was going and why.
I had
not. I felt empty and insubstantial. I felt… nothing.
Coming
down the stairs, my bag in my hand, I could feel the weight and pressure of
everything I was leaving behind. Here was my family, my mother and father, and
here also were Eve and Caroline and all that they had shared with me. I was
leaving this behind, and in doing so would leave behind a part of myself.
Always and forever beyond this point I would be missing something. It was
wrenched out of me and cast aside. I would look back and see the boy I was
standing at the side of the road, and in his eyes were loss and pain and a
strange sense of failure.
You are not who I wanted you to be,
that small
child would say, and I would know he told the truth.
I
wrote a note for my mother. I left it on the kitchen table, and looking back at
it from the doorway I saw it for what it was: a lie.
We left
together, Nathan and I, silently, hopelessly it seemed, and looking back from
the road my own house seemed so small and frail. We walked on in silence, and
though I tried to catch Nathan's eyes, tried to glean some sense of compassion
and empathy for what I was feeling, he looked straight ahead, never flinching,
neither erring nor wavering in his intent. We reached Nine Mile Road, the scene
of so many significant moments, and it seemed a thousand years since I'd stood
in almost the exact same place and watched that small negro girl bear the grief
of Kennedy's death until she fell beneath its weight.
I
remembered the universal family - myself and Nathan and Reverend Verney and Eve
Chantry - and I asked myself how I could ever have believed that things could
stay the same.
Nathan
had walked ahead of me with a determined and forthright stride, and I had
caught his coat-tails - or that's how it felt. Swept along once again in the
fury and passion of the moment.
I
thought of the note I'd left my ma, the lack of anything specific I had said,
only that I had gone with Nathan, we were going to find work, that I would call
her soon.
That
was all.
I had
left $100 behind, and in my pocket I carried a little more than $300, all the
money I'd earned at Karl Winter- son's Radio Store.
I
knew people would talk of us. I kind of knew that there would be no coming back
to Greenleaf, at least until the war was over, and I also believed that the
general opinion of me would be that it was Nathan Verney's influence.
Why?
Simple:
because he was black.
Nice
white Anglo-Saxon Protestant boys didn't do things like this.
And
so I watched Nathan walk on ahead, and had he walked to the edge of the world I
would have followed him.
I
believed in his belief.
That
was all.
For
now, at least for now, that had to be enough.