'She's
dead.'
It was
Dr. Backermann, his voice like the dry scratching of insects trapped in a
cardboard box.
He'd
been there when Eve had died, and now he was here, here on the end of a
telephone line telling me something I couldn't even begin to comprehend.
'Daniel?
Daniel, you there?'
'Yes,'
I mumbled.
'Back
in August, the first week of August. She passed away in her sleep, Daniel, no
pain… but she did die, Daniel. The house has been closed up since then waiting
for you to come back… where did you say you were?'
I was
numbed into silence.
'Daniel?'
Backermann's
voice sounded distant, as if he was whispering at me from the bottom of a Pepsi
can.
'Daniel…
you still there?'
'Yes,'
I said, or at least I
thought
I said it.
'I
think you need to come back, Daniel, come back and sort everything out. You
can't spend your whole life running away from things.'
I was
surprised by his words, angered even.
'What
d'you mean, running away from things?'
I
could hear Dr. Backermann smiling. How that happens I don't know, but you can
hear the slightest change in timbre and pitch and know that someone is smiling,
somewhat condescendingly, even though you can't see them.
'We
understand what happened, Daniel, we understand that you were influenced by the
negro boy.'
'The
what?'
'You
know, the Verney boy, the negro you used to spend so much time hanging around
-'
I
exploded. 'Asshole, you're a fucking asshole. You're a Jew, Backermann, and the
last fucking person in the world I'd expect that kind of bigoted redneck
bullshit from is you -'
'Now
steady on there, Daniel -'
'You
steady on, you dumb fucked-up piece of shit, you steady on… you go fuck
yourself, you go goddam fuck yourself!'
I
hung up.
I was
seething.
My
heart was thundering, my mouth was dry, a taste like I'd been chewing copper
filings.
I
turned and saw Nathan standing no more than three or four feet away.
We
were in a diner near our apartment.
People
were looking at me.
I
felt as if the world could suddenly close up around me, suffocate me. Never
felt anything like it before, never ever felt anything like it any time in my
life.
The
expression on Nathan's face was one of complete shock and bewilderment. I shook
my head. I didn't want to speak. I walked towards the door. Nathan came after
me.
'Danny?
Hey, what's happenin', man?'
I
said nothing, didn't turn, merely shoved the door and walked out into the
street. I could feel the eyes of people in the diner following me. I didn't
care. They could go fuck themselves too.
'Danny!
Hey, Danny, hold up there!'
I
didn't stop, I didn't slow down, and when Nathan's hand touched my shoulder I
turned suddenly.
My expression
must have surprised him because he stepped back suddenly and raised his hands.
'Whoa,
man, what's the fucking problem here?'
I
shook my head. I looked down at my shoes. Somewhere inside of me, somewhere
buried beneath a ton of memories, emotion was beginning to stir.
'She's
dead,' I said, and my voice was cold and flat and strange.
'Dead?
Who's dead?' he was asking.
His
voice sounded like Backermann's, somewhere out there, somewhere in the
distance, echoing all the way from Greenleaf perhaps… a whisper carried back
from the glassy, still surface of Lake Marion…
'My
ma… she's dead, Nathan, she's gone an' died, man…'
'Oh
shit,' I heard him say.
I
felt the emotion even stronger, reaching up towards me from somewhere I didn't
even want to look, and it came, it all came on home, and I could see myself
sitting there on the sidewalk, my head in my hands, my hands resting on my
knees, and sobbing I think, sobbing or crying or something. It was a new thing.
A new emotion. A release perhaps.
Even
now I don't really know what happened.
Seemed
like the world closed up some place and opened up somewhere else.
After
that moment I would never see anything the same.
I had
to go back. I knew that. I thought little of consequences, repercussions, of
what people might say or do when I got there. My mother had died and the house
was empty, and she was buried somewhere and I hadn't even said goodbye. In
eighteen months she'd heard from me once. A single letter, full of lies. That
was how she'd have remembered me. Her son, the liar. She died with that
thought, with the wish to see me, to find out what had happened, and I hadn't
been there. I believe now, perhaps, that that was the point I decided my own
fate. Didn't have anything to do with God, just me and my own conscience.
And
despite everything that happened, despite
everything
that happened, my
conscience was the worst judge of all.
After
the trial, after the move from Charleston to Sumter, I had time to think. Time
was my greatest asset, the one thing I had no shortage of, and yet the weeks
blurred into months and even the years seemed to lose their seams and
divisions. I would find it hard to recall exactly when everything had happened.
During
that time I seemed to lose myself in the events that transpired across America.
It was a monumental handful of years, of events that would change the course of
history, that would sour the minds and hearts of a nation irretrievably, and
those events seemed to open up like gangrenous wounds one after the other.
In
Charleston we had newspapers, a day late yes, but still we had newspapers. At
Sumter we were not permitted them, they could be rolled tightly and jammed into
someone's throat, you could smash their windpipe, even break their neck if you
carried enough force behind it. But we did have a transistor radio, a small one
that hung from a piece of string at the end of the walkway. Mr. Timmons would
hang it there and put it on when Mr. West was off the Block. That happened frequently
enough for us to follow everything that happened through the news flashes and
daily bulletins.
We
listened to a local station, CKKL, a small station with two reporters, a guy
called Frank Wallace and a girl called Cindy Giddings.
Frank
Wallace had the voice of someone who believed himself to be very important. He
rolled his words out like carpets, unnecessarily lengthy and overly precise,
but Cindy? Cindy was a different breed altogether. Cindy Giddings should not
have been a reporter on CKKL, she should have been an NBC anchorwoman. I
created her look, her age, her height, weight and hair color, personal
interests and hobbies, the name of her cat, the kind of house she lived in, and
after two years of listening to her almost daily I felt a closeness, a
sensitivity and depth to our imagined relationship that was perhaps more
meaningful than anything I could remember. When she transferred to some station
in Georgia in 1973 I felt as if I had experienced a protracted and ugly
divorce, a divorce based on nothing more substantial than a difference in
location. I even asked Mr. Timmons if we could find the new station on the
transistor, but Clarence Timmons - understanding as he was - could not get that
little transistor to hear that far.
It
was Cindy Giddings who kept me alive during those first years: the sound of her
voice, her measured and rhythmic tone, the undercurrent of sensuality I
perceived when she said
Well thank you, Frank, and thank you to all our
listeners today. It certainly has been a day of revelation, hasn't it?
One
time I thought of writing to her.
I
didn't know, wouldn't have known, what to say, but I did know from experience
that at times like that it was better to say nothing at all.
Richard
Milhous Nixon was the mainstay of my interest. Curiously, I felt a certain
camaraderie with this bizarre character. There was no doubt in my mind that he
was crazy as a loon. By that time I was cynical enough to believe that the only
people who were ever installed at the White House had to be at least half gone.
Richard
Nixon was an enigma, a walking contradiction.
Why I
felt some sense of empathy with the man I didn't know. I believed he was
caught, just as I had been, and though there were crimes and felonies perpetrated,
though
I did
not doubt he had in fact known everything that was going on, there were those
behind him who wanted him to vanish any which way he could.
Like
me.
We
were different, so very different, but in some small way, some fraction of
reality, we were just the same.
On
one hand Nixon would spend much of his time working on political and economic
relations with the Chinese and the Soviets, on the other he was bugging the
Oval Office and listening to himself and his aides. He was trapped in the
Vietnam fiasco, and while attempting to divert attention from the war by
publicizing his overseas trips, the war was pulling America's attention ever
back to the atrocities that had been perpetrated there.
In
February of 1970 five U.S. Marines were arrested for murdering eleven women and
children. April saw the antiwar protest at Kent State and the shooting of seven
students. Racial violence erupted once more in Georgia and six blacks were
killed. Through September and into Christmas there was the Kent State student
body burning their Draft cards, Lieutenant William Calley began his court
martial for the My Lai massacre, and members of his own unit came forward to
testify that Calley had knowingly and wilfully shot civilians.
The
quote that everyone remembered came from Henry Kissinger. Justifying the U.S.
invasion of Cambodia he said
We are all the President's men.
In
the early part of 1971, William Calley, guilty of murder, pronounced
I will
be extremely proud if My Lai shows the world what war is.
This
was a sentiment the Americans did not want to hear, least of all Nixon, and two
days later Nixon ordered Calley's release while his conviction was reviewed.
In
May, 30,000 anti-war protesters demonstrated on the banks of the Potomac in
Washington. The presidency had the Supreme Court clear Muhammad Ali of
draft-dodging.
Captain
Ernest Medina, also present at My Lai, was cleared of all charges, and Nixon
promised that 45,000 troops would be out of Vietnam by the early part of '72.
He gave five and a half billion dollars to space shuttle research and announced
he would stand for re-election, simultaneously intensifying the U.S. bombing
campaign. A seven hundred- plane B-52 Strato-Fortress fleet pounded Hanoi and
Haiphong. Nixon went to China, then to the Soviet Union. He hoped, he prayed,
and his words fell on deaf ears.
In
June of 1972 five men were arrested at the Democratic National Committee
Offices in the Watergate Complex. Former CIA operative James McCord, Security
Co-ordinator for the Republican Committee to Re-Elect the President, and two
others, both CIA, both with histories of serving anti-Castro groups in Florida,
were among them.
Richard
Milhous Nixon's nightmare had begun.
John
Mitchell resigned as Presidential Campaign Manager just as the last U.S. Ground
Combat Unit, the 3rd Battalion 21st Infantry, left Da Nang. Newspapers told
America and the world that the Vietnam War had cost a hundred billion dollars.
The
air war continued however, with those same B-52 Strato-Fortresses bombing the
communist supply routes that fed the invasion of the south.
Gordon
Liddy and Howard Hunt were indicted for Watergate. A spokesman for the White
House stated categorically that there was 'absolutely no evidence that anyone
else was involved'.