Henry
Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Adviser, said peace with Vietnam was at
hand, and in November of 1972 Nixon won a landslide re-election victory. He
ordered the suspension of the Hanoi bombing after twelve days of the heaviest
raids the war had seen. Three days after Nixon was sworn in, a ceasefire was
declared in Vietnam. The U.S. Army Court upheld the death sentence for William
Calley, prisoner exchanges between the Americans and the Vietnamese began, and
eleven reporters from three major newspapers were subpoenaed to testify on
Watergate. Liddy refused to answer questions and was jailed for eighteen
months. Bob Haldeman, Nixon's Chief of Staff, his Chief Domestic Affairs
Adviser, John Ehrlichman, Attorney General of the United States Richard
Kleindienst and John Dean, Nixon's Legal Counsel, all resigned. Presidential
aides John Mitchell and Maurice Stans were indicted for perjury.
Nixon
admitted that there had been a White House cover-up of the Watergate scandal,
and the Senate began its hearings. In July 1973, Nixon refused to hand over the
Watergate tapes to Senate investigators, and John Dean was heard again. He said
that Nixon knew of the Watergate burglary and was actively involved in the
cover-up. Dean also said that from Nixon's own lips had come a promise:
We
could find in the region of a million dollars in hush money.
The
President was served with Court orders to hand over the tapes of White House
conversations. He refused. The Appeal Court stepped in and reiterated the
order. Nixon refused once more.
Four
days later he consented. He ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to
dismiss Archibald Cox, the Watergate Special Prosecutor. Richardson refused and
resigned. Richardson's deputy, William Ruckelshaus, got the same order. He
refused. Cox was finally dismissed by the Solicitor General Robert Bork, and
with this action came the first mention of impeachment.
The
New Year of 1974, the first year in fifteen that America was not reporting
weekly deaths in Vietnam, saw Nixon rejecting the Court order to hand over more
than five hundred tapes. He finally conceded defeat. The Court received them,
but there were five gaps.
Special
Prosecutor Leon Jaworski spoke with Nixon. Nixon said he would not hand over
the key Watergate tapes, and found himself named as an unindicted
co-conspirator. The Congressional Committee warned Nixon he would be impeached.
The Supreme Court ordered him once again. Again, the President refused on the
grounds of executive privilege. The House Judiciary voted 27-11 in favor of
impeachment.
On
August 8th 1974 Richard Milhous Nixon resigned the Office of the President of
the United States. Spiro Agnew, his Vice-President, had already gone after
pleading guilty to tax evasion, and the former Republican Minority Leader of
the House of Representatives, Gerald Ford, the newly assigned Vice-President,
became Nixon's successor.
There
was an interesting turn. Nelson Rockefeller, a man whose grandfather owned
Standard Oil, a man with a major involvement in the Chase Manhattan Bank and
the Federal Reserve, became Vice-President. He was sworn in on December 19th, a
full five months after his selection, and - coincident with the official
assumption of his new duties - John Dean, John Ehrlichman, Bob Haldeman, John
Mitchell, and Robert Mardian, Assistant Attorney General, were jailed.
The
Nixon empire had fallen.
The
Vietnam War was over.
A new
era had begun.
Such
was America during the first years of my imprisonment. I listened to these
events transpire from a small wireless, and beneath those thoughts was the
memory of what had happened that Christmas of 1969, the few weeks, the few days
even, when all we had believed to be a freedom had become its dark and complex
opposite.
In
some small way my own life had begun to mirror the life of the nation. As I
believed nothing could get worse, so it worsened. As I believed there could be
no darker shadows, so a deeper darkness was revealed.
And it
'was into that darkness I fell: boom, down like a stone.
'How
did you feel when you realized that you'd never been drafted?'
I
looked across the narrow table at Father John Rousseau.
'How
did I feel? I felt cheated… I don't know, confused perhaps. I don't suppose I
took time to think how I felt. My mother was dead. Backermann was there. Nathan
came back with me but no-one knew. I moved into my mother's house and Nathan
stayed inside, didn't go out. If anyone visited he hid down in the basement.'
Rousseau
smiled. 'He hid in the basement?'
I
nodded. 'Right, he hid in the basement. He had been drafted, he'd jumped the
State. If anyone had known he was there the authorities would have been told
and he'd have been arrested.'
'Why
did he come back with you?'
I
shrugged my shoulders. 'I asked him to. I didn't want to go back alone.'
'And
he was willing to go back despite the fact that he might be discovered and
arrested?'
'We
were friends, had been friends nearly our whole lives. Despite anything that
had happened we were still as close as brothers.'
'You
think he came back with you because you had left with him in the first place?'
'Like
he owed me?' I asked.
Rousseau
nodded. 'Perhaps.'
I
shook my head. 'I didn't ask him why he came. I asked him to go back to
Greenleaf with me and he said yes, it was as simple as that.'
Rousseau
didn't ask anything else.
He
lit a cigarette, handed it to me, lit one for himself.
We
sat silently for some time. There seemed to be little restriction on the number
of times Rousseau could come, the amount of time I could spend in
God's
Lounge
when he was there, and I took advantage of it.
I had
thirty-one days left. Thirty-one days and I'd be dead. It was a disquieting, sobering,
unreal thought.
'So
tell me about going back,' Rousseau said. 'Tell me everything that happened.'
I
leaned back slightly in the chair. I wanted to stand, to walk around, but such
movement was not possible in the narrow confines of the room.
I was
restless and agitated. I wanted it to finish now, be done with. It was a simple
request, but it would be dragged out, all the way to November 11th.
I was
getting medical checks, they were ensuring I ate properly, maintained my
personal hygiene. They were not willing to be cheated of their moment of
retribution. My watch had increased, my exercise time was constantly
supervised, and whereas I would ordinarily walk in the yard with one or two
other inmates, there was now simply myself and a warder. Ordinarily Mr. Timmons
would come, sometimes one of the others.
It
was on my walk two days before that I'd found a small piece of wood. Almost
flat, perhaps three inches wide and two inches long, somewhere around quarter
of an inch thick. It was like a slice of wood from a tree trunk, something like
that, and across it was the most striking grain, three or four shades of brown.
Mr. Timmons was with me, I asked if I could keep it, and he said yes. He said I
could because he trusted me. He said that if I was asked I was to say I'd found
it somewhere else, that he would deny ever speaking with me of such a thing. I
agreed.
Later
that evening, I took a spoon and rubbed the end of the handle against the wall until
it possessed somewhat of an edge. With the sharpened end I carefully drew the
shape I wanted, and then fraction by fraction, millimeter by millimeter, I
started the endlessly laborious process of chipping away tiny fragments of
wood. After more than two hours I had the shape I wanted, vaguely symmetrical,
a little square perhaps but nevertheless identifiable. A moth. Its body and
wings, the grain of wood across it following the outer curve of the wings on
each side. I held it up towards the light, and its silhouette was unmistakable.
I
remembered the last time I saw such a shape, hanging right there over the bed
I'd slept in, the bedroom I'd grown up in a million lifetimes ago.
Backermann
stood behind me.
His
greeting had been almost avuncular. I think he was pleased to see me standing
there on the front steps of my mother's house, standing there alone, standing
there without the
negro boy.
We
had entered the house together, and as I walked through the rooms one after the
other, dampness and emptiness hovering around us like ghosts, Backermann was
there, a step behind me all the way. I walked upstairs, he came with me, and as
I slowly opened the door to what had been my bedroom, still was my bedroom, he
seemed finely tuned to everything that was happening, waiting for the emotion
to come, waiting for whatever words of comfort he may have been able to afford.
But
there was nothing. I really felt nothing. Until I saw that little wooden frame
hanging back of my headboard: the candlemoth.
It
all came back to me. Eve Chantry, her husband Jack, their daughter Jennifer.
A man
staggering from the banks of Lake Marion bearing his only child, her hair
hanging wet and limp, her body like a rag doll, the man's face a tortured mask
of utter devastation.
I
felt myself exhale.
I
thought it would never stop, that I would empty out into that room, fold up
like origami and be carried away by some errant breeze.
Dr.
Backermann's hand closed over my shoulder. I could smell him. His cologne. The
vague taint of pipe tobacco. Something beneath that. Perhaps red wine. Perhaps
sherry.
He
sort of pulled me closer. I didn't resist. He stood there, solid like a tree,
and I just sort of leaned into him, appreciated the sense of stability and
support.
I
remember starting to apologize for what I'd said on the phone.
Dr.
Backermann cut me short, told me it was nothing, that he was sorry too, that
he'd been out of line, that we'd both been upset, stressed by recent events…
His
words faded into nothing.
I
just stood there. I couldn't think of anything to say, anything to feel. I was
sort of numb. Displaced.
Later
- an hour, a day, a week, I don't know really - I recall sitting talking with
Backermann. He told me the house was mine, that it would take some time to pass
through the legalities, but it was my inheritance, and that he was happy to see
me home. He told me he knew why I'd gone, that he'd been interested to see if I
ever did receive a Draft Notice. I hadn't. He was sure of that. He'd checked
with my ma every week until she'd died. They'd sent for Nathan, but not for me.
An irony.
During
those moments, I didn't take time to wonder what would have happened had I
stayed. I didn't punish myself with thoughts about how my mother might still
have been alive had I stayed. I didn't allow myself to consider anything about
anything had I stayed.
It
was safer that way.
I was
home. My mother was dead, but I was home.
After
eighteen months of running it was just that simple.
Dr.
Backermann left after some time. He left feeling that I'd be okay. I walked out
to a callbox and called Nathan. He was at the bus station. He asked me if I was
okay, I told him I was, and I suggested he wait until nightfall and then walk
into town. I said he should come the back way, cut across Nine Mile Road near
the 1-88 intersection, and come down through the bank of trees that separated
the Interstate from the main freeway.
He
did come that way. He was certain no-one had seen him.
It
felt good to have him there, have him in my house again, and for a little while
I imagined we were back ten years, that we were kids again, that any moment now
my ma would call us in for potatoes and greens and homemade corned beef, and
she would sit Nathan down and present him with a plate loaded with more food
than he could ever possibly eat…
But
she didn't. She was dead.
We
ate in the same kitchen. We ate from the same plates.
What
we ate didn't
taste the same. Never would. We had changed along with the world, and back here
in Greenleaf it was so much more evident than when we were away. We really had
grown up. We were men, no longer boys, and I think some part of me wished we
could go backwards and change it all. I wondered for a moment what would have
happened had a different decision been made, what would have occurred had we
not run. Nathan Verney would have gone to Vietnam, I would have stayed here,
perhaps my mother and I would be sitting here, right where Nathan and I were
sitting, and we would have been talking about Nathan, what a friend he was, how
much a part of both our lives that little black kid with jug-handle ears,
traffic-light eyes and a mouth that ran from ear to ear with no rest in between
had been…