Christian Nation (2 page)
“San,” my girlfriend Emilie replied, “I love you dearly,” which was not exactly true, “but on this you’re seriously off base. We’ve always had big religious revivals. Think of the Great Awakening. It’s just mass hysteria—it flares up when people feel anxious about change, and then it burns out. And the evangelicals are, what, only a quarter of the population? Fact is, most of the people are drugged out on shopping and reality TV and couldn’t give a crap. It’s just not going to happen, San.”
I agreed with her.
T
HE TYPEWRITER SITS
on a table directly in front of a large picture window that frames a view of three overgrown rhododendrons in the foreground, the narrow lake below, and the rocky shore opposite, dominated by a single large gray-green granite boulder. A dense oak forest punctuated with tall hemlocks rises sharply behind it. The lake is flat, so free of ripple or blemish that every cloud is rendered perfectly on its surface. I hear no sound other than the unfamiliar mechanical hum of the typewriter, in which—I suddenly hear—the dominant note is G, with strong overtones. Secular music has been missing from my life since the end of the Holy War. All we had at Governors Island were Church of God in America hymns, which were so insipid as to kill the joy that I normally found in any music. I listen to the hum of the IBM. It isn’t Bach, but it isn’t
Walk with Jesus Mild
either. I hum a fifth interval, over and over, harmonizing with the IBM, then stop when I suddenly remember the face of the redheaded kid I killed with a grenade. He ran at my position in Battery Park, alone, screaming, his face twisted in hate. I couldn’t hear him, but his mouth suggested, “Die faggot.” They called everyone left in Manhattan “faggot.” He exploded in a fine red mist.
This was not the first time that the world didn’t listen. In college I read Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
. Fourteen years before the first shot was fired, Hitler announced his plan to destroy the parliamentary system in Germany, to attack France and Eastern Europe, and to eliminate the Jews. Why, I asked the professor, did neither ordinary Germans voting in the Reichstag elections in July 1932, nor foreign leaders reacting to the rise of Nazism, believe him? Why was anyone surprised when he simply did what he said he would do? She had no answer.
The fall of my senior year at Princeton, nineteen deeply religious young men flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. During the decade before 9/11, Osama Bin Laden had shouted out his warnings of mass murder using all the means of modern communication. And still we were surprised when he did what he said he would do.
So I suppose what happened here is that they said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.
An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin…. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? … And suddenly the memory revealed itself.
—Marcel Proust,
À la recherche du temps perdu
S
ITTING HERE OVERLOOKING
I
NDIAN
L
AKE
, it feels strange to be outside New York City for the first time in ten years. For the past five years, I have worked at the Christian Nation Archives in New York, in what formerly was the Bobst Library of New York University. The old libraries are closed, of course, but not all the collections have been destroyed. As “indexers,” we are charged with the task of coding the remaining books for preservation or destruction, and occasionally retrieving books requested by public officials or scholars whose research has been sanctioned by the Church of God in America, universally referred to as COGA. All academic and cultural organizations operate under the supervision of COGA, a sprawling enterprise. Most of us from Governors Island were placed with COGA-affiliated employers, which allows them to keep a close eye on our progress. GI has faith in its graduates, but even for them there are limits to faith. I find the physical presence of the books to be a comfort. We are constantly reminded that the eradication of evil is vital work entrusted only to those of us who know Christ and thus have the fortitude for the task.
Six months ago, a new indexer named Adam settled in to work at a table two rows behind mine. He is the only African American in our group, and his rimless glasses, tweedy garb, and strong vocabulary immediately suggested to me that he had been a scholar. For the first two weeks he ignored me, nearly to the point of rudeness. Then, during his third week, seeing that I was heading to Washington Square Park for lunch, Adam casually asked if he could join me. He chose a remote bench facing a dense stand of shrubs. He asked lots of questions about work and dodged most of my questions about him. When we finished our sandwiches and rose from the bench, he glanced to see that no one was near and then said simply, “Greg, you need to know that I am here because of you.” Before I could respond, he shook my hand, giving it that distinctive extra squeeze I had felt from a few others, and then turned to walk back to the library by himself.
Two weeks later, Adam and I had become friends, which is what we now call the sort of superficial acquaintance that is the only relationship possible when people are unable to discuss anything important. I know that Adam is married, has no children, and had spent his career before the siege as a lay professor of theology at the General Theological Seminary in Chelsea. I knew from that first day in the park that he wanted something from me, but I waited patiently for him to ask. He would ask when he was ready. When he proposed the risky enterprise of a long vacation during which I should write a memoir, I refused.
“Why, Adam?” I asked. “You’ve got to tell me why you want me to write this thing and what you plan to do with it.”
“You need to trust me.”
“How the hell can I trust you? I hardly know you.”
“You trust me enough to have this conversation. You know we’re careful,” he replied.
“True. But talking to you is something I might survive if they found out. But leaving town, somehow going off the Purity Web—which by the way I sincerely doubt is possible—and then writing everything that happened, telling the truth … That’s entirely different.” I paused. “And by the way, who is ‘we’? Are you telling me that Free Minds is real?”
“No. I’m
not
saying that.” He looked annoyed with me. “Please, Greg. I know about you. I know what you did. I know
he
was your friend. We need you to tell your story. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You’re asking me to commit suicide. No.”
A few days later, I changed my mind. You may think that I harbor some kind of self-destructive urge. Perhaps so. Not sure what I was going to do or why, I decided to do what Adam had asked. It had been a long time since anyone had asked me to do anything, and it felt odd to be asked, for someone to suggest that I was needed. Saying yes suddenly seemed easier than saying no. You should know that. Coming here was
not
an act of courage.
Adam and I departed Manhattan by train. We were met at the station in the Hudson Valley town of Peekskill by the owner of a small inn located in the nearby hamlet of Putnam Valley. After both of us scanned in as guests, Adam wordlessly handed his Device across the counter to the innkeeper. They both looked at me, silently indicating that I should do the same. The day I left Governors Island, the outplacement officer informed me that I was required to have my Device with me at all times. In the five years since then, I have obeyed. So I hesitated. Although not a suspicious word passed between them, the owners of the inn, Adam said, were “friends.” I had stopped asking about FM. The feds denied the existence of the Free Minds movement, and even I, on balance, assumed it was more secret longing than reality. After all, with the Purity Web encompassing every possible means of communication, observing every meeting and movement, analyzing everything one read or wrote—with the big machines knowing us better than we knew ourselves—how could a movement like that organize or function? But Adam was real, and Adam had “friends.” I handed over my Device and immediately felt more abandoned than liberated.
We walked out the back door of the inn and entered the woods on an old dirt road, now a narrow path kept open by deer. I was overwhelmed by the smell. The woodsy air, damp and infused with the dusty fluff kicked up by our steps, carried odors of mold, decay, fungus, and scat. The only nature I had known after Governors Island was the little wild garden behind our communal house on Commerce Street. It had been sunny and dry. When had I last smelled the woods? I couldn’t remember. I inhaled deeply, and my head felt light. Adam gave me an odd look.
“You OK?” he asked. “Don’t worry about your Device. I’ve gone up to five weeks without touching, and didn’t go pink. My friend knows what he’s doing. He’ll take care of us.”
I nodded, distracted. The smells of the woods told a story, the story of an approaching hemlock stand, of a distant carcass, and of granite ledge rock radiating back the heat of the morning sun. I had forgotten how rich, complex, and without judgment were the smells of nature. For the moment, I was glad I had come.
We hiked for three miles, until the path ended abruptly. The rocky cut, through which the old road crested the hill, had been blasted closed. It appeared impassable. Adam led me through dense brush down along the ridge to an ominous-looking gap between two large boulders. We squeezed through, crawled under the corner of another enormous rock, and emerged on the far side of the ridge, where I saw a gem-like lake at the bottom of a steep valley.
We scrambled down the boulder-strewn slope to the lake’s edge. The water was clear. I could see the algae-covered stones on the bottom, and tadpoles swimming erratically among them. We walked along the shore for about a half mile and suddenly came upon a decrepit two-story cedar cottage, set into the side of the hill, with a partially collapsed covered porch running along the water side of the building. From the outside, it gave every appearance of being abandoned. Inside, it was clean and dry, powered silently by solar panels that looked at least twenty years old.
This is the second day I have sat in front of this machine staring out at the lake. I have underestimated the difficulty of this project. A great stone seems to have been rolled across the only door to that part of my brain in which the past resides, and I don’t have the strength to push it aside. It protects me from memory, keeping the demons behind it from penetrating my consciousness. It even keeps them out of my dreams. I realize that not once have I dreamt of the past. And now Adam says I must remember. Recollection, synthesis, and meaning he repeats like a mantra.
I close my eyes. This time I suddenly remember opening them that warm summer day in August 2020. Only nine years ago. The feds had finally ended the siege of Manhattan and invaded through Battery Park. When I came to I was lying facedown on a lawn. My eyes and cheeks were caked with dried blood, and I could see only a few blurry blades of grass beside my nose. I could hear the sound of the harbor waves, and knew that I was still in the park. My wrists were secured behind my back with a thick plastic zip tie. My shoulders ached, and I surmised that I had been lying there, hands tied, for at least a few hours. My ankles were also secured with a zip tie, but I didn’t care. I was too exhausted to move in any case, and quickly slipped back out of consciousness.
When next I woke it was nighttime. A soft warm August night. I hadn’t been moved, but this time my eyes could focus. I later learned that almost six thousand secular fighters had been captured and brought to the Battery. During the day, teams of army medics had performed triage, evacuating the seriously wounded to hospital ships in the harbor. While I was passed out, my shallow but bloody scalp wound had been cleaned and bandaged and the blood wiped off my face. My arms by this time were numb, and the pain in my shoulder had disappeared, replaced by a sharp headache centered on the place where the bullet had gouged a neat pencil-thin groove in my skull. I shifted my legs and managed to roll onto my side. I could see only bodies. Seventeen acres of bodies. The white plastic zip ties shone with a weird iridescence in the moonlight, an effect that was oddly decorative. Some of the prisoners had managed to turn over and sit upright, arms behind their back and legs stretched out front, but most remained facedown and still. Other than the sound of the harbor waves against the Battery breakwater, all I could hear was the occasional stifled sob. No one screamed. No one spoke. Regular fed army and marines stood casually on guard, looking bored. When I closed my eyes, I daydreamed that I was an African deep in the hold of a slave ship. Shackled. The sound of waves slapping against the hull. Silent stinking African bodies my companions and only comfort.
My mind was sluggish, like an agonizingly slow computer. Churning and churning, and ultimately failing to put the thoughts and words into coherent order. I should be dead. These four words repeated themselves in a demented feedback loop. I should be dead. I, a corporate lawyer with no aptitude for violence, stood up and shot at a company of charging US Marines. They wanted me dead. I stood up to die. I should be dead. And now they had bandaged my wound.