A Movement Toward Eden

by Clark Howard

  “He wouldn’t be able to escape justice forever,” Devlin said firmly.

  “No,” Todd quietly agreed, throwing off his anger, “not forever. Eventually he would die, just like we all will, and that would be his final justice. But even then it wouldn’t be equitable because it’s the same justice we’ll all get. And we don’t all deserve the same justice. Some of us, like Keyes, deserve a different reckoning.”

  “You’re talking lawless tyranny, Todd,” Devlin told him evenly.

  “I’m talking justice, Dev,” the younger man answered just as evenly, “pure justice.”

  Devlin shook his head dejectedly and started to get up. Before he could do so, Janet rose and hurried over to him, dropping to her knees in front of him and taking both his hands in hers.

  “Dev, wait, listen—” she pleaded. “I love you, you know that, don’t you; you know I’ve loved you since I was a little girl. And Todd does too, in his own way. Neither of us want to hurt you, neither of us want to lose you as a friend; but you have to believe that what Toda has just told you is right. It’s true, Dev, as purely true as anything you’ll ever hear. This person Keyes is evil; he’s evil beyond anything you can imagine—”

  “Jan, I know all about Keyes,” Devlin told her. “I know about his sexual perversions and the abortions he’s been involved in—”

  “Yes, but you only know the bare facts of his crimes, and you think of them only from the standpoint of how they would be used as evidence in a courtroom. What you don’t know is the effect that those crimes have had on others, on helpless girls, innocent children—”

  Her voice broke and a tear escaped down her cheek.

  “Oh, Dev, you know me, you know I’m not a weak person, but some of the things that this—this bastard has done, Dev, they’re so brutal, so horrible! Todd hasn’t told you about the poor, lonely, frightened little boy who is growing up in sheer terror because of Keyes—”

  “Jan, you’re saying too much,” Todd cautioned.

  “I know, darling,” she glanced up at her fiance, “but I want so badly for him to understand—”

  She was crying openly now, her pretty young face distorted in anguish.

  “Dev, you already know about that poor girl in the state hospital, but do you know why she’s there? Do you know that Keyes is responsible for her being there, that he used her, turned her into some kind of a—a sex animal, and drove her out of her mind. He actually took control of her mind, Dev; he planned the whole thing, worked his way into her life, into her confidence, made her dependent upon him; and then he seduced her and turned her into a—I don’t know, worse than a whore because at least a whore has a little self-respect; but this poor girl was used like she was a—machine or something—”

  “Are you saying that none of it was her own doing?” Devlin asked flatly. “Are you saying that all this happened and only Keyes is at fault? That the girl is entirely without blame?”

  “Yes,” the question was answered flatly, and it was Todd’s voice, not Janet’s, that spoke. “She is completely blameless,” he said unequivocally, “because she was weak and Keyes was strong. He used a superior intellect and a superior personality to prey on a person of very limited intellect and practically no personality. The girl was totally helpless before him.”

  “No one is totally helpless,” Devlin stated emphatically. “Weak, perhaps; stupid, perhaps; devoid of personality, perhaps; but not so much so that they don’t have some vestige of what is right and what is wrong. If you’re telling me that Abigail Daniels didn’t know right from wrong, then you’re saying that she was insane at the time all this happened, and I will readily admit that Keyes should then be held solely to blame. But if you’re saying that she was merely weak, ignorant and characterless, but that she did know right from wrong, then you can’t possibly blame Keyes without also blaming Abigail.”

  “Oh, but we can,” Todd said quietly, “and we are.”

  Devlin took his hands from Janet’s and gently moved her aside so that he could get up. Todd had moved around to the end of the couch now and when Devlin stood up the two men faced each other directly, only the girl on her knees on the floor separating them. Devlin’s face was like stone, his eyes like two bottomless black holes drilled into its surface.

  “I ask you as a friend, Todd: tell me where Keyes is.”

  Todd Holt shook his head.

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll ask you not as a friend but as the law: where is he?” Todd’s mouth was a tight line of defiance. He did not speak.

  Devlin waited a full, tense minute, his body and eyes unmoving, the attention of his full being riveted on the man he faced. Then, when he was certain that Todd was not going to answer, would never answer, he turned and walked to the door. Before he left, he paused to look back at the young man who had been his friend.

  “You’ve just destroyed yourself,” he said with a strange, emotionless calm in his voice.

  Then he was gone.

  Twenty Two

  “Devising a suitable punishment for this person has been the most difficult task of my life,” the Examiner said quietly.

  He sat in his usual place at the front table in the Blue Room. For the first time since the Truth Court had begun, he looked weary, possessed of less inner strength than usual. His normally penetrating eyes were weakened in perspective by slight dark circles beneath them; his shoulders, the tilt of his chin, the straightness of his spine—all had a vague looseness to them. Still he remained the most commanding person in the room.

  “In approaching this task,” he said, “I have considered two factors which I feel are the sole elements upon which the punishment must be based. The first of these factors, quite naturally, is that the punishment be precisely tailored to fit the scope and consequence of the crimes committed. The second factor is that it must, for the purposes of the Eden Movement’s goal, be a punishment of such terrible and shocking magnitude that it will accomplish the result for which we all hope.”

  The six members of the Truth Court, at the panel table, watched this man who led them, and absorbed his quiet words with a common attention that was undivided, rapt. Their eyes, all so different, were fixed in a single focus: Judge Wilke’s, old, watery, failing; Dr. Fox’s, narrow, searching; Reverend O’Hara’s, clear, intent; Dr. Price’s, assured, knowing; Barry Chace’s, curious yet oddly calm; Todd Holt’s, determined, almost desperate; all so different, yet so alike, because their purpose, their reason for seeing, was one: to find the way—the true pure way to a world as it was meant to be.

  “I shall, if you will bear with me,” the Examiner said, “discuss the latter factor first. Our purpose, as all of you are aware, is to create an awakening in the minds and hearts of mankind. We seek to show the world, as vividly as we are able, that it has reached a crucial point in its existence. We seek to show the world that by its own progress through the ages it has come to a point in time where it cannot continue forward except under threat of self-destruction. Its every step toward the future moves it deeper into the shadow of a self-devourment that will one day erupt into a horrible kaleidoscope of life that will see man reduced to the level of a jungle animal.”

  His eyes, as he spoke the last phrase, shifted from the panel table to the prisoner Keyes. Strapped in his chair in his customary position directly facing the Examiner, Keyes was a much changed figure from the person first introduced to the Blue Room. His formerly ruddy, healthy complexion had diminished, leaving in its wake a sickly pallor which, combined with the slack cheeks and loose jowls, made his face look as if it were fashioned from bakery dough. His hair needed trimming now, as did his mustache, the former having gone unkempt around his ears and at the neck, and the latter now shaggy above his weak mouth.

  He sat slumped as far down in the chair as his bonds would permit, seeming almost to be cringing from the words being spoken by the Examiner. His eyes, once so sharp and darting, viewers for his alert mind, now were heavy-lidded, bloodshot and weary from a
sleepless, terror-filled night; and the mind behind those eyes was still numb with the fearful conviction that he was going to be castrated.

  “Our world began,” the Examiner continued, “in a warm, serene garden called Eden, where the only law was God’s law: the ancient law of right being right and wrong being wrong. Over the centuries, man through his folly and lust and greed has evolved downward from that garden called Eden, and the law by which he is supposed to govern his existence has similarly deteriorated. Today right is no longer right and wrong is no longer wrong. Today there are shades of right and shades of wrong; degrees of guilt, varieties of innocence. Justice as we of our time know it, is—must be—only a hollow shell of what once was supreme law.

  “This poor imitation of justice is a result of man’s having catered through the years to his own insatiable ego. In his ignorant, selfish desire to better the pure law of right being right and wrong being wrong, man has succeeded in diluting not only the spirit of true justice but also its control over the conduct of humanity. In America today we have only to scrutinize a daily newspaper—any newspaper, on any day—to find ample evidence of this dilution. Murderers are turned free by this justice because, as the courts put it, they were not advised of their rights—when in Eden, I am certain, a murderer would have had no rights. Rioters burn our cities and blacken the name of our country, inspired by radicals who openly preach armed revolt, and our courts refuse to indict them for fear of offending a minority group and inciting civil war. Yet in Eden I am sure that such revolt would have been dealt with as surely and as swiftly as was Adam’s revolt—by banishment from the land whose laws had been so flagrantly scorned.

  “It is clear, I think, that mankind no longer either fears or respects its own laws—not as individuals and not as a group. When law was simply defined—right being right and wrong being wrong—and justice was based on that premise alone, man had cause to fear the personal consequences of his wrongdoing, for he knew that his punishment would be forthcoming as certainly as the sunrise, and that it would be like punishment for like crime: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But today there is no such premise. Today a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound male can rape and force fellatio upon an innocent pregnant young housewife, possibly causing unseen permanent damage to her mind, and be spared punishment for his act because, according to the law, he has not reached a certain age and is therefore incapable of rape. Today a man may pollute his bloodstream with alcohol and arm himself with a five thousand pound weapon in the form of an automobile, run down and maim for life a child at play in the street, and for punishment be deprived of the right to use that weapon again for a year, during which time he must also suffer the inconvenience of having to report to a probation officer once a month.

  “Yet this is called justice—our justice, the justice by which we are expected to govern our lives and live like civilized human beings. This is our justice, this mockery that permits the wealthy to buy experienced legal talent practiced enough and clever enough to extricate them from any pitfall of the law into which they have inadvertently slipped. Justice which supports laws now grown so numerous—laws that range from crossing the street in the wrong place improper sexual relations with one’s own consenting wife—that it is easily conceivable that the entire citizenry could be arrested on any given day; laws that have so filled our courtrooms that soon even this skimmed justice will, for the indigent, be so slow as to amount in itself to punishment. Our justice, which to save the governing body time and expense, permits the guilty to plead to a lesser offense and thereby escape a portion of the punishment he rightly deserves. A weak—and ever weakening—justice that permits people like this,” the Examiner’s finger stabbed out at Keyes, “—to prey on the innocent, the ignorant, the helpless, even the unborn.”

  The weary speaker rested his head back against the chair for a moment and closed his tired eyes. His breath seemed to draw slightly more heavily, not so much from the length of his words, but from the deep emotional conviction which he put into them. The Examiner was voicing feelings from deep within himself, and the task was taking its toll in his strength.

  “We must not,” he said, his eyes still closed, “let this kind of justice and this kind of law go on unabated. Our punishment of J. Walter Keyes must be terrible, shocking, dreadful—so that when we return him to society, the price he has been made to pay for his crimes will etch an impression so deep in the minds of men that they will not dare live by any other creed save that of the ancient law: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

  The Examiner opened his eyes and resumed his erect posture in the chair. From a decanter on the table he poured himself a glass of water and drank it fully down. Then he took a deep breath and continued.

  “Now then, what shall the punishment consist of, in terms of its effect on this criminal before us? To answer that we must look at the other factor of which I spoke: that the punishment be precisely tailored to fit the scope and consequence of the crime. And the crime, of course, is Inhumanity. The details and specifications of that offense have been reiterated often enough throughout this trial that there is no point in repeating them. Suffice it to say that in the conduct of his life and affairs, J. Walter Keyes has broken every commandment of God, mortal man, brotherhood and humanity. He has, by free choice of will, acted toward his fellow man not as a peer but as a preying, menacing scavenger. In the face of man, he has reduced himself to the level of an animal. He must therefore be punished not as a man but as an animal.”

  Keyes, in his chair, felt his mouth go dry and his innards tighten nervously. As an animal—?

  “If,” the Examiner said evenly, “for these same offenses, J. Walter Keyes were to be brought before the bar of modern justice, his punishment—if indeed he were even convicted—would be moderate, to say the least. For his coercion of Anita Atkins into signing away her unborn child’s future for an insufficient and insignificant sum, he might be held to have perpetrated an illegal contract, nothing more than a civil offense for which he—or rather, Mr. O’Brien—would have to make monetary retribution. There would, however, be no punishment for the resultant deterioration of Miss Atkins’ life, nor for the mental anguish suffered by the boy since his birth, or the potential havoc all this will wreak in the boy’s future life.

  “For his role in the abortion of Molly Carlyle’s baby, Keyes would face a criminal charge; he would be classed as an accessory before the fact of the illegal act. With the best criminal lawyer that money could hire—which I am sure he would have—and a quick, prearranged plea of guilty to save the state time and money, the sentence probably would not exceed one year in jail and a sizeable fine. The fine would be paid at once and the jail sentence suspended due to Mr. Keyes’ position in the community and the fact that he was a first offender with no previous criminal record.

  “For what he did to Abigail Daniels, the law would take no cognizance. Abigail was past the age of consent when she first allowed Keyes to have sexual intercourse with her. According to the law, she was as much responsible for that act and all the acts that followed as Keyes. The law does not consider wanton seduction an offense, nor does it allow that one person is capable of exercising mental control over another, so long as both have the capability of distinguishing right from wrong. Therefore, for the willful destruction of the mind of Abigail Daniels, J. Walter Keyes would not even be charged with the commission of a crime.

  “So, gentlemen, there we see how modern justice would treat Mr. Keyes.” The Examiner leaned forward, folding his hands on the table. “Now let us go a step further and analyze this same modern justice not from the standpoint of our case in particular, but from an overall view of its punishments in general. Modern justice has only two basic methods of criminal punishment: incarceration and execution—”

  Again Keyes cringed inside, this time at the clipped sound of the dreaded word execution. If they did kill him, he hoped to God it would be quick and painless—

  “Execution, of cou
rse, is reserved for offenses of great magnitude: murder, treason, some forms of kidnapping. Incarceration, imprisonment, is called for as punishment for all other crimes, both felonies and misdemeanors, from very serious acts down to very minor offenses. These two basic punishments would, of themselves, be excellent deterrents to the commission of criminal acts were it not for modern justice’s usual distortion of them. Due to this, they are liberally diluted with such devices as appeals, probations, suspended sentences, fines, reprieves, time off for good behavior, paroles, and a host of other leniencies designed solely to lessen the deserved punishment of a convicted criminal.

  “But basically, diluted or not, the most common form of punishment is imprisonment. This is mankind’s age-old treatment for one who will not obey its laws: lock him up. Put the offender in a cage. Reduce his status from the level of a man to the level of an animal. That is the basis of modern justice’s punishment, and that is the system which, for the most part, over the years, has failed.

  “Our task now is to conceive a punishment which will not fail. Our task is to go farther into the realm of punishment than modern justice has ever gone. To do this we have been given an excellent subject in Mr. Keyes. We do not have to even consider the two basic punishments—execution and imprisonment, to reduce our subject from the level of a man to the level of an animal—for J. Walter Keyes has already done that for us: he has, by his conduct, his acts, his crimes, reduced himself to the animal level.”

  The Examiner’s eyes narrowed and his strained face grew leathery tense as he reached the awful conclusion of his summation.

  “Our task then, gentlemen, is to reduce J. Walter Keyes from his animal state to an even lower state—and it is with this goal in mind that I have devised his punishment and will now pronounce sentence of that punishment.”

  He closed his eyes again for a moment, as if in prayer, and before he reopened them the whole of his physical self seemed to rejuvenate: his shoulders visibly squared, his chin raised to the straightforward, frank tilt that was its natural carriage, his spine expanded to erectness. All the weariness seemed to melt from him; even the circles under his eyes somehow lost their darkness, so that when his lids lifted, his eyes had resumed their full, deep, commanding power.