By her frequent absences and by her direct and indirect influence, Lynetta was the dominant force in young Jim’s development. Along with her canny aggressiveness, she passed on to the child a general irreverence toward the world; and a certain self-righteousness and grandiosity that allowed him to see himself as an independent spirit proudly pushing against the prevailing flows of society. Along with a certain sensitivity, she gave him a mission—a sense of wrongs to be corrected, a feeling of persecution, a resolve to fight back for his mother and himself.8
Most important, Jim inherited a set of family circumstances that reminded him that life had cheated him. He felt deprived by birthright of a loving, close-knit family—something he would crave for the rest of his life. Nothing seemed to lure the Joneses outside as a family—not parades, carnivals or picture shows. The pain of being alone, of being an outcast, of being “different” from the other children, ripped at him whether he was visiting his friends or was in school or church.
Jimmy internalized the shame and pain, and probably first spoke openly of it a year before his death: “I was ready to kill by the end of the third grade. I mean, I was so fucking aggressive and hostile, I was ready to kill. Nobody give me any love, any understanding. In those days a parent was supposed to go with a child to school functions ... There was some kind of school performance, and everybody’s fucking parent was there but mine. I’m standing there. Alone. Always was alone.”9
In the late afternoon, when stoves all over Lynn were fired up, and the smells of cooking filled kitchens, the Jones house would be dark, the stove dead cold. Then Lynetta would arrive home with groceries and start preparing the evening meal. Sometimes she allowed Jim to invite his friend Don for dinner. There was no dessert. Neither parent ate with the boys. While her husband rocked in the living room, Lynetta put her elbows on the kitchen table, lit a cigarette, pulled over an ashtray and worked on a cup of coffee. She encouraged Jim to study, to put in his hours with his books at the kitchen table each night. “Don’t be a nothing like your dad,” she harped. “You have to make something of your life and be somebody. Work at it. Nobody’s gonna help you.” Her words must have been within earshot of the silent man in the next room.
“Big Jim”—as the soft-spoken Mr. Jones was called to avoid confusion with his son—had found two marks of distinction amid all the burdens of his life: his strawberry patch produced some of the biggest berries in Lynn; and the town authorities had presented him with a gun and given him the quasi-official title of Night Marshal. This glorified night watchman who patrolled the business district on foot did not inspire much admiration, not even in his own son. To little Jim, his father was a bitter and cynical man, engrossed in pain and debilitating self-pity.
While most other children in Lynn worshiped with their parents, Jim began a solitary quest for a church that would embrace him. For a while, he attended services with the Kennedys, but soon he experimented, drifting in and out of churches as he drifted around town. His pursuit of an independent spiritual path was not systematic, though at first he attended churches closest to his home. He was seen in the pews of the Quaker church, where he heard antiwar views; in the staid Methodist church; in the very popular Christian church; and in the Nazarene church attended by the Kennedys. Then he made his way out Highway 36 to the Gospel Tabernacle church at the west end of town.
Gospel Tabernacle had started out as a storefront service for a few faithful, but the congregation had mushroomed. Now worshipers by the hundreds gathered in a solid-looking church made of glazed tan building blocks. Still, it was not a proper or dignified house of God in the eyes of many townspeople. This Pentecostal church was considered radical; its members were called Holy Rollers for their rather gymnastic, almost orgiastic, services complete with boisterous healings and people babbling in tongues. Those in less demonstrative denominations thought it a low-brow phenomenon of self-delusion, or worse. For example, when Myrtle Kennedy learned that the “tongues people” had gotten a grip on Jimmy, she rushed off some prayers to God, asking that he be steered away from certain corruption.10
Lynetta Jones admittedly paid little mind to Jim’s religious upbringing. But even she became alarmed when she found that her son, then ten at most, was being groomed as a child evangelist by a fanatically Pentecostal woman minister. Jim would bring flowers to the woman when she was sick. In turn the woman would invite him out to the country to her farm where he could play with animals and talk about the Lord. It did not take long for the woman to discover Jimmy’s verbal gifts, his mind-boggling ability to throw out more well formed words per minute than most people from Lynn could read. So the cherub-faced boy who used to cuss for nickels was placed in the pulpit, where he addressed congregations in Lynn and in nearby towns. A handsome child who could read the Bible with aplomb and speak eloquently about God was—and always has been—a great crowd pleaser.
Lynetta figured that the Holy Rollers were trying to make a buck for themselves by exploiting her son. She was neither overjoyed with his ministerial bent nor pleased by his attraction to the Pentecostal woman. But she let it slide until Jim began having what she called “night terrors.” The boy broke into heavy sweats in his sleep and experienced frightening dreams, particularly of a horrible snake; these were first signs of a lifelong pattern of insomnia.
A local doctor proved little help, so Lynetta did some detective work on her own. Suspecting that the snake nightmare might have been provoked by talk of the biblical serpent, she accepted a long-standing invitation to attend the Holy Roller church services, and was suitably distressed. The next time the woman minister came to visit, Lynetta threw her out of the house in a fury.
The boy’s sleep became less fitful, but Jimmy’s religious inclinations did not fade away. Lynetta peered into the loft of the small barn in back of the house one day and saw him preaching to other children from behind a small altar. The ministry was not exactly the future she had in mind for her son. But she got a kick out of seeing him communicating the Word to even the progeny of some of the town’s social elite. It seemed harmless to her, just as it did when Jimmy used a savage tongue and hawkish eyes to order other children around. Better a leader than a servant, she thought. She had tolerated enough exploitation already in the canneries and the factories: it was time an underdog stood tall in the world.
From the barnwood rafters and bare walls, to the single window and wooden floors, the loft was Jimmy’s domain. He made the rules; he decided how the time was spent. It was his church, classroom, carnival show, laboratory. No one could exclude him or make him uncomfortable, no one could bully him or call him names behind his back.
The loft was furnished as simply as the Jones house, with a couple of small tables on which Jim draped white sheets. He set out candles, and most often several books were stacked on the main table. Behind it he enthroned himself on the only chair, and motioned to places on the wooden floor. Usually about four children took seats, but the gatherings increased to eight and sometimes a dozen for special occasions. All were boys.
For an hour, two hours and more, Jim Jones kept his young audience attentive and sometimes enthralled—though teachers at school were hard-pressed to achieve the same results. He read to them from the Bible and addressed the lessons of life, usually without fire and brimstone. He entertained them with his vocabulary, his gestures, his theatrical manner. It was fun to watch him speak. Jimmy read to them from school books and books borrowed from the library. Every so often he would stop and talk extemporaneously—though he jotted things down, he never spoke from notes. He solicited comment from his playmates, yet no one ever stood in for him. They allowed him to scold them. It was clear that he was doing their work for them, digesting the material, distilling it, presenting it. Jim was particularly pleased when they were inquisitive; it showed that they were paying attention. Sometimes he helped them with homework.
Jimmy seemed to sense that monotony was the surest way to lose his following. Through either design or his own c
hanging interests, he varied the activities. In winter it was a challenge to attract children to an unheated barn, yet some tromped through the snow to the loft. In summer, when the poorly ventilated loft was hot as an oven, Jimmy made a bowl of lemonade or a sweet punchlike drink to attract them. Spring and fall were his best seasons and his longest sessions. Some kids became so engrossed that their parents had to come and fetch them after dark.
He maintained his animals as an attraction. His pride and joy were what he called his carrier pigeons—eight or ten run-of-the-mill mongrel pigeons with leg bands. He would place messages on little pieces of paper that fit inside the bands. Some pigeons would fly out and others would fly in. It was all very mysterious; he kept mum about their secret missions.
“Where are you sending them?” Don would ask.
“I’ve got a place for them. They’ll be back,” Jim would say confidently. He never divulged who—if anyone—was at the other end of the line. He loved intrigue.
Jim’s pigeons, like some of his other animals, were not in the bloom of health. When an animal died, Jim held a ceremony. Last rites for God’s creatures were solemn occasions. Jim conducted them for birds, a chicken and even a rat. Once he had everyone seated and sufficiently expectant in the loft, he let down the trap door, gently. Everything was done with flair and polished precision, as though rehearsed. He put out all the candles except the one on his little altar. The children, most eight to eleven years old, craned to see as he wrapped the body of the deceased in a shroud and placed the remains in a little cardboard or wooden box. He poured oil on the cloth before closing the coffin lid and leading a reverent funeral procession outside for the burial.
The ritualistic aspects of the funerals did not appeal to some children, who found them unsettling. But there were more attractive scientific aspects to Jim’s loft entertainment as well. With World War II under way, Jim Jones’s parents had given him a children’s medical kit with a microscope. Soon medicine absorbed his energies. Jim invited kids over for science shows. Arriving, they would find the microscope set on a table, already focused. The guests were permitted to stand over it and look through the lens, though Jim would not permit them to make adjustments or select the slides from a small box. He magnified all manner of insects, worms and bugs to the proportions of hairy monsters. It was riveting.
Sometimes the kids looked at smears of blood from Jim’s various animals. Jim used a small kitchen knife to draw a little from the legs of chickens, ducks, goats and others. He made it seem clinical, not cruel. It was for science, after all. He also tried to transfuse a little blood between different species to see what would happen. Once he tried to graft the leg of a chicken onto a duck with string. The poor duck waddled around with three legs until the experiment clearly had failed.
Jimmy hated to be outdone in his own realm. He usually ensured his superiority by claiming positions of authority or special powers in their make-believe games. At one time, for instance, the password to enter the loft was “Heil Hitler.” Jim would stand above the trap door with his hair combed straight to the side like the Führer’s, admitting his playmates. He acted like an adult, and sometimes a lord and master.
Some of the boys, including George Fudge, spent a few weekend nights camping in the Jones barn. During these slumber parties, Jim delighted in frightening them. Jim Jones kept talking into the middle of the night, outlasting his audience. In sometimes macabre performances, he would shine a flashlight beneath his chin or wear a white sheet as he talked of his mysterious powers and laughed in a weird high-pitched cackle. Taking a chicken or a rabbit and placing it on a table, he would claim that he could make the animal be still, stand up or sit down. When the animals seemed to obey his commands, he called attention to his powers. Sometimes he would move his hands over animals and claim to heal them.
At times it was easier to get into Jim’s loft than out of it. Late one afternoon, he asked Don and another boy up to the loft to help him with a building project. Once they were settled, he said he needed to go downstairs to look for something. When the trap door shut, the two boys heard the metal latch bolt rammed home. They looked to each other. “I think he’s locked us in.” They dashed to the front window and looked out. Down on the ground in the driveway was Jim Jones. His head was turned upward, his squinting eyes fixed on them, as he smiled his tight, mischievous smile.
The more the two captives banged on the window and hollered, the more Jim smiled. Eventually he turned and went inside his house. His two friends spent the better part of the night trapped.
After this incident, Mrs. Foreman tried to discourage Don from spending so much time with Jim Jones. She did not push too hard, however, because Jim seemed good-natured and good-hearted, charitable even to the disheveled tramps who rode the rails into town and curled up at night in the coal bins. Located near the railroad, the Jones house was a likely place for bums to go begging, and it was a good choice. Jimmy did not hesitate to gather food for them in a paper sack, and Lynetta helped them too. She taught her son that bums were as good as other people. Even at this early age, compassion and empathy coexisted with some unkind tendencies.
TWO
Breaking Away
Jim Jones was maturing earlier than most other boys his age. As the first signs of puberty appeared—Jim was only eleven or twelve—a disturbing series of incidents took place that further fractured his relations with his peers and other townspeople.
The sap was rising in this precocious, unconventional youngster, adding a new urgency to his behavior. While other boys discovered sports, Jim turned to spiritual things. Gradually estranged, he felt his few friends slipping away from his grasp. In reaction he often made himself outlandish, rebellious, demanding, though as he matured he made at least a superficial compromise by moderating or concealing his eccentricities.
The first attempt at overt control had been the locking of his friends into the barn. Don Foreman had been bothered by Jim’s domineering behavior, but it would take many more such incidents before Don—like others who were simultaneously attracted and repelled by Jim—would part company with him. Though at school he often felt pity for Jim, Don remained fascinated by him outside the classroom. Young Jim was years ahead of his peers. He was studious, full of ideas and things to do, seemingly sure of his direction
Jim shared very few adolescent rites with his boyhood friends, except for “pissing contests,” in which four to eight boys would line up alongside a barn and try to see who could shoot highest up the wall. The other boys were impressed with the size of Jim’s genitals, and his sexual maturity. Also Jim, by pinching the end of his penis to build up pressure, could nearly get the spray over the peak of the roof. Jim’s superiority became such a foregone conclusion that some kids quit trying to beat him.11
Pissing contests were soon a thing of the past, however. As the other boys attained puberty and became athletic, Jim became isolated. He refused to go fishing in a creek or swimming in the string of flooded gravel pits outside town, refused to join them when they swiped a few cigarettes and some beer from their parents and sneaked off to enjoy the illicit pleasure. To Jim, such activities were either a waste of valuable time or immoral. He had once more resumed his odyssey through the churches, this time conscious of a greater purpose.
He still longed for a family, brotherhood, a sense of inclusiveness. But now he was also on a quest for a truly religious experience, for the ecstasy of spiritual fulfillment. As before, his search would touch every church in Lynn. His friends, and even his mother, had trouble keeping track of which church he was attending.
For a while, Jim’s flowering interest in religion was no barrier to his friendships. Though religion frequently cropped up in his conversation, and the Bible became one of the books he slung over his shoulder each school day, he did not force his beliefs on others. In fact, churchgoing was a group activity in his circle of friends. They went to the Methodist church, which Don and a number of other playmates attended. They went to the Qu
akers, and to the Christian church. Then it was Jim’s turn to be host.
One midweek evening, Jim and Don walked out Highway 36 to the Gospel Tabernacle church. At the door, Don stopped, but Jim entered, taking a place near the rear. From a window, Don could see his friend carrying on with the others, waving his arms, making loud overtures and entreaties to the heavens. Don turned and walked away. He could not abide that sort of radical church.
The Pentecostalists were Jim’s favorites. He could appreciate the Quakers and Methodists; he had known the Nazarene church since he was a toddler. He would often walk into services at the Christian church (Disciples of Christ), with which he would someday affiliate. But the Gospel Tabernacle church—the one with the shabby reputation, the one on the outskirts of town, the one frowned upon by the “respectable”—suited him best. In that setting of warmth and freedom of emotion where people hugged and praised Christ, Jim Jones experienced the delicious taste of acceptance for the first time in his life. The spiritual bond inspired him to think of being a preacher someday. The people were his people—the rejects. The church drew less from the old stock of Lynn than from the southerners of Kentucky and Tennessee—“hillbillies,” as some uncharitably referred to them—who came to the area to work in World War II- SPAWNED industry and stayed.
While Don fell victim to “Hoosier hysteria,” as basketball was affectionately dubbed, Jim pored over his Bible. Not once did Jim join neighborhood boys who played hours and hours on Don’s homemade court, shooting at a standard attached to his uncle’s barn, alongside a cornfield. Don nonetheless spent time with Jim. After all, they had been friends too long to allow sports to stand in the way.
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