In junior high Jim’s father gave him a BB gun for plinking cans and shooting birds. Jim usually ignored the little rifle. One humid summer day however, while he and Don were chatting aimlessly, shirtless, near the loft, Jim pointed the barrel at Don’s midsection and shot him. A tiny trickle of blood formed; the BB was imbedded in his skin. As Don picked out the tiny copper sphere, a sick smile came over Jim’s face. When pressed to explain, Jim said, “I just wondered whether you could stand it. ”
Don was furious, yet a few months later, in late fall, he and Jim started off on a rabbit hunt together: Jim had finally agreed to participate in one of Don’s pastimes. Don loaned him a .22-caliber rifle and armed himself with a .410 gauge shotgun. While leading the way through a cornfield, Don noticed that Jim was carrying the rifle unsafely, pointing it at Don’s legs. The third time that Don turned and asked Jim to point it elsewhere, Jim issued his own warning:
“I’ve been thinking about demanding that you stop walking,” said Jim.
“What do you mean?”
“If you take one more step, I’ll shoot you.”
With that, the .22 discharged and a bullet tore through the toe of one of Don’s shoes, narrowly missing his foot.
Even before these incidents, which Don never talked about with others, Jim Jones was becoming an oddity around town. Toward the end of junior high school, he had begun evangelizing his neighbors, wrapped —like Mahatma Gandhi or some Eastern ascetic—in a full-length white sheet. In fact the sheet resembled the one he wore up in the loft when he was healing sick chickens and rabbits. At times, he wore these robes over his street clothes and leather oxfords when he hiked out to the Pentecostal church, a white apparition moving west on the dusty shoulder of Highway 36.
Sometimes after school Jim would throw on his holy robes and stride downtown. With a big black Bible pressed against his heart, he beckoned to pedestrians, halting some, offering salvation, paraphrasing from the Bible, pleading with them to allow the Holy Spirit into their hearts. But the Main Street of Lynn was not prime missionary territory, and Jim’s reputation impeded him: some recalled his cussing, and others disapproved of his parents. Most ignored him.
Jim Jones took action against them too, or at least against his father. Since he was a little boy, he had hated the town pool hall. Now, with his jaw set and his white robes fluttering, he would storm down Main Street. Usually he would halt at the threshold of the pool parlor, shouting toward the card players in back: “You’re all going to hell!” One day he kept right on going past the lunch counter stools and the displays of candy and tobacco goods. Planting his feet near his father, he threatened, “You’ll all go to hell if you stay here.” Mr. Jones, who had no breath to waste, said succinctly, “I’ll be home shortly.” Jim could only retreat.12
When Jim Jones entered high school, there never was any question that he was college material. His IQ was placed at 115 to 118. He always ranked at the top of his class in public speaking, and his grades were among the best five or six in a class of about forty. He was a voracious reader with the ability to digest great volumes of ideas. He spent hours at the new public library. He took elective courses such as algebra, geometry and physics. In the classroom, he held himself up as an intellectual and insisted that his ideas were correct. Most of the time he was right. He was brighter, better informed and better read than virtually all of his peers and some of his teachers.
Young Jones stayed preoccupied with religion, medicine, current events and world figures. He and Don had started ninth grade in 1945, the year Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed, and Jim read extensively about the war and about the men influencing history—Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx and, most of all, Adolf Hitler. He did not take these figures lightly; he studied each as one would study a model, an idol or an opponent, assessing strengths and weaknesses, accomplishments and failures. The personalities and power of Stalin and Hitler particularly intrigued him: he respected the Russian’s new social order and the Machiavellian abilities and oratory of Hitler, though he did not endorse his goals.
Though young Jim eagerly compared different political systems, he did not espouse any radical ideas. He showed no particular interest in the plight of black Americans, nor any strong identification with the poorest children at school. He was attracted to boys and girls like himself, the excellent students with drive, those preparing for college, those most likely to break out of the farming town, to become professionals.
Along with Jim’s expanded literary horizons had come a growing sophistication about social situations. Evidently Jim began to realize that he would never gain acceptance unless he moved a little closer to the mainstream than he had been in his eccentric junior high days. Though he remained intensely religious and carried a Bible everywhere, his sheet soon became the relic of an adolescent religious crisis. Jones was smart enough to recognize that holding controversial views was one thing, but wearing bizarre costumes and violating the norm hurt his efforts. It was an early lesson in compromise—and concealment.
Adopting the trappings of normalcy made sense from another standpoint too. Jim was interested in the opposite sex. He took care to make the most of his dark good looks. He always wore slacks and leather shoes, never coveralls or sneakers, and though he had no telephone or car, he did his best. He was fond of Barbara H., a doctor’s daughter, and like every other boy in class, he had a crush on Marilyn K., who was outgoing, pretty and involved in school activities. Perhaps most of all, he liked Sara Lou Harlan, the adopted daughter of a respected dentist. She was a slender young lady with dark soulful eyes, heavy eyebrows and an olive complexion as smooth as Jim’s. Every Sunday she attended the Christian church. Her parents would not allow her to date, but they would invite her classmates home. Jim walked her around town now and then, and at least once went to her house. Afterward, he told Don that it had been a wonderful evening, with her parents graciously serving a nice dinner and Sara playing the piano for him.13
In the meantime, he and Don had moved in incompatible directions. Their contact had become sporadic, and Don did not even bother to invite Jim fishing anymore. One day in their sophomore year, Jim spotted Don and three other basketball fanatics dribbling and shooting at the hoop on the barn. Jim strode over and proposed that all of them sit down and read the Bible. When they refused, he attempted to stop the game by positioning himself in the middle of the court and grabbing for the ball. Don ordered him to leave, but Jim would not budge. Don shoved; Jim moved as if he were going to slug Don. But as he lunged, Don swung. His fist connected solidly with Jim’s face, knocking him into the adjoining cornfield. Dazed and disbelieving, he sat there among the dried corn stalks. A little blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
Don had completely lost touch with Jim. Their eleventh grade class picture captured their relationship in black and white. Don and Jim were positioned at opposite ends of the composition, Jim well groomed and posing formally, Don playing the young athlete, with his hair combed back and a small rakish curl on his forehead. To Don’s right posed some of the prettiest girls, several in pleated skirts, bobby socks and white and brown saddle shoes. Behind Don stood his coach and adviser, with a crew cut, arms folded across a burly chest.
Probably the coach could not have been less interested in Jim Jones’s future. On the other hand, his Latin teacher, Violet Myers, could not help but notice him. He sat directly in front of her desk in that class of about fourteen, and he had a propensity for argument. His shouting matches sometimes led to scuffles on the school grounds. As one of the students told Mrs. Myers: “He’s hellbent for doing what he pleases.”
Despite his occasional rudeness, Jim managed to impress Mrs. Myers with his creative use of English. Once when Jim was bothered by something Mrs. Myers said, he asked pointedly, “On what do you bias your opinion?” She thought his little twist of language so clever that she borrowed it in the future.
The only time Jim’s religious views caused any friction was during study of the
gods and goddesses of early Roman times. Jim felt compelled to make a pitch for his own Christian views, and became dogmatic. Mrs. Myers had to cut him off; religion was a potentially explosive subject in Lynn.
Outside the classroom, other students did not so much exclude or reject Jim as ignore him. Even his old buddies felt they could not invite him on their backroads beer runs. On the few occasions Jim joined other students for parties or get-togethers, he would not dance. Dancing, drinking and playing cards were sinful.
Although his religious expression had taken on a more conventional tenor, and Jim now preached in neat street clothes, the people of Lynn still would not listen to him. Finally, he began hitchhiking to Richmond, the industrial city to the south, where he worked part-time in a hospital and sometimes preached on the streets to anyone who would pause for a while. Some did, so he kept going back.
He held his ministry on the north side of Richmond, down by the railroad tracks in a predominantly black residential and industrial area. His pulpit was the intersection of two streets, with a tavern on each corner —watering spots for the workers.
His raven hair combed in place and his clothes straightened, Jim cut a mature and respectable figure. Despite his smooth face and boyish features, he hardly looked like a sixteen-year-old from a farming hamlet. His manly stature made him difficult to ignore as he stopped virtually everyone who strolled by or groped out of the bars. “Get out of the way,” many would snap, brushing past the nonstop talker. Some shoved, but he persisted. Some resented his presence, but gradually hostility turned to tolerance.
Once he had drawn four or five adults with his brazen technique, Jim strode to the lamppost, where he had placed a rolled-up blanket and his jacket. He unfurled the blanket on the ground before him. Inside was his Bible. Using it as a prop, he raised his voice and preached a mixture of Christianity and equality of all men under God. Jim had no reason to address racial issues when he preached in virtually all-white Lynn. But here, in a town that was one-fifth black, where the blacks were confined almost exclusively to the extreme northern and southern neighborhoods, something needed to be said about race and poverty. As he stood on that street corner waving the Good Book, he stressed the need for brotherhood and tied the message to the written word of God. In less than an hour, he would collect a small crowd of twenty-five to thirty people, about half black and half white. In his blanket were the coins he needed to keep his mission moving.14
Toward the end of his junior year, Jim Jones told his friend George Fudge that he was moving to Richmond with his mother. He said his parents were separating, and that his mother was dating “Shorty” Beverly, a slightly built mechanic whose marriage had fallen apart. He too was moving to Richmond.
In all probability Jim was embarrassed by his parents’ breakup. In explaining the move to Don Foreman, he said he was moving because Richmond High had a superior curriculum which would help him get into a university.
Jim asked Don to supper one evening that spring. They had not visited for a long time, having drifted even farther apart after their fight. Don still felt somewhat guilty about the fight and did not want to part on unpleasant terms.
Answering the door, young Jim seemed glad to see his friend and invited him inside. His father—“Big Jim”—was settled in his rocker, the .45 pistol swinging on the back of the chair, the way it had when Don used to ask, “How the Reds doin’?” and the old man replied either “Doin’ good” or “Doin’ bad.”
The meal took place in the kitchen as usual, the boys eating alone. Lynetta moved in and out, serving sandwiches. Jim and Don updated each other on their activities, and Jim broached the subject of Don’s motorcycle. Don had already heard through the grapevine that Jim disapproved of the black Harley Davidson he had bought himself. Even the town barber knew about Jim’s objections.
Jim now explained in person how concerned he was over Don’s safety: motorcycles were dangerous, he warned. He also probed Don’s reasons for buying what was an obvious status symbol. In almost the same breath, he said he would appreciate a ride to Richmond if Don was ever going that way.
When dusk approached, Don started to get up to leave. Two or three times, Jim persuaded him to stay longer. Don lingered. Finally, he announced firmly that he had to get home to do chores before dark.
“Stay a bit,” Jim said. He had adopted an insistent tone. Don stood there a moment while Jim pressured him to stay, then at last he walked out of the kitchen door to the darkened living room. Mr. Jones was in his chair, humming and rocking and listening to the radio. Don said good-bye.
As Don continued across the room to the front door, Jim passed behind his father. Don stepped outside, and Jim, pausing a minute behind his father’s chair, followed his friend. The light was fading as Don stepped onto the wooden porch boards and turned. He walked to the end of the porch, stepped down and turned again, following the walkway toward the sidewalk. He glanced back. Jim stood in the doorway, one hand hanging down alongside his leg. His fingers were clasped around the plastic handle of his father’s big black pistol.
“I really don’t want you to go,” Jim said. He dropped the words with tremendous weight, as though their friendship hung in the balance. Don said he had to leave.
He proceeded down the walkway at an unbothered pace as Jim pursued him. When he had just about reached the sidewalk, Don heard a command: “Just stop. Or I’ll shoot ya.” Don had never heard such a tone of voice from Jim. The disappointment in it was raw. Jim commanded his friend to stop, to return.
“Just stop, or I’ll shoot ya,” said Jim.
“Jim, I’m going home.” Suddenly, Don was worried. He pivoted ninety degrees and headed down the tree-lined sidewalk. Some fifty feet behind him, on the porch, Jim leveled the pistol in his direction. Almost instantaneously, an explosion went off, and a three-inch chunk of bark went flying from a tree Don had just passed. A horrible ear-ringing noise hit him like a blast of icy wind and set his legs in motion.
He lit out for the cover of a row of shrubs along the driveway. When he was out of sight, he peered back through the greenery. Jim was staring from the porch, the gun dangling at his side.
THREE
Marceline
The girl that I marry
Will have to be
As soft and as pink
As a nursery....
Every Memorial Day weekend Main Street, or U.S. 40 by another name, was clogged by motorists en route to the Indy 500. But tourism was only one part of the bustling economy of this solid industrial city of 45,000; Richmond, Indiana, was the economic, social and cultural center for farming towns throughout the area. People from miles around would come for a basketball game, a movie, the theater, a good meal or drinks in the cocktail lounge of the Leland Hotel.
It was not a homogeneous place. There were extremes of wealth: an elite white area called Reeveston, a black slum called Northside, and all the neat, middle-class white neighborhoods west of the Whitewater River. Wayne County itself was rockbound Republican, but Richmond’s political leadership varied. In the late 1940s, it too was Republican, and one of its City Council members was Walter Baldwin.
A Richmond native with an office job at International Harvester, Baldwin harbored no great political ambitions. But when the Republican party asked him to run, he responded to the call, and he won. The Baldwins lived comfortably on the west side of town in a century-old two-story white farmhouse that had belonged to Mr. Baldwin’s father. In that solid Christian home, Walter and Charlotte Baldwin had raised three girls: Marceline, Eloise and Sharon. Life revolved about family and church. Evenings were spent around the radio nibbling popcorn and listening to programs such as “Fibber McGee and Molly,” or playing cards with Grandma Lamb, who lived with them. Sundays they all strolled down the street to the Methodist church. The family cultivated their natural vocal talents. The parents often went church to church singing spiritual duets. Marceline’s lilting voice became an asset in the church choir as she grew, and she performed,
with Eloise on piano, at the annual minstrel shows.
Marceline was a gentle, warmly expressive girl; she knew how to make people feel good about themselves. Even as a teen-ager, she had a way of looking at her little sister Sharon with an expression that bespoke worlds of love. Twelve years older than Sharon, Marceline became almost a second mother to her. But despite her soft manner, she was not afraid to stand up for what she believed, and she could speak her mind.
By example, the Baldwins had planted in all their girls a strong tolerance, a trusting, almost naive attitude toward the world. Marceline’s parents, in large part for Christian reasons, were not inclined to think or speak evil of others. To their daughters, they stressed the importance of seeing things from the perspective of others, of seeing life as grays rather than as black and white, of trying to see the best in people.
Pretty as she was, with a thin five-foot-seven figure, light reddish curls, finely drawn features and a movie starlet’s mouth, Marceline was content to stay at home on Saturday nights with her family. She took life seriously and had experienced her share of difficulties. Rheumatoid arthritis gave her terrible backaches. And she had to work hard for her Bs and a few Cs, though she had strong ambitions.
Her grades would have earned her admission to a university, but rather than heap a financial burden on her parents, she decided to enter nursing school through a federally funded World War II program. Marceline did not view nursing as a bridge to marriage, but as a means of helping people. She put her first stipend check into clothing for a fatherless family of eight children. She bought a new coat for her mother.
The nurses’ three-story brick residence at Reid Memorial Hospital resembled a college dormitory. The girls lived in pairs and even had to answer to a house mother, who enforced rules designed to preserve the academic environment and Christian morality. The regime was rigorous from mandatory morning chapel meetings to 10:30 P.M. “lights out.” Naturally, dating was much on the minds of the young women, and to some the rules were mere obstacles to fun. Marceline, however, was not one of those girls who took cocktails at the Leland Hotel or disappeared for the night—or was willing to give up her career and principles for a man. She refused to sleep with a local young man who wanted her to become a housewife while he went on to college and career. And she lost him.
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