by Tim Cahill
When Odell first arrived in Guyana, things seemed fine. His job was teaching crafts to children, and he was good at it. He'd spend hours poring over books, looking for projects children could complete in a couple of hours. The kids teased him—"Hey, that'll never work, man"—and he'd bet them cookies that it would. They laughed a lot.
The children would throw their arms around Odell and call him "Daddy." He was worried about that at first. Jim Jones was Daddy. Jim Jones was Father. But the leaders in
the organization appreciated his efforts. Odell, they said, was providing a stable image for the youngsters. His estimation of his own worth soared.
"I really loved those kids," he told me.
But then things started going sour in Jonestown. The food deteriorated. The workdays increased. It seemed, to Odell's experienced eye, that Jim Jones was developing a serious drug problem. Crazy things began to happen, and he made plans to escape.
Odell had been to Vietnam and attended something they called "hunt and kill" school. It was said that no one could survive in the jungle around Jonestown. Armed members of the Temple's security squad combed the roads and trails. Escapees were invariably caught. And punished. Odell figured he could steal one of the camp's crossbows. He'd hide it in the bush, then make off with it the next morning, before anyone noticed that he was missing. He'd stay off the roads and trails, hiding in the bush and living off the land until he was presumed dead.
But then the news of Congressman Ryan's visit hit Jonestown. Security was increased. Then came the incident at Port Kaituma, followed by the terrible night of screams in which more than nine hundred died. The children were first. Odell watched Larry Schact, Jonestown's doctor, measure poison into a syringe. Nurses squirted the liquid into children's mouths. Some of them were brought to Odell. He was their daddy, and they died in his arms.
"I watched them die," he said. "And I haven't cried yet. It's like I'm dead inside. Sometimes, I'm alone in my room, and I close the door and I wait to cry. Water comes to my eyes, but I can't cry."
Odell sipped at the bourbon and blinked several times.
It was a massive job, loading up all the corpses at Jonestown, and it took eight full days. On the ninth day, the government allowed about fifty news ghouls into the jungle enclave. We flew up to Matthews Ridge and were ferried the twenty or so miles to the ghost town in one
helicopter accommodating twelve. There was a dash to be on the first flight. TV crews claimed they should get preference because they needed the light. Newspaper reporters were shouting, "Fuck that TV shit. I have to see, too." The boarding process looked like a Tokyo subway at rush hour. It was, all in all, a shameful disgrace that led several young Guyanese solders to laugh out loud.
At one thousand feet, the jungle seemed like a vast, gently undulating sea: forty shades of green stretched as far as the eye could see. And it was literally steaming: mist rose up from the low-lying areas and from the sluggish, tea-colored rivers. It was awesome, frightening, and my guess is that every reporter on the chopper, reminded of Joseph Conrad's descriptions of the jungle, scribbled Heart of Darkness in their notes, as I did.
We landed on the rise Tim Chapman had mentioned, walked down a dirt path through a neatly mowed lawn, crossed a gracefully arched wooden bridge over a turgid brown river, passed several wood buildings on stilts, and made our way to the pavilion, where the bodies had lain.
Everything was ironic. The last bodies to be removed had been in such a state of decomposition that bits and pieces kept falling off. Guyanese workers were plowing the whole area under, using tractors that had belonged to the people, bits and pieces of whom were being plowed under.
To get to the pavilion proper, we had to step across muddy rills, and the thought of that ocher-colored mud clinging to our shoes was unpleasant. The pavilion had a corrugated metal roof set on wooden columns and a hard-packed mud floor. Tractors had not yet been inside. The smell was bad, and several of us gagged. In front of the
stage, along with a collection of musical instruments, were several bits of gore: blackened flesh, shriveled skin, all crawling with flies. On the walls were signs that said love one another, and the like. Red rubber gloves were lying about, dozens of sheets of paper reading, "Instructions for use; bag, plastic mortuary," mementos of the American graves detail.
I found a notebook containing "notes on the news," which consisted of a recapitulation of Soviet space triumphs and details of repressive actions taken by reactionary, American-supported governments around the world. The notebook must have been in among a pile of bodies because it stank of rotten meat, and I got that stink on my hands.
A soldier pointed out a pile of crossbows. They were Wham-O Powermasters, set on wooden rifle stocks. The arrows were short, lethal, razor-tipped. Forty guns had been found, but the soldiers wouldn't let us see them.
A short walk across the mud ended at a wooden cage with a corrugated metal roof and sign reading mr. muggs. Jones had started off in the Midwest as "the monkey preacher," selling imported monkeys door to door. He loved animals, and the Temple was always taking in strays. Mr. Muggs, the Jonestown chimpanzee mascot, had been shot in the back of the head. Patches of blackened fur littered the cage floor.
The path led down a shallow slope to Jones's house, a brown, wooden affair, slightly larger than the rest, surrounded by tangerine and almond trees. The place was locked up, but scattered on the porch was Jim Jones's mail, a collection of books and magazines, and his medicine cabinet: three things that reveal much about a man.
The books and magazines were about conspiracies, spies, political imprisonment, people who manipulate news, and Marxism. A large red book contained dozens of Russian posters; one showed Lenin speaking before a crowd of workers.
Near a footlocker full of health food and vitamins, I found hundreds of Valium tablets, some barbiturate-type pills, and several disposable syringes, along with ampuls of synthetic morphine. Next to the drugs, by a pile of blank
Guyanese power-of-attorney forms, was a great stack of letters addressed "to Dad." Most were labeled "self-analysis" and began with "I feel guilty because . . ." The self-analysis letters were confessions. No one admitted to being happy and well adjusted.
I read one from a young male: "I am sexually attracted to a lot of brothers and would rather fuck one in the ass than get fucked." After the original confession, the letters churned with hate. "I have feelings about going to the States for revenge against people." From an eighty-nine-year-old woman: "Dear Dad, I would rather die than go back to the States as there is plenty of hell there. I would
give my body to be burned for the cause than be over there
If I had to go back, I would like to have a gun and use it [she names several Temple defectors who worked with the anti-Temple Human Freedom Movement] and have them all in a room together and take a gun and spray the row of them. I am glad to have a Dad and Father like you. . . ."
Some letters seemed to be answers to questions posed by Jones, one of which concerned the writer's estimation of his ability to stand up under torture. The answers suggested that people felt that kidnapping and torture were very real possibilities. Most doubted that they could endure continual physical pain.
The letters were chilling, suggesting lives filled with guilt and hate and fear. More frightening was the tone of absolute submission to Dad, a man who, by all evidence, seemed to be a hypochondriac, a drug addict, and paranoid.
The soldiers clapped their hands and we were told to move along. No one wanted to leave the mother lode outside Jones's house. Everyone wanted to scribble down just one more letter or the name on just one more ampul of amber-colored drugs. Soldiers nudged one or two of us with their rifles.
We were shown a bakeshop, a machine shop, a brick-making area. We noted packets of a Kool Aid-like drink called Fla«vor«aid lying around. The illustration showed two children sipping Fla«vor»aid and smiling happily. There were shoes in the mud and on the grass and in the
fields. A
disproportionate number were children's shoes, sandals no bigger than the palm of your hand.
Across from the rise where the helicopter landed were forty or so cottages, painted in pleasant pastels. They were maybe twelve by twenty-four feet. Several doors were open, and we could see beds jammed together. The cottages seemed to be for sleep and sleep alone.
A guard tower stood above the cottages. Strangely, it wasn't near the roads in and out of Jonestown, but was directly over the area where most of the people lived. Someone had painted several bright seascapes on the tower, so that it appeared to be a contradiction of itself, like a .357 Magnum disguised as a candy cane.
As we stood on the rise waiting for the helicopter and looking down on the cottages, a rainbow began to form in the distance. It grew more brilliant. A second bow formed above the first, and together they stretched across the sky, encompassing the whole of Jonestown.
A soldier said the Guyanese might continue the communal agriculture experiment Jones began. We wondered who could work there, what kind of men and woman would be required to spend their nights in those awful, empty cottages. Someone else said that the Guyanese had considered making Jonestown a tourist attraction. A tourist attraction? What would they call it? Club Dead?
Later, back in Georgetown, I asked dissident survivor Harold Cordell about the guard tower with those painted yellow fish swimming all over it. He told me they had placed a wind-driven generator on top, but it had never worked. Finally, they had installed children's slides on the lower level. The guard tower was called the playground.
The whole process—this denial of the tower's function— reminded me of George Orwell's 1984, in which the Party re-forms language in such a way as to make "heretical thought" impossible. The language is called Newspeak and
makes abundant use of euphemisms. In Newspeak, a forced labor camp is called a "joycamp." The guard tower at Jonestown was the architectural equivalent of Newspeak.
Jonestown itself had become a joycamp in its last year. There was no barbed wire around the perimeter. It wasn't needed. Escape was a dream. The jungle stretched from horizon to horizon, thick, swampy, and deadly. Armed security guards patrolled the few trails, and it was their business to know where an escapee would look for food and water. Rumor had it that captured escapees had their arms broken. Toward the end, most of them were simply placed in the euphemistically named Extra Care Unit, where they were drugged senseless for a week at a time. Patients emerged from ECU unable to carry on a conversation, and their faces were blank, as if they had been temporarily lobotomized.
They were told that even if they could survive the jungle, elude the guards, and somehow make it almost one hundred and fifty miles to Georgetown, they'd be stuck there. The Temple held their passports as well as any money they might have had when they arrived.
[The Party] systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty. "— 1984
It happened that way with Dale Parks, one of the men who tried to leave with Congressman Ryan. He had quit the church for some months, but Jones's wife, Marceline, had convinced him to come back and give Jonestown a try. He was given a round-trip ticket, which he was required to turn over, along with his passport, "for safekeeping." Almost immediately, he was "forced" to write letters to his family about how wonderful it all was. "I saw the guns around," he told me, "and I didn't want it to come to that."
Parks's family believed the letters and followed him to Jonestown. Soon after arriving, his father, Gerry, who had a stomach condition, mentioned that the food didn't agree with him. During the night's Peoples Forum meeting, in which "problems" were discussed, Gerry Parks was called
up "on the floor." Jones humiliated him in front of the community, gathered in the pavilion. "How can you complain about food," Jones raged. "You, with a full belly, when two out of three babies in the world go hungry." Dale then watched his father being beaten.
When Jones called people on the floor, Dale Parks said, relatives were expected to confront them first. Defending a father, mother, or child could result in a beating. The family itself was expected to dispense the most vitriolic criticism. When the Parkses found themselves together (as when they were forced to write glowing letters home), they would whisper furtively: "You know I have to do it. If I'm on the floor, you do it too. I still love you."
"Every citizen . . . could be kept . . . under the eyes of the police. . . .—1984
There were informers everywhere. They got time off, extra food, extra privileges, sometimes even a pat on the back from Father. Children informed on their parents, parents on children. Senior citizens were prized as informers. In rare moments of privacy, one resident might express "negative" opinions to the other. It was unwise to reply with anything but criticism of such ideas. The person might be an informer, and any agreement would put you on the floor and result in a beating.
The aftermath of a beating used to be called "discipline," but the name was changed to the more euphemistic "public service." People in public service were transferred to a dorm patrolled by armed guards. They did double work duty, and food might be withheld if they didn't give their all. Security people would stop by the dorm to administer a beating. Often people in public service were allowed to sleep for an hour or two, then were roughly wakened and made to do some tedious chore, such as washing walls.
The only way to get out of public service was to express regret for your previous attitude, to pretend to like the work, to display a "good attitude." It did something to a man's mind, public service.
"Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting operation, like having an enema. . . . It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control. . . sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship. "—1984
It had been pretty rough for Stanley Clayton in Oakland. He started stealing at the age of eight, and the only presents in the house on Christmas were the ones he stole. Clayton was originally attracted to the Temple because the women he met there were warm and "foxy." Later, he came to share a vision of economic and social equality. On the boat from Georgetown to Jonestown, he met a young, female Temple member. They talked about how they were home for the first time: home in a socialist country with black leaders. They were finally free.
The woman expressed her freedom by sleeping with one of the sailors. The boat's captain told Jones about it, and the second night Stanley was in Jonestown, the woman was called on the floor. The question was put to her: "Why did you do it?" She answered, "Well, because Stanley said I'm free." The community turned on him, shouting invectives. He was knocked to the ground, where security guards, trained in martial arts, shoved him and shouted at him and threw punches.
According to Stanley, Jones frequently railed against sex in marathon meetings. He said it was unhealthy and shortened the life span. When a married man was discovered having an affair, the two were called on the floor and made to strip to their underwear and pretend to make love—there on the floor in front of the man's wife. "Look at them," he said. "They're like animals."
When Stanley had sex with an older woman, both were called on the floor. "They beat the shit out of us," Stanley said.
At Jonestown, you didn't have a lover, you had a companion. One day Stanley's longtime companion told him it was over. "The way she told me," he said, "I knew it was put upon her." At one meeting, Jones's wife told Stanley's com-
panion to sit by the doctor. "At that time," Stanley said, "Jim Jones tried to humiliate me, calling me all kinds of names. 'See what sex can do for you,' he said. 'Your companion is off somewhere else.' He even tried to humiliate her by saying all she wanted was a dick. He said, measuring a small space with his hands, 'Stanley's dick ain't no bigger than that.' "
"[A Party member] is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign en
emies and internal traitors . . . the discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards. "—1984
The public-address system was sometimes on all night, the survivors explained, so that people could learn in their sleep. At six a.m., someone knocked on the door. Breakfast consisted of rice, watery milk, and brown sugar. Promptly at seven, a typical resident reported to work in the field, which might be as much as a mile and a half away. A supervisor took his name, and the list was given to security. It seemed as if the weeds grew back to choke the crops in a single day, and workers were required to do heavy weeding in temperatures that often rose well above 100 degrees.
There was a half-hour break for lunch. Most often, midday meal was a bowl of rice soup.
The workday ended at six p.m. A resident had less than two hours to walk back from the fields, shower, and eat dinner, which usually consisted of rice and gravy and wild greens. At 7:45, the public-address system began blasting out "the news."
Jim Bogue took an adult education course from Jim Jones in Ukiah, California. At the time, Jones didn't believe in tests. In Jonestown, he gave one or two tests every week, and if you did poorly, you might end up on the floor. Sometimes Jones would read and interpret the news, sometimes another voice would supply his interpretation. The news outlined repressive measures taken by the South African government, and it implicated the United States. Tortures in Chilean prisons were described.
Jones became more and more radical in his opinions.
Charles Manson was misunderstood. The Red Brigades, who kidnapped and eventually murdered President Aldo Moro of Italy, had done a good thing. People took notes, dreading the tests.