Fifth Gospel:The Odyssey of a Time Traveler in First-Century Palestine

by William Roskey

  “Yes sir. I’ll make my decision no later than then.” Ike stood up, and Clarence and I rose too. The President extended his hand. “Good luck, son. I’ll pray that you make the right decision.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” I said, shaking his hand. “If I go, I won’t let you down. I’ll give it all I’ve got.” A faint smile played about his lips.

  “I know that. I didn’t get to be where I am by misjudging men, Lightfoot.”

  11

  I longed to go out into the desert to think. To be out in the middle of the desert living off the food that the desert supplies. To sit in perfect solitude watching the sunrise and sunset. To lie out under the clear chill canopy of a myriad of bright stars, the only sounds those of the creatures of the desert. In such an atmosphere a man can think. A man cannot think in a building, especially in a city. Although the Eisenhower farm was not in a built-up area, it was still a man-made habitat; it was still civilization. It would have to do though. As least I was not in a city, where even in “the still of the night” a man’s mind is continuously assailed by trucks and buses thundering by outside like crazed leviathans, their horns trumpeting for others to stand clear, the wail of police sirens, the blaring of a neighbor’s stereo set, the flushing of a toilet, the hysterical shriek of fire engines racing through the night, the angry and suspicious barking of a guard dog, the distant sound of factory whistles greeting the midnight shift, the mournful wailing of an ambulance, the ponderous hourly bonging of huge clocks in steeples and towers, automobile engines coughing and sputtering into life, brakes squealing, the minute settling of the foundation, the creaking of the beams in the house, the kicking on of the furnace or air conditioner, the ticking of a watch.

  Can a man think in such a cacophony? The insane asylums are full of people who have tried. Only when a man is away from, apart from other men and the works of man can he see visions and dream great dreams. Only then can he put his spirit in order and see where he has been and where he is going, and where he must go. I did the best I could under the circumstances. I turned off the furnace and everything else that could be turned off, including the refrigerator. I took the phone off the hook. I unplugged everything that was plugged in, including the clock. I sat cross-legged on the hearth and stared into the roaring fire, blocking out all else around me. Years before I had chosen the way of the warrior. I had become skilled in my life’s work and, with one exception, could look back to my accomplishments with pride. Now I was being asked to become a reporter, a scribe. They were asking me, Aloysius Lightfoot O’Brien, to become an observer rather than a doer. Unthinkable. And yet …

  And yet, I was being presented with the opportunity to undertake what was undeniably the greatest adventure in history.

  But never to return. Never.

  The hours wore on, and, as if it were planned, the very last ember in the fire went out just as the sun announced its appearance on the horizon with false dawn. What of the thoughts that went through my mind that long night? I cannot tell. They were many, varied, and, for some of them, there are no human words—only symbols that the spirit alone can understand, not the conscious mind. I had lost track of time. Standing, I took my mother’s blanket from around my shoulders and folded it. I had arrived at a decision.

  12

  At breakfast in the Secret Service bunkhouse, I learned that the President had set aside a small area on a remote part of the farm as a sort of informal range for target practice. He used it himself to zero in his guns for hunting season and to plink with .22s, and encouraged the Secret Service boys to use it too. I grabbed some empty tin cans from the kitchen and headed there with my Colt. 45 Peacemaker. Shooting has always helped to relax me. The concentration required for good shooting blots everything else from your mind. There is just your eye, the front and rear sights, and the target, all four points falling on a perfectly straight line. Nothing else exists until a gentle squeeze from your finger sends the bullet speeding toward its target. Ten years later, in the late ‘60s, hundreds of thousands of upper middle-class and upper-class adolescents would “discover” that thought technique when they’d explore Eastern religions and philosophies, either never learning or conveniently overlooking the fact that this Zen exercise was developed, and reached its highest state of perfection at the hands of Buddhist warrior monks as they sharpened their archery, knife-throwing, and stick-fighting skills for combat. Like peace, man.

  I was enjoying being under the open sky, drinking in the fresh air, and reveling in the comparative solitude when the President came up behind me. A Secret Service agent was about fifty yards behind him, and there was another about a hundred yards to the right, but he appeared not even to notice them. Maybe he didn’t. I guess it’s something you get used to. His smile was the smile of a man enjoying a private moment.

  “You’re pretty good with that thing, Captain. A Peacemaker, isn’t it?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “May I see it?” I handed it over, and he hefted it, appreciating the legendary balance. It had a five-and-a-half-inch barrel and weighed thirty-seven ounces. I had recently had it reblued, and the finish was almost lustrous. Although mine was only forty years old, it in no way differed from the model that Colt was turning out in 1873, nor, for that matter, from the Peacemakers that Colt is turning out today. There is a certain mystique about the Colt .45 Peacemaker, at least as far as we Westerners are concerned. Also known as the Single Action Army and the Frontier Six-Shooter, it is the Old West. It was used by Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, and, when Custer went down at the Little Big Horn, it was a Colt .45 Peacemaker he was blazing away with.

  Ike cocked it and squeezed off a round at a tomato can. He missed but not by much.

  “You’re no stranger to the Peacemaker, sir.”

  “No, remember I’m a Texas boy—Abilene. Not only that, but I was using a Colt .45 a good twenty years before you were born.” He held it in both hands, and, as he looked down at it, his eyes took on a faraway cast. “You’re an Apache, so you can appreciate this more than most. Geronimo finally surrendered the year I was born; he died when I was a nineteen-year-old cadet at West Point. In fact, some of my instructors at the Point had fought against him. Against him and Cochise. Isn’t that amazing? I can clearly remember when automobiles were something you read about, a curiosity, rather than something you saw every day. I can remember when there were no radios or aircraft. Funny, isn’t it? That all in one lifetime, we’ve gone from that world to a world of nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, computers, and God knows what else.” He stood frozen for a long moment looking at the Peacemaker with an expression of deep sorrow in his eyes. “And we haven’t gotten any smarter.” Abruptly, he shook himself and handed the gun back to me. “It’s got to stop, Lightfoot. It’s got to stop. We’re all going down a road that can only end in a nightmare. Perhaps an eternal nightmare … We have only one hope, and that is God. We’ve taken, somewhere along the line, we’ve taken the wrong turn. If we don’t get back on the right path and soon, our future holds nothing but horror.” I stood there speechless for a long moment.

  “Sir, I’ve decided to go.”

  “Good,” he smiled without surprise. “You’ll do a first-rate job. I’m certain of it. Clarence and I had a long talk earlier this morning. He’s arranged for Aramaic lessons to be given for you in Washington by one of the foremost scholars in the country, and for some other training as well. You and he will work as a very close team in the preparation phase. While you’re undergoing language and physical training, Clarence will be poring through hundreds of books in the Library of Congress gathering information on customs of the time, the geography, the literature, songs, poetry, food, prices, laws, and a hundred and one other things you’ll need to know. He’s suggested that you stay at his house, so you can make the best possible use of what little time we have to prepare. During the day, language, and physical training, then, when you return home in the evenings, Clarence
will spend a few hours briefing you on what materials he’s gleaned that day in his research.”

  “Oh no, sir. I couldn’t inconvenience …”

  “It’s settled, O’Brien,” Ike said in a tone that assured me it was. “Say,” he said with a sudden smile, “that Peacemaker, it just dawned on me that must be the Peacemaker you carried when you fought your way back through enemy lines in Korea.”

  “Yes sir. It was my father’s. He left it behind, and this,” I said taking out the old railroad watch. Ike examined the watch with open admiration.

  “It’s a beauty. So is that Santa Fe fob. You don’t see things like this around much anymore.”

  “No sir, you don’t. I remember the night the other miners carried his body home from the bar. My mother handed me his gun and watch and said, ‘You’re the man of the family now.’ Ever since, wherever I’ve gone, they’ve gone. I carry them with me and my mother’s blanket. They are my only real possessions, the only things that mean anything to me.”

  “Son, do you mean that you pack that .45 wherever you go?” Ike asked incredulously.

  “No sir. I only carry it on my person in a combat situation or when I’m in the desert. But it goes with my personal effects, wherever they go.”

  “I hope you realize that you’re not taking your watch or Colt back to the first century with you.”

  “No sir,” I said, sticking the gun back into my belt and slipping the watch back into my jeans pocket. “I hadn’t really thought about it. As you know, this pistol saved my life in Korea. It also saved my life in the desert once when I used it on a rattler. I’ve hunted with it, done target shooting with it, and have never imagined going into any potentially dangerous situation without it. It’s been a part of me since I was ten years old.”

  “I’m sorry, son. I can appreciate how you feel about those things. I don’t see any problem with your blanket, but the gun and watch have got to stay behind. Is there anyone you’d like to have them? We’ll make the arrangements.”

  “No sir, there’s no one. That’s why they mean so much to me.”

  “I’m sorry.” He turned and began to walk away. He stopped after just a few steps and turned back.

  “Lightfoot, did you really wear warpaint during your ground action in Korea?”

  “Yes sir. I kept a small tube of yellow oil paint with me whenever I flew in the event that I was shot down. I put it on the first chance I got, which was right after I sprung the POWs.” Ike shook his head in wonder.

  “And just where in the world did you learn guerrilla warfare and commando tactics? Surely not in Air Force flight school?”

  “From the old men on the reservation, sir.”

  “Of course,” Ike smiled and said softly, “where else?” He turned once more and walked away.

  13

  We left for Clarence’s home two days later. He was going to be taking a couple of weeks of annual leave, and he needed to tie up some loose ends with the Secret Service detail before shoving off—duty rosters, training schedules, standing orders, and the like. During those two days, I just walked the frozen and deserted Gettysburg battlefield, a solitary figure lost in space and time, suspended between two worlds, wandering over the ghostly snow blown landscape.

  Finally we were off, I had been longing to get moving but, at the same time, was a little afraid about the prospect of being integrated into a normal middle-class American family. I had seen “Father Knows Best” as well as “Ozzie and Harriet” on television, and I had read “Dagwood and Blondie” in the comics, and I knew I was never going to fit in. Four children. Two dogs. House in suburbia.

  Well, there was nothing for it but to take one day at a time. We began the trip at about 10:00 a.m., and the snow was coming down in huge moist flakes, which, overnight, had already added an additional two inches to the snow on the ground. Jones was an expert driver and a fast one. I later learned that all Secret Service agents are. They are, after all, the people who must be able to coolly maneuver the Presidential limousine through snow and ice and a hail of gunfire all at the same time if need be. The Buick flew southward on Route 15 through the Catoctin Mountains, its powerful heater keeping its Apache occupant comfortable, despite the alien environment beyond its frosted windows. Mrs. Eisenhower, a very nice lady, had sent us off with a large thermos of steaming hot chocolate, and that too was welcome. We found a radio station that was broadcasting a dramatization of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and we both began to unwind.

  Clarence and I took turns telling each other about our respective boyhoods. We had a tacit understanding that we’d both enjoy a few days of genuine vacation, without any intruding word or thought about the forthcoming incredible mission. We were determined to think of and speak of only happy things and innocent times. Clarence spoke of his growing up in Tennessee. He had a thousand anecdotes illustrating exactly what life in a sleepy southern hamlet in the 1920’s was like. It was all there, the fishing for catfish in the river, the slingshots that had shattered the wrong windows at the wrong times, the maiden aunt with the mustache, and the slobbery kisses that invariably accompanied her exclamations of “My, how you’ve grown! I remember when … ,” marble-shooting, rabbit-hunting, the school bully, the banker getting the first automobile in town, the town drunk, the one-room schoolhouse, the raiding of the watermelon patch (and how good stolen watermelon tastes), the village idiot, the first harvest hayride and the first kiss from the wholesome country gal he later married … it was all there and more. Clarence Jones was the nearest thing to Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn that I’d ever seen. Perhaps that anyone has ever seen.

  By comparison, my boyhood world was, well, just that—another world. I spoke of a one-room schoolhouse too, but one on an Indian reservation. My rabbit hunts were not through verdant pine forests, but across barren and near trackless desert. While Clarence spoke of times when he and his pals sat around the courthouse steps listening to the old men spin yarns of their fighting at Manassas, Shiloh, Antietam, Vicksburg, and Cold Harbor, I spoke of me and my friends sitting rapt listening to the old men on the reservation tell of fighting alongside Victorio, Loco, Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, Juh, and the legend himself, Geronimo. Another difference was that everything the old men said on the reservation was true. There was no embroidery or exaggeration. For the most part, Indians do not spin yarns. Why this is so I cannot say. I supposed that it all goes back to the Apache concept of honor. In my briefing, the President had spoken of honesty and asked me for an explanation of some of my actions in years past. In response, I had simply blurted out that without honor, a man is nothing. An answer that was both good and bad at the same time. Good because it sums up all Apache metaphysics, and bad because, to an outsider, it is a woefully inadequate way to express an entire way of life.

  The Japanese are usually credited with the tradition of, and adherence to the code of the warrior, and with the sanctity of a man’s honor and the steadfastness of his loyalty. People think of Bushido and the Samurai when they think of death before dishonor, and of courage that springs up from a well deep within a man’s spirit, making him better than he really is. We Apache have lived that code for a thousand years that we know about, and almost certainly long before. It is we who are the Samurai of the Western Hemisphere, not only in the philosophical context, but also in terms of skill, endurance, and effectiveness. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, American and European professional military men were able to lay aside their bigotry long enough to admit that mounted Apache braves were the finest light cavalry in the world.

  Honor. That’s what the fighting was really all about. Apache leaders weren’t stupid. From 1850 on, none of the chiefs ever believed for a moment that they could win. The fighting didn’t go on because of culture shock or greed or hatred, although these all played their parts in the misery recorded in human blood on the shifting desert sands. Geronimo, the last and the greatest of the war shamans, fought until 1890 because he was sickened by the loss of honor that the
Chiricahua Apache had suffered at the hands of the white man. Once a proud and totally self-reliant people, free to go where they willed, they had allowed themselves to be enslaved to the point where they had become nothing more than cattle. They were herded onto a reservation, where the white man controlled them in the most elementary way—by the use of food as a weapon. The sites that were chosen for reservations were chosen because, quite simply, no one else wanted them. They were locations deemed unsuitable for farming, ranching, or mining. Neither was there much game available. No one could leave the reservation, and Indians had no money. Even if one could have left the reservation, he could never have obtained a job. No one hired Indians except the U.S. Calvary, who used them as scouts to hunt their own people. That meant that the only way to survive was to allow oneself and one’s family to be fed by the white man, and to obtain food from the white man. A man and his family (all his family, including sick infants and old people who were dying) had to march to the fort to present themselves to the Indian agent once a month. All Apaches, including babies, wore metal tags around their necks, and the numbers on the tags were duly recorded by the soldiers when the rations were given out. The rations were meager and most often wormy, rotten, rancid, or full of weevils, and this was because the system was so corrupt that money, supplies, and food were siphoned off at virtually all levels. The Indian, once proud and independent, had become a scrawny, ragclad, parasitic-ridden beggar. He had allowed himself, and more importantly, his family to become kept dumb beasts. People wonder why Apaches followed Geronimo, why they fought fiercely against all odds, without any hope of winning, until 1890. That is why. They saw what they had become and had decided that death as free men was preferable to living like that.