Beautiful Revolutionary

by Laura Elizabeth Woollett

  Lenny is dimly relieved when the woman called Phyllis stutters, ‘Y-yes Father,’ and when, through a slatting of eyelashes, he sees her shadowy form rise. The black-haired man says, ‘Mmmm,’ and then, quietly, ‘I love you, sister. The people love you. They’re sending loving thoughts your way. How does that feel?’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Can you move, sister? Can you move without pain?’

  ‘Ah … Father … Yes, Father!’

  ‘Show us, Sister Phyllis. Move your arms and legs together.’

  Lenny widens his eyes to see Phyllis pumping her doughy arms and legs like a gingerbread figure magically animated. Should she be moving like that? Should anyone be moving like that? There’s a loud flutter of applause. Someone shouts, ‘Hallelujah!’ and Lenny is embarrassed. The black-haired man shouts, ‘Hallelujah!’ too, like he knows it’s a corny thing but saying it anyway. Then he smiles down at Phyllis, who’s still moving, dancing almost, and tells the crowd, ‘She move damn fine for a honky, don’t she?’ and then, out of nowhere, a young black guy comes forward and takes Phyllis’s hand and starts doing a jazzy little two-step with her, and the black-haired man shouts, ‘Yeah-hh!’, and Evelyn laughs sweetly.

  Evelyn laughs.

  Lenny looks at his wife, waits for her to make that rare sweet sound again, but she only smiles until the dancing stops and the black-haired man holds up a palm. ‘Peace. Close your eyes, darlings. It’s time to meditate. Meditate on the love that surrounds you.’

  Evelyn closes her eyes again, and Lenny wonders what it is about the black-haired man that makes her so soft and trusting. He wonders if maybe it’s that the black-haired man is handsome, but of course Evelyn has been around handsome guys, tramped around campus with a whole string of them, and never lost her sharp edges. It’s something else — something Lenny feels as well when he closes his eyes, like there are no walls between him and the black-haired man. And he’s guessing others feel the same, the way the black-haired man keeps reaching into the dark and pulling out things he has no way of knowing.

  ‘Brother … Cecil. You been short of breath, wheezing, a sensation in your chest like crackling fire …’

  ‘Sister … Thelma. You got spots in your eyes. Can’t hardly see for all them spots moving ’round your eyes, big dark leopard spots …’

  ‘Sister … Diane. You been hearing a thump-thump sound from the engine of the red Volvo …’

  ‘Brother … Leonard …’

  Leonard: a name Lenny still gets called sometimes by his father, by older relatives seen once a year, by people behind desks and people wearing gloves and people holding clipboards. An icy name, but intimate as having his chest palpated, urinating in a plastic cup, being naked all day in a room full of other naked young men who don’t want to go to war. His name, insofar as he’s a human male with human parents who named him in a hospital twenty-two years ago.

  ‘Brother … Leonard. You got yourself a garden. Lush garden. Planted l’il something in that garden. Brother, you know what plant I’m saying?’

  If Lenny is ‘Brother Leonard’, does that mean he has to open his eyes? Stand up and speak like those other people? His face is hot and his tongue tingly and thick in his mouth. Is the black-haired man a good man or a bad man, looking into Lenny and telling the whole crowd what he sees?

  ‘Don’t be ashamed, Brother. I ain’t judging. Nobody here — we don’t judge our brothers and sisters. Open your eyes, friend.’

  Slowly, Lenny blinks his eyes open.

  ‘I ain’t judging, brother. I care about you deeply. Sensitive, peace-loving soul you got. Dove’s soul. Ain’t nobody here wanna see you imprisoned, which is why, gotta tell you, friend … Where you at, friend?’

  Lenny is aware of the black-haired man looking in his direction through the flashy-dark sunglasses. The black-haired man seems tall to Lenny, and maybe sort of dangerous. Lenny shifts in his chair. He wishes he was somewhere else, back at the white house on Vine Street. Or Davis. This time of day in Davis, they’d be sleeping off their hangovers, or getting ready for Sunday lunch with Evelyn’s parents.

  ‘Brother Leonard, you safe here, but I seen — I foresee great trouble for you. ’Less you act soon. Let me look upon you.’

  Lenny has a sudden urge to cry, or to be a soldier without thoughts or feelings. Soldiers at least know how to stand to attention. A surge of heat runs up from his belly to his throat, and he finds himself rising on jelly-legs; not a soldier at all, unless a soldier who’s been napalmed.

  ‘I see you, brother. I see where you at and where you been. Trouble with the law. You had a small taste already, last week when the highway patrolman stopped you?’

  The cop. Almost Lenny had forgotten about that cop, leaning so close with the hot breath.

  ‘I seen that. Like I seen there’s trouble in your garden. Great sorrow gonna come from that garden, gonna tear you from your pretty white house. Mm-hm, mm-hm. Unless …’

  Here the black-haired man lets out his breath, low and whooshing, as if the thought of Lenny’s pain truly does pain him. The black-haired man loves Lenny; somehow there’s no doubt about this. Loves him like a father, and maybe more than a father, for wouldn’t Lenny’s father disown him if he knew of the marijuana plant? Wouldn’t Lenny’s father be mortified if he could see him standing here, trembling and pink and tears stinging his eyes and wanting only to do what he’s told, as long as it means keeping the white house and Evelyn?

  ‘Only one thing for you, brother,’ the black-haired man says. ‘You gotta go into the garden and dig it up. Dig it all up.’

  7.

  There’s only one name on their lips, and that name is Jim Jones. Moving among his people in the happy after-church hours, and eating from paper plates, and drinking from paper cups — sweet, swirly fruit punch that stains her mouth pink. Watching the sun sink lazy and gold into the hills, and stars winking out of the evening blue, and other people’s children dashing after fireflies. He is a father to so many. He works tirelessly. There is not a creature on this earth too small and insignificant for his love. And later, packing themselves into the bright station wagon, leaving behind the flapping white tent, it’s his name beating in their blood.

  Jim Jones.

  Jim Jones.

  Jim Jones.

  They go to the garden together. They go barefoot, under the big country moon. They go to the dirt and jungle-like green and he digs and she watches. She watches until he’s finished digging, and when he smiles at her and holds up the wasted Mary Jane, she smiles back. It is the second summer of their loving. He is the same boy she married, the same blue-eyed boy, and she is the same girl, but this is the new life. This is the beautiful life, and in this life they will never be alone again.

  Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair

  1.

  Evelyn Lynden isn’t in love with Jim Jones. Though he is the most brilliant man she has ever met, the most generous, the most dynamic. Though she likes the way his voice sounds, and the way he looks, and his tender way with children and animals and the elderly. Though she thinks about him when he isn’t around — things he has said and things she might say to him, about religion and politics and even her most private hopes and dreams and fears. Though she thinks about him more than she thinks about her own husband in fact, her first thought waking up and last thought going to sleep some nights. Evelyn isn’t in love with Jim Jones. It doesn’t even occur to her that she might be in love with Jim Jones.

  Except … it does occur to her. Early on, within their first week of meeting, in some secret part of her that doesn’t speak but thinks and frets and understands that she has never been content in her relationships with men. He is a minister. She is a minister’s daughter. Of course this is significant, as the fact that he is married with children is significant. Evelyn has seen Jim Jones’s wife around Peoples Temple enough to know that she’s attractiv
e in a wan, rustic sort of way, and always well-coiffed and well-dressed and well-liked by the people, some of whom call her ‘Mother’. Evelyn is aware of Jim Jones’s children, too, without knowing their names or how many of them there are, only that they are different races and mostly adopted. All these things are significant. All these things combine to reassure Evelyn, in that secret not-quite-conscious part of her mind, that she isn’t in love with Jim Jones.

  And because Evelyn isn’t in love with Jim Jones, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t think of him, speak of him, praise him as she brushes her hair and the fan beats and Lenny sits up shirtless in bed, reading a paperback. Lenny, who agrees with all her praise; Lenny, who looks sweet and soft and clean; Lenny, who she’s happy to fool around with on a beating-hot Sunday night after setting down her hairbrush, even with Jim Jones still on her mind. Going to him and laying her hands on his hairy boy’s chest, touching noses like a pair of cubs, recoiling inwardly at how predictably he gets hard and sets aside his book. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. She’d hoped he’d read more serious things now that he’s been off drugs for a whole month, but what does it matter? The fan is loud. She’s thinking of Sundays, church potlucks, grinding herbs in the mortar and pestle, hips grinding. Baking something.

  ‘I think I’ll bake a cake tomorrow,’ Evelyn says, and when Lenny says ‘Mmm’, she noses his cheek and elaborates, ‘You’ve been clean a month now. I think we should thank Jim somehow.’ Feeling the catch in her voice, breathy and false, yet also the whirring fan and Lenny’s dumb lust and how the dark hairs prickle with an electricity that’s all their own. Evelyn isn’t in love with Jim Jones. Evelyn isn’t in love. She’s just very, very thankful.

  Thankful for the sun and thankful for the valley and thankful to be pedaling through smooth blue shadows past vineyards, as if she isn’t in America at all but the south of France. The Haut-Médoc with Jean-Claude, springtime, just before they broke up. She had already known that she would break up with Jean-Claude yet had enjoyed the weekend anyhow, cycling from one village to the next, glancing down at her engagement ring and thinking it was a shame she had to give it up, really a shame. Je regrette, mais je ne peux pas t’epouser, Jean-Claude. But she is happier now, more truly and deeply happy, because it is not simply the selfish happiness of loving a Frenchman and planning a life with him, far from the ills of American society. She is living beautifully and meaningfully here in Evergreen Valley, and if she thinks of France now, it’s only as a barometer for her current happiness.

  There’s nothing special about the evergreens near the Jones property, but Evelyn recognizes them somehow, the morning sun soaking their foliage like champagne. Her bike slows; the front wheel wobbles. Then the dirt path and the hump of the white tent like a mountaincap. She has baked a cake for Jim Jones, but if Jim isn’t around, she will leave it with his wife, Rosaline. Or she will leave it on the doorstep of the parsonage with a thank-you note, something lighthearted yet courteous that’s signed from both her and Lenny. A note could not be misconstrued. Dear Jim and family: thank you for making our first month in the valley so beautiful …

  Only, Evelyn won’t need to write a note. She knows this as soon as she sees the figures of the three men standing by the tent. The men are black and white and in-between. They are making rectangles with their hands and prodding the earth with their feet and frowning over blueprints. They are Assistant Pastor Isaiah Bellows and Officer Eugene Luce and Reverend Jim Jones, but the last is the only one she really sees: Western-style blue denim shirt, blue-black hair, sunglasses. Her insides clench. She alights.

  The sun hurts her eyes. The men look up, then at each other.

  Sometimes Evelyn thinks there are too many men in the world. Gene Luce, for instance, standing there in brown, just the type to think a uniform makes a man. She sees the familiar way he scans her body, the deliberate way he looks away. She knows a chauvinist pig when she sees one, and doesn’t at all regret being a bitch to him that day on the highway. But she’s here today as an ambassador of ‘Mr and Mrs Leonard Lynden’, and she won’t be deterred. She rolls the bike forward, drily raises an eyebrow.

  ‘I didn’t realize I’d be riding into the scene of a crime.’

  There is a blue-skied silence. Then Jim Jones laughs, and his laugh is the contagious kind, high-pitched and a little manic. Isaiah Bellows rustles his blueprints and chortles, skin furrowing beyond the rims of his thick spectacles, and even Luce smiles sheepishly into his shirtfront. Evelyn parks the bike and swiftly takes the moment to lift the cake from her basket, a round shape covered by a blue check dish towel. The men’s eyes follow the shape.

  ‘What have we here?’ says Isaiah.

  ‘Mmm-mm,’ says Luce.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ says Jim Jones, once she has placed the cake in his hands. He mugs at the dish towel, like he couldn’t possibly know what is underneath it, like he has no reference point for round shapes covered in dish towels. He mugs at Evelyn, and her heart dashes against her chest like a rock to a baby’s head.

  ‘I wanted to thank you — Lenny and I,’ Evelyn corrects herself. ‘We’re so thankful for everything you’ve done for us this past month.’

  ‘This got nuts in it?’ Jim Jones lifts the tea towel and sniffs.

  ‘It’s a French almond cake.’

  ‘Almonds from France?’

  ‘They’re from the market,’ Evelyn says, not with her usual laugh, but a high, tinkling thing. ‘I was just thinking yesterday: it’s a month now since Lenny last got high. This probably doesn’t sound so impressive, but I’ve never known him to go more than a few days.’

  ‘Ain’t nothin’, baby.’ Jim Jones sniffs the cake again, smirks, and passes it on to Luce without a word. Then, with the suddenness of rising water, he takes her in his arms, kisses her cheek, and leaves her breathless. ‘Thank you. But, ah, you don’t need to go baking me no cakes. I mean, you got more to offer than that. Having you here, that’s sweeter. Huh?’

  At that, Jim Jones lets her go and motions cordially at Isaiah’s blueprints.

  ‘You come at the right time, darlin’. Tent days are over. Ask these gentlemen, they’ll tell you. Isaiah?’

  ‘These ain’t final,’ Isaiah says carefully. ‘You sure, Jim?’

  ‘I thought we weren’t announcing it ’til Sun-dee,’ says Luce.

  Jim Jones wets his lips. ‘Show Evelyn.’

  And so the tall gaunt black man unfolds the blueprints, and the tall potbellied white man in uniform holds them steady. Evelyn steps forward, feels a hot shiver of excitement as Jim Jones touches the small of her back, speaks close to her ear. ‘Now, this’s only the beginning …’

  When Lenny returns from the mental hospital that night, his wife is exactly as he last saw her — sifting flour in the kitchen, as if she’s been chained there all day. But of course she hasn’t. Of course he has no way of knowing where or how she spends her days, or why she looks so flushed, except for what she tells him. Thankfully, she seems to tell him everything.

  ‘I’m making pissaladière. I’m only just making the dough now, so you’re going to have to starve for a couple of hours, unless you want those grapes over there.’ Lenny looks at the grapes; they look small and unappetizing. ‘They aren’t very good, but Jim is tearing down some of his vines, so it was either that or have them go to waste.’

  Lenny plucks a grape dutifully. ‘Why is Jim tearing down vines?’

  At this, Evelyn beams. ‘You’re lucky I’m telling you this; the announcement isn’t until Sunday.’ She rolls the dough into a ball and plops it into the bowl, stretches over a layer of Saran wrap. ‘Construction starts on a new Temple building next week. I saw blueprints!’

  ‘Oh.’ Lenny eats another grape. He wishes Evelyn was cooking something other than her French pizza thing, which always takes too long and isn’t very filling. ‘No more tent?’

  ‘Honestly, Lenny, do you reall
y think Jim Jones belongs in a tent? He could be in Congress.’ Evelyn slips the bowl into the fridge. ‘The amazing thing is, he’s doing it all on his own terms, no outside funding. And he wants to be involved in every stage of the process, down to the bricklaying. He really is a maverick.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It isn’t just going to be some elitist place of worship either. He’s planning a clothing bank, a kitchen, offices. A swimming pool, for the children …’

  Evelyn talks some more, a lot more, and with great enthusiasm, about the building-to-be. At Davis, it had been easier for Lenny to keep track of his wife’s enthusiasms, yet now she is unconstrained by a curriculum, he never quite knows what he will come home to. In the past weeks, he has seen her doing everything from conjugating French verbs to writing letters for illiterate black seniors. But there is generally always something cooking or about to be cooked, and she generally seems pleased to see him, and generally they’re having more sex than ever, now that there are no housemates or in-laws to contend with. And if she talks a lot about Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, he understands it’s because these things make her happy, and because she likes talking more than he does. So he listens.

  While listening, Lenny takes off his white uniform and folds it up neatly, causing Evelyn to raise an eyebrow. Another thing Lenny likes about living alone with Evelyn is that he doesn’t have to wear much if he doesn’t want to. Lenny likes being shirtless, especially now it’s the middle of summer. Lenny likes being shoeless. Lenny would like to spend a day shirtless and shoeless by the water with Evelyn, like on their honeymoon swimming in the Sea of Cortez, or just after their honeymoon, lounging by the poolside of his parents’ mansion in the Berkeley Hills. ‘We should go swimming sometime,’ he says, as soon as there’s a break in Evelyn’s patter, and she slits her eyes at him, for of course this has nothing to do with anything she’s been saying. He notices for the first time since coming home that the bridge of her nose is sort of red, dotted with tiny freckles; that her cheeks have flame-like patches; that her arms and even her clavicles seem to be blushing. She didn’t look this way in the morning, did she? How does she spend her days? It strikes him that he should listen more closely.