They form a line outside a tent with their luggage. In line ahead of Lenny, Daisy is having her possessions rifled through, a tube of lipstick confiscated, her TigerBeat magazine — ‘Only good for toilet paper.’ Sister Regina comes around with a clipboard and starts telling people their assigned cabins; Single Males C-17 for Bruce, C-23 for Norm …
‘Sister, I think there’s a mistake?’ Norm panics. ‘I should be in a cabin with my wife?’
‘Who’s your wife?’
‘Renetta Coleman. Kids are Pauly, Vivienne, Irene—’
‘No “Renetta Coleman”.’ Regina frowns, adjusts her rimless glasses. ‘We’ve got a “Renetta Dixon” … Wife of Claudius Dixon. Mother of Paul, Vivienne, Irene, Louis.’
Norm turns whiter than Lenny’s ever seen a black man turn. ‘No … That can’t be …’
‘You can take it up with the Relationship Committee.’ Regina makes to move away. Norm reaches for her round brown shoulder, begins pleading. Her nostrils flare.
‘Mister, don’t you lay your hands on me. That ain’t my area, alright? Take it up with the Relationship Committee.’
Lenny figures Norm might cry, so he stares away; the green-black canopy, the dusty yellow sky. He feels nothing but blunt inside: blunt to the cruelty; blunt to the newness; blunt to the stinging, the salt, the dirt, the flies. That is, until he sees his ex-wife.
Walking alone, in drawstring pants and a lace-edged tank top; that same fast walk; hair in that same boring bun, flashing dark as plumage. Back in college, there were girls Lenny would see some days and those days felt improved, lucky somehow. With Evelyn, the feeling was strongest. It’s still strong; a flight of rare birds in his chest, a clear blue wonder.
Lenny stares at his ex-wife.
She notices him staring, and all the beauty flies from her face.
5.
There are mornings, lying in his bunk in C-25, when Lenny dreams Jim Jones’s voice in his ear, Jim Jones’s hand reaching across his sweaty thigh and taking out his cock. Jim tugging at him furiously, talking through clenched teeth, until he wakes with damp sheets and a stickiness in his shorts. So ashamed, he could open his veins, drown in red.
These are the mornings Lenny rises before the sun, blindly laces his boots and ties his hair with a snot rag. In his blindness, following the scent of routine, he can sometimes convince himself that he’s back at the commune in Red Creek — that there’s a warm, wifely body waiting for him just out of sight, just out of reach. He tries to keep up the fantasy as he lines up for his morning rice and syrup in the tent that smells of iodine. Eats at a long table, elbow-to-elbow with other workers in boots, snot rags. But it’s not easy when Jim’s voice keeps beaming through the speakers. Flies. Everyone with a flyswatter, I want you out there swatting. These fuckers, they get immune to pesticides; don’t get immune to being splatted!
It’s still blue-dark when they set out, by the dozens, for the fields. Jim’s voice fading, mercifully, the farther they range.
In the fields, they break into crews, take up hoes and cutlasses. Split soil. Pull weeds. Slice through dense intrusions of vine, which bleed green like slaughtered aliens.
Lenny pretends he’s on another planet. A hostile place of red dirt, blistering sun, giant bugs. He doesn’t kill the bugs, though they land, sting, feast on the nectar of his sweat. Doesn’t kill, though he wields sharp tools, and there are new muscles in his arms that scare him.
He’s on another planet. How’d he get here? By moving through space. Why was he sent? For the Cause. When will he return? Never; earth is ruled by fascists. What’s for lunch?
‘Gotta be kiddin’ me!’ Rondelle, a big, mouthy girl he remembers from San Francisco, opens the sandwich inside her lunch bag. ‘They forgot the filling.’
Matty, an effeminate white guy with shoulder-length dark hair, peeks over her shoulder. ‘See that brown stuff, sweetie? Syrup.’
Rondelle mutters under her breath, then jabs Matty. ‘Show me yours, twink.’
Matty shows her. ‘You kiddin’ me? You got banana bits! You’re kiddin’ me, man—’
‘Give it up, Rondelle,’ bird-boned Taysha intervenes. ‘You could skip lunch every day and it wouldn’t hurt you one bit.’
Rondelle looks ready to smack Taysha across the mouth. Quincy — one of the guards assigned to oversee their crew — comes past and she decides against it; settles in the shade and starts munching with a holier-than-thou look.
Lenny opens his own sandwich. There’s a smear of syrup on one slice of cassava bread, two rounds of banana on the other. He closes it and bites in, eyes averted. Quincy jabs his arm.
‘Get to the radio shed. Father wants you.’
‘Wants …?’ Lenny squeaks, but Quincy has already moved on to flirt with Yolanda, the prettiest girl on the crew.
‘Hey, Yo’. You gonna watch us play ball this Sunday?’
Yolanda rolls her eyes. ‘You know I don’t got time for that.’
‘What gives? You still on orchid-duty for them in the White House?’
‘Drop it, Quincy.’
‘Miss seeing you ’round, that’s all. Maybe I can help you pick flowers sometime? Two’s company, right?’
‘I said, drop it,’ Yolanda says, but she’s smiling as she nibbles her crusts.
On the trek back into town, Lenny chokes down the rest of his sandwich, midday sun hard at his back. When he reaches the radio shed, Phil Sorensen beckons him in. ‘Lenny.’
Lenny follows Phil’s broad back. Jim is inside. So’s Evelyn. So’s his mother.
Liesl looks bad. So bad, the sight of her distracts from both Evelyn and Jim. When did she get so skinny? Whenever she got cancer, probably. She gives him a feeble smile.
‘Mom?’ he says; then recovers and looks at Jim. ‘You wanted to see me, Father?’
Jim doesn’t look up. He’s frowning into his shirtfront. He looks fat; skin an unhealthy pale yellow. He makes a weak curly gesture in the air.
Evelyn seems to understand the gesture. She turns and fetches some papers.
‘Sit,’ Jim says. Lenny joins his mom on the daybed. Jim hands over the papers. ‘Read.’
It’s a facsimile of a newspaper article. On the first page, a photo of Terra. Her hair is shorter than Lenny remembers, chin-level and shaped like a mushroom. Her eyebrows are different, too, plucked into fashionably thin curves. Eyes wide. Lips parted. Big hoops in her ears. She looks pretty and sexy. Briefly, Lenny feels proud to have such a pretty, sexy wife.
‘Read,’ Jim repeats.
Lenny reads the headline. ‘“Escape From Jungle Hell: Ex-Temple Aide Bares All”.’ He stops; glances at the date at the corner of the page: June 12. A month since he left the US. ‘Is this … new?’
Jim glowers. Lenny keeps reading.
‘“The Peoples Temple mission in northern Guyana has come under scrutiny from US government officials as alarming reports emerge of starvation, sleep deprivation, public beatings, and illegal weaponry. The reports were provided by Miss Teresa Jane Day, 29, a top aide of Temple leader Rev. Jim Jones, during a press conference last night. Day, daughter of a prominent Oceanside attorney—”’
‘“Attorney’s daughter”. Didn’t take her long to go back to her bourgeois roots.’ Jim catches Lenny’s reflection. ‘Didn’t take her long to forget her marriage, either.’
Is that what she’s done? Lenny doesn’t have the words for it, so he just nods. Jim motions for him to keep reading.
Armed guards. Cruel and unusual punishments. Twelve-hour workdays. Rice for every meal. Meetings, long into the night, in which the paranoid leader rants about enemies …
‘Do you believe these things your wife’s saying? Your daughter-in-law?’ Jim booms. ‘Why would she say these things? After all we’ve given her?’
‘I — don’t know,’ Lenny offers.
‘Tell me, darlin
gs — do you believe what she’s saying? Do you believe — be honest now — you’re underfed? Overworked? Our punishments are too harsh?’ Before they can answer, Jim squeezes up to Lenny. ‘You know, darlings, self-sufficiency don’t happen overnight. We all gotta work hard, make sacrifices … Sometimes, for the good of the group, individuals gotta be made examples of. It don’t please me. When I see one of my people hurtin’? Hurts me ten times more. So if you’re unhappy, if you’d rather go back there where they’re puttin’ blacks in concentration camps and experimenting on them like in Nazi Germany, you tell me.’
There’s a long silence. Then Liesl says, ‘I do not ever want to leave here.’
Lenny looks at his mom. She’s got her chin held high, fists bunched tight. Cheekbones like billiard balls. He feels Jim’s eyes crawling along the back of his neck.
‘I want to stay.’ He swallows. ‘I love it here.’
‘Course you do,’ Jim says gently, placing a plump hand on Lenny’s knee. ‘I know.’
Lenny looks at his own hands. Runnels of dried dirt-sweat. Orange blisters. Grime under the nails. He feels dirty. He wishes Jim would remove that hand.
‘Your wife’s a traitor,’ Jim tells him, caressing his knee. ‘How’s that feel?’
‘Bad.’ Evelyn turns away and starts sorting through papers, her movements contained. Lenny knows better than to watch her. ‘She’s not my wife anymore.’
‘And you, sweetheart?’ Jim turns to Liesl. ‘Terra, wasn’t she like a daughter to you?’
In fact, Lenny doubts his mom would’ve joined the Temple if it wasn’t for Terra. For sure, he never invited her; never encouraged her to give up her jewelry, her art collection, her six-figure divorce settlement. That was all Terra.
‘She is dead to me,’ Liesl says adamantly.
It’s a relief when Jim sends them off to the Letters Office with Phil. A relief, to walk in the bright sun, away from the dark corridors that always seem to open up in him, around Jim.
‘In a way, it’s better Terra talked,’ Phil says, offering Liesl his arm before Lenny can. ‘Her claims are so exaggerated, they shouldn’t be hard to refute.’
‘With letters?’ Liesl wonders.
‘Our letters are good, but not that good.’ Phil laughs. ‘We’re organizing another press conference: supporters and detractors, together. The last thing we want is to look defensive.’
They reach the office. Brother Tobias, a gay guy Lenny’s age who’s weirdly fond of Liesl, stops typing when she crosses the threshold with Phil. ‘Well, look what the cat dragged in!’
‘Cat? No, Phil is a lion,’ Liesl says admiringly, patting Phil’s arm in thanks.
Lenny wonders what King Henry VIII is doing now; dozing, licking his paws? Tobias sits Liesl at the typewriter next to his. Phil says, ‘I’ll put Lenny next to you, Min’.’
Minnie?
‘Hi, Lenny.’ Minnie’s wearing a yellow blouse through which he can just make out the shape of her bra, and she’s got her hair in two cute dumplings atop her head. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh … You know …’
Minnie nods. ‘I’m sorry. Is it a shock?’
‘Yeah. I mean …’ There’d been talk of a traitor, when he first arrived. Within days, he’d stopped asking about Terra. Had he known? Suspected? Or just been exhausted? Suddenly, he feels he could cry; the depths of his not-knowing. ‘Her picture was in the newspaper.’
Minnie nods again. ‘I haven’t seen it yet. But I heard she told some awful lies.’
‘Yeah.’ Lenny looks at his boots. They’re dirty. He goes to the porch and tries to stomp off more dirt. When he returns, Minnie has turned back to her typing.
Phil pulls out a chair for Lenny. ‘Ready to write a letter to your old man?’
Lenny writes. Trying not to bump his sun-damaged white arm against Minnie’s smooth brown one, but also thrilling when he does. He finishes a letter to Dr. Lynden, another to his brother, Ned. Liesl writes to Ned and Beth. Phil reads all four letters, praises them, marks them up in red and explains the markings. They type up second drafts, which Minnie and Tobias read. After a while, Evelyn comes in.
‘This paragraph about the cassava bread is overkill. Strike it.’ She skims, then looks at Lenny starkly. ‘Wasn’t there a nickname you and your brother had for Beth? Something cruel?’
Lenny racks his brain. ‘“Bad-Breath-Beth”?’
‘Use that.’ She returns them to Phil. ‘Finish these letters soon. The boat is going out.’
‘I won’t miss the boat.’ Phil half-smiles.
‘Don’t,’ Evelyn says, and flounces out.
Phil gets them to rewrite their letters by hand. He steps out, and when he returns, Lenny’s flexing his cramped hand, hoping for Minnie to notice his fieldwork muscles.
‘Stop the presses.’ Phil grins; hands out watermelon slices. ‘Nice work, comrades.’
Lenny returns to the fields feeling, actually, not too bad.
But it happens that night: sirens, slicing his sleep, and not just sirens. Guards. Banging on the cabin doors. Over the speakers, Jim’s voice yammering: White Night! White Night!
Lights form halos against the isolating blackness of the sky. Lenny imagines UFOs, beaming him to another planet, back to sleep. Every bench is packed with weary asses, kids on laps. Standing room only. He can’t see past the shoulders to Jim taking the stage; just Jim’s authoritative voice, like a hand gripping his hair by the roots.
‘The traitor has spoken,’ Jim declares. ‘She’s gone to the press with her vicious lies and ruined our name. It’s time for you to know her name.’ He clears his throat loudly. Hocks. Spits. ‘The traitor is Terra Lynden. Wife of Lenny Lynden.’
6.
Sometimes, for the good of the group, individuals gotta be made examples of. Lenny tries to keep this in mind as he stands before the group, taking their insults. Weak. White. Bourgeois. Lazy. Junkie. Homosexual. Only a homo could be married to a traitor-bitch so long without realizing it. Only a homo would need Father fucking his wife on the regular to keep her loyal. Only a homo would get drunk in Georgetown and try to overcompensate with a married woman.
‘Where’s the woman?’ Jim barks. ‘Where’s Minnie Luce? Get up here.’
Minnie rises, eyes round and mortified. Her sister, Ursa, rises with her, and Minnie frantically pushes the air, shakes her head. Clarisse, Minnie’s pregnant sister-in-law, tugs Ursa back down to the bench and diverts her with the kicking in her belly.
‘Lenny, are you interested in fucking this woman?’
There’s no point denying it. ‘Yes, Father.’ People jeer.
‘Minnie, are you interested in fucking this … “man”?’
Minnie looks at Lenny. ‘No, Father.’ More jeers.
‘But you broke the rules for him, hmm? Rum on the porch? Batting them nice eyelashes? Felt good, didn’t it, this whiteboy lookin’ at you like you the Queen of Sheba?’
Minnie doesn’t dignify this with an answer for a long time; so long, in fact, that Jim’s smirk slips.
‘It felt good to be distracted,’ Minnie confesses eventually. ‘There’d been a lot of talk of death that night, but Lenny wasn’t part of it. He was a nice distraction.’
‘Nice you can be distracted from death, sister,’ Jim taunts. ‘Rest of us, we livin’ it. I’m dyin’ every day to keep y’all alive. But drinking, white boys? Them’s nice distractions … Just don’t you go getting distracted from how they been keeping you enslaved for centuries.’
The mob kicks in, calling Minnie ‘uppity’, ‘race traitor’, ‘negro princess’. She stands tall, arms at her sides. Jim asks again if she’s interested in Lenny. Again: No, Father. Why not?
‘I’m not interested in any relationship. Socialism’s my only reason for living. I don’t want to die if there’s a chance for socialism in this life. And I don’t want to be dist
racted.’
Jim softens. ‘Well, don’t be, honey. You ain’t no use to us if you distracted. I want you to keep death in your mind always. If you ain’t ready to face death every day, you’re no better than that traitor-bitch.’ He waves Minnie down, saying he’s feeling merciful; at least she recognizes sex is only a distraction. To Lenny, he says, ‘You still wanna fuck that woman?’
‘No.’ His ears burn. ‘Not if she doesn’t want me.’
‘Not if she don’t want him.’ Jim laughs, prompting the crowd to do the same. ‘What’d you think she’d want? Your body? Your bitty white dick? Cause sure as hell you don’t got a mind to give. Can’t even string a sentence together.’ Jim waits for Lenny to disprove him. ‘Think that’s what a proud, black socialist woman wants?’
‘No,’ he says; the only answer.
‘You got anything else to give her? You got anything to give any woman?’
Peace? Love? Loyalty? None of these things are articulable, against Jim’s scorn. ‘No.’
‘Nothing? Well, sisters, he’s offering. Don’t got nothing, but he’s offering. Any takers?’
The pavilion buzzes with the disinterest of every woman present; shifting legs, averted faces, hands cupping whispers. A few stray cheers, whistles. Lenny feels a searing hate: for Minnie, for Terra, for Marianne Glover, who broke up with him for coming to bed with red eyes; for his mother, who gave him life. But not Jim. Hating Jim is too much hate to live with.
‘Sheila, what d’you say? Would you fuck him?’
‘Hell no.’
‘Ninette?’
‘I don’t fuck faggots.’
‘Gail? Elly? Sally-Ann?’ As an endless lineup of women shout their rejections, it takes all Lenny’s willpower to keep his arms at his sides, instead of covering his groin like he wants to. Finally, Jim growls, ‘Not a single sister out there wants you, and you better get used to it, ’cause you ain’t getting nothing. Any sister goes near you, she’s a traitor-whore. Already proven you can’t keep a woman faithful. Pussy. Piece-of-shit. What are you? Say it.’
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