by Joshua Furst
We got to the station and Fass was easy, level. He looked like he should’ve been working for Boeing. Heavy black glasses. Short blond hair, parted on the side. But he had the kindly bedside manner of a TV priest.
“How’s our boy?” he said, killing time in an industrial hallway that doubled as the station’s greenroom while we waited to go on the air.
Before I could answer, he crouched to my level, a hand on each knee, and rolled out an anecdote about a bizarre experience he’d had, “a few days ago,” while sharing a meal with some friends. “Just as we cut into our chicken française, a mouse came racing up the length of the restaurant, right there in the aisle between the tables. When it got to the door to the kitchen it froze, confused, its little head poking back and forth like it couldn’t decide which direction to go. Just for a second, but long enough for everybody to notice it was there. Then it turned around and scurried back the way it had come. And then the oddest thing happened.”
He went on to describe how instead of leaping on their chairs in alarm the patrons calmly worked with the waiters to coax the rodent into a box that the owner, a sweet guy, then carried out to the street where, surrounded by the waiters and kitchen staff, as well as all the people whose meals had been interrupted, he set the box gently along the curb and let the mouse poke its way to freedom.
“Everyone applauded. And when it disappeared into the sewer grate, we all went back inside and finished eating. It was remarkable.” He shook his head with something like awe. “It’s enough to give you hope for humanity.”
He must have told this story a hundred times before. He had all the beats and inflections down, like he knew exactly how each moment would land. It was his go-to warm-up to put his guests at ease. And it worked.
“Are you sure it was a mouse?” I asked.
“You’re right.” He chuckled. “It might’ve been a very small, adorable rat.”
By midnight, when Fass’s show started, I’d forgotten all about being nervous. Whatever happened in there, I knew, this man would cradle me through it.
The three of us made our way into the booth and adjusted our mics. Fass fiddled with the levels on the soundboard. And just as we were about to go live, my mother started touching me again, rubbing my back, ostensibly to calm me down, but actually transferring her anxious energy into me.
“Breathe,” she whispered. “Don’t forget.”
But it was hard to breathe. The booth was tight, barely room for the chairs in among all the equipment. And before I could find my equilibrium, Fass had done his intro and given me my cue. The red on-air light mounted above the door glared down on me, and in the silence of that moment, I realized suddenly that this was real, this was now, and I was in no way up to the task.
“Freddy,” my mother said, “it’s okay. Go ahead.”
I had to say something, so I said, “Uh…hi.”
The thing to do was to dive in, like at a swimming pool. I burrowed into the script.
“I don’t…I don’t want to talk about Lenny today. I want to talk about a guy named Geronimo. An Indian. Or I mean, a Native American. Let’s call him an Apache, because that’s really what he was. A Chiricahua Apache of the Bedonkohe band. A great warrior and freedom fighter.”
My voice caught as I swallowed back the knowledge that these words were, in fact, absolutely about Lenny. Every time I looked up I could see my panicked face in the glass of the booth. I told myself, Ride the rails of the script, bounce along with it, don’t let yourself fall off the track.
“Geronimo came from a little village in New Mexico. But it wasn’t New Mexico then, it was just Mexico. In this village, people shared everything. The old wise men, the little children, the fathers, the mothers, the young scouts, everyone. They cooked big communal meals called potlatches, and afterward, they liked to sit in a circle around the fire, laughing and telling stories and playing games with sticks.
“These villages, they weren’t like our cities and towns. The Apache, Geronimo’s people, had a different relationship to the land on which their villages were built. They believed it was more powerful than they were, that they were only one little part of the wild, mysterious life of the land. They didn’t try to own it. They didn’t try to control it or manage it or make it do what they wanted it to do. Instead, they listened to it and responded to what they heard it say. Sometimes they moved their village from one place to another. They could do that because they lived in houses called teepees that were made of long poles covered with animal skin. The family could take its teepee down and pack it up whenever they wanted to—like when we put our clothes in a suitcase and take a trip, Geronimo and his people would carry their whole house with them. When they got to a new place, they’d unpack the teepees and build their village again. They wouldn’t think about who might come and stay on the land where their last village had been because they’d never thought of the land as being theirs to begin with. Nothing was theirs. Nothing belonged to anybody—that’s how they saw it. The great gift that was the world was too beautiful to keep all to themselves. They shared it, just like they shared their food and everything else—not just with each other, with the animals and the trees and the rivers and the wind. Everything was shared by everything else. The Earth was an endless continuum and they were just a small part of it, grateful be included.
“And think about it. Wouldn’t life be better if we all thought that way? Isn’t that how life’s supposed to be? Geronimo thought so.”
Mom nodded along with me, sometimes mouthing the words. And I guess she was charmed when I stumbled over the more difficult passages, ’cause for the first time in months there was no tension in her face. It flickered with light, with encouragement. I was doing okay. The power of the story had taken me over.
“One day, Geronimo and all the other men went away on a hunting expedition. They were gone six days, tracking deer and buffalo. Collecting prickly pears and stalks of aloe to use as sunscreen. And while they were away…”
Here’s where things got tricky.
“The white man came and burned their village to the ground.”
My mind began to wander off and affix itself to the parallels between Lenny and the story I was telling. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this. I knew that. But I couldn’t stop. So I told myself, Don’t think! Don’t think! And the more I did that—the more I thought about not thinking about Lenny—the harder it was for me to focus on Geronimo and the words I was supposed to be saying.
“When Geronimo and his hunters got home, he jumped off his horse and ran through the smoking ruins and called out for his family, but it was too late.”
The fear, the horror, came racing through me.
“They’d been murdered. His mother. His wife. His little girls.”
These people were us. Me. My mother.
“He fell to his knees and looked up at the sky, blind with sorrow and rage. Then he held out his arms, begging the world to explain what he’d done to be punished like this.”
And I slipped. Reading the next sentence, I said, “When Lenny—”
The room shrank around me and I seized up. My mother’s palm was suddenly glued to my shoulder. She pantomimed breathing.
“What happened next?” purred Fass. “You’re doing a great job. We all want to know.”
Stammering, struggling to find a way to press on, I said, “Geronimo, he…I mean…uh…and the white man…”
My mother’s finger on the sheet of paper showed me where I was in the script.
“He opened his…”
Focus.
“He opened his mouth to howl and his soul flew out. His heart, all the goodness that had been in his life before this day, it rose from his chest like smoke and escaped into the air. A voice…a voice came to Geronimo. ‘No gun will ever kill you,’ it said. ‘I will take the bullets from your enemies and I will guide your
arrows.’ He stood tall. He imagined a movement and gathered people around him and inspired them to believe that he could lead them. And he fought back. Just like—”
And this time the transference was in the script.
“—Lenny Snyder, my dad. Geronimo—and Lenny, too—did the thing you’re not supposed to do. He refused to submit.
“In Geronimo’s case, he and his band of warriors took to the hills. They ambushed stagecoaches and wagon trains. They fought off US Marshals and cavalrymen who had been sent to track them down. They held out for ten long years, living off lizards and rattlesnakes, hiding like coyotes among the desert’s craggy boulders, clinging to the hope that one day they’d win and their people would be free.
“And…” I knew what was coming. I’d read the script a hundred times, preparing for this moment. But still, the pale bony fingers of Nosferatu came inching out of the dark places in my mind. The specters with their scabs and bruises and bleeding sores—all those deathly visions I’d imagined turning on Lenny, chewing him up—it all flooded over me.
“L-Lenny…” I stammered. “My dad…” My voice cracked.
Airtime moved at a different pace from real life. Slower. Every fraction of a second more pressurized. Tick. Tick. Tick. Time narrowing around me. And I wasn’t ready for the effect of a live audience. Even unseen. Even theoretical. The idea alone of tens of thousands of people, a multitude of invisible witnesses, craning their necks toward the radio, waiting, wanting to hear what I would say next—I fell completely apart.
“And…”
Lenny’s voice came down from on high. Don’t be a pussy. Politics is no place for the sentimental. You need a gut like iron. A heart made of fire. Never, never ever let them see you cry.
“They…they took…” We were failing. I was failing. Just like I knew I would. “They…took him…”
And then I was sobbing. Snot bubbling from my nose with every word I pushed out.
“Just…’cause…like…Ger…on…i…mo…and…”
I couldn’t go on.
All I could do in that moment was look at my mother for forgiveness. What I got from her instead was horror. I’d let her down. Never mind that I was a child. I’d failed. And as the recognition of all this twisted through me, my body tightened and I couldn’t find my breath, she must’ve seen me, how small I was, how desperate. ’Cause her horror shifted. It turned inward. And she broke and she—for the first time in I don’t know how long—she was just a mom, all arms and protective, possessive love, reaching out to me, the tears coming to her eyes too.
In the midst of all this, Fass somehow kept the show going. He understood that it was better for the pitch to let us wallow. He slid the script from me and adjusted the mic. “They’re having a moment, folks. What you’re witnessing here is the human cost of our nation’s draconian drug laws.”
He let our sobs carry over the airwaves, milking our sorrow for all it was worth, until my mother was ready to disentangle herself from me and pick up where I’d left off. “Like Geronimo,” she said, “Lenny Snyder has sacrificed everything to stand up to the powerful factions in this country and say No! No more slaughtering our children. No more worshipping at the bloody altar. No more oppressing your own people to make a quick buck.
“If you listen to this show, I don’t have to tell you what he’s done for the cause. You’ve been there battling by his side. You know what it means to say ‘Power to the people.’ And you know how selfless Lenny’s been in the fight to make that slogan more than just words. You were there in Chicago. You were there at the Pentagon. In Berkeley and Madison and Detroit. You were there in Ohio when your comrades fell. In Newark and Watts when your cities burned.”
The strength pouring out of my mother buoyed me. I sniffled. Incrementally getting it together in gulps and shivers.
“What you might not know is how Lenny’s suffered for his bravery. Like Geronimo before him, Lenny is treated like an enemy of the state. For years now, Lenny and I and little Freedom here have been living under siege. The FBI watches our every move. They come into our apartment when we’re not home and put hidden microphones in the walls. They listen in on our phone calls. They get people to pretend to be our friends and report back on every little thing we do. That’s what happens when you have the gall to stand up for what’s right.
“And now he’s in jail on trumped-up drug charges. He’s accused of things that the Lenny Snyder you and I both know would never do in a million years. All because he refuses to shut up. They’re afraid of him. They’re afraid of you. Of us. They’re afraid of what we can do if we all come together and raise our voices against them.”
She looked to Fass, who took over for her. “He needs our help, folks. Right now, bail is set at—”
My mother leaned in and said, “Ten thousand dollars.”
“That’s a lot of dough for someone who’s spent his life forsaking money. So please. We’re making a plea right now, live from Radio Unnameable. If you care at all about the important work Lenny Snyder has done on your behalf, open your wallet. Contribute five or ten bucks, whatever you can afford. Let’s get this great American patriot out on the street again.”
He passed the mic back to my mother. “We’ll take cash or checks, but if you write a check be sure you make it out to the Lenny Snyder Defense fund—LSD for short. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t mail it. They confiscate our mail as well. Bring it to the Namaste Bookshop on 6th Street between First and Second. Ask for Ted Barrow. The password is ‘Do you know the way to San Jose?’ ”
“Or you can bring it here to the ’BAI studios and I’ll make sure it arrives in safe hands.”
At the end of the segment, Fass slouched back in his seat and gave a little nod. “You did good,” he said. “You made some money tonight.”
When we stopped by the bookshop the next day, though, Barrow told us nothing had come in.
We went back morning, noon, and night. Barrow was always there. He lived in the back, in the cell of an office, just him and his turtle and his research on alternative forms of consciousness. He’d hear the wind chimes on the door tinkle as we entered and he’d shuffle out to meet us, leaving 90 percent of his mind behind.
“Nada,” he’d say, introspectively running his hand down his droopy, tongue-tickling mustache. “But not todo por nada.”
Two, three days of this. Back and forth, back and forth. We might as well have lived there, we made the trip so often.
And then one evening we popped in around closing time and Barrow was waiting for us up front.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” he said. He unraveled the wire specs from around his ears and wiped them clean on the felt vest he wore every day. “Todo con todo,” he said, and with two fingers, he slid a fat manila envelope across the counter.
Inside, the full ten thousand in hundred-dollar bills and a note, hand-scrawled on a sheet of blue-lined paper.
Two words: Sorry, Phil.
* * *
—
“That fucking guy,” Lenny said when he got out. “Probably thinks he did the world a good deed.”
At home: his moods. His scabby buzz cut. The way he stalked the apartment, silent, radiating heat.
I was scared of him, scared of what he might do.
My mother tried a few times to sit him down, to get him to focus and work on a plan with her. She’d taken notes, procured documents, clipped all the press, done each and every thing Kunstler’d advised. She spread this information across the living room floor, a timeline, a map, a narrative of that night. What was missing was Lenny’s version of events.
She called on him to help her make sense of it all. “If we’re gonna win, we need to prepare ourselves.”
He’d just stand there and stare at her, at all her diligent work, his eyes sunken and black, like he couldn’t fathom why she’d think all
this had anything to do with him, why she’d be so naïve as to believe she was helping.
He looked at me the same way. As if we were both too much for him. As if more than anything, he wanted to be released from the annoying, oppressive sight of our love.
He locked himself up in the cubby behind the kitchen, that same room he always disappeared into whenever his mood turned too heavy, the one where we threw empty boxes and random junk we didn’t know what else to do with. He spent his days looking out into the air shaft, studying patterns in the snow and soot caked to the bricks of the building behind ours. Even that was too much light. He blacked out the window with greasepaint. Sat there on the floor. Or lay there. Sweating in the dry-steam heat of winter, braced for the moments when the chill outside broke through. Staring down the darkness. He didn’t bathe. He didn’t eat—a saltine here or there; that was about it.
My mother kept me away.
He called for her sometimes when he needed something. They’d whisper behind closed doors.
“He’s working,” she said when I tried to peek in on him.
“On what?”
“On what’s next.”
Which…in retrospect—maybe he was.
I’ve reached the age now where I can, I think, understand what he must’ve been thinking. Not that I forgive him, but I can understand.
An accounting was in order. At thirty-six, he was an old man. He couldn’t comprehend the person he’d become.
He ached for those days, those years, not so long ago, when he’d open his mouth and the words that tumbled out came from some cosmic authority beyond his control. When just being himself had made him righteous. People’d see him on the street and say, That man is free. They saw him on television and their first thought was, Hey, dig it, what if I was like that, too?
And whenever the beast tried to chew him up, he just had to cackle and throw on a costume, commandeer a TV camera and tell people, Look! This beast’s made of paper. It’s a piñata. Grab a stick. We’ll smack it. We’ll break it all to hell. Then we can redistribute whatever falls out.