Kill the dove!

by Francis Kroncke

  Chapter 44: Unwrapped

  South Minneapolis is a blue-collar coat, edged as with fur by richer homes that lap at crystalline lakes in the enchanting “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” South’s neighborhoods bear names made legendary by the American poet for whom one of them is named: Longfellow. There is Nokomis and her son Hiawatha. There is Minnehaha and the Great River itself, Mississippi. The area is seedily spotted here and there by poverty and—unheralded by the Chamber of Commerce—it’s the locus of the netherworld of urban Indians: Hiawatha’s off-the-reservation progeny. “Largest Urban Reservation” is not a civic boast written on highway billboards. Politically, it houses a multitude of locals who are enraged by the American Dream and its many violences, especially the endless wars waged to fulfill its alleged Manifest Destiny. It’s where most of Jared’s draft resister friends and fellow ex-cons live.

  Longfellow becomes Jared’s parole home. He sneaks into the neighborhood, masks himself with a Twins baseball cap, dark sunglasses, fakes a limp with a cane and smoothly taps a prisoner assistance program at, naturally, the local Catholic church for some clothing and rent vouchers, even a bit of charity dollars, then goes and obtains a room, magically becomes a specter in the attic of a friend of a friend who asks no questions. The rent’s dirt-cheap but no one’s paying for hot water, either. A coldwater flat—a winter’s subzero delight! As he wants, the dude, hardly a landlord, confides, “Whatever you wanta do, man, it’s cool. Whatever.”

  Not far from where he lives, the city of “Minneapolis-Saint Paul” (several words, one sound) has at its mythic core a honeyed well: Honeywell Corporation. It issues forth the nectar of the military-industrial complex, to wit, antipersonnel bombs. These are easily the most hideous weapons used in ’Nam. They are iron balls filled with razor-sharp fragments that barely harm property as they hideously shred, flay and infest human flesh: of the aged, the weak, children, the innocent. Not the image most locals want. They prefer “Minnesota Nice.”

  The Twin Cities are also a historic player in General Custer’s quest, the obliteration of the Red Savage. Cavalry and troops gathered nearby at Fort Snelling and systematically drove the native peoples out of “America” and onto the numerous Heartland reservations. Likewise, the Cities’ vaunted earthen giants, those agribusiness mainstays of Pillsbury, General Mills and Cargill, seek to plow graves for the family farmer. Many call the region “the Heartland,” but “heartless” is how he finds it. Truly a “Twin Cities,” Janus faced, with a twice-tricked heart: one seen, one not; one felt, one not—European invaders and America’s Natives.

  On its upbeat side, it’s a polis that echoes with the calls of pioneer women, leaning against prairie doorframes, huge with whale children, shouting to hayseed-haired boys and black-soil-clogged men to come in from the fields and wash up, eat, rest. They are families reverent at meals and likewise faithful quaffers of the malty brew. Sadly—a deep motherly sadness—their boys are prime fodder for the war machine. The Vietnam era draft made it statistically clear that Midwestern boys are healthier, enlist in higher numbers, and pass the Selective Service’s exams at a higher rate per capita. More body bags per acre! In parallel, Minnesota ranked high in the number of draft resistance cases and trials. At the height of the Resistance, over fifty percent of all cases on the district’s federal docket were draft related.

  Am I on the reservation, still? Shooting baskets with Iron Moccasin?

  Thoughts course through, about the city, prison, the farm, and now where he actually is, sitting by the window looking out on Elliott Avenue.

  At an unclocked moment, the inevitable becomes the obvious—facing up to it, Jared accepts that he’s really back in Minnesota, but as inevitable he’s straightaway overcome by dreadful anxiety. It’s almost clinical. Like an allergy test—here, sniff this—he breaks out in hives, all over his body. He starts to sweat profusely as his heart races with a wild rhythm. He can’t find any spot of comfort. His body spreads out on the bed like formless putty.

  “Fear, it’s simply fear. I’m just fucking-a scared shitless,” he admits out loud, being his sole audience. He’s definitely frightened. He dreads not being able to get back on the bus. He envisions himself as being spit out. But it’s simply all about his fear of being welcomed home.

  In his mind, he runs the scene. He’s sending a telegram. It reads, “I am not on the bus. Send everyone away. Dismiss the band!” What he doesn’t admit is that it’s not “being seen” that he truly fears—it’s “not being seen.”

  Not knowing the time of day or night, he just lies there, moaning within, “Welcome home!” The words fly on bat wings, flutter and screech and bounce off things, come back mocking, taunting, in sharp rebuke, sarcastic slice. Welcome? Is this the way to welcome? Back at square one just doing one-night stands, fucking-a shit!

  Jared doesn’t want to think of Donna as his first betrayal of the insights and vision bestowed within the Bright Cloud. He convinces himself that getting screwed naked with her doesn’t count—that although they got off the bus to play “hunt the beaver” and “lick the stick,” they were really still on the bus. He absolves himself. What they did was not here but there, over somewhere in some corner of some alien space and time box—still doing time! He has no inclination to pursue any of this through deep reflection.

  I fucking-A am not off the bus yet, motherfuckers! So it doesn’t count! Can’t a guy just get laid?

  But it was betrayal! Aaren’s face looms. He knows that it—the juice—was for her. He’s whimpering, kneeling, begging her: I’ve got more juice, baby, really!

  Light filters through thin drapes. He rolls out of bed. Lugs himself over and gazes into the mirror hanging above a rickety clothes bureau. “Home? Is this home? Have you a home? Or is it the hole in your ass?” Jared goes back, collapses, nearly cracking the low-budget bed frame, sleeps. How long? No clock in the room.

  Upon his second waking, without thinking, he gets up, opens a window, accepts that it is late morning but misses the fact that he’s standing buck naked in the window frame. He scratches his groin, then realizing his state, laughs a bit as he looks out down among the parked cars—unseen by human eyes!

  After putting on his trousers he steps outside into the small patch designated “back yard.” Free! He fingers the hibakusha—always with me. Caged with me. Free with me! To celebrate this fact, he takes the wooden toiletry box that houses the hibakusha—his last physical connection to the Inside— just knows that it is time for its transformation, so shouting joyously and with a fiery heart, “No more boxes! No more cages! I’m home!” he stomps. Stomp! Stomps and shatters the box to smithereens. In respect and gratitude he softly prays, “God help Uncle Sam, wherever you are!”

  Upon his chest, the hibakusha throbs, at once hot and cold, at once a cross and a dagger. Raising it before his eyes and then pressing its dagger tip against his third eye, he celebrates, “Let’s get it on! Let’s get the fuck out of here! Let’s imagine a fucking-A new life!”

  Ready or not! Jared leaves his apartment and strolls aimlessly around the nearby streets—actually looking for a coffee shop. He realizes that more than anything he needs some soulful nourishment. He’s tired. Worn down. Past the end of the proverbial rope. Willfully, he focuses upon every positive change he sees as he walks about. He’s strengthened by seeing a black woman pushing a baby carriage, walking with a white man—husband? He’s cheered by watching a papa hug his bearded son on a street corner. As he sits down, he’s delighted to see a guy at the café table just across the room reading Siddhartha—not a kid, some old geezer!

  Yet, Jared still doesn’t know what “Welcome home!” could possibly mean. Who were they expecting to get off the bus? How should I prepare? He’s not sure whether he should deny himself the praise of “Welcome Home, Our Hero!” Why should he punish himself with the pains of defeat? The war goes on. Nixon imploded. What we did, did it matter? Fuck! Does that make me a failure?

  For an hour or so he sips one French
roast after another. He’s weighing his life, assessing. Seminary. Draft raids. Trial. Inside. The Ride. The Bright Cloud. Violent felon. Ex-con. Outlaw. Fucking-A, man, for sure, it was worth it!

  Welcome home! His heart is stuck in his throat as he glances out the window and sees the street filled with a crowd of hundreds, a gaily decked-out marching band, “Peace” banners fluttering. He opens the café door, hears the brasses blare, the drums roll and the crowd cheering, “Welcome home!” A small plane flies above, trailing a long banner fluttering, “Proud of You! Minnesota Hero!” Jared is happy.

  Happy.

  Back from his walk and quick lunch, Jared goes back down and sits on a rickety plastic chair in his back yard. He’s bathing in the early afternoon’s warmth, sipping his umpteenth cup of java. Remarkably, there are no neighborhood sounds, no cars honking, no lawn motors starting up, no kids screaming, no sounds to break his reverie. His face, still brightened by May’s soft sunny kisses, exudes the happiness of being welcomed home.

  Happy is Jared because he is home—alone.

  No one was there to meet him. No one knows where he is. He’s happy because he is solitary, alone within his memory. He’s happy hearing what he wants to hear and seeing only what he wants to see.

  He remembers the first day he arrived here in Minnesota, back over at the train station, the whole family arriving in St. Paul on the train from New Jersey. He remembers standing on the station’s cascade of steps, twenty, thirty steep, and for the first time ever gazing upon the Midwest. He’d been happy.

  Like then, he’s happy now.

  Only someone’s rude honk! honk! honk! impatient for whomever to come out and get going somewhere, jerks him back. How long have I been sitting here? Does it matter?

  He doesn’t stop to count the minutes, just gets up and heads straight back to bed. Fully clothed, he slips under the cover sheet and pulls the two scraggly blankets full over his head. He boxes in his ears and covers his eyes with two small, understuffed pillows. His long-john legs he folds up like a card table, knees almost to his chest. He’s ready to seek deep comfort.

  He knows he wants to sleep. He just doesn’t know that a part of him never wants to get up.

  And so, finally, the welcoming home begins.

  His sweat is so thick that he can smell his own saltiness. He shivers so violently that he wishes there was someone to tie his legs down. Although he fears being restrained again, being immobilized, he prays that a huge thick blanket of something would materialize and press down on him, hold him steady, mold him to the bed. His teeth are tapping and grinding and he can hardly bear to lift his left hand to wipe his brow because in doing so he loses the tiny caves of heat he holds hostage under his armpits.

  Dry retching comes in due course, and he swears and implores and submits himself to God’s every mercy: “Please! Just a steaming cup of coffee, just one cup!”

  As he drops in and out of consciousness like a ping-pong ball, now on this side, now on the other, nothing within him is recording the phases of this day. Your whole life flashes before you as you lie dying! He asks within, Do you fear dying more than you fear living?

  To Bruiser, now past: “Man, look, I’m sorry. Shit. This place has me all bent out of shape. Believe me, man, look, I don’t want you hurt, fuck, so what do you want me to do?” Tenderly, he yields to Bruiser’s incursions, nurturing him, reaching out a motherly hand, calming him, cooing, “I love you, Bruiser. Know that someone really loves you, man.”

  In the courtroom, now past: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I can’t really say why I did what I did. I just had to do it. I don’t know why the government’s lying and acting crazy. But I just love my God and bingo! I just had to do it. God wanted a new symbol and He chose me. What more can I say?” He stands there iron-legged as their laughter and shouts of ridicule cleanse him.

  During his dreaming scene-shifts he vomits—sometimes a little puke, sometimes just gnarled air. But these are just intermissions, not the dream’s end.

  “Scene 37: Char. Take One!” He’s bringing her clothes—expensive clothes. At times, jewelry. He piles them upon her so that she’s laden, almost hunchback bent. With each gift he feels himself at a safer remove, until he has to shout to have her hear him, so thick is the mound of presents.

  In this scene, not numbered by any logical sequence, he repeats himself over and over while running around her, she now almost obliterated by his mountain of gifts, but inside them somewhere she hears, “I’m sorry about all the jerking off! I mean, it was the joint, you know. Sweetheart, I really wanted you, you know. Don’t you know that?”

  Ta da! Aaren waltzes in, arm-in-arm with Witson. Jared raises his shotgun and blows their heads off. Knee-deep in blood, seeing what he has done, he jumps up and down, splashes gore all about and with great macho posturing boasts, “I killed the motherfuckers! Me! One mean-assed son of a bitch. Don’t fuck with me, fag-assed FBI man, dumb-assed Bitch!”

  “Look, motherfucker, the days of nonviolence are over!”

  In time, another part of him arrives to pardon this sin, this error. He’s dressed in priestly robe. Oddly, it’s himself peering back out at himself on this bed. A self too, too close to him. He feels the cloister’s breath, senses the Novice Master’s sharp eye, hears the thoughts before they are spoken. “You have sinned, my son! You have transgressed. Throw yourself upon the merciful Father. It is never too late!”

  Darkness like confessional gloom, not just an absence of light but the presence of oneself behind the door of conscience, this darkness blankets him. Frightened, he throws off his covers, so wet are they that he has to peel off his sheets. He stands, wavering, weak in the knees, starts slapping himself upside the head, this side, that side, and falls to his knees, crashes down. There’s a thud no one hears and there is badly bruised cartilage which no one tends. Down he plunges, bouncing off the bed, landing with arms wide and face buried into the soggy, dank sheets, screaming, “Where is my home? Where is my home?”

  Drop-dead weary and worn out, he sleeps for twelve hours straight.

  For the next two weeks Jared acts roles within a play as he stealthily travels around the Twin Cities. He tells himself that he wants to see the town as it is, not as others will try to tell him it is. He convinces himself that this is the best way back in. Slowly, reading the town, letting it back in slowly. So he contacts no one. Decides that his well-known frame can only be hidden by not being too clever, yet clever he must be in light of his limited funds. As the leopard cannot change its spots, so Jared resorts to wearing clerical garb—what investigating detectives would have anticipated as the obvious route. In priestly black, white collar, hidden by sunglasses and a secondhand-store fedora, he’s a natural for the role of a visiting cleric, casually meandering around town. He plays it possibly too well, presenting as a pious asshole, one exuding an air of aloofness.

  Jared enjoys this sleuthing around town, casing the joint! He’s his own tour guide. The IDS tower, the Guthrie—Shakespeare, man, Lear. Still radical! Over to the Walker Art Center. Lots of blown-out minds twisting junk into beauty! Next, over to the Great Muddy, following it from West River Road across and down through St. Paul. Pig’s Eye!

  He’s just window-shopping the city. In his mind: being unknown, unspied upon. Adjusting to the city again. Like a new pair of shoes, breaking them in. Adjusting to new cloth, a fine suit of clothing. Modestly, he succeeds. Those who know him see him but then don’t.

  He anchors his homecoming days with this ruse. His nights, however, prove less merciful. He wakens time and again, profusely sweating, most often with chills and shakes, other times overwhelmed with such a vast emptiness that he tells himself, “You’re dying! This can’t be living!”

  Mercy is rendered—the mad swirl of dream flurries lessens with each ensuing dawn. He’s getting things under control. Or am I?

  He faces himself. “Am I? What’s this shit with the white collar and the stupid hat?” Righteously, he chucks his cle
rical disguise.

  He can’t hide. The hard-edged reality of Outside makes itself fully present. You’re running out of money. How many more soup kitchens can you hit before someone suspects? Out of familiarity, he’s come to eat by volunteering at various non-Catholic religious shelters. He ladles out soup and free food, and so gets a free meal.

  I mean, Jared Jennings, you, you flaming asshole! What’s going on?

  All in all, Jared stretches his homecoming into a two-and-a-half month event. A map of cheap hotels, soup kitchen charades, always on the move, evading this shadow and that brightness. Nevertheless, everything from Inside thins out. Loses its strength. Ultimately dematerializes in this Outside space of time. No longer “Inmate 8867-147 reporting, Sir!” No longer the clanking sounds of his spectral chains. He’s left facing what he’s heard so many old-timers describe. “You’re a loser, Jared. One stupid ass-fucking loser.” He’s reached the border crossing marked The End.

  It’s time. Doing time’s over!

  Thoughts about thoughts: He turns his palms over and stares at the back of his hands, he observes the way his large veins submerge and disappear into his envelope of flesh. He raises his hand and in memory of his trial judge he points at himself and pronounces the verdict. You’re guilty. You sinned. You erred. You lied. You did everything to protect yourself. You failed to resist while Inside. You succumbed and licked their dicks! Jesus, they fucked you in your ass—bung pussy!

  He flips back to look at his palms, watching how the lines intersect, cross without cutting, carve deeply but do not strike blood. You’re just like every other ass-wipe motherfucker! When the Man said jump you jumped! When he put you on the Ride, you went! No protest, no lock-up, no escape for you—fag breath! When it came time for you to suffer, you pushed everyone away. Your Mom, Char, Matt, Sean, Harley . . . do I need to read the whole list?

  Why did you beat Bruiser? Why didn’t you save Dikbar? Why didn’t you jump Witson? Why do you long for Aaren? Admit it, she’s the one you want, not Char. Fornicator! Bastard! You’ve always betrayed Char, right from the start. In your heart you lusted after Aaren, you dreamed of Aaren, Aaren is all you wanted. Her fantasy, not Char’s look. You gutless motherfucker, Aaren should’ve sliced you with that stiletto!

  Coward! Yellow belly! Scaredy pants! Admit who you are!

  You’re such a wimp, man. They got to ya, didn’t they? They got to you, didn’t they! You’re no different from the rest, motherfucker. THEY GOT TO YOU, DIDN’T THEY!

  “They got to me, motherfuckers!” They got to me, motherfuckers!

  Jared whips his arms around himself, hugging, squeezing, strapping, straining, and his legs start hopping, jumping up and down involuntarily. A great pain, a huge, rising serpent of air emboweled deeply within, hidden in his toes, moving like a clot of razors up his legs, blasting through his crotch, up his intestines, bounding loose and about his bowels and jamming into his chest, to be irrepressibly released, streaming out his mouth, “Yes! Yes! I am like the rest. They got to me! They got to me! They got to me!”

  Two nickels clinking, Clark Kent undressing, Jared is in the phone booth. “Truth, Justice and the American Way!”

  “Char. Sweetheart, I was waiting for my birthday. You know, like something that could mean something. August 6. Yeah, baby, I want to see you. Don’t cry. Don’t say anything. Just meet me at the farm. Love you!”

  Stunned, before she can clearly grasp that it’s really him, he hangs up. Char wonders, No anger? No threats? Did he get my letters? Does he know? Did Steve . . . ?

  Jared: I hung up, Why?