The Recipe for Revolution. Carolyn Chute
like what Beth always calls Mr. America. But Ben looked African, not African-American but real true African like he had no Indian or Irish ancestors or any of that fooling around and pot melting that goes on here in America. His eyes were like the eyes of God floating in the night.
Side note: Later, Lorraine said Ben had an old face, not old like a great-grandpa but like old people who went way back and had a geography that wasn’t shifting so much but was like a humongous tree with roots going below the earth’s crust and then opened wide and nobody ever had to ask, “Who am I?” and “Where’s my inner child?” Time was a very straight bold line. At least until the 1600s.
I had to laugh at that because I was remembering how when Ben talked to us, he talked wicked soft but it was in a Very Big City, USA accent. So he is us, just plain unromantic USA.
Anyway, so when Ben and the guard guy came in, the little guard guy, he’s taking off Ben’s handcuffs and neither one of them were happy-looking people. It was as if they were all set to murder Ben today and everybody was all braced for it.
We had been sitting there, smiling, before the door opened, me and Lorraine, but then we weren’t.
Before we went to the jet, I said I really really really do not want to see ANYBODY but JEFFREY . . . get it!!! He’s the one. I want ONLY JEFFREY and that’s that.
So Stuart and I went to see Jeffrey. It’s different than visiting Mum. Texas has more cement and stuff and cop guards feel your organs like doctors do.
It was glass between us because Jeffrey is a dangerous killer. I heard that news tells it that Mum is a dangerous drug dealer, which is different than killer . . . even though really Mum is a dental assistant. So maybe Jeffrey is messed up by the news. He is really tall and really skinny for a killer.
We put our hands together on the glass. Me and Jeffrey. And Stuart and Jeffrey. Through the phone that they make you use Jeffrey had a jokey voice and he laughs nervous at everything. Then he asked me if we were Bootists or cathlic workers. I explained to him that where I am staying everybody works till they drop. But not me. I’m just a guest. My Mum is in jail for the drug war, a war in America.
Jeffrey said he knew about the drug war. And he said DEFINITLY there is war IN America.
I told him everyone at the Settlement eats and slurps on horridable foods like fish with SKIN and if you suggest very nicely to go to McDonald’s it is a mortal sin.
Stuart rolled his eyes. He told Jeffrey that I am a drama queen.
Jeffrey laughed.
I said I am a queen in certain ways.
Jeffrey laughed again.
My mother (Josee, for the record) says Gordon’s mother (Marian, for the record), you never see her, she doesn’t like the Settlement or us, she gave Gordon hell because on the radio a caller said how us kids go to visit prisons, that we will pick up uncivilized evil loser low-life ways.
Gordon says you can’t pick up uncivilized evil loser low-life ways in an hour and forty-five minutes.
My father (Aurel, for the record) said Gordon’s mum Marian St. Onge, for the record, is always already calling us all losers. So where is there to go from there?
My Tante Jacquie says kids shouldn’t know about the death penalty till they grow up. It could give them heartache and confusion.
Gordon said maybe that’s true.
Bev and Barbara said there is no recipe in stone for growing up.
Penny says one must always fill up with opportunities for thought even if it provokes moral indignation. One needs to be amazed at how a DOCTOR is hired to poison TO DEATH a RESTRAINED human person and it isn’t called murder by politicians. She said one needs to realize that the whole thing is not a cartoon, not a movie with actors or a video game or a game of checkers.
Claire said Abraham Lincoln hanged dozens of Indian chiefs because they wouldn’t crawl on their hands and knees while Lincoln and other hotshots built their empire. She said the older she gets the uglier American history and American history-making get, that maybe it was wrong to immerse the younger kids in the full truth.
Gordon said, “Baloney. The kids are handling it better than himself.”
Beth said, “Hey, remember when Gordon got so upset about them killing the retarded guy in South Carolina that he, Gordon, threatened to wet himself and he was raving and pulling his hair and those people visiting, the soprano singer and the other one said Gordon ought to see a psychiatrist.”
Leona said, “Oh, well, the kids are back. It’s done. Let’s move on.”
So I forgot this. Jeffrey said he got the pictures I sent him that I drew. He said they made his day. He asked what kind of church I go to. I said, “Church? You mean the white things?”
He laughed. Then he asked Stuart if he knew Jesus.
Stuart said in a very nice way he guessed he wasn’t ready for that.
Then Jeffrey asked me if I knew Jesus.
I said, “Is he here? Is he a dangerous killer?”
Jeffrey laughed the most over that. He said, “He’s here.”
I said, “Does he work here or is he . . . stuck here?”
Jeffrey laughed so hard and I saw all his missed teeth. I will remember forever him laughing and his sad eyes all drippy with happy laughing tears.
***** Remember this is pre-9/11. Now they’d probably taser you.
††††† Vermin Supreme is a real candidate in New Hampshire elections. He’s yet to run in Maine.
Dangerous Gift
I am utter power. I am violence that finds no limit, no finish, no regret. Even on an ordinary day in ordinary America, with everyone on the scene smiling and crowing, “Nice day, isn’t it?!” you all are, in the private canyons of your skulls, aware of what noncompliance will get you.
On the ballot of the managed flow, optimism is the one box for you to check. Helplessness is joy. Hopelessness is joy. There is no box for fighting back. You dream of it, maybe brag of its sweet imagined reckoning, but no fellow slave will stand with you. There is only utter terror in the face of utter power. There is only strange strange joy, strange strange frozen obelisks of joy, strange strange howls of joy.
Gordon alone but for Secret Agent Jane asleep upstairs.
No, he is not the charismatic prophet talk radio has described him as, or the terrorist cult leader the newspapers hint hint hint at. Nor is he the prize of strength many Settlementers would swear to his being, with whom so many here have aligned their hearts.
The