FREEDOM HOUSE

AN AUTHOR READING WITH TEXT

This is the first part of a new novella. FREEDOM HOUSE came to me when I was watching a documentary about Civil Rights. I don’t remember when it was though. It was something to do with the Freedom Riders in the South, and the dangers they were in. It was somewhere in there where I hear the expression Freedom House, that I thought, I like that. And I pictured a White Baptist Minister being lynched outside of his Church as the opening scene. I can’t tell you anymore about the inspiration, other than that. Also, that the narrator was female.

It’s an intense story, and probably not for everyone. But then, a lot of my stories are a little different that way. You can listen to me stumble through it, or else read it if you’d rather…

    CHAPTER ONE

  i

In 1955, the Klan lynched Daddy from a lamp post in front of the Church. They burnt the Church down at the same time. They didn’t give a reason for it; they just assumed that everyone knew. We did. It was a dozen years before Momma said anything to me about it; ten years after that, and she was ready to throw it in my face like it was my fault. I thought maybe she’d forgotten that I was there when it happened. When she finally did say something, all she said was that Daddy’s death served as a warning to anyone who thought the times were changing—like Dylan said in that song back in the sixties. I told her it wasn’t just the song people wanted to believe in; there was more to it than that, and besides, the song wasn’t written to support any particular belief, or cause. It was just a song.

“It was never just a song,” she said quickly, and there was venom in her tone.

I told her people wanted to believe in Dylan’s song as much as they wanted to believe that the times really were a-changing. His voice was a celebration of the times-—a cry for the youth of our day to wake up to what was happening around us—like Kennedy calling for volunteers to the Peace Corps.

She looked at me with that knowing look she had—something all too familiar to me—and said you can’t compare Dylan to Kennedy, because as far as she was concerned, Dylan would win out every time.

“The world doesn’t need politicians as much as politicians say we do,” she went on. “That’s how they justify their livelihood. How else do you think someone like Kennedy got elected President?”

She used to laugh at the idea of L.B.J banging on the White House door for someone to let him in.

“He was nothing more than a country bumpkin,” was how Momma said it, “and if they remember him for anything, it’ll be to blame him for everything that went wrong—like Vietnam. It was his tough luck to follow Kennedy and his carnival into that fancy royal court they called the White House. What was it they called it then? The new Camelot? Why would they let him in? He reminded me of that little man with the moustache dragging his shovel and pulling a garbage bin behind him as he scoops up horse shit after the parade’s already gone by. And when the parade did go by, he was too busy trying to pick up the pieces of a foreign policy that seemed weak and Colonial at best.”

I asked her how she could still think that way, when it was so long ago, and so far removed from where we were now.

“Kennedy was certainly not the diplomat his father was. And as for his domestic policy? He didn’t stand a chance with that Congress,” she went on—as if she hadn’t heard a thing I’d said.

“History won’t be kind to Johnson, not like it will be to Kennedy,” she said, even though it was Johnson who pushed the Civil Rights Bill through. “How long do you think it’ll take the country to forgive Kennedy for The Bay of Pigs? Or the Cuban Missile Crisis? I’ll bet you they’ve already forgotten—or at least forgiven him. They were calling him a hero after the Bay of Pigs, when it was his fault in the first place. He was the one who told the C.I.A. it sounded like a  good idea to let the Cuban émigrés go down there to begin with! If they wanted to mount their little invasion at the Bay of Pigs, he told them, we’d support them. Glad to. But then they got caught! What was he thinking? That they'd just walk in and take over? That was his idea of a foreign policy?

I told Momma that she had it all wrong. There was more to it than that. There’s always more than what you see on the surface. He inherited the Bay of Pigs from Eisenhower. It wasn’t his decision to go ahead with it, that had all ready been decided long before he became President. I told her Kennedy was a good man; he was young and he was handsome. He had a beautiful wife and two gorgeous children. Who could ever forget little Johnny Jr., saluting at his father’s grave? He was popular.

She laughed at that.

“Popular? He only became popular after he died. And he barely won, remember. When Nixon won, he won by a landslide. That's popular. Do you think anyone’ll remember it was Kennedy who sent the troops into Vietnam? Of course not! Even though it was Eisenhower’s gaff before he left office—‘Oh, by the way’,” she mimicked Ike, “‘I’ve sent some advisors down to check out what’s going on in Vietnam—it’s just a small favour for my buddy, Charlie DeGualle. Maybe you can follow up on it?’”

“‘Follow up on it?’” (Now she was Kennedy, even though she sounded more like Katherine Hepburn.) “ ‘Sure! How many advisors do they need?’

“Well, that sure blew up in everybody’s face, didn’t it? So instead of leaving; instead of just getting out and turning tail, what do they do? They get into a pissing contest with the Chinese, and the Russians just stand by and watch. But the French—the ones who started it all in the first place?—they’re thinking: maybe we should just leave while we still can, before it’s too late? We can always have the Peace Talks in Paris. Why not? Who doesn’t like Paris in the Spring time? Right?

“It’s that us against them mentality! ‘We can’t let that part of the world fall into Communist hands! We can’t! We can’t! We can’t! Let’s send in more troops!’” she said, and then she assumed a swaggering bravado, putting her hands on her hips. “‘Come on boys! Rally ‘round the flag! Your country needs you! We’ll show them little bastards what it means to take us on!’” And then she laughed.

I didn’t know if she was laughing at the irony of the whole thing, or at the futility of it all.

She turned to me and asked me if I thought she didn’t watch the news too. “I’ve even seen you a time or two as well,” she said to me with that same knowing look. “Standing there in the background while them others give speeches and call down the war; blaming the government for all our woes. And what’s all this stuff about Nixon, and how he stole the Presidency? He was the greatest man I never voted for.”

I told her I preferred staying in the background. I was never one for being in the limelight. I didn’t like getting involved in riots and demonstrations anymore because people got hurt--I hadn’t been involved in anything since Kent State. As for Nixon and his Presidency, all I could say to her about that, was that the system worked. Republicans and Democrats--Liberals and Conservatives--they all agreed that he had to go, I said, and when they brought the impeachment orders out and he resigned, all we could say was that it worked.

The system works Momma, I told her.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Momma smiled. “Have you seen this Ford guy?” I had to smile at that. “He was the best they could come up with?” she asked. “They’ve made the man into a laughing stock with his golf slices, and his always bumping into things. What kind of an image is that for the Presidency?”

I wasn’t going to argue with her about that one; I was working for the Carter campaign, trying to register voters just like I’d done with Humphrey, Muskie, and McGovern before them. With Carter, I thought Momma might actually register to vote for the simple reason that he was a Southerner. She hadn’t voted since Daddy died; she hadn’t done much of anything since Daddy died.

“You’re just like your friends on T.V.,” she went on. “You think you can change the world and the way things are--even going as far as using Daddy’s death as a rallying cry.”

  We don’t want to use Daddy’s death as a rallying cry, I told her, but she wasn’t listening to me any more than I was listening to her. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the world today? Nobody listens to what anyone else has to say.

  I think with the sixties being over, we still held on to our optimism and hoped to bring it into the seventies with us, but it was a matter of the Old Guard against the New; it was the Established Order against the Countercultural Revolutionaries. That Us against Them mentality again--the same one Momma complained about with her generation. And so far, the Seventies hadn’t started off too well, had it? There was Kent State for one thing. That was where Momma saw me on T.V.

“The world isn’t ready for change,” she told me, “and there’s nothing you can do about it, no matter how hard you try.”

I told her we didn’t want to change the world; if the Peace Corps taught the world’s youth anything, it was that you can’t fight the Establishment or the Status Quo with an idea born of naiveté. But if the rest of the World wants to follow our lead, I said, fine. The country has to change first though.

“Follow our lead?” she laughed. “Why would they want to follow our lead? You can’t change a country without the rest of the world seeing it; look at what the Russians did in Prague, back in ‘68. It’s like 1956 all over again. Do you remember what happened then? In Hungary? And when they put the Berlin Wall up? They’ve closed themselves up tight, but we still know what’s happening because there will always be dissidents in the world. The pen is mightier than the sword.

“And for as much as we might think that we’re better than they are because we don’t terrorize our people, remember, we were bombing Cambodia all along.”

That was your man Nixon, I said in defence.

“Was it? Well, he must’ve had good reason to. And what’s happening in the Middle East? How much are we involved with over there?”

I told her the world had to support the Jewish State because we’d turned our backs on the Jews during the war, and she laughed at me.

“Do you think that’s what it’s all about? Guilt? Don’t you think it might have something to do with the price of oil, or the gas shortages we’ve had lately? We’re much better off thanks to Vietnam--or maybe I should say thank you to that weak-willed dilettante, John F. Kennedy? I thank God we had him!” She said it with that familiar sarcasm I’ve known all my life. “We’ve lost a lot of standing in the world because of him, and he never even knew it. ‘Ich bin ein Berliner?’ But that didn’t make them take down the Wall, did it? Isn’t that what he went over there for? And what was that he said in his famous inaugural address? ‘Ask not what your country can do for you,’” she quoted with a smile.

  “The best thing he ever did for this country was get killed. Now he’s an American icon. A teen idol,” she smiled. “People are already starting to ask, ‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ Instead of, ‘What were you doing when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbour?’ And when his brother wanted to be president, they killed him, too.”

I wanted to ask who she thought they were, but I thought she’d go off into one of those conspiracy theories about Big Government, and how it’s failed us all. It isn’t the Government that’s failed us, I thought, it’s we the people who have failed ourselves. She wasn’t about to believe any of that though. She had to blame someone for Daddy’s death, and if that meant Kennedy, or Johnson--or even King himself and the whole Civil Rights movement--so be it, just as long as it was someone.

“What about the younger brother and that girl he killed driving off the bridge on Chappaquiddick?” she asked. “Wasn’t he going to run for President too, a couple of years ago? Maybe he’ll run for President again one day? The greatest President who never was. If they can forgive his brother for being a womanizer, they can forgive him for being a drunk. But you wait, you’ll see, now that they’ve killed King, everything’ll fall apart; Daddy’s death will have been for nothing. Look at all the riots and fires that happened all over the country right after he died. He’s preaching love and non-violence, and what do those people do? Burn the cities down! There’s a righteous ending to a noble cause for you.”

She sighed and heaved her shoulders up like there was nothing she could do about it, and then she looked at me  asked me why I was bothering her with politics. Her life would be so much easier if I just left her alone.

Exactly, I thought.

And there you have it…