As sophisticated as he could seem, Brother-in-law was never above platitudes. "Remember the story of the little boy who cried wolf?"
Patiently, as if imparting great original wisdom, he repeated the whole story to me. "And so when a real wolf came, nobody believed him."
"They used to read that to us in grammar school," I said coldly.
"Remember the story of Caesar's wife? About how she couldn't afford even the appearance of lacking virtue -- because she was Caesar's wife?"
"Yes. I saw the movie with Marlon Brando and Greer Garson, based on the play."
"That's an important lesson to keep in mind."
"We went to a sneak preview when I was in junior high. Our drama teacher got us free tickets."
"Do you recall Louis XIV? They called him the Sun King and they built a cult around him. He said, 'I am the State.'"
"Yeah, people used to even stand around and watch him take baths. There was a picture of that in one of our history books."
"You know that saying, Kerry, about the exception that proves the rule?"
"Yes. That didn't used to make sense to me. If there is an exception, that proves it is not a rule. Then I read somewhere that people use that saying wrong. It means the exception that tests the rule; they are using 'prove' in the sense of testing. I think that was in Reader's Digest."
"Remember Mendel, Kerry, who discovered genetics? His accomplishments were never recognized within his own lifetime. Wouldn't that be horrible? To make an important discovery and yet to remain anonymous and unrecognized?"
"A fate worse than death," I replied.
"You wouldn't let that happen to you, would you?"
"Don't worry. I wouldn't."
What made these discussions seem unimportant, more than anything else, was the way they wandered from one topic to another. Swirls of organic verbal coherence would build up to the point where we would seem to be getting somewhere and I would become excited, then Brother-in-law would either seem to change the subject for no reason, or he would make a remark so horrid as to turn me off. As a small boy he must, I figured, have gone around knocking down sand castles and sticking firecrackers in ant hills -- for he seemed gleefully delighted with acts of destruction.
"Remember what Priscilla said to John Alden?"
"Yeah, 'Speak for yourself, John.' I read the Classic Comic of The Courtship of Miles Standish. A guy I've known since the third grade had a whole collection of them. That's how I learned to read."
"She wanted to hear what he had to say, not what the man who sent him told him to say."
"Yeah, I bet I would never have learned to read in school. I just wasn't much into Dick, Jane, Sally and Spot."
"Kerry, I think the philosopher-king should be someone who doesn't blame messengers for bringing bad news."
"I agree. Once in a Captain Midnight radio show an evil king had someone shot for bringing him news he didn't like. That seemed awfully unfair."
"You know, that was one of Hitler's shortcomings. Toward the end of the war, when the Germans were losing, he instructed his intelligence people not to give him any bad news."
"That figures."
"Did you know, Kerry, that Hitler and most other great dictators kept a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince at their bedsides?"
"Eric Hoffer's book, The True Believer, seems to be written in the same style as The Prince. He says that one of the sources of recruiting for fanatical causes is the bored, because if your own business is worth minding, then you usually mind it. I like that saying. I think one of these days I'll print up business cards that quote it. New Orleans is just full of people who don't understand how to mind their own business. Total strangers are always walking up to me and giving me free advice. I hate that."
Slim shared my feelings about the provinciality of New Orleaneans and was always ready to discuss the subject. Brother-in-law was not the same way. Avoiding my glance, he would say nothing.
Lulls in the conversation were not unusual. But they would always pick up again.
"You know, in the Mayan culture of Central America they used to raise virgins from birth for the sole purpose of sacrificing them to the gods when they came of age."
"Yeah. What a waste! There was this documentary film about that they used to show us in school. It was about Guatemala. It must have been one of the only films in the library, because they showed it nearly every year. They kept the virgins in a gigantic well until it was time to cut their hearts out."
"Kerry, do you believe in the greatest good for the greatest number?"
"Yes. But I believe the greatest number is Old Number One here."
Brother-in-law cracked up. He liked that one. It was a statement he could identify with.
One of his trite repetitions, spoken always with a cheerful, tight little grin, was, "You know, Kerry, it really is a dog-eat-dog world."
"That's what my dad used to always tell me."
"It's true."
"I think that depends on how you look at it. Ayn Rand would say that's a parasitical attitude."
"Kerry thinks everything Ayn Rand says," Slim injected to Brother-in-law, "is about ninety-nine percent more true than anything anyone else says."
"Not exactly. There are things in Ayn Rand's writings I disagree with."
"Kerry, imagine a movement based on a man, instead of an idea. Consider the advantages. A man possesses many ideas. He is more flexible than an ideology," Brother-in-law went on in a voice filled with warmth and emotion. "People can identify with a man as they cannot identify with cold, abstract ideas. Think of that -- a movement based on a man."
"Yes," I said, "I think that's probably true," unsure of whether or not he had changed the subject again.
"You know, Kerry, the duPont family is very large; there are hundreds and hundreds of them."
He had changed the subject.
Then there was something he mentioned once or twice that seemed even less credible than flying saucers powered by German secrets of perpetual motion.
"In the state of California, Kerry, there is a plan to begin performing mind control experiments on people who live there. I.G. Farben, the economic arm of the Third Reich is involved in it. They are going to put surveillance devices in the heads of their experimental victims, in order to monitor them, and then they are going to subject them to mind control. So, if I were you, Kerry, I would think maybe it would be a good idea to stay out of California in the future."
I looked at him. I didn't say anything, except to acknowledge that he had spoken. A picture was conjured up in my mind of thousands of puppets on electronic strings being manipulated by a vast, hidden cartel -- of people in psychological torment that seemed too horrible to be possible. This guy was wasting his talents as a cheap hood employed in a brewery; he should be writing novels.
A couple of other times he spoke of what, perhaps because of the way it was phrased, sounded more credible. "Kerry, the Fascists are now experimenting with advanced thought control techniques. You know, there are Fascists in this country. Among them is Henry Luce, who publishes Time and Life magazines. They are planning to build a society comprised of nothing but human robots, with transistors installed in the backs of their heads, so that they will be absolutely obedient to subliminal messages."
"Yeah. There are people who say it can't happen here. But I guess it can."
"Remember the saying about how you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink?"
"A friend of mine in high school used to say, 'You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.'"
With characteristic unfairness, Brother-in-law seemed annoyed at the irrelevance of my remark.
He found my comments about Germans equally irritating. "Every now and then we have German tourists at work, where I wait tables at the Sheraton-Charles. They're so rude and crude," I said, borrowing one of Slim's favorite expressions. "They blow their noses in the cloth napkins and leave olive pits in the ash trays. When they want a waiter, they snap their fingers. They talk loud. I don't like Germans very much," I added, feeling brave.
"You cannot, however, generalize about a whole race from a few examples."
I couldn't believe my ears!
"And there are things about the Germans, Kerry, that are quite admirable. They are very precise people, in both their music and their devotion to science. In that sense they are highly civilized -- real sticklers for perfection."
"Yeah, I guess that's true."
"Kerry, one of Nelson Rockefeller's sons went on an expedition in the jungles of New Guinea and vanished. I wonder what ever happened to him?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Kerry, you know, criminologists say that a strand of hair is a more certain method of identification than a fingerprint."
"I read that in Dick Tracy's 'Crimestopper's Textbook,'" I replied, adding that I had also learned from the same source tht the best murder weapon was an icicle, because it melts afterwards and cannot be used as evidence.
Once he spoke of the People's Republic of China -- a very mysterious, bellicose foreign power in those days. "You know, Clare Booth Luce is in favor of diplomatic recognition for Red China."
"No, I didn't realize that. Hell, she supports Goldwater. I don't get it."
"It's true, though." After a pause, he added, "You know, loyalty to the State is expected above loyalty to your own family there."
"Yeah. I saw a picture of a statue once in a book in the library of a little boy in Communist China who reported his own parents to the secret police."
"Those are the values they foster there. They've got so many millions of people to work with that their values have to be different than ours."
"I don't see what difference the number of people makes. That is altruism at its worst extreme, if you ask me."
"Kerry, I've got a close friend in the New Orleans police department. He knows I'm a burglar. If I ever get in trouble, I can rely on him for favors."
"Yeah, they ought to call the New Orleans police the Blue Mafia. Did I tell you about the time I got put in jail for nailing posters to telephone poles? I never saw such rotten conditions and such open corruption in my life. I'm tempted to write a book about it."
"Kerry, when I take over the country, how would you like to be Secretary of Defense? You are a strong believer in national defense. You would be able to travel everywhere in the world, and that's something I know you would like. I think you'd make a very good Secretary of Defense."
"Yes. I'd probably like that job."
"Then it's settled. When I take over, you will be my Secretary of Defense."
Slim was looking at me and laughing.
"And who do you recommend for President -- after we kill Kennedy and Johnson's term expires?"
"Barry Goldwater," I answered without hesitation.
"Don't talk to me about that raving Red," Brother-in-law said with a laugh. "I think Nixon ought to be our man, because Nixon is unprincipled. A man without principles is easy to manipulate. We want somebody we can control, Kerry."
I was amused to hear Goldwater called a "raving Red." Brother-in-law seemed to be making fun of himself -- of the extremity of his own paranoia and right-wing views. Little things like that always made everything else he said seem less menacing.
There were many subjects of discussion about which my memories are vague due to distaste. Barracudas and moray eels were among the themes he would dwell on much too long for my comfort. Among the only undersea creatures that attack humans without provocation, they seemed of particular fascination to him, as I would sit there fidgeting and trying to change the topic to a more pleasant one.
Another depressing subject was Hughes Aircraft, of which he spoke quite often, although I do not recall the details of what he said -- something, I think, about a project invasive of human rights. All that remains in my mind here is a surrealistic visual impression that seems purely imaginary in origin, though associated in his words somehow: greasy airplane parts and scraps of aluminum in a vacant lot. Brother-in-law was forever dwelling on the mundane when he was not preoccupied with the depressing or the bizarre.
"Kerry, have you ever heard the saying, 'Let George do it?'"
In retrospect I wonder if this was a veiled reference to George DeMohrenschildt who, according to his own statements just previous to his death, was involved in the assassination conspiracy.
At that time I was unaware that a man named George DeMohrenschildt was involved in Dallas in discussions with Oswald that could easily have resembled Brother-in-law's talks with me. At least, Oswald seems to have talked with De Mohrenschildt alone at length, and he seemed to come away from those discussions with an attitude that was as ambivalent toward him as mine was toward Brother-in-law.
Sometimes I was successful in returning digression for digression, particularly in the realm of stories about weird people. My tales of Southern California's ample lunatic fringe seemed to entertain Brother-in-law.
Besides Daniel Fry's UFO watchers, there was a religious cult in Box Canyon under the leadership of a Messianic ex-convict calling himself Krishna Venta -- until his followers assassinated him.
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"That man had it made," I said. "Not only was he fucking all the women, but he had required all his converts to sign over to him all their earthly possessions when they joined. He said he was not born of woman, because he didn't have a belly button. I figured he must've gotten plastic surgery."
"Kerry, you know how in old Westerns they run the bad guys into a box canyon before rounding them up?"
Also among the more well-known luminaries of Southern California's more eccentric attractions was a television personality named Criswell whose predictions about the future were made in sing-song tones that I found easy to imitate. A close friend of May West, he once prophesied she would become President of the United States.
Then there was a tale told by a woman who had lived across the street from us about a strange lady she met at a Tupperware party who had purchased tickets to Venus from the author of a then popular book called The Flying Saucers Have Landed.
Among the most notable lecturers Greg Hill and I had encountered at Understanding were Reinholt Schmidt and Jimmy Valaquez. Schmidt amused us because he said the interplanetary aliens spoke to him in High German and that the numerals on the dials in their saucer were "just regular numbers." When Greg asked, "Why do you suppose they use Arabic numerals just like us?" Schmidt said, "Why, I don't know what other kind of numbers they would use."
Valaquez was a more convincing speaker, but then his story of encountering UFO people was so far-fetched as to require the utmost rhetorical skill. All his aliens dressed like Jesus and wore sandals that were made of living protoplasm that glowed in the dark.
"Remember Eisenhower's farewell address, Kerry, about the danger of what he called the military-industrial complex?" was a question Brother-in-law only asked me once.
"Yeah, I figure Ike was senile by the time he made that speech."
"No, Kerry, there really is a military-industrial complex, and you had best keep that in mind."
"That's right," Slim added. "He ain't lyin'."
"Kerry, if the society you are living in begins to become totalitarian, you will be able to tell," he said more than once, "because, when you attempt to uncover the past, they will say: 'Don't bother with the past; only the future is important.'"
"Yes, William F. Buckley tells a story about Mussolini saying something like that to an American general once." My information was slightly confused.
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"You know the angel in the Book of Revelations that rules the world for a thousand years with a rod of iron? What do you figure that could symbolize?"
"Anything you want it to," I replied casually. "That's the advantage of predicting things in vague language: they are bound to come true -- one way or another, sooner or later, if someone interprets them with sufficient ingenuity."
"Rods are used in nuclear energy reactors. They are also used in computers."
"Like I say." I was not very patient with scriptural interpretation, especially since I knew Gary professed to be a pagan, if not an outright atheist.
"I think the Bible would make a good code key for a revolutionary movement, though," he said.
"Yes -- especially since there is one in every prison cell and hotel room in the country."
Whenever he persisted for long in discussing Revelations, I would turn the discussion to my favorite foreign movie, The Seventh Seal, since it drew its imagery from the Biblical Apocalypse.
"I think the mission of this century," I would say, "is to transform religion from the field of philosophy to the realm of the arts."
"You know, Kerry, you aren't going to be able to be too far ahead of your time."
"That's all right with me. My ambition is to be remembered as a man of his own times. Why be a sensitive genius who brags about being misunderstood? That's why I am not afraid to use clichés in my writing. Clichés are the idioms of the common people. Writers who scorn them are snobs."
Both Slim and Brother-in-law looked at me with hearty approval.
"Kerry, I think it would be better for the world if eventually just one ideology -- no matter what it was -- came to predominate everywhere."
"So do I," I said without attaching much importance to my words.
Similar to Brother-in-law's fascination with the Revelation of Saint John the Divine was his fondness for the Oracles of Nostradamus, toward which I displayed equal impatience.
Another of his favorite subjects were recent movies. "Remember in Night of the Hunter, how the preacher had the letters for the words 'LOVE' and 'HATE' tattooed on the fingers of opposite hands?"
"Now that was a movie that said something valid about religion. That preacher was a killer."
"Remember the woman Susan Hayward played in I Want to Live? You know that was based on a true story. Remember how sensual and alive she was and how much people liked her for that reason?"
"Yes! That dance scene with the bongos was fantastic! I saw that when I was at Atsugi, Japan, in Marine Air Control Squadron One. We turned I Want to Live! into a slogan when we rioted in our barracks. I got office hours once for writing it on a post with a laundry marker. An asshole corporal named Curtis reported me. I hated that guy."
"Do you know what cant is?"
I wondered if he he was talking about the German philosopher that Jack, a Marxist-Leninist who hung out with the rest of the radicals at the Ryder Coffee House, liked.
But no. "Cant is a kind of slang used by criminal groups in order to make understanding what they say to each other more difficult for outsiders," Brother-in-law took pains to explain.
"I'm planning to write a novel that deals with, among other things, organized crime in New Orleans. There's so much of it here."
"Yeah. Most people think New Orleans is a French town. Actually, it's a Dago town. Italians are clowns. Hitler never should have accepted them into the Axis. That's one of the reasons he lost the war."
"What about the Japanese?"
"Now the Japanese are clever people," he said. "Among the Asians, they are the Master Race, together with the Chinese. You know, gunpowder and paper were both Chinese inventions."
"Yeah."
"Kerry, come over here and sit next to me. I want to tell you something important." I sat on the floor next to the footstool where he was seated, hunched forward with his elbows resting on both knees.
"Now listen." He fixed a fierce glare in my direction. "If there was to be a rebellion in the intelligence community -- and if a man were to find himself in the middle of that rebellion -- and if he were to blow a lot of covers, then those people whose covers were blown would be very angry. And they would need a method of dealing with that anger. So I think that man who exposed them to the government should be taken to sea in a submarine -- and tortured to death."
An awkward silence followed.
"Don't you agree?"
"I guess so," I answered meekly, quickly pushing the whole subject from my thoughts.
There were other subjects that I have dealt with by pushing them away, even more successfully. For example, from the time that I read in Ed Sander's The Family about filmed ritual murders until well into 1976 when I began encountering seemingly unrelated rumors about "snuff films," I failed to remember the weird and disturbing discussion with Slim and Gary about "snuff movies."
Before recalling it clearly, I was saying in relation to the rumors, "That's just the type of thing Slim and Gary would have been into." Yet today I remember vividly the morning Gary asked me what I thought of "snuff films" and then explained to me what they were. I recall exactly where both he and I were sitting in his living room at the time. I remember my intense fear, and how I privately rationalized my pretense of agreement. And I have recollected ever since early in 1977 the exact expression in Gary's eyes as he leered at me wickedly and spoke of building "a network of blackmailed murderers."
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