Kerry Thornley - The Dreadlock Recollections

"Yes, Hitler did say that."

"That's so true. A certain amount of rationality is needed just to work at a job and survive. People aren't near as stupid as these politicians think they are."

"Kerry? Do you know that line from that Tennessee Ernie Ford song: 'I got one fist of iron and the other of steel; if the right one don't get you, then the left one will…?'"

I chose to interpret that as a warning of some kind.

Once, I told a tale that may have given Brother-in-law an idea. "I heard a story on the radio about a French financial genius. A doctor came to him and offered him fifty francs to will his brain to medical science, so they could cut it up and find out what made him so smart. But when the man died and the doctor came to collect his brain, it turned out he had sold it for the same price to fifty other doctors. Nobody got it. His brain was buried with him."

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.