Jane Smiley - Early Warning

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JANET WAS GLAD in spite of herself that she and Lucas didn’t own much, because she saw how difficult it was for some of the Temple members to turn over their possessions to communal ownership. There was one couple she was watching when they donated their house on Potrero Hill. The house was to be set up as a commune. The man had a look on his face like he was happy to get rid of the thing, but the woman cried. Janet watched her; she cried for a long time, and the man just glanced at her every so often, as though he was disappointed in her and waiting for her to stop. When children were turned over to communal care, there was a lot of crying; Janet didn’t think she herself would be able to take that so she was glad she and Lucas didn’t have children. She also didn’t agree with the paddling, but in that she thought she might be wrong, since just about everyone she knew had been spanked or whipped as a child by their own parents, so why not by their caretakers at the church? Reverend Jones was sympathetic but strict — you had to start the new world sometime; eventually, sometime became now. Didn’t those who worshipped Jesus suffer for their revelations? No one was asking the members of the Temple to be flayed alive, shot with arrows, or broken on the wheel (Reverend Jones laughed aloud). Only to share. Only to understand that there was plenty to go around, no matter what it was. Only to give up the onerous responsibility that was possession and take up the freedom that was connection.

Janet also knew that right now, for Lucas, giving up what he possessed was more difficult than it was for her. She didn’t say a thing about it — she didn’t even let a facial expression about it cross her countenance. When he said that the drums were his, they were. When he said that his money was his, it was. When he said that his recordings of his favorite music were his, they were. Whatever pressure Lucas was to feel, it was not going to come from Janet. One night, when they had something of an argument about the Temple, Lucas said that he wasn’t going to sign anything and he expected Janet not to sign anything, either, even a blank piece of paper. If she wanted them to attend like all of their friends, then they had to be free to come and go; he had to be free to do his gigs. There would be no signing. Lucas said that one woman, Joyce someone, had told him that the papers were confessions of child molestation that the reverend would then use against you if you were disloyal and tried to leave the Temple, but Janet and Lucas agreed that this was such a ridiculous and paranoid idea that the woman must be making it up. People made a lot of things up about Reverend Jones — that he called himself God, that he said he could cure cancer, that he kept all the money for himself, that he threatened one woman in a service with a poisonous snake — but Janet had never seen any of this, and neither had Lucas. There was a lot of pressure to go to services more than one day a week, but, after all, her mother sometimes went to AA meetings three or four days a week, and what was the difference, really? The 25 percent tithe was difficult in a way, but when Janet looked around the congregation at the smiling faces of old folks and some others, like Jorge, who had nothing, she could not think of what else to spend her money on, so why not hand it over?

Today she was all right, too. Last night, it had been difficult to stand there and be shouted at by Cat, by Lena, and by Reverend Jones, told that she was vain and foolish and selfish, that she thought only of Janet Langdon and never of others, that she seemed unable to learn any of the lessons the reverend was trying to teach her. She was evasive or stupid, take your pick — which was worse in the end? If she was really looking for the truth, what was she waiting for? Where was her purse? Hand it over. What were these silly things she kept to herself? Just vanity and childishness. No one was asking her to walk down the street naked, just penniless. What would be so bad about that? People all over the world did it all the time, and their souls thrived on it. To give is to receive — how long would it take her to learn that? If her boyfriend, Lucas, was holding her back, get rid of the fellow; it would be better for the both of them. Go ahead and nod and say yes; no one believes you; we all know you; we all know how hard-hearted and selfish you are; you deserve nothing until you have nothing, and then something will come of it. And so on. Until after midnight. Lucas had sat quietly, looking on, and then left at some point. Finally, when she was really crying, down on her knees with her hands over her face, Reverend Jones came over, took her hand, lifted her up, and put his arms around her. He said to cry it out — every tear was a drop of selfishness pouring forth, making room for the humility that was the true grace of God. Surely she didn’t want to remain as she had begun, the corrupt child of a corrupt world? No, he could tell that she did not; he loved her; he could see the precious light dawning in her eyes.

It was Cat who led her home in the rain, took off her soaking clothes, helped her dry her hair, put her to bed, and kissed her good night, and though she cried for a while, she was so exhausted that she did fall asleep. Now she was wiped out, almost hungover in a way; she knew she ought to get up and go to work, but she could not make herself do it.

—

THE PROBLEM Eloise had when Jorge came by and told her how enemies of the Temple were bent on destroying it was that she believed him. Jorge was twenty-two; he never thought of the Kennedy assassinations, except as ghost stories. Nor, when she asked him, did he know what the CIA did, only what Jones said it did, which was to infiltrate peaceful organizations like his and destroy them from within. Eloise knew that was true, especially if that organization openly — you might say defiantly — professed socialist principles, which Jones did. When Jones said that J. Edgar Hoover had once called him personally and threatened to destroy or kill him, his wife, and his “rainbow children,” and told him that he had a dossier on him full of crimes “you and I know you didn’t commit, but that I can prove you did,” that was the first time Jorge had heard of Hoover, and he believed the reverend, who had been good to him, like a strict but loving father, and allowed him to work as an orderly in the Temple medical clinic. People came in pain and left in joy, because at last they had found treatment, but also love; Jorge was convinced that the latter was more effective than the former. Eloise remembered what Frank had said about that young woman — Judy was her name — that Hoover hated because she knew he was gathering every molecule of shit he could on everyone he knew in order to maintain his hold over them, and how unusual was that? Not at all, in Eloise’s experience.

Jorge insisted that there was nothing at all wrong with Cat, Janet, Lucas, and Jorge himself going to Guyana — the piece of property there was beautiful, rather like Marin County, fertile and well watered. The medical clinic was already up and running, and it was no less healthy than family farms in the Midwest had once been.

“That’s not a good recommendation to an old farm girl,” said Eloise, but Jorge said, “I would rather work in my own communal field than a field owned by United Fruit.”

Eloise said that she hadn’t known that United Fruit owned fields in the United States. Jorge scowled but pressed on. All they needed was some money for transportation. Janet had let it out that the family farm had been sold somehow, or split up, and there was money. Just a few hundred dollars was all they needed. No one, not Lucas or Janet, knew he had come over to ask.

“Cat?” said Eloise.

Jorge didn’t answer, just smiled and said, “We know that, deep down, you are in sympathy with socialism and with our experiment. You gave Marla money.”