Fifth Gospel:The Odyssey of a Time Traveler in First-Century Palestine Page 2

  “The fight. Well, my father was an Irishman, and it was Saturday night in a mining town. If the fight hadn’t been about my mother, it would have been about something else. It was hardly the only fight Dad had ever been in. It was an accident—the killing that is. He was beaned by a beer bottle, and it just happened to hit at exactly the wrong spot on his skull with just a little too much enthusiasm on the part of the miner swinging it. That’s the way my mother looked at it and told me to look at it.

  “We moved back onto the San Carlos Reservation soon afterward. Her family was all there, and they took us in. We had a good, happy life on the reservation. I made a lot of friends, and I learned a lot about my heritage from the elders of the tribe. I learned to track, to hunt, and to fight. I even learned to speak Athabascan, the language of the Apaches and the Navajos. You know, the first Apaches arrived in the American Southwest in the 11th century … Mr. Jones, can’t you even give me a small hint about what kind of aircraft you want me to pilot?”

  “First,” Jones said, producing a beaten corncob pipe, “let’s get a little less formal. Please call me Clarence. I understand your friends don’t call you Al; you prefer Lightfoot.”

  I nodded.

  “Second,” Jones continued, as he began to pack his pipe bowl slowly with Cherry Blend, “I never said you were going to pilot any type of aircraft.” When he saw the look of consternation on my face, he went on, “I don’t need to, nor do I want to tell you anymore than that right now. It would be in extremely bad form from a security standpoint; you may not even be picked. Suffice it to say that your status in this project would not be that of a pilot. You’d be more of a … passenger.”

  Now I had it! Now I knew what all this was about! They wanted a loner, someone with a sense of history, but with a scientific bent as well, good physical shape, good reflexes, a good aerial combat record indicating physical courage, and the ability to make quick decisions in a split second. But this someone would function more as a passenger than as a pilot. That’s what gave it away. The space program. It could be nothing else. The high security classification, the incredible background investigation, the direct involvement of the President himself—it could be nothing else. Ripples of rumors had been running throughout the Air Force for the last year and a half or so. The first step, everyone had pretty much agreed, would be a suborbital downrange flight for equipment checks, followed by putting a man, not a pilot, but an astronaut, into orbit around the earth. Heady stuff that, and I may, I thought with exhilaration, just be that man. The Charles Lindbergh of the Space Age. The Lone Eagle. From that moment on, Jones couldn’t have dragged me from that room with a fleet of bulldozers.

  3

  When Clarence David Jones had told me that the interview would be unlike any I’d ever had before, he had been understating the case. The next four days and nights merged into a single blur of questions, questions, and more questions. Looking back on it now, I can understand the line of questioning, and the reasons for each one. Looking back, I can see what he’d been looking for. But, at the time, the questions seemed strange, haphazard, whimsical, and unstructured. Did I think that the American Revolutionary War could have been averted? How? If it had been, what would have been the long range impact on world history? Did I read any science fiction? Who were my favorite authors? What were my religious beliefs? Did the “No Preference” entry in my personnel folder mean that I was an agnostic, an atheist, or that I felt that God listened to all, so it really didn’t matter which denomination one was? Had I thought about religion lately? How could some of the more negative aspects of the Industrial Revolution been ameliorated? Was there a woman in my life at the present time? How did I feel about her? What did the word “love” mean to me? Did I ever intend to have any children? Why? Why did I spend so much time alone in the desert? Was society becoming too impersonal? What about my tastes in art?

  Well, I answered all of his questions in detail, even though they made no sense to me at the time, and even though I felt, as he had in fact predicted, that some were about things that were none of his business. If this was an opportunity to be the first man in space, I wasn’t going to pass it up. Jones and I lived on black coffee, sandwiches, and six hours of sleep per night for those four days, but I showed it and Clarence didn’t. Every couple of hours he’d amble down the hall to the latrine, splash a few handfuls of cold water on his face, and he’d be as good as new. I got the distinct impression that he was used to living like this, and I was right. I also got to know a bit about him. Every now and then, when my eyes started to look like roadmaps and my voice began to get hoarse, he’d give me a break by answering some of my questions about him. Clarence was a fascinating guy. He was 46 years old and had been an associate professor of history until the war had come along. He wound up on Ike’s staff just prior to D-Day and had been with him ever since. He spoke of the “Old Man” with frank and open admiration. Ike stood in awe of few things, but as I later learned, one of those things was Clarence’s phenomenal photographic memory. (From the beginning I had been wondering how he’d been able to effortlessly summon up specific names, dates, and places from my past without the aid of any notes.) Ike had entrusted Jones with many sensitive extracurricular activities, all of which, Clarence was quick to claim, were “just inconsequential little errands,” but which, nonetheless, had sent him into the offices and parlors of such notables as Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and De Gaulle. I got to like him; he was an honest and friendly, straightforward man with a dry sense of humor not unlike Mark Twain’s. Once he let you get to know him, that first impression of dour, official frostiness fled. He had a wife named Marge, whom he idolized, and four kids, about whom he felt even more strongly. He also had two Norwegian Elkhounds, a wealth of anecdotes set in and around his hometown near Chattanooga, and, like me, a fascination with the Civil War. There were some times of light-hearted camaraderie, but some dredged-up pain as well. He came, as I knew he inevitably must, to the Accident.

  “On December 16, 1952—”

  “Yes,” I interrupted, wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible, “that’s when my mother and my fiancée were killed. My birthday, my 22nd birthday, was on December 18th, and I was due to graduate from flight school on the 22nd. They decided to drive up for a double celebration. I had two weeks of leave coming up after graduation, so we were all going to drive back together and spend the holidays at San Carlos. My mother and Amanda were very, very proud of me, and they wanted to show me off, they said.” I grew silent for a moment; the feelings all began to rush back to me. Clarence drew me out of it.

  “Amanda Clearwater, she was also a full-blooded Chiricahua Apache, wasn’t she?”

  I nodded, “Yes. She was very beautiful, very gentle, and she was twenty years old. I loved her. We were to be married in March. I … still remember how she looked, exactly how she looked at her ‘coming out’”

  “‘Coming out?’”

  “Yes, anthropologists call it a puberty rite. Strictly speaking, I suppose it is. Yet to us, it’s much more. It’s our most important ceremony. It lasts four whole days and nights. The Mountain Spirit Dancers perform the Sunrise Dance and other ancient sacred dances that mark the passage of the maidens from girlhood into womanhood … she wore a white deerskin dress …” I was beginning to drift again, but quickly brought myself out of it this time. There was a lot at stake here. “Anyway, Amanda and my mother started out on the morning of December 16th in Amanda’s car, a ’41 Ford. They got as far as Safford before a drunk crossing the center line punched their tickets for them. My mother was killed instantly, but Amanda was pinned in the wreckage and burned to death. The drunk turned out to be a member of the state legislature, so all charges were dropped against him except the one for reckless driving. He had his driver’s license suspended for two weeks. No big thing; it was just a couple of Indians killed.

  “We had the funeral on the reservation. Both of our families were very traditional, so the funeral was too. All of
my mother’s and Amanda’s belongings were burned. The Apaches have done this for centuries, maybe even longer. It’s so no one can ever profit from the death of another. I had taken off my uniform, and clad in nothing more than a breechclout, was given the honor of leading the Death Chant: ‘O Ha Le … Only the mountains live forever … O Ha Le … Only the rocks live forever … O Ha Le … Our shadow bodies come and go … O Ha Le … But we are together, we have kept the faith … O Ha Le … O Ha Le.’ I spent my leave at San Carlos, but most of it alone in the desert. The first thing I did when I reported back on duty was to volunteer for combat duty in Korea. I was … consumed by a white-hot rage, a towering black infernal rage that made me want to lash out, to kill and destroy. My father, my mother, the girl I was to marry … all taken from me, not through malice. Malice I can understand. But taken from me through some kind of Cosmic Caprice. Well, you know the rest; I became very good at killing people and destroying things. I even got medals for doing it.”

  “You christened your F-86, ‘The Apache Avenger.’ I thought the motto you had painted on the nose interesting too. ‘Death Is Our Business and Business is good.’ Can’t get much more unequivocal than that, although as words to live by, it leaves a lot be desired.”

  That led into a discussion of Korea, and in some ways, was almost as painful. At any rate, late into the fourth night of the interview, Clarence finally arrived at a decision. We were taking one of our breaks. Our throats were kind of raw, so we’d gone to the Coke machine instead of the coffee machine for our caffeine and had brought the ice-cold bottles back to my home away from home, Debriefing Room B. Clarence leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the table. I did the same.

  “Lightfoot, the human animal is a curious thing. On the afternoon before D-Day, I was alongside Ike as he reviewed the pathfinders of the 82nd Airborne. These were the very first of the invasion troops to hit French soil. They jumped at fifteen minutes past midnight, and their job was to mark the drop zones for all the other paratroopers. Ike had just finished giving them a little pep talk but it was a pep talk tempered with some straight talking. He told them that his staff estimated that those guys might hit as high as eighty percent casualties. As we were walking through the ranks, Ike stopped in front of a big PFC. ‘How do you feel about what I just said,’ he asked, ‘an eighty percent casualty rate?’ The guy looked around him slowly, then replied, ‘Sir, I sure am going to miss all these guys.’”

  I smiled, and Clarence took a long thoughtful swig from his Coke bottle.

  “How do you feel about your own death, Lightfoot? Can you see it? What would you have said to Ike?”

  I took a long pull from my own bottle and considered. “I’d be inclined to agree with that paratrooper, I guess. I don’t want to die, but you can’t let that keep you from doing things that have to be done… or,” I said with the mind’s eye on the stars, “from things that you want to do with all your heart.”

  “The interview’s over, Lightfoot,” Clarence said softly. “You passed.”

  “You mean you’re going to …” Clarence nodded.

  “I’m going to recommend to the Old Man that you be the one. You have only one more hurdle, and that’s an interview with the Old Man himself.”

  “The President himself is going—”

  “I told you that this was the big time.”

  My head was spinning, “Me? With the President? When?”

  In reply, Jones picked up the black phone and dialed the number for the Officer of the Day. “This is Clarence Jones. If you’ll check the Standing Orders, you’ll find that General Forbes has authorized Priority Red One transportation for me. Please have a fast two-seater jet aircraft fueled up, ready to go, and pointed in the direction of Washington. Captain O’Brien will be the pilot, and we’ll be taking off at dawn. Right … yes … that’ll be fine. Thank you.” Jones picked up the red phone next. It had no dial. “Tango 78, Bravo 4 … yes … 018836 … authentication Papa Alpha 38422 … Hotel Sierra Whiskey … 490032 … Mr. President? It’s Jones, sir. Yes sir. Yes he did, with flying colors … Yes sir. 1800 hours Eastern Daylight Time. Very well. Thank you, sir.” He hung up and turned to me. “Does that answer your question?”

  4

  We thundered off the runway at 0602 hours in an F-94C Lockheed Starfire, a two-seat, all-weather jet interceptor. If we’d been flying an intercept mission, Clarence, seated directly behind me, would have had his hands full in using the sophisticated radar unit to vector us into a pass at an intruding aircraft, and arming and readying the weapons systems. But it wasn’t an intercept mission, and there was nothing for Clarence to do but to catch up on his sleep. By 0620 he was dead to the world. In the coming weeks and months, I’d learn that that was one of Clarence’s “tricks of the trade”—the ability to key down quickly when the opportunity presented itself, and so recharge his batteries so he could give it all he had when the old adrenalin hit the bloodstream once more and he had to come through.

  I flew low for the first twenty minutes, somehow sadly certain that I’d never see the desert again, and, like a man leaving the woman he loves, reluctant to take his eyes off her for what would be the last time. So many thoughts and images came flooding into my mind. I’d spent my boyhood and adolescence in the desert. As a child at San Carlos, my friends and I were no different from any other American boys; we too played cowboys and Indians. There were only two differences in our play: the Indians were the good guys, and the Indians always won. As we grew into our teens, the desert turned from a playground into a huge recreation area. We hunted, trapped, explored old mineshafts, picnicked with our girlfriends, and found solitude and tranquility in its vastness when we needed to be alone to think. The other guys in desert survival school took it tough because they were too dumb to realize that the desert was not a cruel, implacable enemy; it was a friend. The desert, in addition to the food it fed the soul with its stark beauty, offered a bounty of food for the body as well. The desert teemed with plant and animal life. All one had to do was to look around. During the wars with the United States Army, one advantage that Apache raiders had was that they required no supply wagons or mules to carry provisions. Everywhere they went, provisions surrounded them.

  An excellent staple was mesquite: a tree or shrub anywhere from ten to twenty feet high, its pods resemble string beans and have sweet, juicy pulp embedded with hard seeds. The raw beans have a lemony taste, are high in sugar for quick energy, and are nutritious. You can also eat the twigs, seeds, bark, and leaves. Then there’s always the fruit from the prickly pear cactus, the saguaro cactus, the barrel cactus, and hedgehogs. Flower buds from the Joshua tree can be eaten hot or cold after roasting and are so sweet they’re the next best thing to candy. Yucca produces a short, banana-shaped fruit that is sweet and nutritious. When it’s ripe, it can be roasted or baked in the hot ashes of your campfire, and when the rind is removed, it tastes a lot like sweet potato. Then there’s the sweet, round, red fleshy fruit of the organ pipe cactus, the berries of the desert hackberry, and of the manzanita. Sagebrush seeds, if cooked, are not bad. Other edible seeds include those of the deer brush and of the desert ironwood (which taste like peanuts). Roasted catclaw seeds are great. Miner’s lettuce is a small succulent, the leaves of which form a saucer about halfway up the stem. They can be eaten raw or boiled. If you place the leaves near a red ants’ nest, you’ll find that the ants give off a formic acid that makes a vinegar-like dressing on them. Mexicans used to make a salad with the leaves of miner’s lettuce and peeled prickly pear cactus. And, as for edible roots and flowers, well, they abound.

  Meat can also be had without a great deal of effort. Besides birds and rabbits, there are the snakes and the lizards and the insects. Lizards and rattlesnakes have a fibrous flesh, which, when cooked, tastes mighty like chicken. Some say better, but I’ve had them all and I prefer chicken. Then again, you won’t find chicken on the desert, so I developed an early taste for reptiles. Lizards especially are easy to catch. A lot
of times they’ll freeze instead of run and hope that you haven’t noticed them. That’s when you bean them with a rock.

  Water. That is supposed to be the roughest part. Finding enough water. That’s even easier to come by than food to someone who knows the desert. Aside from the water found in natural reservoirs like the barrel cactus, you can watch birds in flight in the morning and evening, because they head for water then. For that matter, all you have to do is to follow any game trail downhill, because the animals know where the water is, and water always flows downhill. You can chew pigweed stems; they contain a lot of water. You can do a lot of things. The desert is a friend.

  I sadly watched that old friend zip below me at the rate of 585 mph as we zoomed toward the rising sun. There were a lot of memories, a lot of memories, I thought of that time that a woman tourist/artist came to the reservation to paint “primitives in their natural habitat.” My friends and I were around eleven years old. A couple of us had distracted her while Johnny Hawk stole a tube of bright yellow oil paint from her gear. We used it for warpaint in our cowboy and Indian games for months afterward. Geronimo always wore three stripes of yellow on each cheek whenever he was on the warpath.

  I thought of the time when, at fourteen, I had tried my hand at prospecting. I had stormed into the cabin howling and yelling like a maniac, only to be subdued by my mother, who had patiently explained the difference between gold and pyrite (also known as fool’s gold, although she did not use that term).