by James Frey
I lost everything that mattered to me.
Ben waited until I looked up. I can only imagine what my face must have looked like, certainly not the cool calm federal agent trying to be an intelligent, convincing, and intimidating interrogator. He spoke.
Release one of my hands.
I can’t do that.
Yes, you can.
I won’t do it.
You’ll be able to walk through your front door without crying. You’ll be able to sleep at night.
You’ll be able to call her, and tell her you miss her, and you’ll be able to love again, and live again.
Fuck you.
I know how much it hurts.
You don’t know fucking shit.
Release my hand.
You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, you crazy fuck.
I wish I didn’t, but I do.
You motherfucker.
I can take it away.
You’re a fucking freak.
Call me whatever you need to call me.
I want to know how you knew.
By looking at you.
Tell me how the fuck you knew.
I did.
This is not some fucking joke here.
I’m just trying to help you.
You’re gonna help me? You in shackles and a jumpsuit and twenty years hanging over your fucking head?
If you let me.
I stared at him. I didn’t know what to say. I was confused and angry and in pain. He scared me. He scared me more than anyone I had ever been in a room with, anyone I’d ever met, anyone I’d ever seen. Most people, as dangerous or violent as they may be, are easy to figure out. They come from somewhere, and they have experiences that have shaped them, and they have soft spots, weaknesses, places inside where you can open them up. Ben wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met, watched, or interviewed, he wasn’t like anyone I’d ever heard about. He was absolutely impregnable. At the same time, he wasn’t putting up defenses, and didn’t appear to have any. He made me think of something I read when I was in college about Buddha, something that described his physical presence and his state of being. It said he was soft as iron, hard as rain, quiet as thunder, and still as a hurricane. Our professor explained the paradox of the description, that iron is one of the hardest substances on earth but also malleable enough to be shaped into anything we want it to be, that water is fluid and yielding, but strong enough to carve canyons.
That while thunder shakes the ground we walk on, a thunderstorm is also a peaceful and serene event, and that while hurricanes are among the most destructive forces we know of, the eye of the hurricane is an incredibly calm place, an eerily and almost otherworldly calm place. Ben stared back at me. He didn’t move, and if he blinked, I didn’t see it. He just took me in with his eyes, those bottomless black eyes. And our session as agent and suspect ended, and our conversation as two men, two men trying to live and be alive and find their way, which is all any human being can really do in this life, began. He spoke.
Despite your earlier statements, you believe in God?
Yes, I do.
And you have sought God out in order to deal with your grief?
I have.
You have gotten down on your knees and cried, and pleaded, and begged for relief, and for answers?
Yes.
Has your God answered you?
No.
What version of God do you believe in?
I’m Christian. Episcopal.
Your priest has counseled you?
Yes.
And he is well-intentioned, but he has left you empty?
Yes.
Has he spoken to your God about you?
What do you mean?
Has he spoken to him, the way I speak to you, the way you speak to other people?
No one speaks to God that way.
And yet you keep trying, because you believe at some point your God will answer your prayers?
I hope.
Hope is an illusion, a carrot dangling.
Hope keeps me going.
Going towards what?
I don’t know.
Your God offers you hope. Hope offers you nothing. You should seek another way.
What would that be?
I’ve told you.
Let you go.
I don’t care if you let me go. I don’t care if I’m in a cell for the rest of my life. I’m telling you, if you release one of my arms, and believe in what I tell you, and trust me for a brief moment, I can do what your imaginary God, your fairytale God, a God no one has ever seen or spoken to and who has not relieved your pain or provided you with the answers you seek, cannot do.
I could lose my job.
If that’s more important to you.
He sat there and waited. I looked away, towards the glass, and wondered if my colleague was watching us or listening to us. We also record all interrogations, so video was a concern. Agents are given a certain leeway with suspects. If we think giving a suspect space or room to move might help them open up, we are allowed to do it. If we think giving something to eat or drink will motivate them, we are allowed to do it. This, though, wasn’t anything like that. This was entirely personal. And it involved physical contact, which was expressly forbidden. It was against regulations. But I had been in so much pain for so long. I had been haunted and terrorized and destroyed by images of my dying child, of the pain he felt as he went, of the fear he must have experienced as his body failed, of the horror of the moment when he stopped breathing, with my wife and me holding his hands. I knew I would never recover from my boy’s death, and I doubted the pain would ever subside, but I decided that if Ben could relieve me of it for a minute or an hour or a day, it would be worth whatever penalty I would have to pay.
I reached into my pocket and took out a key. I leaned across the table and unlocked the shackle that kept his right arm bound to the table. He did not move as I did it, but once his arm was free, and I was still leaning over the table, his arm shot up and he grabbed me and pulled me towards him with a strength that no one who looked like him should have possessed. I felt my feet leave the ground. He held me with my head on his shoulder, and he started whispering in my ear. I don’t know what language it was, though I believe it was either ancient Hebrew or Aramaic. I was terrified, and I didn’t know if he had tricked me and was going to hurt me, or if he was actually doing what he said he could do. And in a way it didn’t matter, because he was so strong that I couldn’t have gotten away if I had wanted to.
He kept whispering, and my body went limp. It felt like someone had just emptied it of everything, like what I imagine people who die and come back say they feel while they’re dead and drifting towards the light. My emotions, my soul, and my physical strength, my pain and sorrow and struggle, it was all gone. I felt completely empty. I felt like I had always wished I could feel: peaceful, and simple, and uncomplicated. I wanted to be that way forever, to stay with him forever, my head on his shoulder, his voice in my ear. I heard the door open behind me and I heard people come rushing into the room. Someone had been watching us and assumed he was hurting me and I knew it was going to end. Ben stopped speaking whatever language he had been using and just before I was pulled away he said I love you.
I was carried out of the room. The last image I have of him before the door slammed shut is of one of my colleagues spraying mace into his face. I was later told he was also shot with tasers and beaten with billy clubs, and when the beating was over, he was carried out of the room, bleeding and unconscious. I was taken to a hospital, where I checked out normal and went home a few hours later and slept easily for the first time since the day my son went into the hospital. I was transferred off the case and Ben was bailed out two days later. I never saw him again, though I did try to find him. I wanted to thank him for doing whatever he had done, and for giving me a new chance at life, for teaching me to love as he had loved me. I wasn’t surprised when I heard what happened to him. We live in
a cruel and unfortunate world. The longer I am in it, the more I believe he was right. Hope is an illusion, a dangling carrot, something to keep us going, but going towards what? It all is ending. His end, cruel, unnecessary, and cloaked in a veil of religion and righteousness, like so much of what’s wrong with what we’ve built, will be but the beginning.
LUKE
I’m a white man, brothers and sisters. From the great state of Mississippi. Born a Christian white man and raised with a strong sense of my Southern heritage and the belief that I was part of a God-given few: the few who founded this country, who built this country, and who run this country, even when it appears someone else might be doing it. I was raised in Jackson, Mississippi. A beautiful town, brothers and sisters, a beautiful town. My family had been in the state for two hundred years, and most of us had never seen a reason to go anywhere else. We’d been settlers, soldiers, plantation owners, slave traders, slave owners. We’d fought for the South in the Civil War, and a good many of us had died for her. We’d been gamblers, farmers, Indian hunters, sheriffs, thieves, lawyers, bootleggers, congressmen, and senators. My daddy was an oilman. Spent his life searching for the black gold, that thick, dark, elusive money juice. He bought and drilled some land in Laurel, Mississippi, and he struck it, brothers and sisters, struck it deep and made himself a bundle. When I was a youngster, he lived in Laurel during the week, working and spending his nights sleeping with his black mistress. My momma and I lived in Jackson, and my momma spent her nights sleeping with the golf pro, the tennis pro, the local police, and just about anyone else who wanted to sleep with her. On weekends my momma and daddy got drunk and pretended they loved each other. They went to cocktail parties and horse races. They played golf and went to events at the club. Occasionally they threw things at each other, and occasionally my daddy hit her. I didn’t think it was anything but normal. Even after my momma killed herself, my brothers and sisters, I didn’t think it was anything but normal. I just thought maybe my momma had got got by the Devil, or that she had had a bout with some kind of female insanity. Lord knows how many believe those kinds of things happen. Lord knows.
Back to me. I must declare that I grew up like a little prince. I had fancy clothes and fancy food and went to the fanciest schools in Jackson. I did whatever I wanted and acted however I wanted and I got whatever I wanted. I had black women who cooked and cleaned and cared for me, and though my momma claimed to be raising me, it was really them. And that was the way it was with all the white kids I knew, and we just thought it was the way of the world. When I finished high school, I went to Oxford to attend the University of Mississippi, where I lived like a gentleman prince. I didn’t hardly ever go to class, because I knew I had a job waiting for me. I was the president of my fraternity, where we drank beer and played cards every night and flew the Confederate flag right outside our front door. And when I wasn’t drinking and gambling, me and all my friends did whatever we could to get coeds to sleep with us, including forcing them to do it. It was four years of what I thought was bliss, brothers and sisters, before I knew what bliss was. There was no responsibility to myself, my family, or any sort of higher authority. My loyalty and faith resided within my own ego, and within the bonds established at the fraternity house, where, by the way, we had black women working for us cleaning our clothes and cooking our meals. And yes, brothers and sisters, occasionally we’d try to sleep with them, and if by God they said no, we’d force them to do it.
At the end of college, I went to work for my daddy, supervising his wells. I married myself a nice young blonde girl, whose daddy was in the oil business in Louisiana and had known my daddy for twenty years. We had ourselves a big wedding at her parents’ plantation house, where everyone got drunk and ate too much and generally acted like we were Southerners before we lost the war. We settled in Gulfport, ’cause it was closer to her family, and in six months’ time she was pregnant. We had ourselves a little girl, and then another. They were cute little things, brothers and sisters, believe me, they were pretty as buttons the both of them. I settled into a pattern like my daddy’s. I was working in Laurel and coming home on weekends. Though I said I wasn’t going to do some of the things my daddy did, I did them anyway. I found myself a black ladyfriend and spent my evenings in bars with her and in bed with her. I played some cards and lost some money. I drove a big fast car and yelled at the people who worked for me, even if they didn’t deserve it, and I fired ’em when I felt like it, even if there wasn’t a good reason. I was living a bad, bad life, and I didn’t know any better. Some would say, and I have said at times myself, that I was singing with Satan, running with the Devil, walking down the dark dirty path of the demon Beelzebub. But I thought that was the way life was supposed to be led by a man of my type, brothers and sisters, a rich white man from the South.
As it is in life, what rises must fall. The mighty become the meek. Giants are stricken and empires razed. And even though nobody ever thinks it’s ever gonna happen to them, it sure as shit does, brothers and sisters, and I can attest to that. My fall was swift and pitiless, like a box of rocks falling off the back of a wagon. I started smoking crack, which was a newfangled thing, with one of my ladyfriends. I could not for the life of me stop smoking it. Simultaneous to that little bit of nastiness, my daddy’s wells ran dry and he had a falling-out with my father-in-law. Simultaneous to that, my daddy’s stockbroker disappeared to Brazil with a mistress and all of our money. I stayed in Mississippi under the auspices of helping my family navigate the turbulent and troubled waters of financial Armageddon, while actually spending all my time in a cheap motel with a pipe and a torch and a stream of hookers. Upon returning home, I was greeted by my father-in-law, who had hired himself a private investigator, with a shotgun and some divorce papers. He told me my wife and beautiful daughters were in Louisiana, and if I tried seeing them or contacting them again I’d be strung up and castrated. Brothers and sisters, if you had seen the look in his eyes, you’d have known that was no joke.
So I went back to Laurel and smoked away everything I had left. And then I smoked away a whole bunch of what I didn’t have. And then I started stealing things that weren’t mine and smoking those. Brothers and sisters, I descended into the depths of Hell, where I laughed with Lucifer and made love to his dastardly disciples. I stayed there for three years, smoking and doping, hooking and whoring, wheeling, dealing, and stealing. When I was near a point where I believed I was shutting down and about to leave my earthly body, I had a revelation, brothers and sisters, a tremendous revelation, and I was born again, born again into the heart, soul, and spirit of the man who became my best friend and mentor, the man I believed to be the power and the glory, the mighty Almighty himself, the Prophet and the Son, our Judge and Redeemer, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It happened in a rotten old basement of a rotten old abandoned shack that a bunch of crack smokers used to hide out in and get high. We were like a bunch of rats. Gray and stinky and dirty, greedy and hungry, willing to crawl through a world of shit just to feed ourselves. I had been having some pains in my chest from lack of proper diet and too much of the drug and had been in a fight with another man over rocks he claimed I owed him. He showed up angry and fixing for a fight. I didn’t want to fight, so I tried to ignore the man, which made him angry as a cut snake. He picked up a brick and smashed it right against my head, knocking me literally and figuratively right into kingdom come. When I woke up, brothers and sisters, there was light streaming through a broken window and coming right across my face. I heard the words, in a deep, strong pure voice, you must be born again. I didn’t know who it was so I said who’s that and the voice said Jesus Christ and I said how do I know it’s you and he said look into your heart, my son, and I said what do you want me to do, Lord, what do you want me to do and he said you must be born again. I said I am, Jesus, I am, what do you want me to do now and he said spread the word of God the Father, preach the truth of the Gospels of the Son, and fill the hearts of sinners w
ith the spirit of the Holy Ghost. I said I will, Jesus, I promise I will.
The light went away and I stood up and brushed myself off and walked out of the hellhole and went straight to the nearest church and got down on my knees and prayed. I spent two days praying. No food, no water, and no sleep. When approached by the clergy of the church, I waved them off and said I’m conferring with the Lord, brother, I’ll talk to you when I’m done. Sometimes it felt like the Lord was sitting right there next to me, chattering in my ear. Other times I wondered why the silences were so long. Near the end, I believed the Father himself, the omnipotent one, the creator of all that we know, told me that I was to go to the one city on earth that held the greatest number of sinners, and the greatest amount of sin, and start a church and start saving souls. So there I went, brothers and sisters, to New York, New York.
I walked the entire way. Walked with the shoes on my feet and the clothes on my back and a Bible in my hand. I was depending on the kindness of strangers to sustain me, and, brothers and sisters, as cruel and ugly as this world can be, there is much goodness still to be found in it. Within a day I had a full belly. Within two I had new shoes and new clothes. Within three I had a couple of dollars in my pocket. On the fourth I got a haircut and a shave. Everything was given to me by blessed strangers, all of whom I considered angels in disguise, angels from Heaven sent to aid me and guide me, sent, brothers and sisters, to insure my mission was successful. Every night I prayed for several hours, slept for three or four, and walked the rest of the time. And while I was walking, every few minutes, I said in a manner I would call and consider loud and proud, Lord, I love you, I’m a humble man and a humble servant and I love you with my whole heart. After twenty-two days on the road, I walked across the George Washington Bridge.
