The scene collapsed into a quiet chaos, with too many things for one person to observe, too many unknown people huddling or rushing in and out of the pavilion, too many worried faces overlooking, overhearing, murmuring. As more defectors came forward, Ryan’s aide Jackie Speier added them to a list and took oral affidavits. Still dressed in platform shoes and a black and white polka-dot sundress, she talked into a tape recorder, “I am Jackie Speier, an attorney on the staff of Leo Ryan. What is your wish today?” And they would reply, “To go back to the United States.” Because the defectors feared harassment, they were accompanied by Speier and others when they went to their quarters for belongings.
At one point, Leo Ryan stood back as the Temple leadership and their attorneys pulled close together to parley in low tones. “How are things going, Leo?” I asked. “Are many leaving with us?”
He cocked back his head, then dropped his chin to his chest and out of the corner of his mouth said with a touch of bravado: “Looks like about a dozen. There are more every minute. They’re coming out of the woodwork.” Ryan was vindicated and he knew it; no one could say any longer that he was on a political witch hunt, or chasing headlines. So many people had come forward that an additional plane, a six-seater Cessna, had to be ordered via the Temple radio—and it appeared that might not suffice.
The gloom in the other camp was oppressive. From the rank and file to the higher-ups, not a soul could summon a smile. Only the very small children obliviously played on or watched television. All other eyes remained riveted on Jones as pressures built inside him. Stepping away from his attorneys and his legal aide Harriet Tropp, he motioned Marceline to come over. One hand to his chest as though it hurt, he rasped: “A pill.” Lovingly, his wife resisted his entreaty.
In that degenerating scene, hope vanished from the faces of the Temple inner circle and the Concerned Relatives alike. Neither group would come away from the test with their desired results, and they knew it.
As Jones wearily tried to persuade the defectors to stay, Jim McElvane stood, pillar stiff, his arms folded, looking more unapproachable than ever. “How do you feel about these people leaving?” I asked. With genuine sadness, he said, “It brings almost tears to my eyes.” Then he caught himself and tried to minimize the impact of the desertions: “They were never really in it completely.... We try to make them feel very much at home. It’s their choice. If they had expressed a desire to leave earlier, they could have.” Appearing hurt, the big man stared off, his brain adrift, probably wondering what crisis strategy his leader would adopt now, with so much on the scales.
“How many people are leaving?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied, as though it did not matter whether one or a hundred left.
In her floral muumuu, rotund Patty Cartmell had not given up; she pleaded with me to understand. “No one else has ever left. Jim Jones has never expressed anything but love—and I’ve been with him twenty-one years. I’ve been here eighteen months. Before I came here, I had hypertension. This is the whole world to me. He represents all that is kind and loving. He has one fault—his heart is too big.”
A young white man in his late twenties chimed in, “If people had really wanted to leave, peer pressure couldn’t keep them. People travel to Port Kaituma, Matthews Ridge and Georgetown every day. And what’s to stop them from leaving?” It was a compelling question.
Attorney Charles Garry appraised the situation, implying that some members of the Parks family might reverse their decision. “If the Parkses decide to leave, I’ve got five thousand dollars Guyanese for their transportation. That’s from the Temple.” In his hand, an envelope bulged with currency, which would not go very far toward repatriating a half-dozen people and resettling them in California.
“It was expected that someone would leave, but Jim Jones is a perfectionist,” Garry said. “If one leaves, he has failed.” For the second time, someone was saying the number of deserters did not matter, that Jones could be devastated by even one.
When the clouds boiled together in swirls of gray and black, and departure time raced nearer, NBC set up for their finale. In the news media, it is known as a confrontation interview, usually done at the conclusion of an investigation, with the prime target. The print media had pitched questions at Jones the night before, but the television people wanted the drama and daylight of a Saturday afternoon session, after their tour and inquiries. At the rear edge of the pavilion, where the cloud-filtered light was brightest and the bodyguards thickest, Jones took a straight-backed chair, crossed one leg, sipped a glass of water and awaited the barrage. With hostility as subtle as it was deep, he watched Bob Brown meter the light on his gray face. His back stiffened, Jones sat as motionless as the macaws, yet poised. At the outset, the interview struck me as ominous, faintly climactic.
For Javers, Krause and me, these few minutes were nearly as important as they were to NBC, because of the defections, because of the constable’s information. We had held off on some of the thornier questions until now. We gathered closely around Jones, standing or squatting out of the camera line, taking notes and awaiting our turn with him.
In response to soft opening questions from Harris, Jones described his utopia, the Temple’s escape there from U.S. racism, and its attempts to eradicate racism, classism and elitism in the jungle. “You never accomplish what you set out,” he added. “I am a perfectionist.”
To another, he said with weariness, “We want to fade out of the whole arena of public attention but obviously we haven’t, because of lies. I never understood how people could lie with such total freedom and conviction.”
Were the stories of beatings and corporal punishment true? “No.” He acted misunderstood and repeated his earlier explanation of abuses that had been stopped.
Asked about the report of the underground enclosure, Jones showed slight surprise. “We don’t have an underground enclosure here.” Then he changed the subject.
What about allegations of armed guards around the perimeter? “There are no armed guards,” he said.
Harris told Jones that police records show the Temple bought an automatic weapon with a twenty-round clip—he probably was referring to one of the few semiautomatic rifles under government permits. Arguing that the Temple had only a few guns licensed for hunting and insisting correctly that no “automatic” guns were delivered to the compound, a baffled-looking Jones swore, “That’s a lie....”
Why do these terrible things happen to the Temple and why are allegations made? “Obviously, there is a conspiracy. Someone shot at me and missed me by a couple of inches. We went through a week of hell.”
But who would do such a thing? “Who conspired to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John Kennedy? Every agency of the whole government is giving us a hard time. Somebody doesn’t like socialism.”
Was he dying, as some had speculated, and as he more than implied? “I don’t want to be one of those people in their golden years,” he said from behind his sunglasses. “I have no knowledge. I don’t know. I haven’t had a diagnostician. Our doctor is competent, but he can only see shadows.”
Harris said he had heard that security guards with guns had gone to the houses at night and warned people not to cause trouble during the Ryan visit. Jones denied it with little outrage. “No one came to see people with guns. I have strictly prohibited guns.
“You don’t have to shoot me,” he added excitedly. “The media smear does it.” Again, he had placed a figurative gun in our hands; the casual talk of violent death bothered me.
Jones gave an epitaph, telling us how he wanted to be remembered: “I’ve given my life for people, serving people.”
As the clouds blackened and groped toward us, Harris produced a piece of paper, and said, “Last night someone came and passed me this note.”
Jones took the note and read in silence. The words—“Vernon Gosney, Monica Bagby. Help us get out of Jonestown”—clouded over his face. His nose was being rubbed in his
humiliation, his failure, his catastrophe. “Friend, people lie and play games.... Please leave us. People can go out of here when they want.” He showed the note to Prokes, who leaned over his shoulder. Rev. Jones had been put on the run, but it was to be no stampede. He kept most of his composure.
What was his response to the defections? “I only feel that every time people leave up until now, they chose to lie....” For the second time, he expressed fear that those leaving would expose him.
When the questions ceased, he shrank visibly, his water glass dangling in his hand. He sat there, as wooden as a marionette, while Bob Brown shot cutaways to be spliced into the footage. Taking the opportunity to approach him, I asked, “Reverend Jones, what are your feelings now that it’s apparent some of your followers want to leave?” Wounded to the point of numbness, he said in an even voice, “I must have failed if people can’t talk to you and be up front with you.”
He excused himself as the belongings of the defectors were being carried along the boardwalks. As he rose and walked away, almost transfixed, black clouds collided in the skies overhead, and a sudden wind tore through the pavilion, riffling the pages of my notebook. “That’s the biggest blow I’ve seen in a month,” Jones shuddered. Then, without even a preliminary thunderclap, the skies dumped a violent rain that bent the plantain fronds and sent people scooting for cover. Something so freakish had to carry some meaning, I thought.
The last good-byes were painful. Jones did not seem so wooden as he bent to hug little blond Tracy Parks and took her twenty-eight-year-old brother Dale by the shoulders, attempting to whisper something or kiss him on the cheek as the young man recoiled. Harold Cordell exchanged an embrace with fellow old-timer Jack Beam. One was going, one staying. Each shed a tear.
When Jones turned away from that sadness and headed toward the truck, I placed myself in his path. I needed more answers. Had he tried and failed to talk them out of going? “No.” He shook his head. “I wanted to be sure what I heard was true.” Would he take greater pains in the future to assure members they were free to leave? With a stare, he said in a roundabout way that he would. “If they want, I’ll let them leave.” It was a curious, self-incriminating statement for a man who had maintained his followers’ freedom to leave at will.
As I asked further questions in a conciliatory and tactful way, Jones answered vaguely that he would allow other Concerned Relatives to see Jonestown and their people. His mind seemed divorced from his words, his eyes detached from his body. Yet his voice stayed steady, sluggish as though each sentence had been diagramed in advance. With Javers and Krause looking on, Jones told me, “I feel sorry that we are being destroyed from within. All we want is to be left in peace.”
His talk of failure and perfectionism was a disturbing echo: if one person leaves, I have failed. But he reversed himself, not wishing to leave a final impression that all was lost. “I will continue to try,” he said vacantly. “Time will tell whether I will succeed.”
My thanks rolled off him as I shook his hand and our gazes met. His chin was low, his eyes angled upward through the tinted glasses, chilly as the wet wind. We parted.
For the first time, propagandist Dick Tropp was sitting down on the job, his lean rump on a nearby table. I joined him, watching the procession of Temple members shouldering the trunks and suitcases of defectors and hurrying along the rain-slickened boardwalks. Thirsty, I lifted a glass of water but put it down again; it was cloudy for a change. Did Tropp believe this day proved that Jonestown was an open society? “I hope so,” he answered gently, with a hint of agitation. “I don’t know what happened to these people. I hope people can see this is not a closed community—media, Congressmen and relatives can come in. The truth will out. We don’t have anything to hide.”
Before venturing from the shelter, I pulled my poncho from my backpack. A loudspeaker blared, “Bonny Simon. Bonny Simon. Please come to the radio room!” Then, barely able to keep my footing on the wet walkway, I headed toward Mr. Muggs’s cage and the truck. All at once, I heard pounding feet behind me, and a woman screaming, “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you! You bring those kids back here. Don’t touch my kids.” A husky white woman in her thirties came to a skidding stop just short of a stocky American Indian in a T-shirt. He had two children in tow, and she wanted them. She lunged, then there was a frenzied instant of tug-of-war over a little boy. Temple members reassured Bonny Simon that her husband Al would not be allowed to take her children. Then the attorneys stepped in. Garry took a stand: the father had no right to remove the children from their mother’s custody, even if he wanted to leave with Ryan. The attorneys agreed the matter should be settled in court. But in the meantime the children would not be stripped from their mother, who wanted to stay in Jonestown. Simon, nearly mute during the brief exchange, sulked back toward the pavilion, muttering that he would remain with his kids even if it meant being harassed.
Hearing Simon’s statement, Garry turned to Jones inquiringly; the minister quickly assured him there would be no harassment. Nonetheless Ryan volunteered to stay behind with Simon and others who might wish to repatriate yet could not get space aboard the two planes. The noble gesture probably was necessary. The emotional climate darkened noticeably after the incident. The threat to kill—whether in a fit of temper or not—had charged the air. Child-stealing accusations had been introduced. The time for warm good-byes had ended. Departure time had drawn upon us. We streamed toward the truck.
Off in the playground, Jones took up a vantage point, with an aide holding an umbrella over his head. In his red shirt and khaki pants, mud creeping up the sides of his shoes, he looked little like the minister who had charmed politicians in his pastel and white leisure suits. He held an eerie directionless gaze until one of his aides whispered to him. Then he waved, like the mayor of a big city bidding farewell to visiting dignitaries.
Yet there was nothing final about the gesture. The community seemed poised. Dozens stood stiff as cane stalks around the playground perimeter, their attention fixed on Jones and some aides—Jack Beam, Maria Katsaris, Harriet Tropp, Jim McElvane, Mike Prokes among them. The rank-and-file members by the truck had turned their backs to us to watch and wait. They all looked as though there had been a death in the family.
Mounting the big truck was an acrobatic feat until a ladder was propped at the back of the bed. The defectors were surprisingly agile. As I held Patricia Parks’s hand, her muddy feet took the aluminum rungs one by one. We had heard the fiftyish woman had been the last holdout in the Parks family. But she chose her family over Jones. Edith Parks, her snowy-haired mother-in-law, looked comical in her baseball cap and sneakers, with a sheet of clear plastic to keep her dry. She was as frail as her son Gerald was youthful-looking. Dale had his father’s dark hair and receding hairline. Brenda Parks, the teen-ager, boarded with her boy friend, Chris O’Neill, a scraggly-haired white youth. Tracy Parks, the towheaded preteener, clung to her mother. With Jim Bogue, who looked like a farmer in a tractor cap, were his children—Tommy, Teena and Juanita, whom I recognized as the friendly stroller that morning. Bogue’s estranged wife Edith, her hair pulled back, glasses low on her nose, boarded with Harold Cordell. The original defectors, Vern Gosney and Monica Bagby, stood together in the truckbed crowded with people in the rear and baggage in the front.
One of the last to clamber aboard the truck was a sharp-featured man my age, thirty or so. About five feet six with a wiry body and a nearly emaciated face, he stood next to me in the right rear of the truck bed. When this man boarded, Dale Parks angrily hushed up some of the relatives. With their hair stringy in the rain, their expressions grim, some looked over at the newcomer. I introduced myself and, though he kept his hands locked on the sideboards, he gave the name Larry Layton. Was he leaving with us? “Yeah, and I’m happy to be getting out of here.”
“Why are you leaving?” I asked.
He hesitated. “I’ll talk to you about it later.” His eyes shifted straight ahead, aimed at the blank
side of a building with fuel drums on the porch. His stare did not seem to meet the eyes of dozens of members loitering on dry porches or looking out of windows.
There were sixteen defectors aboard, and Ryan was still back at the pavilion. He planned to stay overnight to complete the paperwork and to safeguard, if necessary, any more defectors.
When the truck engine cranked over, Maria Katsaris, waif-thin and sunken-eyed, appeared below me in the mud, toting a huge purse. “Here,” she called, throwing a small metal object overhand. “Tell Steve I don’t believe in God.” With those harsh and cold words, she turned heel and went back to Jones, her first and last lover. In my hand was a silver cross and chain. Though Maria’s brother stood just across the truck, she had thrown it to me. Perhaps she had not located him in the crowded bed; perhaps she wanted to spare him further pain. Already, Anthony was dejected, looking off at the wet fields of crops, seeing nothing.
My initial impulse was to return the cross directly to his father and spare Anthony’s emotions. But I decided it would only mean a delayed trauma, and I was not entirely certain what would happen in the coming minutes. Placing the cross in Anthony’s hand, I repeated his sister’s message, having no idea of the cross’s importance. Anthony collapsed against the side of the truck and wept. Holding back my own emotions, I gave his shoulder a parting pat and stepped back to the other side of the truck.
The truck revved in reverse, but we went nowhere. Though just a few yards from a gentle downgrade, the worn truck tires would not grip in several inches of mud. Our driver leaped out. Moments later a yellow Caterpillar tractor was pulling us to the edge of the grade. But my relief lasted only an instant.
What sounded like a cheer rumbled from the pavilion. Scores of people stampeded toward the far end of the structure. The noise stopped both Greg, who had been shooting from the truck roof, and Bob Brown, who was spread-legged on the hood taking footage of the fields. “I’ll wave if it amounts to anything,” barked Don Harris, hitting the mud with a squish of boots, then jagging a course through the crops. A moment later, he whistled and flailed both arms like a madman. We other reporters hit the muck and ran through tall beans to the pavilion. There, Harris held up one hand, halting us near the stage, calming us. His breath came in fast rushes, but he deliberately controlled his normally unexcitable voice. He said, slowly, so there would be no misunderstanding, “Some guy tried to kill Leo. Leo’s all right. The guy grabbed Leo around the neck. Put a knife to his throat. Said, ‘I’m gonna cut your throat, you motherfucker.’ Leo and the rest took it away. The guy was cut in the scuffle.”
Raven Page 76
