CHAPTER 36
They took him to Camp Pendleton for debriefing. A formal by-the-book notes taken filmed and measured debriefing. Everything they did was of no interest to the Priors in The Bright.
Take him down.
Frank had free access to every part of the base—any part of San Diego or Orange County, even LA. He did get “into town,” meaning, Oceanside...he simply, somewhat annoyed, didn’t feel at home there, only on the base at Pendleton.
Since he had never ridden a motorcycle, he was amused to find himself tolerably weaving in and out and up and down the many roads and dirt trails and around the beach. He buzzed about for days.
He began to miss Dalores. In a deep depression way—not depressing, but as if a depression appeared in his side and as he touched it he knew that she was missing. Not that she was a simple part of him...no, he missed her, her just being there.
But what am I going to say? It’s like seven years, though only seven months. They gave him back his chronology. They gave him a story. They phonied-up the necessary medical records. They were good. Prior experts. “Mission Impossible.” She’d believe, because he did. Frank believes them.
Believes—slipped on some ice as he left a rally: “All Peoples” at Fort Snelling protesting the war. “A rally your wife wanted to attend, but she couldn’t.” He remembers the rally, sort of. Banged his head, conked out: slid under his car. “You were picked up by some MPs who thought you were a spy. Now, that’s serious. Being found outside a militarily sensitive base—although no one knew it’s shadow: a momentous meeting that day—the Cong were there, and the Chinese—Who’d’ve picked St. Paul as the site?—that’s why they thought you were a spy. And then all that amnesia. The docs were certain it was induced. A Russian thing, you know. We’ve seen this before.” Frank believes.
“San Diego? That’s where we have the special “Reforming” psychological unit—ya know, Jolly’s project...UCLA and all that. The White Room. When we learned of your particular academic background—we had to be cautious. You required special attention, the Tops. National Security. You understand.” Frank understands.
The Sixties—you had to be there to believe it!
And the White Room truly defined “a special psychological unit.” Although one which few in America or any country truly knew about...knew in terms of vision, organizational objectives, methods, etc. It was called the “White Room” in jargon but in reality—What’s real?!—it housed The Bright. An indescribable hue, one more felt than visual...foreboding more than forbidden...which betrayed its secrets to those with esoteric instincts, with mythic hyper-sensitivity.
“Reforming”—that personality is not “God given”—“Whatever that could mean!”—not in a secular society, not in a high-tech, atomic microscope, cosmos probing satellite, “Because it’s there” curiosity unbarred society of Probing, Objective Knowers: “Box it, label it” epistemology, that personality is a social given, a gift, total nurture not nature...so no one has a right to their personality: Rights? Divine Rights? Natural Rights!—kablooey! Baloney: at first, prisoners, Leavenworth...drugged so deeply that their psyches fell in pieces on the floor and the white-robes (“Tonsured?”) reassembled the pieces so that you are...right now, it is “Frank”—validation of their theory, of their practice…only those in The Bright laugh at the arrogance which permeated the room of white-robes.
Genetically, The Bright was Frank’s room—his type, his people, his father’s father’s fathers.
As a aeonic marker, Vietnam was—based upon Frank’s “work”—the End and a Beginning. Ending a mythos of warring. Beginning a mythos of voyaging.
The image had been dreamed—as The Bright so dreamed—of the holistic vision of the cosmos as just one place and Earth as a place you could voyage away from—holism mapping. what is done in the White Room...now, through Frank The Bright dreams of a place which could be—had been?—voyaged to.
In the White Room: the Earth had become a place with only one map: global.
In The Bright: a place as just a place on some other map: cosmic.
For Frank—on Earth as throughout the Cosmos—it had ended and begun one day at the beach.
A beach—one he knew was used for landing maneuvers, tank training, SEAL night attacks, mock wars…he looks and sees the bloody waves foam and break upon the rocks, curl a lip in the sand...sink and be absorbed—drunk by something getting drunker under the sand.
He was there: alternating between flipped-out thoughts and the intense pleasures of Southern California sun and breeze and ….
...she walks, strolls towards him—it was not Dalores. As first he forgets...although it was Dalores...he was still tottering on that The Bright’s plane.
She walks up to him, kneels, then sits down beside him. Instantly, she smells only as Dalores does...a slight but intense fragrance which he has sniffed in the breeze on curious days: feeling like he just stepped out of a bath!
Jackson, just a recruit, told him: “It’s desert verbena, man. Just stupid old verbena. I’ve ripped thousands of those bushes out, clearing my old man’s lots.”
Verbena. It’s what he calls her, though he doesn’t speak her name and she never offers him one.
Eyes which came at him like out of a dream...one which wakes you up, startled but immobile—here fixated on her green-eyes in a way Frank has never seen green or verdant or vaporous jade—as if alive, as if Frank must lean over and lick her, taste her..so did such eyes invite him; lure...witchy seduction!
She reaches for his hand. Within a sigh they are there.
There. Atop a majestic cliff. Standing at ocean’s edge, a cliff which is doorway to a bay. Wind rifling them. He turning as she sweeps her arms bayside and as she sweeps, it unfolds: “Nephi,” she states...as if she is saying that this is his land, his domain, his country, his people….flash! people appear, flocks and crowds and clusters, each at some point recognizing them turning and waving, turning and gazing, turning and shouting with great vigor, passionately: “Replenish! Replenish!”
At this sound Frank becomes aware of the immense cross which stands behind him—Christian? Not a gory Catholic crucifix. His question stays simply stuck in his mind as a question.
Bay—he dreamed of this bay...of flight, flight under water—rising, poking up to look at a post-nuclear world...he knows it is San Diego, just doesn’t know why: Cabrillo Point—he knows it...just knows it...knows it—Why?
“You have many questions. That is normal. What we expect.” Frank has no doubt that this man is a king.
“Unlike the past,” no pause to explain the reference, “it is our questions to you which are more important, this time.”
They ask and he answers: Amazing!
Yes, Christians still believe in Original Sin.
Yes, America is yet unknown as the land of the Lost Tribe.
Yes, salvation is by faith alone... the spirituality of the Eternal Family yet unrevealed.
Yes, the prophet has come and died.
Yes, the End is in sight. It is the Latter Days.
“What in god’s name were we talking about?” The walls of his night room do not give answer. Frank is shaken by what seems so unshakable—his belief in himself.
Answers—how? why? from where?
Anxiety: definitely the king was anxious—probing Frank...unhappy with his answers—a scent of defeat, of collapsing disappointment...The King’s Last Words: “But you were there. With us.
The Golden Plates.”
Late at night she comes, again... at the top of the night if he had cared to check the clock—Where’s the clock?
She comes—it is an instant mating, not of the flesh but of a uniting, a union...not unlike a reunion, the embracing of a long lost brother—it is clear that she is here for him, to give him something: teach, instruct, educate as “lead out”...and it is okay; Frank is calm and accepting.
Innocence—it is urgent! It i
s why all the Ages have brought us together: now, repeatedly unvoice...“I am Innocent,” her kisses convey...in her arms he feels the armlessness of so many mauled and disfigured ...Innocent: the air is filled with guilt, is Guilt—they breathe Guilt...it severs them, it is the flood which ebbs and pulls them apart...it drowns them so that he no longer sees her—Guilt cloaks her and she disappears, not just from sight but—Presto!—from his presence forever. He now, they, forever guiltless.
Behold, there is no Original Sin.
Behold, you and I have been we—gods ever and forever...eternally married: Family.
No Original Sin—she embraces him and he knows her as powerful. She speaks with his southern tongue and he is filled up—drawing from her pool of desire a fire which flashes onto and around his cock, throbbing his cock, rendering him of a hardness which he knows is of the foundational rock which is this Earth—that they have created this Earth together, drawn it from their flesh, molded it...as in the Past so is the Future which is the Now.
Ever and forever—more than a state of being, it is as they become present each to the other that this is the shawl which embraces them—a shawl which is their imaginings emanating from each and forming about them...an ever and forever which makes visible to each the plenitude of history—the land about them as it has been ravaged and savaged by nature and the hand of humankind...they see each and every person who has ever lived and see them with a far-sight which shows how all have lived before time and will so after time...it is an ever and forever which is the river of the souls who were and shall be and so are...all dive into and rise from as they die in memory and become robust imaginables….
High tide: The cold Pacific has made several successful runs at his bare feet. As is the case—as soon as the sun dips in this southwestern abandon of desert so does cold air flare and flush...at least a twenty-degree drop this time of year: late August...so his feet are rudely iced and shivering,
Frank wakens from his reveries, an awakening which is like Lazarus rising from the dead—his limbs he has to shake and slap against his sides, then together...his heart he has to punch to get going, kicks-out a shrill of warmth...he slaps at the waves and splashes the harsh brine over his week old stubble—the bottle of wine he bought, he picks up: still full.
Three long gulps.
“I’m ready,” so he tells the doctor—Doctor Major Campbell—the doctor agrees, “Your stay with us is over.” He closes the folder labeled Frank Frakes, finger-taps it, swivels and plops it into a quite empty “In” basket.
When he swivels around back, Frank is gone.
“Hey, Man,” this guy Jackson yells at him as he is about to step onto the bus for the airport, “Hey, Man, shaking off the Devil’s Thirst? Right on, brother!”
Perplexed. But just too, too eager to hop and jump on the bus and get going to care: “Dalores,” is all he hears echoing in his mind.
As he settles in, the bus grinds a gear, starts to roll—he knows: The corn is high in Minnesota!
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