The Language of Cannibals

by George C. Chesbro

  “I grew up Roman Catholic, Frederickson,” the other man continued when he saw that I had nothing to say. “I remember sitting in Sunday school classes and listening to tapes of various sermons by American priests, bishops, and cardinals informing us not only that Roman Catholicism was the one true faith but that America was the nation finally chosen by God to be His headquarters. We Americans were to show the correct path to other nations and individuals that didn’t see the absolute correctness of Christ and capitalism—and not necessarily in that order. We were the Redeemer Nation, and communism was the great enemy of man and God. We had been given permission by God, we were expected by God, to impose our beliefs and our way of life on the rest of the world. We knew best, and it was for their benefit. We were the Messiah of Nations, the defender of the oppressed. That was our illusion, Frederickson; but that image of ourselves went down the tubes in Vietnam. That’s where and when first the soldiers fighting over there, and then the people back home, learned that so much of what we’d been led to believe about ourselves and our government is a lie, conjured up with smoke and mirrors. This government lies, Frederickson!”

  “Don’t they all?” I said quietly. “Except that governments don’t lie; people lie. The more powerful the person, the more people his or her lies affect. I’m getting the impression, Mr. Trex, that somewhere along the line you discovered that American political, business, and religious leaders can lie with the best of them, and that this came as somewhat of a shock to you.”

  He stared at me for some time, stroking his mustache with a hand that had begun to tremble slightly. He noticed the trembling, abruptly gripped his mug with both hands. “Some men find a kind of state of grace in war, Frederickson; they can kill, maim, rape, and brutalize, and still feel good about themselves—sometimes better than they’ve ever felt about themselves. Not me. I lost both my leg and my faith over there. And it was my own fault, because I never realized that the weapons my own countrymen, our leaders, were using against me were more deadly than bombs, hand grenades, or bullets.”

  “Words,” I said. “Lies. It’s the language of cannibals.”

  Trex bowed his head, nodded slightly, and grunted with approval, as if I was a particularly bright student. “Yeah, that’s right. Their goddamn lies swallowed the lives of more than fifty thousand American servicemen, God knows how many Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, and they ate away my leg.”

  “Mr. Trex, you must be some politician to have managed to get yourself elected commander of the local chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America.”

  He looked up quickly, and color rose in his cheeks. “Are you mocking me, Frederickson?”

  “No, sir, I am not. I’m saying that people who attend the same school don’t always receive the same lesson.”

  He ran a hand through his thinning, unkempt hair, shook his head. “Up until a little more than a year ago, most of the men in our chapter agreed with me. Like me, they’d never much thought about it before. When they did, when they listened to what I had to say, a lot of them came around to see what I meant.”

  “And then Elysius Culhane came to town with a brand-new smoke machine and more mirrors,” I said in a flat voice.

  Jack Trex leaned back in his chair, blinked slowly as he stared at me. I suspected that my status as star pupil was rapidly deteriorating. “Am I boring you, Frederickson?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t seem all that interested. Or maybe you disagree. Maybe I misread you.”

  “I don’t know what you read.”

  “But you understood what my picture meant.”

  “I knew what I thought your picture meant. It was a nice way of visualizing an idea, Mr. Trex, but it’s not exactly a new idea. It wasn’t new with Orwell, and it wasn’t new with Lenin. It probably started with some caveman who finally came to realize that his shaman was bullshitting him, and went looking for a new cave.”

  “It was new to me!”

  “I understand that, Mr. Trex, and I respect that. For you, this realization that so-called leaders in all walks of life have been blowing smoke up your ass, trying to manipulate you all your life, astonished you. You’re still astonished. You’re still trying to come to terms with the fact that people you trusted have been trying to jerk you around with the language of cannibals, mesmerizing you with symbols—things like flags and music. I even suspect you still can’t really believe the depths of that deception; maybe you feel like a fool.” I paused, used my thumb to point to the overflowing desk and card table behind me. “It looks to me like you’re really getting into the subject. Are you collecting samples of doublespeak, phrases like Department of Defense, Peacekeeper missile, and preemptive counterattack?”

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  “You know what I think, Mr. Trex? I think the reason you find all this smoke and mirrors business so deeply disturbing is that you still, in your own way, buy into the notion that America is somehow unique among nations. You were terribly hurt by this betrayal by your leaders and the country’s institutions. You’re still hurt. You should stop. You’ve identified the dog that bit you, and it’s enough; it’s a mean dog, so you should stop worrying it and get on with things.”

  “Aren’t you proud to be an American?”

  “I feel lucky to be an American, because being an American means that I have greater freedom than many to do things that I’m proud of. Sometimes I’m proud of what our elected leaders do, sometimes not. There are a lot of dogs in the world a hell of a lot meaner than the one that bit you. There are no equivalents in politics to the painter, writer, musician, or sculptor, Mr. Trex. What motivates people to try to gain power over other people is the same thing that drives them to use the language of cannibals. Understanding that won’t bring your leg back, but it could ease your sense of betrayal and hurt.”

  Jack Trex picked up the coffeepot with a hand that continued to tremble slightly, refilled both our mugs. “I got married the month before I went to Vietnam, Frederickson,” he said in a low voice. “My wife was an alcoholic—hell, I was probably an alcoholic, too, but just wouldn’t admit to it. My son Gregory was born with what the doctors call infant alcohol syndrome.”

  “I’m familiar with it,” I said evenly, watching pain and shame march across the other man’s face.

  “Gregory was diagnosed as being mildly retarded, Frederickson. I found out about it when I got back. He was only a little more than a year old at the time. I think he might have been all right under other circumstances, but what really messed him up were his messed-up parents. I didn’t know it yet, because the term hadn’t been invented, but I was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. I was really fucked up, feeling terror one moment and rage the next. I couldn’t work, couldn’t sleep—couldn’t do much of anything. I sure as hell couldn’t manage to be any kind of father. I was drunk most of the time, and I did a lot of drugs. You know what? It was the meetings at the Community of Conciliation that first helped me start get myself together. That’s when I began to get it clear in my head what had happened. I laid off the booze and drugs, but it was too late. My wife died of a drug overdose when Gregory was only four years old.”

  He paused and turned away, but not before I had seen tears glisten in his pale eyes. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, averted my gaze.

  “Gregory was eventually taken away from me,” he finally continued. “They put him in a home not far from here. They said he was emotionally disturbed as well as retarded. I vowed I was always going to stand by him, to help him in any way I could. I’d lost, or helped to destroy, everything else; I wasn’t going to throw away my son.”

  “Mr. Trex,” I said quietly, studying the wall to my right, “I’m no mental health expert, but in my opinion your son needs professional help badly. He needs intensive therapy, maybe medication, and maybe even hospitalization for a time.”

  “I know that, Frederickson,” Trex said in a strong, flat voice.

  I looked back at him, found him l
ooking at me. Tears glistened on his cheeks, but his eyes were now dry. “Then why don’t you do something about it?”

  “I … can’t. He’s of age. He refuses to even talk about going to a therapist or taking medication again. In order to hospitalize him I’d have to get a court order, and there’s no guarantee I’d succeed.”

  “You could try.”

  “Gregory would never forgive me if I did that, Frederickson. Somehow, I have to find some other way to bring him around. You see, he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with him, and he’s surrounded by people who don’t think there’s anything wrong with him. He thinks there’s something wrong with me. The people he hangs around with all feed into his fantasies. Their words are going to …”

  “Does Gregory live at home, Mr. Trex?”

  Jack Trex slowly shook his head. “He did—up until a few months ago. Now he lives in an apartment that’s subsidized by Elysius Culhane.”

  “Does he work?”

  “Odd jobs for Culhane—mowing the lawn, raking leaves, that kind of thing. That’s another reason I don’t think I could get a court order for Gregory’s hospitalization; Culhane would have it quashed. I just don’t dare try.”

  “Mr. Trex,” I said evenly, pushing my coffee mug away, “I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this. Just why did you want to see me?”

  Trex pushed his mug across the table until it clicked up against mine. He wiped at his mustache, met my gaze. “I want to ask you please not to kill my son.”

  The words caught me so completely by surprise that I could do nothing but stare back dumbfounded into the anguished face of the man sitting across from me.

  “I’ve found out some things about you, Frederickson,” Trex continued quickly, his words now tumbling over one another. “I know about your reputation. People like my son who don’t know you and don’t take you seriously because you’re a dwarf make a big mistake. Sometimes a fatal mistake. I know you’ve killed men; I think you’ve killed more men than I have, and I was in a combat unit. I know you could have killed Gregory last night. I can see that you’re hurting, and I know Gregory did that to you. Maybe it would have served him right if you had killed him, but you didn’t, and I thank you for that.”

  “Mr. Trex,” I said when I finally managed to collect my thoughts and find my voice, “I don’t plan on killing anybody.”

  “Please hear me out. Gregory’s a very sick young man.”

  “He’s not so sick that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, Mr. Trex. All of us have to be responsible for our own actions; that’s the antidote to the language of cannibals.”

  “Gregory is a victim of Vietnam, Frederickson, just as surely as I am, and just as surely as the fifty-five thousand Americans who died over there. I was so busy with the smoke and mirrors that I couldn’t be a proper father to him. I know Gregory. He won’t be able to live with what you did to him last night. He’ll come after you; he’ll keep coming after you. That’s why I’m asking—begging—you not to kill him, to try … to find some other way.”

  I sighed. “Will he come for me in New York?”

  Jack Trex shook his head. “No. He’s actually afraid to go into the city. Gregory never goes far from Cairn. This is his turf, if you will; he feels safe here, in control.”

  “Then your son is safe from me, Mr. Trex. You don’t have to worry. I’m leaving Cairn.”

  Trex swallowed hard, nodded with relief. “Thank you. I didn’t want to suggest … but I was hoping for that. May I, uh, ask when you’re leaving?”

  “As soon as I leave here,” I said, rising to my feet. He pushed himself up, braced himself with his left hand on the table as he extended his right. “Thanks for the coffee, Mr. Trex. Good luck to you.”

  I walked to the door, hesitated with my hand on the knob, turned back. Jack Trex was staring at me, a drawn, haunted expression on his face. “Mr. Trex,” I continued, “what do you think of the idea that there’s some kind of death squad operating in the towns along the river?”

  He thought about it, and his brows knitted in a puzzled frown. “Death squad? What do you mean, ‘death squad’?”

  “Never mind,” I said, and left the house.

  Walking back up the driveway, I found I was not only depressed by my strange conversation with the driven Jack Trex but also deeply disturbed for reasons I was not sure I fully understood.

  Chapter Five

  It was not quite noon, and it was an easy Saturday drive down the Palisades Parkway and across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. I drove down the West Side, then over to the brownstone on West Fifty-sixth, a block over from Carnegie Hall, where Frederickson and Frederickson’s offices and living quarters were located. I parked Beloved Too in the brownstone’s underground garage, retrieved the plastic shopping bag containing Mary Tree’s demo tapes from the trunk, and went looking for my brother. I found him in our basement mini-gym laying out our softball uniforms and equipment. We both played on a team we sponsored in one league, as well as on another team in another league; Garth led one league in home runs, and I led both leagues in number of walks. We were supposed to play a doubleheader the next day.

  My brother had changed greatly in the past few years, I thought as I watched him sit down on a weight bench and begin to oil a glove. And not without reason. We had both been hammered good, both physically and psychologically, in the course of investigating a string of related cases that had turned nasty and bizarre on us. But Garth had been hammered more, and a poisoning he suffered had bent both his body and his mind. He’d emerged from that searing experience a mellower man in many ways; but he was considerably harder in other ways, and quite different from the much-honored NYPD detective he’d been for almost two decades. I considered him an almost perfect empath, with an uncanny ability to understand and feel the suffering of other people, and then to reach out and soothe them.

  Loonies loved my brother, as did people who were down and out, or on their way there. With life’s losers and hurting, he was the gentlest of men. If, on the other hand, you happened to be a person who caused others to suffer, Garth was a good person to avoid. He brooked no nonsense, did not suffer fools at all gladly, and no longer bothered reading bad guys their rights; when really worked up, he took no prisoners.

  He now wore his thinning, wheat-colored hair long, sometimes in a ponytail held in place by a thin leather thong. In addition, he had a full beard liberally streaked with silver and gray. The effect of all this hair was to frame his limpid hazel eyes, which could be startling in their gleaming expressiveness—of love, sorrow, or rage; when Garth was upset, you knew it. Fortunately, the occasions on which he really grew angry were rare, for his reactions could be astonishingly quick and brutal. He now seemed to me to be a kind of emotionally polarized human being who lit up brightly at both ends of the emotional spectrum, but could seem dull emotionally to many people when he was in the middle. He could seem virtually Christ-like when dealing with people in need; indeed, with his long hair and limpid eyes I thought he even resembled some pop artist’s conception of Jesus—assuming the artist’s Jesus was over six feet and upwards of a hundred and ninety pounds of finely toned muscle.

  “Yo, brother,” Garth said, looking up as I limped across the room toward him. “You look a bit stiff.”

  “How observant you are today. I look a bit stiff because I am a bit stiff.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing earth-shattering; I’m just getting old. But I’m not going to be able to play tomorrow. Can you get Ratso or Willy to sub for me?”

  He nodded. “So, did you get to ask your questions?”

  “Yep.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.”

  Garth set the glove and the jar of oil aside, looked at me, and frowned. “Are you all right, brother?”

  “Yeah. Just stiff.”

  “In that case, give me the good news first.”

  “I met Ma
ry Tree. Damned if the love of your life isn’t a long-term member of the Community of Conciliation who lives in that mansion of theirs in Cairn. As a matter of fact, I spent the better part of an hour talking to her. I told her what a fan you are, and she sent something for you.”

  Garth stared at me for some time, his mouth hanging slightly open. He finally managed to say, “Huh? Are you serious?”

  “Here,” I said, handing him the plastic bag. These are for you.”

  My brother took the bag, held it open by its plastic straps, and peered inside. “You really met Mary Tree?” His voice was almost childlike.

  “Yes, Garth,” I replied, smiling, “I really met Mary Tree. Why don’t you ask me what you’re looking at?”

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Demo tapes; all new songs by Mary Tree, Harry Peal, and Dylan, performed by the light and love of your life. She mentioned that she’s preparing a new album, but I’d guess that there’s enough music in there for three albums. She thought you might enjoy a sneak preview. Oh, and by the way, she’s invited us both up for a day of picnicking and sailing. If you can refrain from trying to jump her bones the moment you lay eyes on her, I’ll bet she can even be persuaded to take out her guitar for a little sing-along.”

  Garth looked up at me, his hazel eyes gleaming—a small boy on Christmas morning when he first sees the gifts under the tree. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

  “Close your mouth, Garth; it makes you look stupid. Also, try to remember to breathe; I don’t think you’re breathing.”

  He dismissed my helpful suggestions with a wave of his hand, then reached down into the bag and took out one of the cardboard-jacketed reels, lovingly turned it over in his fingers. “Mongo, she signed it. Mary Tree.”