I brought her up to date. In the past year and a half we’d found Jack Larsen; we found a lot of the surving Natoma Bay aircrew; we verified great chunks of James’s story, including the fact that he did fly a Corsair. We’d learned the name of the pilot James had remembered: James M. Huston Jr.
Shalini was very excited. Her ancestral roots are Indian, and she is a true believer in reincarnation.
I said, “And Bruce is on our side.”
That may have been the biggest shock of all. Bruce was such a hard-line disbeliever.
“You know, I’m not with 20/20 anymore.”
Well, that was natural in the TV business. Young producers switched around like tag-team dancers.
“So who are you working for now?”
“I’m working for ABC Primetime.”
She said that there was a brainstorming session at ABC Primetime and that our name had come up when they were kicking around story ideas. She asked if we would be interested in telling the story again on Primetime.
I said that I had to discuss it with Bruce. I told her that she could give our name to the producer, Clem Taylor, and that we would discuss it in-depth with him.
She said that there was a time factor. They wanted to move quickly, since they were looking at an air date of October thirty-first.
Bruce sat down and had a drink.
“I don’t like the Halloween part,” he said.
No, neither did Andrea.
Still, one step at a time. Naturally, they brought in the panel, who were all for getting the story on television. Their attitude was a very Cajun “Laissez les bon temps rouler”—“Let the good times roll.”
Over the next few days, as the debate in Louisiana shifted back and forth, Shalini called and said that if they agreed, the correspondent would be Chris Cuomo, the son of the former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, who was a very personable and rising young television correspondent.
Andrea was still bothered by the Halloween angle. It could rob the whole thing of some gravitas, make it seem like one more vaporous tale of ghosts and goblins. Just another spook story.
On the other hand, there was a big incentive. There were still about eight families of Natoma Bay casualties that the Leiningers couldn’t find. Putting the story on television would spread the word and, perhaps, coax the survivors into the open.
By the beginning of October, Shalini was pressing for an answer. She wanted to make firm arrangements for Chris Cuomo and the crew to come to Lafayette for the taping. After a lot of back-and-forth, they finally settled on the crew arriving on Sunday, October 19. The actual taping would take place the next day.
Now the pressure was on the Leiningers. The producers wanted to interview all the people from the Natoma Bay end: Al Alcorn, John DeWitt, Leo Pyatt, Jack Larsen, and James Huston’s sister, Anne Barron.
The problem was that none of the people they wanted to talk to about James and his past life knew the real story of why the Leiningers had gotten involved. Bruce had told a few people at the Sargent Bay reunion, but Natoma Bay veterans were still under the illusion that Bruce’s interest had started with a neighbor and morphed into the desire to write a book. If they agreed to the Primetime story, everyone would have to be told. Someone would have to break it to them. With the film crew scheduled to come to the house in less than a week, they had to tell Anne Barron fast.
Andrea was a nervous wreck. She worried that Anne would think that they were complete lunatics or con artists. She might even have a cardiac event. So Andrea got the number of the Los Gatos Fire Department in case disaster struck while they were breaking the news.
Anne was, after all, an eighty-six-year-old woman. On the night of the great revelation, Andrea had fortified herself with a drink and handed another to Bruce as they got ready to make the conference call. They waited until ten p.m. Louisiana time—eight California time—to call. It took them that long to screw up their courage.
Bruce picked up the phone, punched in seven or eight numbers, then hung up. Another glass of wine, perhaps; that would make it go easier.
Finally, he punched in all nine numbers and let the chips fall on the conference call.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Anne. This is Bruce and Andrea.” They sounded cheerful, but it was the wine. “How are you doing?” they were both chirping, like TV game-show hosts. If Anne had any kind of complaint, if she was not in good health, they would abort. But she said that she was doing just great. Couldn’t be better. The Leiningers danced around and around, avoiding the crucial moment:
“How are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Fine.”
“How is James?”
“Fine. Just great.”
Andrea was wagging her hands, mouthing, “Just spit it out, for the love of God!”
Then she suggested that Anne be seated. “Anne, do you drink?”
“No,” said Anne.
“Oh, that’s too bad, because this story may take a glass of wine,” said Andrea.
Bruce said, “The reason we’re calling is because we have some interesting news.”
“Oh?”
“ABC Primetime has contacted us about doing a story about Natoma Bay—and your brother.”
“Really?” said Anne. “That is interesting news. How did they find out about it?”
“Anne, you sure you don’t want a glass of wine?” persisted Andrea.
“No.”
“Well,” said Bruce, “I’m just going to start at the beginning. When James was two years old, he started having these nightmares about being a pilot in a plane and getting shot down and crashing in the water.…”
Silence.
“Are you still there, Anne? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
Andrea told her the whole story—the vivid descriptions of battle, the accuracy in naming the ship, coming up with the names of the pilots—and all the while, Anne never uttered a sound. Occasionally, Andrea asked if she was still there, if she was still okay, and Anne would say, “I’m still here; I’m fine.”
Bruce went into a lot of detail about his research and all the things that had happened over the past three years. Finally, when they got to the end of the story, Andrea asked Anne if she had any questions.
“No,” she said quietly. “I just need to think about everything that you’ve said. I want to call my daughter, Leslie, to talk to her about it.”
“We totally understand,” said Andrea. “But we wanted you to know—we’re not crazy; we don’t want anything from you; we just wanted you to know what’s going on in our family.”
She thanked the Leiningers and said that she would be in touch with them soon. Then she hung up.
The next day, Bruce got an e-mail from Leslie Frudden, Anne’s daughter.
“Don’t know where to begin! Guess I’ll just ask you to e-mail the information you gave to Mom last night… This will make things more clear as Mom, needless to say, was somewhat flustered on the phone this morning. I will also be able to pass on your e-mail to Mom’s grandchildren as well as her nephew John before they happen to watch Primetime (I rarely miss it.)… I must say thank you again for giving Mom a part of her past which she had suppressed for very good reasons, which I will share with you in confidence. At the time of Uncle Jimmy’s death she was in California with me and my brother, feeling very much alone… Uncle Jimmy’s return was the one bright spot in her life.… Love to you both and your precious James III.”
It was a weight lifted from Bruce’s and Andrea’s shoulders. And so, having passed this hurdle, Bruce proceeded to inform all the others. Leo Pyatt was calm and accepting. He said that he was in a church study group that was actually delving into reincarnation.
He, too, asked how James was doing.
Al Alcorn, the president of Natoma Bay Association, accepted the story. “I’ve heard a lot of things about past lives,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me.”
Jack Larsen’s wife, Dor
othy, answered the phone and listened to Bruce’s take, murmering, “Oh, my!” along the way. She had always wondered why the Leiningers were so mysterious. Then she asked about James. Her husband, Jack, said he needed to talk to his priest before he had an opinion. Afterward, he said that he was fine with it, although noncommittal about the truth of the story.
They were all understanding, accepting—maybe not believers, but not active disbelievers.
That was enough. Now Bruce could cast off the last shred of guilt about his “lie.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CLEM TAYLOR, the ABC Primetime producer, flew down to Lafayette on October 19, the night before the taping. He was a tall, bookish man in early middle age—the kind of avuncular presence to set everyone at ease. He carried with him a model of a Corsair—it was like bringing James a bouquet.
Clem and the family went to dinner at Don’s Seafood, a locally famous Cajun restaurant, and spoke of the weather and Mardi Gras and life’s recurrent details. Clem had a child near James’s age, and he asked about the schools and the restaurants and extolled the sweetness of small-town life; they were getting acquainted but avoiding any potentially upsetting topic.
The ground rules had already been set by the Leiningers: no direct questions to James about the nightmares or his battle memories. The TV people could engage him in ordinary conversation, but they could not “interview” him. If they did, James would just freeze up. Also, there would be no use of the family name, and the town where they lived would not be named.
The next day, Chris Cuomo and the crew descended on West St. Mary Boulevard like a special-ops squad on a mission. There was always a terrible urgency to these things, but that was just television. To lower the stress, they did much of the taping while James was at school. He was just five years old, they were all repeatedly reminded.
By one in the afternoon, the taping had pretty much wrapped up, and everyone was ready for lunch. However, Chris Cuomo had one more question before they broke.
“What did James Huston’s family think of all this?”
Bruce and Andrea explained that a few days before the taping, Bruce called Anne Barron to confirm that she’d been asked to give an interview to ABC Primetime. Anne was excited and nervous at the prospect of being on television. But more than that, she wanted Bruce and Andrea to know that she had been thinking about the story. And the more she thought, the more she believed.
It was, she told Bruce, not just the revelations about James and his connection to Natoma Bay.
She had gone through her own transforming experience:
“Jimmy was due home in March of 1945 and I was in my living room, cleaning, anticipating his arrival. I sensed that he was in the room with me. And I spoke to him just as though he was there with me.
“We were all going to meet at my home in Los Angeles for the reunion. A couple of days later I got the news from my dad that Jimmy had gone missing. There was never going to be a reunion. I was devastated. We were very close.
“When my father told me the date Jimmy was lost—March third—I remembered… That was the day I felt his presence, when I was cleaning. We never knew what happened to him. I only wish my dad was here to know this. I want you to know that I believe the story. And I’ve sent James a package.”
It was, at this stage, perhaps a flimsy thing, based mostly on intuition. But Anne Barron had very strong feelings about it. And it would only grow stronger, more powerful, supported by a greater and greater body of circumstantial and inferential proof.
When they spoke on the phone, Anne felt a great affection for James. He called her “Annie.” Only her dead brother had called her Annie. Andrea thought it was somehow disrespectful, but James insisted that Annie was her name. And he told Andrea that he had another sister, Ruth. Only he pronounced it “Roof.” She was four years older than Annie, and Annie was four years older than James. When Andrea checked with Anne Barron, she said it was all accurate. Ruth was the oldest by four years; James was the youngest by four years.
Somehow, the attachments seemed solid, like family. When he talked to Annie on the phone, he would speak of their father and their mother, and it sounded like something that a sibling would say. He would speak of their dead sister, Ruth, with the familiarity of a brother.
These things could not be explained. Five-year-old James knew about their father’s alcoholism. He knew all the family secrets with a soft, familiar intimacy.
For instance, James recalled in surprising detail when his father’s alcoholism got so bad that he smashed things and had to go into rehab (which they called a “sanitorium” in those days); he knew all about that. And he knew that Ruth, who was a society columnist on a local paper, was “mortified” when Mother had to take a job as a common maid in the home of a prominent family that she was writing about.
The accumulation of family minutiae that they discussed over the phone was stunning and, over time, left Anne Barron without any doubt about James’s true identity. Clinching it was the inexplicable matter of the picture. Their mother, Daryl, was a gifted artist, and Annie had sent James a portrait that Daryl had made of her brother as a child.
“Where’s the picture of you?” James asked when he got it, and the question took Annie’s breath away. Only she knew that Daryl had painted twin portraits—Annie and James—and the second portrait of Annie was up in her attic. No one in the world knew about it except her.
Annie was thunderstruck. She knew that she was speaking to her brother; in spite of the fact that he was five and she was eighty-six. She couldn’t fail to recognize that familiar spirit when she heard it.
And so she was happy for James to call her Annie, and she accepted the mystery of the spirit of her dead brother in a five-year-old child.
“So how do they feel about it?” persisted Chris Cuomo.
“The family is fine with it,” Andrea replied.
Just then the doorbell rang, breaking the concentration of the TV taping. It was the postman, and he had a package from Anne. Inside were a bakelite model of a Corsair, a small pewter bust of George Washington, and a letter:
Dear Bruce and Andrea:
Enclosed you will find a model Corsair that was with Jim’s effects (which were) returned to my parents. I want James to have it. I feel it belongs to him.… I started to clean it, but on second thought there may be some connection with the soil. Also enclosed is a bust of Washington that was always on his desk at home.… Jim Eastman (a boyhood friend of Jim Huston) told me that when Jim (Huston) died, Jim (Eastman’s) mother, Lydia, called to tell him that Jim Huston had come to her in a dream to say, “I came to say goodbye”! All of this is still overwhelming. One reads about it, but never expects it to happen to you. I can only imagine how it affected you. But I believe.
With my love to you,
Anne
Clem suggested that they tape James when he was handed the package. Andrea went out to fetch sandwiches at the local deli and to pick up James at school. And over lunch, Clem finally convinced the Leiningers to allow the use of their last name and the town. That is how it works in television; the salesmanship is sophisticated and builds on small steps of trust.
James was abuzz with all the attention and the excitement of a film crew setting up its equipment in his home. The sound man wired him with a microphone, and Chris and James went into the backyard and played on the jungle gym. Chris lifted James on his shoulders, and they seemed to judge each other as just fine.
The taping was a cinch. James was comfortable. He sat on the steps of the family room, and Bruce handed him the bust of Washington. He grabbed it, ran down the hall to his room, then came back and said he’d put it on his desk. He took the Corsair and examined it, sniffed it—the film crew ran out of tape and were frantically trying to reload.
“James, why are you sniffing the airplane?” Bruce asked.
“It smells like an aircraft carrier.”
Bruce asked him to repeat that, and he did, and then Bruce took the mo
del plane and held it up to his nose and detected a smoky, musky scent of diesel oil—the way an aircraft carrier might smell. Andrea smiled.
The members of the crew stood in stunned silence, and Andrea thought, Good, someone besides me is stunned for a change.
They did not air the program on Halloween, to the relief of the Leiningers. The date was postponed, and there was some thought that things might turn out like the first 20/20 experience—too weird for Primetime. They were both thankful and disappointed.
There was an interesting shift in emphasis in the interviews with the veterans, now that they all knew about James. An albatross no longer hung around their necks.
The holidays came and went, and Mardi Gras was too cold to celebrate, but they had a good time anyway. Then April was upon them, and Clem called to say that the piece was finally going to run. Andrea told James’s teacher.
The Leiningers notified all the families of the veterans and lived through the nervous excitement of waiting to see the meteor land.
The story ran on April 15, 2004, less than a week after James turned six. And it had seismic effects. As a result, the telephone in the Leininger home went mad. There were calls from supporters, believers—and cranks. Surprisingly, the neighbors hardly mentioned it. It was very much in keeping with a Southern characteristic—a deep respect for privacy.
There were pitches for the Leiningers to go on lots of local television and radio programs, and they did succumb and go on one early morning radio program. But it was a disaster. Every conceivable loony accusation was hurled in their direction. They were not prepared to mount a big defense at five in the morning. And they didn’t do any other public appearances.
Meanwhile, James continued to astonish people. While watching a tape of a History Channel program about Corsairs, he corrected the narrator. The old gun camera shots showed repeated footage of Corsairs shooting down Zeroes.
“Bruce, did you hear what James said?”
Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot Page 21
