Through the Darkest of Nights: Testament XIV

Every few days over the next several months I will be posting installments of a novel about life, death, war and politics in America since 9/11.  Through the Darkest of Nights is a story of hope, reflection, determination, and redemption.  It is a testament to the progressive values we all believe in, have always defended, and always will defend no matter how long this darkness lasts.  But most of all, it is a search for identity and meaning in an empty world.

Naked and alone we came into exile.  In her dark womb, we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.  Which of us has known his brother?  Which of us has looked into his father’s heart?  Which of us has not remained prison-pent?  Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?      ~Thomas Wolfe

All installments are available for reading here on Docudharma’s Series page, and also here on Docudharma’s Fiction Page, where refuge from politicians, blogging overload, and one BushCo outrage after another can always be found.

    I’ve been given a pendant, a broken heart of gold on a silver chain.  I’ve been given a companion to share my journey, a companion with the same compassion, idealism, and courage Sarah had.  I’ve been given a chance to begin a new life, to tell an untold story, to make a difference. . . somehow . . . some way . . . after years of futility teaching American history to college students who didn’t give a damn about it.

   My journey through the academic world ended in failure.  I would not play faculty politics, so I was never offered tenure.  I gave my students the grades they deserved, so I was slammed in evaluations as a poor instructor.  A few of my students, a precious few, understood the meaning and vital importance of history.  But most of them could not grasp that the value of history abides in the understanding it offers of humanity’s past, that it teaches us about our flaws, our dark urges, our lethal selfishness and infinite capacity for making the same mistakes over and over again.

    History exposes human nature, it shatters our illusions, it provides troubling proof that human nature has not changed at all over thousands of years.  We still have the same primal drives our hunter-gatherer ancestors had, we still have the same primitive urges, the same relentless ache to control and dominate people weaker than we are.   We’re still hunter-gatherers, just like we were on the savannahs of Africa distant millennia ago, we just hunt and gather different things.   We hunt for money, we gather possessions, and call it capitalism.  But that’s just a modern name for the same primal urges we’ve always had, we are little more than hunter-gatherers with cell phones, credit cards, and deadlier weapons.  

    I would tell my classes that, they would look at me like I was from Mars, the bell would ring, and they’d head off for their business, marketing, or economics classes to hunt and gather credits so they could be the chief of a corporate tribe someday.  I endured 20 years of that.  I endured the reality that higher education in this country is as dysfunctional and corrupt as everything else.  Integrity is not rewarded, it is resented.  Honesty is not admired, it is scorned.  Individualism is not respected, it is feared.  America’s universities are no longer institutions of higher learning, they’ve become degree factories where the flawed learning, flawed values, and flawed paradigms of the False World are produced, packaged, and shipped off for consumption.

    Tuition revenue must keep feeding the beast, so freshmen with the reading comprehension skills of 5th graders keep pouring through the factory gates, keep punching the credit clock, and keep taking their place on the production line.  The False World needs new drones to replace the burned out and dying drones, so the production line must keep churning out graduates, no matter how defective they are.  So it keeps churning them out, into the False World, where defective students become defective executives, defective administrators, and defective managers.  They become defective cogs in the defective machine of monopoly market capitalism, rise to their level of incompetence, and spend the rest of their careers blaming everyone else for their blunders.    

    I fought the system, I fought it for twenty years, but I lost.  My journey through the academic world ended in failure.  Will my journey with Shannon end in failure too?  Will it be just as futile?  Will my days with her end in tragedy, just as my days with Sarah ended in tragedy?  The False World destroys people like us, Sarah knew it, Shannon knows it, I know it.  It crushes anyone who resists and leaves them behind, to die broken and bleeding on the tribal hunting grounds of this modern corporate savannah.

    Shannon has the strength, intelligence, moral courage, and charisma to be a progressive leader unlike any this nation has ever seen.  But she despises politics, she will not travel down that road of iniquity and betrayal, only False World power can be gained there.  She is seeking a different way, she is determined to travel a different road, a road only a very few have traveled down before, a road that winds through three Gateways.    

    But there is a haunting awareness of vulnerability within her, a feeling that no matter how hard she tries, it may not be enough.  She’s been very withdrawn these last few days, she’s been having nightmares.   She won’t talk to me about them, she won’t talk about the Gateways or explain why we have to stay in Kansas City for several days.  

    Last night, I heard her speak Sarah’s name, in a voice trembling with grief, in the midst of yet another nightmare.  As I laid awake in the darkness, I remembered the confession Sarah whispered to me on the morning of her death, I remembered telling her it didn’t matter.  I remembered her dreading what might happen at that meeting at the World Trade Center, I remembered she didn’t want to go.  But she went, she felt she had to, and I never saw her again.

    When I woke up in the pre-dawn twilight, Shannon was gone.  Disconsolate, weary, haunted by Shannon’s suffering, aching with longing for Sarah, I walked out onto the hotel room balcony, stood at the railing, and looked down on the empty streets.  The hunter-gatherers of Kansas City are still asleep, their daily hunt for money and possessions has not yet begun.

    I want to be told about these Gateways, I want to know if Sarah came into my life for the same reasons Shannon has, I want to know about everything.   I trust Shannon, I trust her completely, I just wish she would trust me enough to confide in me . . . but maybe I don’t deserve her confidence.  What have I done to deserve it?  What have I done to earn it?

    Since I met Sarah on Concord Bridge, I’ve been given love, understanding, and a chance to redeem myself, I’ve been given far more than I deserve, but what have I given?  Not much.  The list is pretty short.  I gave Sarah a kiss goodbye on the morning she died.   I gave that Fox 5 guy some hell back in New York.  I gave Shannon some aspirin after we watched Bush land on that aircraft carrier, and I’ve given her some coffee a couple of times. I can’t blame her for not confiding in me, but it still hurts.  I want so much to help her, but I don’t know how.    

    When Shannon returned and joined me on the balcony, the look of resignation in her eyes told me Travis had found us.  I saw that same look in Sarah’s eyes on the morning she died, but I also saw her determination to face whatever was coming, no matter what the cost.  I see that same determination in Shannon’s eyes, I hope she won’t have to pay the same price Sarah paid.

    “He’s here.”

    “Yes.  He’s here.  I’m sorry, Jericho, I don’t want to, but I’ll have to see him.”

    “When?”

    “Tonight.”

    “I don’t think you should.  Can we talk about it?  Can we talk about Sarah?  Did you know each other, was she a Watcher too?”

    “I shouldn’t tell you more than I already have, Jericho, you aren’t ready.  You have far more awareness of what’s at stake than most, but you’re only beginning to see the hidden forces at work beneath the surface, you’re only beginning to realize what must be done if humanity is ever going to awaken from this False World nightmare.”    

    I watched the first hunter-gatherers venturing out into their False World, I heard the first horns honk, announcing the onset of the morning migration to the hunting grounds.  “I’m aware of my limitations, Shannon.  I just feel so lost, I’ve never felt more lost than I do right now.  Can you tell me how Travis could have tracked us down so soon?  Can you tell me that much at least?”

    “I’m going to find out, I’m going to find out how and I’m going to find out why.  This isn’t just some bizarre courtship ritual, there’s much more going on, I see that now.”

    “I don’t think you should see him alone, can I go with you?”

    “I have to deal with the consequences of my mistakes, Jericho, no one else can do that for me.”  

    “Mistakes?  I don’t understand . . .”

    “9/11, Sarah’s death, the war, Travis following us here . . . I should have seen the hidden forces at work, I should have seen the connections, I could have warned her, I could have saved her.”

    “So you knew her, she was a Watcher too.”

    “She was much more than that, Jericho.  She was my sister.”