Christian Nation (44 page)
My good morning turned to a spectacular one when, a few seconds later, I was amazed to see Sanjay, dressed like the rest of us in an orange jumpsuit, escorted by two guards to stand at the edge of the platform. I had last seen Sanjay on the evening before the invasion of the Battery. I was busy listening to the instructions of our sergeant, a retired marine from the Bronx. I had understood that Sanjay was with the rest of the civilian leadership at City Hall, so I was surprised to see him walk into the park carrying a small machine gun. Sanjay had not accepted military training. I left my unit and walked over to him.
“You know how to use that thing?” I asked.
He looked exhausted but managed a weak smile. “I am learning quickly.”
We stared at each other in silence.
“I have come to fight with you,” he said simply, and then turned to follow a turbaned Sikh to a position about thirty yards to my south.
Hours later during the chaos of the marine landing, I looked over at Sanjay’s position, but I could see nothing. I did not see him on the ground after the fight, or anytime thereafter at Governors. I assumed that he had either been killed in the invasion or captured and killed afterward. And now he stood before me. Within seconds, his eyes found mine in the crowd. My face broke into a broad grin, which his eyes told me was not a good idea. But no one seemed to notice.
I heard nothing of the assembly program that followed. We both reveled in our wordless connection, and the time passed slowly.
After the business of the assembly was complete, the camp chaplain mounted the platform and turned to face the born-again group. The gold-star crowd in Zone Four had grown slowly over the first eighteen months but then increased rapidly over the course of the summer. None had yet been released, although we understood that the genuineness of their second births would be tested over a six-month period, following which they would return to civilian life. For the first time, the chaplain addressed the gold stars directly:
“Beloved in Jesus. We are brothers and sisters. You and I have accepted a new father, our Lord Jesus, and become united as a single family in his love. We are, thanks be to God, saved. Redeemed. Granted eternal life and spared an eternity of torment. Our old lives are gone, and in their place is a life with Christ at its center. Christ who is everything. For Christ we live and for Christ we would do anything. Anything. We do not question his word. We do not question his law. We do not question his justice. For we know nothing, and he knows everything. Our human instincts and judgments, like the human beings who make them, are flawed. Only in Christ’s love are we perfected. Today is the time to show us that perfection. To show us that you have indeed been born again in God’s love, for if you have, you will do his will, joyfully and without question. Look inside yourselves. Recapture that light and faith and love that you felt the day you were born again. Make it burn bright within, this I pray, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
“Thank you, Padre.” Super JJ strode to the podium looking, it seemed to me, uncharacteristically nervous. Perhaps it was the cameras.
“Gold stars, make a semicircle around the front of the post. Guards, clear the area.”
A murmur arose from the crowd. The general company of prisoners was moved back, and the gold stars were arrayed in a single row arcing in a semicircle around the post. Guards stood behind them, one for every four or five gold-star prisoners. My mind seemed to move slowly, reluctantly, not wanting to connect the dots.
With a nod by JJ to the guards, Sanjay was brought forward to the post. One of the guards roughly pulled up his orange jumpsuit and two others tied his wrists in front of him. He was shoved with his back against the post, so he faced the semicircle of born agains, and his arms were pulled up and stretched tightly above his head. This in turn stretched his torso, revealing each rib. His feet were spread and pulled back, each tied slightly behind the post. This position left his smooth brown body grotesquely exposed. I had never seen anyone look so completely naked or so vulnerable. Sanjay’s breath remained deep and steady. I, in contrast, could not breathe, and dreaded the whipping that I assumed would follow.
Super JJ looked carefully at Sanjay and nodded his satisfaction to the detail of guards, who then stepped away.
“A reading from the book of Leviticus: ‘And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.’ A reading from the book of Deuteronomy: ‘If there be found among you … that … hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them … Then shalt thou … stone them with stones, till they die … If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers … thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die.’ Thanks be to God.”
As JJ had been reading, four puzzled-looking men from the maintenance crew had entered the courtyard with wheelbarrows and dumped small loads of stones, each ranging in size between a golf ball and a baseball, at the feet of the gold stars.
“You, my brothers born again in Christ. This man you see before you has been Christ’s greatest enemy in this world. He is an agent of Satan. He is an atheist, a pagan, and a sodomite. He not only turned his heart from God, but he harnessed Satan’s power of illusion to turn millions of others from Christ. He reeks with the blood of infants, the dark stain of sin most vile. And God calls out for vengeance, for justice. So for you, our first class of sinners born again in Christ’s love—for you we have reserved the unique privilege of showing your devotion to Jesus by doing this just thing. The Bible calls us to justice, and to you we extend the special privilege of doing God’s will. If you falter, we know that Christ’s light does not truly burn in your heart and that you have deceived us. And you know the consequence. Brothers in Christ, pick up the stones and do as the Bible tells you. You may proceed.”
There was no sound in the courtyard. I remember hearing the sound of a ferry engine and the faint echo of a taxi blowing its horn in Red Hook. My eyes were locked with Sanjay’s, paralyzed. I was terrified. His eyes were calm. Resigned. Not a person in the semicircle moved. To a man, their eyes were cast down, staring at the stones. Eyes trying to make invisible the bodies to which they were attached.
Super JJ walked down the stairs and into the space between the gold stars and Sanjay. He scanned the faces and walked up to a man who must have reminded him of himself. A balding man who was large and muscular, with receding hair and a buzz cut. Perhaps ex-military. He raised his eyes. JJ stood in front of him.
“You will pick up a stone and start,” JJ said.
“I will not,” the man replied. In an instant, JJ drew his sidearm and shot the man in the middle of his forehead. He dropped in place.
The Super stepped back and again scanned the circle. He walked up to a younger man, probably a student when Manhattan fell, with curly red hair and acne scars. His face was pale and he was too scared to look up. “You will start,” said JJ. The redhead looked up at Sanjay and started to stammer, “I … I … No, I …” The back of his skull and half his brain exploded backward from the shot to his head, splattering a guard behind him.
Again, JJ stepped back and scanned the circle. As he approached the next man, the man dove to the stone pile, picked up a small stone, and hurled it at Sanjay. I heard the crack of a rib and stared at the purple bruise on the side of Sanjay’s chest.
“Everyone. Now,” said JJ.
The stones started to thud against Sanjay’s body in a regular rhythm. Some men threw them frantically, some methodically, and many laconically. A few wept.
It seemed to me that I had breathed only a single breath since JJ stepped off the stage. I had not moved. I can remember observation but no conscious thought. But the instant I understood what was happening, I darted from my place in assembly, around the side of the gold-star circle and through a hail of stones, to Sanjay. I wrapped myself around the exposed side of his body and grasped my hands together behind the post, intending never to let go.
My body now shielded his from the stone throwers. Some of the prisoners stopped throwing, but others continued. A few stones hit my back and the back of my legs, but I felt no pain. Sanjay was conscious. I felt his breath on my neck, and for a few moments I heard only the sound of his breathing, now labored.
“San,” I said. “I’m here.”
The guards rushed forward and the stoning stopped. The first two to arrive grabbed my shoulders and tried to pull me away. I held my left wrist with my right hand. I had never felt stronger. A third guard arrived and wrapped his forearm around my neck and gave a stiff kick to the back of my knees. I did not let go.
Sanjay turned his head and whispered in my ear, “G, you must remember.”
Two more guards arrived, and with four arms pulling each of mine, they succeeded in breaking my grip. They yanked me away and dragged me back to the edge of the circle. I was held down by the guards.
All stoning had stopped, and each gold star was staring at me in shock.
“No,” I begged them. “Don’t do it. You know it’s wrong.”
JJ raised his gun. I remember wondering what it would feel like. Instead, he pointed it in the general direction of the forty born-again prisoners.
“You will now show me how much you love Jesus. Again.”
A dozen prisoners instantly resumed the stoning, and within moments all had joined in. Sanjay’s body now twitched and jerked from the force of the blows. The stones from the throwers at the ends of the arc landed on his sides, and most of his ribs soon had fractures that penetrated the skin. When a large stone fractured a kneecap, he cried out in pain for the first time. Blood streamed from a wound in his throat. Agonizing minutes later I saw a prisoner heft one of the larger stones and, with the deliberation and strength of a professional pitcher, land a blow on Sanjay’s left temple. Sanjay instantly lost consciousness. It was, I choose to believe, an act of mercy. The stoning continued for another few minutes. Although the sight was unbearable, I was determined not to avert my eyes. I did not blink. All I could do for Sanjay was to witness.
Then JJ held up his hand silently, and within moments the throwing stopped. With a nod he summoned the doctor, whose starched white coat was already stained with a misty spattering of Sanjay’s blood. The doctor’s step faltered when he approached the pillar. His outstretched fingers had trouble finding the carotid artery beneath Sanjay’s purple and bloated neck. He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and raised one of Sanjay’s eyelids. The other eyelid was missing. He turned and nodded to the Super and mouthed, silently, the word “dead.”
Very truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again.
—John 3:3
I
STILL HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG
I was unconscious. It could have been an hour, it could have been days. When wakefulness lapped gently but insistently at my unconsciousness, I resisted. Eventually my eyes opened, but confusingly no images came to replace those of my dreams. My brain signaled my arms to stretch, but they remained in a tight embrace across my chest.
My conscious brain was numb, indifferent to my situation. But the intensely practical programming in my primitive brain was insistent and slowly unraveled the mystery of my situation. The punishment cells were windowless and thus completely dark. The doorjambs were thoughtfully cushioned with black rubber lest even a few photons stray through the crack to comfort the occupant. The ceilings were high enough for standing, and the room was large enough to take two paces in one direction and three in the other. A small hole in the floor allowed the prisoner to evacuate his waste to the vaulted cistern below. The floor was concrete, the back wall was stone, and the other walls were roughly stuccoed. I knew all this because my brothers and I had spent two days in the cells of Castle Williams when my “brother” Jamie unwisely flirted with one of the girls in the serving line at the mess hall. When told we were going to the castle for two days, we joked about it. There were no jokes when we returned. It does not take physical torture to drive a man to despair. It is a sad irony that a technique so cruel to the tortured requires so little effort and occasions so little guilt on the part of the torturer. As virtually every authoritarian regime has discovered, a couple of days of solitude in total darkness leads to nasty hallucinations and, in a few more days, many people experience a complete mental breakdown akin to psychosis. After our previous visit of two days, we were highly motivated to enforce strict discipline among the brothers.
This time was different. I soon realized where I was and the reason for the darkness. But my arms worked strangely, and for some time—minutes or hours, I really don’t know—I thought perhaps I was injured or paralyzed. But eventually the picture emerged. I was lying on my side, secured in a canvas straightjacket, arms across the chest—loose enough so that I could move my arms slightly in all directions but not so loose that I could pull my arms out. The first time I tried to stand, I discovered that the back of the straightjacket was attached to a metal ring in the floor by a chain too short to permit me to stand upright. I could stand with legs straight and torso bent over, or kneel or squat on the floor with torso upright and straight. The chain was just short enough to prevent me from walking or crawling to the latrine hole.
It was so typical of GI. Superficially the veneer of twenty-first-century civilization was preserved. Would any of this shock the conscience of the American public? I was not beaten; there was no sexual humiliation, no grotesque tortures. After all, before the Christian Nation hundreds of American prisoners and mental patients were kept in solitary confinement and secured in straightjackets for their own protection. I had no doubt that the meticulous records of GI would faithfully record that the prisoner was secured in a lightweight canvas straightjacket for his own protection, the doctor having advised of a risk that he was a danger to himself.