WILD TURKEY — an extract

Chapter One

November 2018

We killed our children first.

      We made them drink the Flavor Aid that Sally and the others had laced with a lethal dose of cyanide.

      And when it was my turn to die, a woman called Emily saved me.

      Whenever anyone mentions Wrightstown, they talk or write about Kool Aid. 'Drinking the Kool-Aid'. Its bullshit. Kool Aid was a lot more expensive than Flavor Aid. We were building a new world in the jungle and Mike and his team kept a real strict budget. Some of the residents had Kool Aid, but we didn't have huge supplies of it. The kids loved Flavor Aid.

      The killing, this happened to someone else entirely. My new name is Lisa Hutchinson. The woman who killed my children, she was Sarah Packer. I buried her back in the jungle, a long time ago. We're both 69 years old.

      It's nearly 40 years since I left Wrightown. Survived it. Over 900 men, women and children, some of them deep friends, didn't make it.

      Here in the state of Rhode Island, I look back at moving from place to place and wonder if I was trying to make myself whole. You can't make yourself whole going someplace else, it doesn't work. Hell, it works for the first few weeks, then that old broken you comes right back It just turns up like lost luggage.

      I stopped running and settled here, in Newport, when I was fifty years old. Apart from my memories, there is no one in my life. I don't see any of my old family or old friends. Newport is as good a place as any. I was tired of turning up in a new country and overstaying my welcome, working in English-speaking bars and restaurants, looking after American or European children, walking dogs. If you're an American it's easy to overstay in any foreign country. Locals assume a lot about you. They think you have a legitimate reason to be there. It doesn't occur to them you're an illegal alien when you're from the most powerful country on Earth.

      The old me is everywhere, if you're willing to look. I'm mentioned on page 58 of Kool Poison — The true account of the Guyana Tragedy (published May 1985) by Steve Donden. I'm also mentioned by James Menteith of the Washington Post in his book, Black Night (published May 1979), which is a much better book than Kool Poison.  There's an extensive interview with me on page 143. It's the only one I ever gave. I re-read it now and see I was still in grief back then, my mind still somewhere in that jungle.

      If you want to see pictures, there's two pictures of me in print and online. One in Road to Wrightown — William Wright Temple (published May 1989). There's a photo of me and my three boys on page 86. On page 103 there's a picture of me beside the man himself, the Rev. Wright. I'm not smiling in either photo. The one with my children was from 1974 in California, the other one with Rev. Wright was taken in Guyana in 1977. I'm in a pair of overalls in the Guyana picture, 29 years old, proud and a pioneer, complete with bandana on my head. I look like the archetype cult girl; thin and blonde, pretty in a girl-next-door kinda way. In the picture with my children, I look harassed and stressed. My husband took the California photo, you can make out my youngest, Jimmy, crying his little eyes out. I'm standing there posing for the camera with a screaming child in a pram and two other hungry kids on either side of me. I was wearing an awful tartan dress and waves and waves of hair, a band across my forehead. I'm 26 years old. We were standing outside the temple. I'm dressed a little more formally because we had a big service that very afternoon. Only four years separate the picture, but I look so much older in the '74 picture than the '77.

*

In a few days a journalist who wrote a bestseller on LBJ is going to interview me. Richard Sarkis. He's writing a book on Rev. Wright. I dye my hair brunette and used to wear non-prescription glasses, now I got real ones. Sarkis tracked me down through a very close circle of survivors of Wrightown, who knew how to contact me. They told me this writer was looking for me. Asking specifically for me, by my old name, Sarah Packer; one of the few survivors from the mass suicide at Wrightown. I agreed to speak to him because, well, I dunno. I'm tired. Perhaps it's time to tell the only story I've got to tell. Or it could be I've become an old fool. There is another reason. Perhaps I feel a confession will stop the boys asking for me. I see them everywhere, the eyes of my three dead boys staring at me. As I walk past children walking home from school, on swings, in the back seat of cars or even on the television. Seeing them on the television is perhaps the most terrifying.

      Bobby was born first and Lloyd came second, which was typical of Bobby, always first, always the loudest. Bobby was like that right up to when we arrived in Guyana. Then he went into his shell out in the jungle. In that sense, Bobby was an all-American boy, who didn't like strange lands; wanted drive-ins and burger joints and movie theatres and arcades. Though it kills me to say it, I loved Bobby the best, then Lloyd. With Jimmy, well he was conceived the night the Reverend Wright came into my life, so maybe that's why he's the most painful to love of my three boys. There's the fourth, the one who never made the nine months, dear innocent sweet Lowry. Sometimes I think I love him the most, a life untainted by life, pure potential in his little brief existence deep inside me, until God called him back home. Called him back home to join his brothers up there.

      God only exists in the slim imagination that it provides a place where my dead boys can still laugh, can still stick gum under tables and chairs. In the small space I allow God to exist, I can hear the twins laughing. I can see Jimmy crying with his little hands held up like a little criminal giving himself up to the cops, wanting to be picked up. When your children are toddlers, its truly a wonderful time, do they ever love you more at this age? I know I didn't love my parents more than I did when I was a little girl. By the time I was ten I loved my friends more and that didn't change until I had my own husband and child, my own family. I loved my daddy, but never the way I loved him till it hurt like I did when I was a little.

*

If people ask me about my time in Wrightown, if they find out, I always told them the same thing. That hasn't happened much these past decades. When I came back to the States in 78, in the glare of the world and holed up at my parent's home in Indiana, everyone wanted to know, wanted to ask me why? Some were more interested in how I survived. Others wanted to know why so many didn't. I told them, and I'd tell anyone now the same thing, it's like a script — Wrightown had all kind of people living there, rich and poor, black and white. People from Texas, people from New York, people from Oregon. It could have been you... it was me.

*

The bodies that came back from Wrightown arrived at the United States Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware. The airbase was accustomed to death. Thousands of dead American servicemen had passed through, arriving home from Vietnam. Vernon survived his tour, but still ended up in a body bag arriving at Dover. He would have laughed about that, all those hours we argued when he volunteered, that a VC bullet would find him, and he ended up coming home alongside the war dead anyways. Then, perhaps Vernon wouldn't have laughed too long because our children were in body bags too.

      The writer, Richard Sarkis arriving in a few days. Does he already think of me as a beast? A woman who killed her three boys, watched her husband die, yet she survived. Didn't have the decency to die after such a selfish act? No-one wanted to prosecute me when I got home, not the FBI, not Vernon's parents or my own. Was that the punishment, to think of my dead babies in those bags, while I walked free?

      For about a year after Wrightown, around the time I left America to travel, I kept on dreaming of my family in those body bags. Vernon's father identified the bodies. The corpse of my husband, my children had become bloated with decomposition by the time they were recovered. I remember reading that somewhere, from a newspaper report. The doctors on the ground had to puncture them, the dead that had lain there for days on the jungle floor of Wrightown. And I couldn't get that imagined vision from my head, certainly from my dreams. Vernon once told me in Vietnam, his patrol came across a pile of decomposed bodies, bloated like seals. Monsters. Over 900 monsters on the jungle floor.

*

Vernon had always been a man of extremes. I met him, when I was 16, he was 18. It was the winter of 1964. My best friend Abigail pointed him out as 'dreamy' when were both at a party in Richmond. Vernon was one of the city boys, cool, not country stock like me. A record player was playing that song that everyone loved from their teens at the time, 'The Locomotion'. In 64 it was already a classic, out here in the Midwest. You have to understand, this was the summit of sophistication for me, a gal from nowhere. I grew up in a nowhere place that was featureless and flat and when you stood at any crossroad, each direction seemed to go on forever. Richmond, pathetically, was Paris or London to me at 16.

      Abigail dared me to ask Vernon for a cigarette. So, I did. If he had just given me a cigarette, I would have walked away, never spoken to him again. But Vernon wanted to know if I had ever smoked before, I lied and said yes, but he insisted he had to teach me the proper way to do it, so we went outside. Abigail was led away by one of his college friends, while he put his hand on the small of my back. Next to him I felt like a ghost. It felt like floating being with him, before we even started to talk properly.

      We went into the yard, away from the music. I honestly can't remember how Abigail found out about the party, it was her cousin I think, who lived in the city. We had used each other as cover with our parents for our awkward first steps into rebellion. In the yard teenagers hung out, smoking on makeshift furniture that someone had either thrown out or dragged here. From out there, the building looked empty on the upper floors. He took out a hip flask and offered it to me, the same time as offering me to sit on an improvised bench.

      'Have some vodka.'

      'I dunno, vodka?' I told him as Vernon took it back and downed a few swigs, I smiled goofily.

      He took out a pack of Chesterfields and gave me one, he said, 'You know, the government think those things can kill you?'

      'Well my mother says smoking is good for your circulation. I never heard anyone say it can kill ya.'

      The music had changed, and a cheer rose from the party with the first notes of the Beach Boys, I get around. I took the vodka to try and stop the coughing. We must have been out there for a long time, because Abigail came out twice looking for me, and I shooed her away both times.

      'You see, Sarah, has music ever sounded so good? I mean…'

      I had my head tilted back and I was looking at the sky. High as the stars I was struggling to see, I interrupted him, 'You can't see the stars in the city! Do you believe that? You can't see anything!'

      When I looked back at him, he was staring at me, 'You just have to look harder... look.'

      He pointed up to the sky, then he took my hand and held it, pointed to the heaven. All I saw was a shimmering lilac mist.

      'Yeah, right there. That's Andromeda just below is Cassiopeia, you see, Sarah?'

      I didn't say anything. His body felt wrapped around me, I was falling into it. He laughed as my head rested against his chest and I continued to blink into the dark sky.

      'See, those three lights there, that's Andromeda and those two less bright lights, that's Cassiopeia! Cassiopeia. The Queen. Andromeda? The Princess…'

      The world spun, and I lowered my head. His lips found mine. If only those stars could have told me, that those lips would be cold and dead in only twelve years. If I knew I'd lose him so soon, I wouldn't have pushed him away after that first kiss.

Chapter Two

In the fall of '71, the night Jimmy was conceived, and the twins were only five years old, that's the night the devil rode into my life.  Lloyd would always wait up for his daddy, Bobby was less fussy about daddy saying goodnight. Besides, Vernon never came home too late from the office. Vernon wasn't one for going to the bar after work and he didn't have to, he was an executive in the family business and his granddaddy owned the business. One thing we had back then was security, iron clad security, which is a wonderful thing for children to grow up in. What children need the most of all is love, though that didn't mean much with security, with being kept safe from harm.

      When you become a mother, your children snuff out your old life, those moments of tranquillity when you let hours slip past like ghosts in slippers. You can't do that anymore, once you have children. My mother used to say, even when we all left home, she thought about us every day. Well my three boys have left this Earth, and I think about them every day.

*

In the fall of 1971, Vernon looked funny when he came home from work. His big hazel eyes, why, they looked like he had seen the devil himself. Or God. I loved those eyes, clever, kind. It was past midnight, he was yelling at me to wake up. Little Bobby and Lloyd had gone to sleep by then, they had tried to stay up for their daddy. I told him to hush in case the boys woke up.

      Vernon wasn't the kind of man that came home late to his wife. He was in the lounge with that moustache of his that he claimed made him look like Burt Reynolds, but with his thick blonde hair, he always reminded me of Robert Redford as the 'Sundance Kid'. I had fallen asleep on the couch.

      'Honey, what happened? You look high.'

      He just stood there frozen, like he couldn't hear me. That was when I started getting scared. If I could smell liquor on him, that would have made me feel better.

      'Sarah, sit down… Let's both go sit down...' He hesitated, 'No, let's go outside, I need to talk outside.'

      'Vernon, you crazy? I ain't dressed to go outside.'

      'Well, we'll get you a coat and some shoes, come on. It's real important.' He was talking like a child on his birthday, breathless. He watched me impatiently as I grabbed my coat and put on my boots. He couldn't stand still. He hopped from foot to foot, like he wanted to pee. As soon as I had the boots on, he took my arm, firmly and led me out to the porch. It was cold, and I wanted to go back inside and get a hat. He sat me down on the porch swing and with a tenderness I had not felt in a long time, he brushed my cheek with his fine fingers.

      'You are so beautiful, you know that?'

      I didn't know what to say to that, he continued, 'Sarah, are you happy? Like every day, you wake up happy?'

      I wanted to bark back, of course! But I'd never struggled to tell the truth to Vernon. He looked like he wanted to know the truth, so I gave it to him, 'Most of the time I'm happy, content. Vernon, we're not put on this Earth to be happy all the time, unless you take drugs...' I whispered the last part, as we were outside.

      Vernon just nodded, 'What if I told you, there was a way we could be happy all the time? That Bobby and Lloyd could grow up in a community of love and true and good people?'

      I looked at him blank. Our neighbourhood was one of the best in Indy. Was he talking about moving? He always complained the street was too bourgeois and white. That we should move to a more mixed neighbourhood, like Brookside, how it would be better for the kids to see Negroes as they grew up, not like us. I looked away and stared down my street. It was so cold. I thought of the blizzards and rain and snow.

      'Vernon, you sure you're not high?' I said this as a whisper. Worried neighbours could have caught my words on the wind.

      'I went to a meeting tonight, I met a few people and heard a preacher, a man called Wright. And I believe in him Sarah. I believe he knows the way.'

      'Knows the way to where?'

      He kissed me then and I let him. It was good to see him so charged and I didn't want to break the spell he seemed under. The cold shooed us back inside soon enough. That night we made love for the first time in months. In the dark stillness of the morning, we created our third child. I think back to my life then; days that differed only in barely unnoticeable ways. We lived in a wealthy suburban street where I drank and made birthday cakes, discussed plotlines of daytime soaps and entry for private schools. The love lives of Andrea and Steve and that bastard Mac in Going Home.

      Vernon had asked me if I was happy and I had asked my neighbour Jackie, the same thing a while back. She was another housewife, a work widow and when I asked her if she was happy, she had just laughed.

The night after Vernon's first meeting with Rev. Wright, Saul came over to the house. He was leaving for California with Rev. Wright New Temple in the morning, according to Vernon. Did Vernon tell Saul to try and persuade me that we should go too? I hadn't seen Saul in months. He was a queer little fellow. He was still fat back then, before Wrightown. Those ill-fitting round glasses and serious little green eyes, like a 26-year-old schoolboy. He was part of the crowd of students Vernon and I knew when we still attended Butler. He dropped out around the same time as Vernon. When Saul got drafted in 68, he convinced the draft board he was trans, so he never served.

      Saul was sat on my couch, trying hard not to look at my chest. The twins were out, but toys were everywhere like ticker tape.

      He searched in his jean jacket full of badges and raised an unlit joint in his hand, 'Do you mind?'

      'Go ahead...' I told him as I lit up another cigarette, he lit up his joint. I had given him one of Vernon's beers, he sipped and smoked like some farm machinery.

      I watched the smoke curl around him like a snake. His frizzy long hair reminded me of Kathy Evans from my high school. He was nervous, like he always was around me. I was curled up on our tatty old easy chair, enjoying him looking at me. It was as if he couldn't stare at me for more than a few moments. At Butler, Saul had always chased blonde girls like me, Midwest girls from the cornfields. That afternoon I could almost taste his desire.  He was the son of Indy Southside Jews, who had done well and ensured all their kids attended college.

      'I wish you'd come Sarah, just visit and see, see what their building over there.' He told me.

      'Saul, I'm happy for you, I really am. But you know, making the world better...It was all a long time ago for me. For Vernon. We had no children then…'

      'I know you. We stood beside each other at Dunn Meadow… You care!'

      'Saul, shame on you. You know how vulnerable Vernon is! You still took him to see some crazy Jesus preacher!'

      Saul drew back, his eyes wide, 'Vernon told you I took him? That was Emily! And this has nothing to do with the bible.'

      I blushed, and I saw him hide a smile. Vernon had mentioned this Emily before, one of Saul's radical friends from California. Saul had been making regular trips west for protests and happenings for years.

      'Sarah, I was as sceptical as you, religion? But if you had seen this cat, the theatrics, he healed the sick! It was a riot. Then after the sermon, we hung out and we talked.'

      'And you believe he healed the sick? This reverend, you think I don't know bout him? William Wright is a Richmond boy. Just like Vernon. Wright is a showman, you know that Saul! Healing the sick, jeez!' What I knew of Wright at the time was not much of anything. I only knew second-hand gossip from Richmond mostly. While I wouldn't describe myself as godless at 24, I certainly didn't believe in preachers who preyed on vulnerable people like poor Negroes. That's why I was so confused, Vernon, yes had Nam changed him, but Saul? Saul was a revolutionary for goodness sake. While I didn't put much faith in the church, I at least believed in God.

      Saul took a deep inhale of the joint and the smoke slouched from him. He offered me a drag and I shook my head no.

      Saul almost coughed when he said, 'What did we all talk about at Butler? How student protests were just kids throwing custard pies. Isn't that why Vernon went to Nam? He had a pass, but he still went. He wanted to make a difference, a real difference, he still does!'

      My doorbell rang and we both looked over to the door, like we were expecting it to talk and tell us who was behind it.

      'That must be Emily…' Saul said smiling.

      Vernon had told me Saul and a friend would be over.

      'It's open!' I called out.

      A woman walked through. I stood up, not knowing whether to offer my hand, so I just raised it instead. Smiled. She was nothing like I had seen, not in real life anyways. A beret sat on top of her head and she wore a jumpsuit. Her boots were like my grandpa wore, black leather, dabbed with mud, working man shoes. Standing with my bare feet, I felt exposed, small. She met my smile with indifference. She was youthful but with eyes that looked as wise as the world. Considering she was my age, I felt like a child in her intensity. Maybe she was French, or Spanish. I couldn't believe this woman was American.

      Saul was standing beside me. He was beaming as he said, 'Sarah, this Emily, Emily, Sarah.'