“This is insane,” I muttered as Dave Maresh’s rugged, jovial face filled the screen of my own television.
“The Pentecostal Evangelical Enochians are an eccentric bunch, Ted, even by today’s standards. Members pride themselves on being the buckle of the Bible Belt. We’ve done some research into the beliefs of the Pentecostal Evangelical Enochians, and what we’re discovering is that this is a group so far afield they make David Koresh’s Branch Davidians look like High-Church Episcopalians.”
Cut to a videotape of Reverend Woody in a white polyester suit, thumping his Bible on his knee, covered in sweat with Maresh’s voice-over continuing:
“The group draws a direct connection between Enoch of the Old Testament, who was the seventh generation from Adam, with the seven angels of the sixteenth chapter of Revelations, who pour out the wrath of God upon the earth.”
“ ‘And the first angel went,’ ” Reverend Woody screamed, “ ‘and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men, which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.’ ”
Back to Maresh now: “The Pentecostal Evangelical Enochians believe that the skin lesions associated with Kaposi’s sarcoma are that ‘grievous sore which had the mark of the beast.’ AIDS, they say, is the biblically predicted precursor of Judgment Day. The Enochians also saw the 1994 bloody genocidal massacres in Rwanda, in which bodies floated down rivers so thick they became a cholera hazard, as further evidence of the seven angels and the impending apocalypse.”
“ ‘And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood!’ ” Hogg was in a frenzy now.
“And in a videotaped sermon last year,” Maresh continued, “which has only recently been made available to the press by a disgruntled ex-cult member, Hogg even drew an apocalyptic revelation from the career of Madonna.”
My jaw dropped as they cut to Hogg, an open Bible in his hand, at a podium inside a church that looked to me more like a bingo hall.
“My children, she is here! The Bible predicted her, and she has taken the name of the blessed mother of our blessed Savior! In Revelations 17, God tells us: ‘And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy!’
“She is here, my children! And her lies and fornication foretell of us the end of the world! The Great Whore who has stolen the blessed virgin’s name is upon us now in these last days of the world!”
He seemed to be in a trance, possessed of the spirit, or something dangerously close to it.
“This is absolutely fucking insane,” I said out loud to a television that, once again, didn’t bother to respond. Maresh continued his report, then wrapped it up with a quick summary of the week’s events. Ted Koppel segued to a commercial, then came back and introduced his guests. I recognized the mayor and the chief of police, sitting nervously in front of two separate cameras as Koppel slipped them the tough questions in his own iron-fist-in-a- velvet-glove style.
“Chief Gleaves, you and the mayor both insist that you’re not going to call in either the National Guard or federal agents. Yet isn’t it true that if we are to believe the Enochians and their claims about weapons, they have you outgunned?”
Harold Gleaves shifted nervously in his chair, then gave his tie a Rodney Dangerfield tug. “Well, Mr. Koppel, I don’t want to get into speculating what kinds of weapons they may or may not have down there, and I certainly don’t want to disclose what we’ve got on our side of the fence. I’d like to emphasize that the important thing for us is to keep the dialogue open. We’ve got a top-notch hostage negotiating team down there. We care very much about finding a peaceful resolution to all this. We’re willing to talk. We want to talk. I only hope that the other side will remain open to that as well.”
“Good job, Harold,” I said.
“Mr. Mayor,” Koppel asked, “at what point would you be willing to request the governor to call out the National Guard?”
The mayor was a former entrepreneur who’d made a fortune in the car-parts business. Right now he looked like he wished he’d stayed in the private sector, where the only hostile takeovers he had to worry about were on paper.
“I’ve speaken-spoken-with the governor,” he said, stumbling over his words. “I’ve kept him apprised of the situation. We feel like we’re a long way away from having to call out the National Guard or seek federal intervention.”
“Good dodge, Mr. Mayor,” I said.
Then Ted turned to Professor Barbara Hatfield, whom Ted had introduced as a Vanderbilt University sociologist who’d made a study of religious cults in the Deep South.
“Professor Hatfield, how serious are they? They must know that no matter how heavily armed they are, ultimately they’ll suffer the same fate as Koresh’s group did in Waco if they push the issue too far. Do you think they’re willing to do that? Is this a suicidal group of martyrs at work here?”
Professor Hatfield, in her midthirties, a bespectacled, seriously academic lady, took her time and chose her words carefully: “That’s what causes me the most fear, Ted. Clearly, as our experience in Waco showed, there are levels of obsession at work here that make suicidal martyrdom a distinct possibility. The five innocent people trapped inside the morgue right now are the ones for whom I fear the most.”
My gut knotted up.
“At the very least,” she continued, “we must take their threats of armed confrontation seriously. From Jim Jones to David Koresh, we’ve seen that these threats can be realized. The one departure here from recent events like this-and I’m not sure what the ultimate importance of this will be-is that their leader is not behind the barricades with them. If apocalypse comes to Nashville, Tennessee, we apparently won’t see the Reverend Woodrow Tyberious Hogg go up in flames with his flock.”
“Good point, Professor Hatfield,” Ted said. “Exactly how much control do you think Reverend Hogg is exerting over his followers? He claims to be only their inspirational and spiritual leader, and he insists that the criminal acts they’ve committed in the group’s name were not ordered by him.”
“Well …” She hesitated for a moment. “I think I have to speak with some sensitivity here because we are still involved in active crisis management. But I am very dubious of Reverend Hogg’s claims in this area. I think he has substantial control over his group. He may not be controlling their every action, but …”
“You think if he ordered them to stand down, they’d do it,” Ted interjected.
Professor Hatfield nodded. “Absolutely.”
Ted turned back to Chief Gleaves. “With that in mind, Chief Gleaves, have you made attempts to speak with Reverend Hogg?”
“We’ve certainly made attempts,” Gleaves answered. “But we haven’t had much success with opening a dialogue with him. As you said, he insists he’s just their spiritual leader, and he claims that what they’re doing is biblically sound and morally justified. We, of course, don’t agree.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” I said.
“What about this business of giving the body of Reverend Hogg’s wife back to the group? Is that in the realm of possibility? Can this be done without the government seeming to have caved in on the issue?”
Again, Chief Gleaves spoke up. “What we’re trying to do right now is reach an agreement with the group that will avoid bloodshed, and yet still allow us to fulfill our constitutional obligation to uphold the law. One avenue we’re exploring is that while state law requires us to perform an autopsy in this case, it doesn’t specify in medical terms what an autopsy actually consists of. So if we can reach an agreement whereby we perform the tests necessary to determine the cause of death, but do it in such a way that the religious strictures of the group aren’t violated, then we may be able to settle this peaceably.”
Harold Gleaves was coming off very well. By tomorrow morning, the mayor would hate him.
“Even then,” Ted Koppel asked, “the group would still face charges. Would they be serious charges?”
Gleaves hesitated a moment. “My feeling is that we’re probably looking at some weapons charges, trespassing, maybe a few others. Given the circumstances, nothing all that serious.”
