history is a lot like mine-we try to combine those features of modern life we believe are morally neutral, like a Ford pickup, with the simplicity and cooperative spirit of traditional Amish life.
'It's hard sometimes. Isaac has never really dealt with his family's rejecting him, and he sometimes falls into black bouts of depression that last for days. And I get restless once in a while and yearn for my comical lost career as a jazz musician and my not-at-all-comical exciting youth, when I was the scourge of homophobes. But basically we like the lives we've made, and we manage pretty nicely. And since Sarah and Esther joined us three years ago, it's been even better-and easier, too, with the four of us working the farm. Financially, it's touch and go, but it helps that none of us are big consumers.'
I said, 'No twin Range Rovers parked side by side in the driveway of the Diefendorfer farmhouse?'
'No, but I have no objections to a beautifully made machine. It's one of the theological differences I had with the elders of my community in Ephrata. That and-as the J-Bird so eloquently put it-an appetite for corn- holery.'
'Speaking of which,' I said, 'what became of Ronnie?'
Diefendorfer's sunburn seemed to intensify for an instant. He said, 'Ronnie died. Years ago.'
'Oh no.'
'I did manage to get him sprung from the psych hospital his parents had put him in.
When I found out where he was and tried to see him, they wouldn't let me in, naturally, or even let me talk to Ronnie on the phone, because I wasn't family. And, of course, because I was the coconspira-tor in ungodly activities and the alleged cause of what Ronnie's family called his mental breakdown. But I met some gay hippies in a park near where Ronnie was locked up in Philly, and one of them knew about the FFF and said this was exactly the type of cruel and unjust situation they specialized in.
'A week later, we had Ronnie out. As with most FFF rescues, we got help from sympathetic gay lower-level employees in the hospital. Ronnie was relieved and grateful, but neither one of us had a job or any money or even any marketable skills, really. Ronnie was a high-school kid who liked track and field, and I didn't know much more than how to drive a plow horse. It was all I could do to get on and off a subway train.
'We stayed with some of the Fairmount Park kids for a month or so. But Ronnie became more and more frustrated with the hand-to-mouth life and the overall uncertainty, and he told me one day that he was sorry but he was going back to Ephrata. He did go home, for a while, and lied to his parents that he had been cured of his homosexuality by the electroshock treatments at the hospital. I felt hurt and betrayed and lost, but I couldn't face going back to a place where a lot of people considered me an agent of Satan. I hooked up with the FFF, which was being financed by a rich stockbroker in Chicago whose parents had given him the treatment when he was a teenager, and I stayed with the group for almost two years. The FFF was righteous, it was a cooperative community, it was gay, and for me it was home. I was happy and fulfilled and free, for the most part.
'As soon as Ronnie hit eighteen, he left Ephrata for San Francisco, and I saw him a couple of times when some of us were doing rescues in California. By then, I was involved with Sammy Day, one of the FFF guys, and Ronnie was deep into the seventies San Francisco scene, with lots of happy-go-lucky screwing around. His timing was unlucky, though. When the plague hit, Ronnie went with the first wave.
He was twenty-six when he died.'
I said, 'Those were the people who never knew what hit them. It didn't even have a name in the beginning.'
'No, just things like 'gay cancer.' Most guys suspected, though, that it had something to do with all the fucking. That it was some kind of communicable disease. I saw Ronnie six months before he died, and he said, 'It sure was fun while it lasted.' That could have been me. I did a lot of casual screwing around, too. But I was moving around so much with the group that we tended to pair up, like some ancient Greek army of fuck-buddies.'
'But in an age that had Edith Massey there to record it instead of Edith Hamilton,' I said. Then I asked, 'Did you know a man named Kurt Zinsser? He was involved in the rescue of two Albany kids around 1970 from a mental hospital in New Baltimore, New York. I met Zinsser briefly in seventy-nine when he sheltered one of the two kids, Billy Blount, when Blount was being set up on a phony murder rap.'
'Sure, I knew Kurt. He was still with the group in seventy-three when I joined up. He was a bit of a doctrinaire lefty, always quoting Fanon and Marx, and a bit tiresome in that regard. He stuck with the FFF after several of us got fed up and left in seventy-five.'
'Any idea where he is now? In seventy-nine he was living in Denver.'
'No, I've kept in touch with several of the old gang, but not Kurt.'
'Thad,' I said, 'I certainly admire your going off and doing the Lord's work, so to speak, for the two years when you were with the FFF. But I'm wondering about one thing.'
'What's that?'
'The first real skill you developed beyond eighteenth century-style farmwork was there's really no more accurate way of phrasing it-kidnapping. That's what the FFF's work amounted to. True?'
Diefendorfer's big ears reddened now, and he laughed. 'That's one way of putting it.'
'So, I have to ask you. Let me just blurt it out. Have you had anything to do with the kidnapping of Leo Moyle?'
He grinned some more. 'Nope.'
'Your showing up to try to divert attention from the obvious suspects in the kidnapping, the old FFF, is certain to leave some investigators wondering. I'm sure Lyle Barner will consider the possibility of a cunning, elaborate plot.'
'I'm clean,' Diefendorfer said easily. 'Anyway, I believe that I arrived on the scene before Mr. Moyle was abducted, no?'
'Well, before anybody at the radio station knew about the kidnapping, yes. But of course you could have known all about it, and timed your arrival to sow doubt and confusion just as the investigation turned urgent. Not so?'
'Strachey,' Diefendorfer said, looking pleased, 'you know, you're really getting my blood racing.'
'Thank you. Please elaborate.'
'Look, I left the FFF after two years because, as with so many radical organizations, things got complicated and even ugly after a while. Disagreements developed over philosophy and even strategy, and I could deal with that. Men-nonites know how to find consensus. What I couldn't stand was the intrigue and backstabbing that got started after some new people came into the group. I came out of a background where people disagreed openly and resolved disputes in a mutually respectful way. The FFF conducted itself that way in the beginning, and that was one of the things I loved about it. The Forces of Free Faggotry was in a lot of ways Amish.
'But when the scheming got started, I was too naive and inexperienced in the world-and too shocked, really- to put up with the machinations, and I got out. I lived in a commune in Oregon for a while, and then ran a truck farm with some friends. 1 gradually adapted to the customs of life among the English, a lot of which I find reasonable and humane.
'But I'll tell you, Strachey, I really loved the excitement of those early FFF days before things went sour. It was a righteous life, and it was thrilling. So, when you talk about me being part of a kidnapping, it brings that all back. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. See?' Diefendorfer displayed a muscular forearm, and in fact the skin on it resembled the skin of a particularly masculine and well-shaped naked goose. This gesture was in keeping with Diefendorfer's apparent longtime habit of expressing his emotions with varying presentations of his limbs.
'I can see that you're feeling happily nostalgic,' I said.
'I am, but that's all it is,' Diefendorfer said. 'Just nostalgia. The people the FFF snatched away wanted to be kidnapped. None of us would have carried off people who didn't want to be freed. Robbing people of their freedom, which is what someone has done to Leo Moyle, is the opposite of what we did. Being held against your will is a terrible thing. Some of the stories I heard from the kids we rescued would break your heart.'
'But,' I said, 'don't you feel just a twinge of empathy- sympathy even-for the neo-FFFers, whoever they are, when they try to rid the public airwaves of a man who embodies the hateful impulse that got all those innocent young men and women you rescued locked up and tortured in the first place?'
'Sure, I sympathize,' Diefendorfer said. 'But, at the risk of sounding not righteous but self-righteous, I'll say that I also know that to fight evil with evil is to increase the amount of evil in the world. Usually. There may be exceptions, I know.'
This sounded familiar. 'Thad,' I said, 'I hope you can meet my cohort, lover and helpmeet Timothy Callahan. Your theology and his are similar. You two would hit it off. My own moral philosophy is somewhat more… English,
