“Nope, nope, and nope.”
“What?” His mouth was full. “What do you mean?”
“The first one’s just a technicality-it was Flavor-Aid, not Kool-Aid. Secondly, there were no drills, at least not according to the survivors. And third, while it’s true that some of the people did drink the poison, many, if not most, of them were murdered-”
“What!” I said.
She nodded. “Some were injected with cyanide, some were strangled, some died from gunshot wounds, others from crossbow bolts.”
Ralph and I exchanged glances. “I thought they all drank it,” I said. “Mass suicide.”
“Babies don’t commit suicide, Pat. Of the 909 who died, nearly 300 were children, another 200 were elderly. Some people were asleep when they were injected. That’s not suicide. The babies had cyanide squirted down their throats by their parents.”
Just the thought made me physically ill. “I had no idea.”
“That’s what I mean; most people don’t know the whole story.” I pushed my plate away. I’d lost my appetite.
Ralph took a bite of beef chow fun. Nothing seemed to faze him. “All right,” he said. “So fill us in.”
“Well… the Reverend Jim Jones founded Peoples Temple as a mainline Protestant church in the 1950s. They did a lot of social work, crossed over racial lines, attracted lots of minorities, which of course made him popular with the city council of San Francisco. Eventually, though, he stopped teaching about God and drifted into teaching a mixture of pseudo-communism and socialism-of course, he only preached those sermons when the city officials weren’t present.”
“Of course,” Ralph said.
“I knew he was a pastor,” I said, “but I didn’t know he was a communist.”
“Well, he talked like he was, but for him nearly everything he said was to manipulate others. It’s hard to say what he really believed. After a while the political tide began to change-lawsuits, allegations of human rights abuse. Jones was even arrested for lewd behavior with another man.”
She nibbled at her chicken and then took a sip of bottled water. “Anyway,” she continued, “he was paranoid and convinced nuclear war was imminent-also wanted to avoid the lawsuits. He’d researched the best places to live in case of nuclear war and decided on Guyana, South America. Eventually, he and his group moved down there to set up an agricultural project.”
“A what?” asked Ralph.
“Basically a commune. They farmed, grew their own food, stuff like that.”
“So. A cult,” he said.
“Semantics. Call it what you want, but the truth is when you look at what they were able to accomplish in just fifteen months, it’s nothing short of astonishing.”
I couldn’t believe she was saying anything good about Jonestown. “What’s so astonishing about a killer cult?”
“Clearing the land, planting, building, even moving toward universal health care. Originally they were planning on having 500 people living there within 6 to 10 years, but in just over a year nearly a thousand had moved down- and that didn’t even include the Temple members who were still in California waiting to come down.”
“OK, but despite all that, Jones was clearly insane,” I said. “Right?”
“Of course. But he was also a genius. And he was able to inspire people to work together toward a common goal, to sacrifice for the good of others, to put aside hatred and prejudice. Most of the people in Jonestown were disenfranchised minorities. He gave them hope, a place to belong. And he had an amazing ability to persuade people. Incredibly charismatic. People even said he could perform miracles-healing cancer, reading people’s minds, even raising the dead. Sure, some of the gags were shams and con games, but some of his miracles have yet to be explained.”
I ventured another bite of supper. Jim Jones a miracle worker? You have to be kidding me.
“Jones wouldn’t let anyone leave the town. Soon there were allegations of abuse, torture, kidnapping. Eventually, Leo Ryan, a congressman from Northern California, was told they were keeping people against their will, and he decided to investigate. There was a boy involved, some kind of custody battle with a woman who bore Jones a son and then left Peoples Temple. It gets complicated.”
“Simplify it,” said Ralph. His mouth was full of rice.
“Ryan was assassinated.”
“What?” I said. “Down in South America?”
Lien-hua nodded. “He took a news crew down, met up with Jones, and as he and his team were getting ready to board the plane to return to the states at a nearby airstrip, some men stepped out of hiding and assassinated him and four of the newsmen. It happened at a place called Port Kaituma. A number of others were wounded.”
“I don’t remember hearing any of this stuff before,” I said.
“I remember hearing about it now,” said Ralph. “That name, Leo Ryan, but not the details.”
Lien-hua continued. “Well, in the aftermath of the tragedy, the media had photos of rows and rows of dead bodies to show the world, and when they latched onto the killer cult angle, most of the events leading up to the White Night were lost in the shuffle.”
I sat up straight. “What did you just say? The White Night?”
She looked baffled by my reaction. “Yeah, White Night. The night they all died is called the White Night.” As she said the last two words, her eyes lit up. “White night!” she exclaimed. “That’s what Bethanie wrote, isn’t it?”
I grabbed my computer and pulled up Bethanie’s crime scene photos while Lien-hua hurried into an explanation. “Jones didn’t like the idea of darkness being associated with something bad or evil because of the large number of African-Americans in his group. So, whenever there was a crisis or tragedy at Jonestown, he called it a ‘white night.’ Sometimes he’d create his own crisis-even having his guards fire gunshots over the compound-to keep the people following him, believing in him as their savior.”
We gathered around and looked at the computer screen. Sure enough, the K wasn’t a letter at all, just a smear of blood from Bethanie’s finger. But because of the chess connection, everyone, including me, had assumed it was “knight.” Never assume. Never ever assume. I could have kicked myself.
“So that’s it,” I whispered. “White Night. There’s going to be another one. The kid remembers.”
Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid stared out the window at the starry New Mexico sky. Each point of light pierced through the fabric of the night like the tip of a dagger driven through black velvet. So many stars. So many distant worlds. So many daggers piercing the darkness.
He struck a match and lit the scented candles beside him. As he did, the window turned into a mirror, reflecting flickers of dancing candlelight as well as the interior of the room.
He gazed at the reflection. The room still bore the marks of its predecessors, with all their rare artwork and imported Italian furniture. High above him the original aspen beams held up the vaulted ceiling of the main room. Even after eighty years they looked as solid and imposing as ever.
Too bad this place would be a pile of ashes by tomorrow night.
In the dark mirror, he saw the door on the other end of the room swing open. A huge barrel-chested man with a shaved head stalked into the room and stood motionless, at attention, not wanting to disturb the Father. David was twenty-nine years old, had played six years as a tackle for the Bengals, and then started teaching martial arts. His specialty was breaking people’s bones with his bare hands.
Kincaid ran his finger along the scar on his wrist and stared at the stoic man’s reflection in the dark window. He knew he could have made David wait for an hour, a day, forever. David would do anything for him. Just like the others.
Kincaid approached David. “My son,” he said. The words rang with the true affection of a father, even though the two men weren’t related.
The leviathan of a man lowered his gaze in deference to his master. “Yes, Father?”
Kincaid laid his left hand on the back of David’s neck and gently stroked the corded muscles like a father might caress the neck of his child. “Do you understand what we’re doing here? Do you really understand?”
David lifted his eyes to stare at the far wall. “We’re creating a better world, Father. We’re stepping together into the light. We’re completing the revolution, we’re-”
