Read Trials of the Monkey Online
Authors: Matthew Chapman
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Retail
Trials of the Monkey (25 page)
Yes, I’d done okay. Here I was, after all, rewarded for my academic failure by a six-month sojourn in Italy. But, putting aside justifiable pride in my anti-achievement, I had also, though I hated to admit it, been hurt. What charm I’d had as a child was replaced by the alternating cowardice and drunken swagger of the lost. That was the victory of the schools.
Through the open window, I could hear a boisterous group of
English and American students making their way up the steep street below. These were young men and women with
prospects
—you could hear it in every self-assured laugh, in every braying shout; these were the good children, captains of teams, winners by reflex, the entitled. And I would never be one of them, never join that community of ease. At least in mind, I’d always be elsewhere, lying in the dark with a cripple in my arms.
English and American students making their way up the steep street below. These were young men and women with
prospects
—you could hear it in every self-assured laugh, in every braying shout; these were the good children, captains of teams, winners by reflex, the entitled. And I would never be one of them, never join that community of ease. At least in mind, I’d always be elsewhere, lying in the dark with a cripple in my arms.
Sediment in the Mouth
Gale Johnson looks like one of those young moms you see in commercials selling washing powder. She’s in her thirties and the prettiest woman I’ve met in Dayton so far, blonde with big eyes set among freckles. She has kept herself in shape.
We are having lunch at the Peking Palace on the highway and I’m secreting charm from every moonshine-and-guilt-polluted pore in the hopes of wresting a script or video from her which will allow me to pretend—if I have to—that I saw the play. But there is a gulf between us. She is nervous and defencive and my charm machine is not operating at full capacity on account of my hangover. I sense—and this will later be confirmed—that Gale has ‘lived,’ and has in consequence developed a certain intuitive suspicion of men like me. I am in my best clothes and I am shaved, but the sinner is still visible to Gale and it reminds her of things she’d rather forget.
Gale and her husband, Carter, are Presbyterians, as William Jennings Bryan was. She was born in Abington, Pennsylvania, but when she was eight moved with her family to Fort Lauderdale, where her father owned a TV repair shop. She and Carter have been in Dayton for seven years, having been sent here to ‘plant’ a church. They don’t have a church building of their own yet, renting one instead from the Methodists. When she first came here, she found it dreary. They were outsiders and had a hard time attracting a congregation. Their congregation is now around eighty. It’s been eighty for a couple of years now.
One of the elders in the church said maybe they were trying to ‘grow corn in a bean field,’ meaning Rhea County is a
Baptist and Church of God area, which makes Presbyterianism a hard sell.
Baptist and Church of God area, which makes Presbyterianism a hard sell.
There are two branches of Presbyterianism, she tells me, Presbyterian Church of America and Presbyterian Church, USA. Their branch is the former, referred to as PCA, and is the less liberal of the two. In trying to describe what her branch believes, Gale mentions Calvin and the five points of Calvinism.
‘What are the five points of Calvinism?’ I ask.
‘Well, there’s the TULIP. Let me see if I can remember them, ’cause I was raised as a Baptist and came to this late in life … Total depravity of man …’
‘That’s the starting point?’
‘That’s the T of TULIP, yes.’
We’re in trouble here. Total depravity of man?! This is too close to the bone.
‘The U is er … unconditional … I’m not sure what the U is … I wish my husband was here, he could tell you.’
‘Unconditional something,’ I offer.
‘Anyway, where we differ from Baptists is in the idea of election—that man left to himself would never choose God because in his unregenerate state he has no desire for God and so God in his grace and mercy reaches out to you … There’s a drawing of the Holy Spirit and you can’t resist it.’
‘You think that’s true?’ I ask. ‘Seems to me man has a great desire for God.’
‘Do I think that’s true?’
‘Well,’ I say, laughing, ‘I guess you do, of course.’
Gale says she believes God put a desire for a general kind of
spirituality
in man, but that’s very different from wanting Jesus Christ. ‘And so they’ll search to fill that void and that’s where you get some really wacky philosophies and religions, false religions.’
spirituality
in man, but that’s very different from wanting Jesus Christ. ‘And so they’ll search to fill that void and that’s where you get some really wacky philosophies and religions, false religions.’
She tells me about her own life, how as a child in Fort Lauderdale, she went to church, but when she got into high school, she rejected it all.
‘Were you a wild kid in high school?’ I ask.
‘Yeah,’
‘Drugs, pre-marital sex, the whole thing?’
She nods affirmatively, but moves quickly on, telling me how she became an actress, did some dinner theatre, and then went to New York. She found New York exciting, ‘a lot of incredible beauty and talent, but I couldn’t handle the pain that I was seeing, the people sleeping out on the park benches with a newspaper for a blanket.’ It got so bad she couldn’t ride the subway anymore. She says God intervened and led her to question the meaning of life and of her part in it. She would go to auditions and there would be 5,000 actors trying out for a single part. She imagined herself in twenty years, living in a tenement apartment, having achieved nothing. ‘And so I turned my back on theatre and I gave it up, I came back home to North Carolina, where my family was living. I spent a long time searching and praying, ‘What do you want me to do with my life?’
After a while, she went back to graduate school and got a degree in special education and then went on to work with disturbed and abused children who had been taken away from their homes because they were in such bad shape.
I point out that she left New York to escape pain but ended up in an even more painful environment and that maybe what she couldn’t take in New York was not the pain but her inability to do anything about it.
‘That’s a very good observation,’ she congratulates me. But even after she had her job, she was still searching. She went to a seminary so she could learn more about the scriptures, and that’s where she met her husband. For the first few years of her marriage, she avoided even going to the theatre. She wanted to put it out of her mind; but, she tells me, if you give something up for God, he’ll often give it back to you. When she got to Dayton, the opportunity to be in a community theatre production of Neil Simon’s play
Rumors
came up and she took it.
Rumors
came up and she took it.
She met a lot of actors and then the director of
Rumors
asked her to direct
The Crucible,
up at Bryan College. Because she knew the actor who played Darrow, she went to watch ‘The
Scopes Trial.’ She found some of it confusing and asked Bryan College if she could stage a new version the following year.
Rumors
asked her to direct
The Crucible,
up at Bryan College. Because she knew the actor who played Darrow, she went to watch ‘The
Scopes Trial.’ She found some of it confusing and asked Bryan College if she could stage a new version the following year.
‘How can I see it?’ I ask.
‘Well, um, I don’t have a videotape available and I don’t really feel comfortable giving a videotape to anyone, um …’
‘So, there is a videotape?’
‘There will be, yes, for the actors.’
I tell her I bought the tickets, I just couldn’t make it. I’ll pay her for a tape, give money to her favourite charity. She smiles unyieldingly. I tell her about the book, my desire to show what Dayton was like seventy-five years ago as opposed to how it is now. I’ve done a lot of research, I know things about Rappleyea that could be helpful to her …
‘I don’t have him in my play.’
I try to hide my shock. ‘No? You should. He’s a fascinating guy.’
‘Oh, he is, there’s a lot of colourful people. H. L. Mencken, I don’t have him in either, for other reasons, because sometimes his relatives come and visit and we didn’t want anyone to be uncomfortable by portraying him …’
No Mencken!? I can’t believe this. Two of the story’s most interesting characters, gone, the men who started it and the man who reported it. It’s incredible.
I tell her a lie. I tell her my daughter was sick. The re-enactment was central to my book, but I couldn’t leave. I just couldn’t make it. This is a disaster for me. Please, won’t she give me the tape?
She laughs. ‘I don’t know how the re-enactment will really help in the book. I mean, are you going to have any of the arguments in there?’
Yes, I am. But I want the tape because the other half of the book is about modern Dayton and the re-enactment seems like a large part of that.
‘Well, one of the things about my play,’ she begins, as if answering my question, but, in fact, simply changing the subject, ‘is we had street scenes, placards …’ She goes on to tell me about
a scene between two reporters, one of whom is ‘more pro-Bryan and the other one is a cynic.’ She tells me about how long she rehearsed, how hard it was to work with amateurs. She tells me Sheriff Sneed is great, totally relaxed, but won’t rehearse, just turns up for final dress rehearsal. She tells me they pass out sheets to the audience, telling them to react as the real audience did in 1925. She tells me people came this year from the Mencken Society in Baltimore, people from Nashville, people from Washington. One time, not this year, a group of atheists came up from Atlanta on a bus called ‘The Atheist Bus.’ This year, she felt there were more pro-Bryan people.
a scene between two reporters, one of whom is ‘more pro-Bryan and the other one is a cynic.’ She tells me about how long she rehearsed, how hard it was to work with amateurs. She tells me Sheriff Sneed is great, totally relaxed, but won’t rehearse, just turns up for final dress rehearsal. She tells me they pass out sheets to the audience, telling them to react as the real audience did in 1925. She tells me people came this year from the Mencken Society in Baltimore, people from Nashville, people from Washington. One time, not this year, a group of atheists came up from Atlanta on a bus called ‘The Atheist Bus.’ This year, she felt there were more pro-Bryan people.
‘We didn’t see any reaction from the audience that was overtly in favour of Darrow.’
She suggests people for me to visit, old men who were at the real trial when they were five.
She doesn’t want to give me the tape. She has no mercy.
I decide to drop the subject and come back to it later. I ask her if she had any complaints. She tells me some people from the Mencken Society were upset because she did not include a part of the trial where Darrow asks Bryan if he believes the six days of creation were twenty-four-hour days or periods. It is perhaps the most important moment in the whole trial, revealing how the Bible can be interpreted differently by different people. ‘I wasn’t trying to avoid that,’ says Gale, innocently, ‘it was just it seemed to me it flowed better if I went in this direction …’
I ask again if I could have something to help me write about the re-enactment, even just the script. ‘You’ve got to help me,’ I plead as fetchingly as I can, hoping to appeal to some Christian mercy in the woman, or pity.
‘Well, um …’ she says. ‘How long will you be in town?’
‘I’m supposed to go back Sunday lunchtime but I’d stay if you were going to be nice to me.’
She laughs almost flirtatiously, it’s like a burst of light, a flashback. And it gets switched off fast.
‘Well, I say … I’m just trying to think … I’m going out of town and I’m not going to have … if you could come back,
maybe … and … I just wonder though how’s the script? … Is it that it would just shorten things for you because you wouldn’t have to … ?’
maybe … and … I just wonder though how’s the script? … Is it that it would just shorten things for you because you wouldn’t have to … ?’
She’s calling me lazy now?!
No, I tell her, I know as much about the trial as she does, probably more. I’m just interested in her angle on the thing. It’s all a little strange to me. Had I been there, I would have seen it. I wasn’t there—now I can’t. Where’s the logic? (Where’s the logic? There’s a question.)
‘Okay, why don’t we do this?’ she suggests efficiently. ‘If you can be back like when I’m back from out of town, the video will be available and you and I could watch it together?’
I tell her I’m going to be out of the country until at least September.
‘Well, you can just call me when you’re in town and we’ll watch it together.’
Like I’m just going to be passing through Dayton some time and we’ll … But I can see I’m not going to get anywhere with this today and start paying the bill.
She asks me if I’d like to come and see her husband preach on Sunday.
She has me by the balls. That’s not entirely fair; she does have me by the balls, yes, but the offer is made sweetly and includes lunch afterwards. Anyway, I’m curious. She seems such a poignant character, a pretty, sexy cheerleader wounded by the big city, washed up in Dayton. I wonder what the husband will be like.
However, sympathetic as I am to her, as I drive off to see Joe Wilkie, the John Scopes of the modern high school, I feel angry and resentful. Her refusal to help me is un-Christian. The whole enterprise starts to irritate me. The very word ‘re-enactment’ is a lie. It isn’t a re-enactment—the trial took two weeks, this takes a couple of hours—it’s an
interpretation
and there’s something sly about the concept, neither fact nor art.
interpretation
and there’s something sly about the concept, neither fact nor art.
Joe Wilkie is a big man. He has a large face with a beard around it. He’s brought his wife along and she’s large too and they’re
both hunched over a table at the Frontier Diner. Their faces are inexpressive, the eyes watchful, as if some other being lurks inside, hidden and suspicious. To try and warm them up, I ask some general questions about Dayton kids. Do most of them want to get out of Dayton when they leave high school? No, he tells me, most of them want to go work at La-Z-Boy. It’s pretty good money. About 30 per cent of them go on to college or trade school. He cites as an example of a Rhea County high school success, a man who’s now Vice-President of the Sara Lee cake-making company.
both hunched over a table at the Frontier Diner. Their faces are inexpressive, the eyes watchful, as if some other being lurks inside, hidden and suspicious. To try and warm them up, I ask some general questions about Dayton kids. Do most of them want to get out of Dayton when they leave high school? No, he tells me, most of them want to go work at La-Z-Boy. It’s pretty good money. About 30 per cent of them go on to college or trade school. He cites as an example of a Rhea County high school success, a man who’s now Vice-President of the Sara Lee cake-making company.
Joe, who is a Baptist, went to Rhea County High himself and has now been teaching there for sixteen years. He mainly teaches regular science classes but he has also developed one class called ‘Ideas and Issues in Science,’ based on a book he wrote. He had to get special permission from the state of Tennessee to teach it. In the science classroom, he teaches evolution. ‘As far as teaching creationism in the science class room, no; but in the class that I’ve developed, of course that’s the whole point of it.’
His wife watches me with mistrust from the side, as if she came here to protect him. I ask him what he himself believes and he tells me he ‘chooses’ to believe in creationism. He cites a couple of examples of phenomena which would seem to suggest a younger earth. One has to do with how the earth’s magnetic field ‘can’t flip in two thousand, four thousand years,’ but a creationist working out west was working in some lava and his ‘magnetic compass flipped as he went through the layers.’
Then there’s delta filling. Given how much sediment comes out of the mouth of the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico would have filled up by now if the world was much older than ten thousand years old. Hmm …
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