Drowning of Stephan Jones
Read Drowning of Stephan Jones Online
Authors: Bette Greene
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
by Bette Greene
CONTENTS
Author’s Affidavit
The murder of the book “The Drowning of Stephan Jones”
H
OW COULD IT BE
even remotely possible that a book based on the true story of the drowning of a man would become one of the American Library Association’s Top 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000? The outrage and threats of violence directed against both me and my novel-to-be,
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
, began more than a year before publication. Actually, they began even before the writing was completed, even as I was still actively involved in my research.
It was the summer of 1989 and I could not have been happier as I drove into the multi-acre parking lot of this large and important seat of religious activity. The employees were leaving their squat office building complex in droves, and so my timing was perfect.
That’s what this important man’s secretary had twice impressed upon me: “My boss will talk to you as soon as the workers go home. So come after 5:30 PM and he’ll be able to give you some quality time.”
I walked into his large office decorated with haphazardly arranged pictures of Huey Long and Jesus on the cross. The man smiled as he stood up from his oversized desk and threw an outstretched but pudgy hand in my direction.
“I’m always happy to be of service to those in the service of the Lord. So, young lady, how can I help you spread the good news? That the second coming is now at hand!”
Right off, I was confused by his words. Did he think I was some evangelist? Thinking back, I remembered that this appointment was set up between me and a soft-voiced woman, his secretary, Maxine or Maria or maybe it was Mildred.
Maxine or Mildred or one of those M names must have surely have checked me out and found out who I was prior to scheduling this interview. Just a glance at my bio and she would have known that I didn’t gain my reputation from writing paid political tracts or, for that matter, paid religious tracts. Any review of my books would have quickly informed her what the critics have long been saying: I write books that ring out with truth and with no holds barred.
“Sir-er,” I said, somehow allowing that word to slide into two syllables. Why did I do that? Was I trying to prove to him how respectful and harmless I was? Maybe I was hoping against hope that the heightened level of respect I was exhibiting would allow me entrance into his mind, help me understand how what happened could have actually happened. But how could I make this man understand that I was not there to write advertisements either for or against religion?
I smiled, although I wasn’t certain that it would pass for a sincere smile. “Sir-er,” I said again. “The reason that I asked for this interview today was to gain your insights into this tragedy. I, along with much of the civilized world, like the United Press journalists, can’t make sense of it. Not of a crime like this. How three young men ... three of your most devoted followers—”
Suddenly his eyes were switched to full throttle. It was as though he was trying to take in something big, and his eyes—his eyes were now stretching. Stretching even beyond their physical limitations.
Then, with a motion so quick and so agile that it could not possibly have been made by a man of his bulk, the mahogany desk that separated us was no longer separating us. What was happening?! The door! The door! Reach the door! My fingers touched the knob just as he twirled me around and slammed me hard against the wall. His hands pressed against my throat, lifting me off the floor. Air. Need air. The heaviness of his hand pressed, pressed against my throat. Need air ... desperately need air. My daughter’s face. I’m going to die. Darkness. The darkness grew steadily deeper.
A voice sliced through the blackness: “You will not write that book!”
He banged my head against the wall. Again and again. Then, his voice throbbing with perspiration and purpose, “It wouldn’t be healthy for you to ever write that book.”
With equal parts confusion and desperation, I was able to choke out the word, “No ...”
I saw his face searching mine. That’s when I understood that I had to give him something. Something, true or false, it didn’t matter. Only it had to be so overwhelmingly big that he would believe me. Only then would he stop and let me go. “I swear to God. I swear to God on the cross of my savior, Jesus Christ, that I’ll never write that book!”
That night, and for all the subsequent days and nights that I lived and continued writing and researching in that small community, I slept (when I could sleep) with my clothes on. Only when slivers of daylight edged their way into the windows of my tiny side-of-the-road motel room would I finally take my shower, put on fresh clothes, and then with more fear than I would like to admit, I’d face my day.
By the time
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
was published, I was back home in Brookline, Massachusetts and the lingering fears from that attack and threat of violence had receded. I hadn’t forgotten—maybe I would never forget—but I was, at least, back to sleeping through the night ... and in a nightgown!
Oh, yes, I had so much to be thankful for. The reviews for
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
were enthusiastic, and subsidiary rights were being sold even in foreign languages. Teachers and librarians were finding that the book had therapeutic properties, and it was often referred to as
bibliotherapy
. Both teacher and librarian found that there was an increasingly long waiting list to read the book.
And yet, when I was a guest speaker at both the conventions of the American Library Association and the National Council Teachers of English, I learned that there was another drumbeat. Another more sinister drumbeat whispered to me from so many in-the-field professionals.
This time, the teachers and librarians began relating the angry opposition to my novel. The opposers (most of whom were not even parents of students) confronted school boards, complaining angrily about having used their hard-earned tax dollars to buy such “filth.” What some teachers and librarians were now witnessing was a conspiracy meant to silence a voice. Groups of people joining together, plotting together to murder a book.
In New Ipswich, New Hampshire, a teacher was fired when she suggested that a troubled boy might find solace and understanding within the pages of
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
. The book was challenged by school boards throughout the country along both the eastern and western parts of the United States, and the South in particular became a cauldron of anguish and rage.
In Arlington, Texas the citizens voted on whether or not I would be morally acceptable to fulfill a pre-arranged speaking engagement. Leading this anti-Bette Greene posse of moral superiority was a local man who admitted to fathering at least ten children, none of whom he ever had any relationship with. Ditto their various mothers whose names he had trouble recalling. Even so, the naysayers carried the day and so I had to stay out of Arlington, Texas so that the children and their morals would stay pure.
And at Searcy, Arkansas’s Baptist institution, Harding University, they pulled my scheduled talk at the very last moment, explaining to the national press that it was just some silly misunderstanding and claiming, “Greene had never been formally invited.” Finally when they were pressed and pressed hard by the press, they explained that, “If there was a problem philosophically, that could very well be the reason she wasn’t chosen.” When a reporter asked if their previous speaker, the number one Communist in the world, Mikhail Gorbachev, held views more in sync with Harding University than Bette Greene, there was no answer forthcoming from Harding University.
Ultimately
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
was made unavailable. So how should this be interpreted? This much is true—and it is true historically and true today: oppression always begins with the mind and ends with the body.
The good news is that those armies of unlit minds will not have the last word, as the last word is written by those who read
The Drowning of Stephan Jones
. And now that the book that so many have waited to read is back on the e-platform, it is these enlightened minds that will decide its fate. So cup your ear to the wind and listen, and you too may be able to hear it. Hear the rattling and the roaring of all those armies of oppression in full retreat.
This is my affidavit.
Chapter 1
C
ARLA
W
AYLAND HAD
every intention of entering Harris’s Handy Hardware Store just as though she were the world’s greatest actress triumphantly striding across the spotlit stage to embrace her Oscar. But by the time she reached Jerry’s TV Sales and Service two doors west of the hardware store, her heart was rat-atat-tatting against the walls of her chest. To distract herself from what felt like a fatal case of nervousness, she stopped and stared at the enormous fifty-two inch color TV in Jerry’s window.
Although the volume was turned low, she was startled by the nearly life-sized images of men and women marching and waving cardboard signs, pink triangles on a solid black background. In front of the state capitol in Little Rock, their briskly waving banners demanded: GIVE US OUR RIGHTS! and PASS GAY RIGHTS Now!
Suddenly the camera panned to an opposing group of angry people, many of whom looked as though their faces had been left to harden in cement. Several hundred strong they marched waving the twin banners of the Moral Majority and the Christian Decency League. In the bone chilling cold, they chanted: “Hay-hay! HI-HO ... All the queers have got to GO ... Hay-hay! HI-HO ... All the queers have got to GO ...”
The camera seemed to fixate on these people who were heckling the gay rights protesters. Carla was struck as much by their hands jabbing into the air as by their granite looks misshapen by hatred. Fists clenched, they screamed “SAVE OUR CHILDREN! STOP THE QUEERS! SAVE OUR CHILDREN! STOP THE QUEERS! ...
Although some of the placards looked professionally printed, the largest one carried a message clumsily written with a Magic Marker on a grayish-white sheet:
THE SILENT MAJORITY SAYS NO!
NO RIGHTS BUT DEATH RIGHT
FOR
PORNOGRAPHERS-MOLESTERS-FAGS!!!
Instead of being calmed down, Carla felt agitated. Why, she then wondered, was she getting herself worked up over this? This wasn’t her battle! She certainly wasn’t gay, and she didn’t even know anybody who was. Was it only because she always managed to feel sympathetic for anyone who was being picked on? Particularly people who were picked on because they were different? Being different, boy, could she ever understand that!
That news segment ended, and an anchorwoman on the nightly news began asking the handsome young governor of Arkansas for his comments on whether or not he would run for the office of president of the United States. Carla turned from the screen and quickly began walking again toward Harris’s. She reminded herself that she was not about to become unstrung over some injustice happening over in the state capitol. Lord knows, there was injustice aplenty in her own little northwest corner of Arkansas, right in good ol’ Rachetville, U.S.A.
Besides, she was about to do something for
herself,
something that would stop the hurt of loving someone who didn’t know that she existed. Oh, sure—he knew her name and face all right, he probably always had, but he didn’t
know
her, not a bit. She was hellbent on making certain that that would soon change!