Read Trials of the Monkey Online
Authors: Matthew Chapman
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Retail
Trials of the Monkey (22 page)
And I was jealous.
Here, after all, was a man who dictated what my girlfriend hummed after breakfast, whose bent coins she carried in her purse, a man to whom she believed she owed her happiness, even her life. Faith has a proven physiological effect on the body. It’s
called the placebo effect. Thomas was Denise’s Grand Placebo. He had no ‘powers’—obviously—but he worked for Denise
so long as she had faith in him.
Without asking myself if I had anything better to replace him with, I set out to destroy that faith.
called the placebo effect. Thomas was Denise’s Grand Placebo. He had no ‘powers’—obviously—but he worked for Denise
so long as she had faith in him.
Without asking myself if I had anything better to replace him with, I set out to destroy that faith.
We lived on the second floor of a two-apartment Spanish stucco building on La Peer Drive in the wrong part of Beverly Hills. Anna Bella was less than a year old and we were so broke we had recently taken an art deco lamp belonging to Denise from one antique shop to the next and finally, after considerable humiliation, sold it to help pay an electricity bill. In spite of this I went out one day and bought a four-head video machine. Denise had some tapes of Thomas performing some of his ‘miracles’ and I intended to study them in detail.
The tapes were at once amusing and alarming. Thomas was a funny little man, a simple country type who had some training as a pharmacist and had turned it into alchemy. He had a beard and a bump on his forehead which, so the story went, was caused by his getting struck by lightning. This was the source of his power, along with an encounter with aliens from a planet called Itibi-Ra. I found it all extraordinarily hokey, a lame amalgam of Uri Geller and a bunch of New Age bunco artists. In Denise’s defence, however, there were eminent Brazilian doctors and scientists who were also taken in: you could see them on the tape, open-mouthed. How could Denise know that scientists, trained to deal with nature, which is not intentionally mischievous, are the least capable of exposing human fraud? A magician would have busted him in a second.
It took me about an hour.
Amid a lot of shouting and distraction, I watched as Thomas turned paper into aluminum and made childish patterns appear on its surface. He squeezed perfume out of his fingers. He put a coin in the palm of someone’s hand and asked them to make a fist around it. When they opened their hand, the coin was bent. (Why one never actually saw a coin bending on a table was not explained.) When things were going well, he relished the presence
of the camera. When he was unable to perform some sleight of hand without the camera catching him, he insisted it be turned off. The moment was too ‘sacred.’
of the camera. When he was unable to perform some sleight of hand without the camera catching him, he insisted it be turned off. The moment was too ‘sacred.’
I ran the tapes at normal speed and then more slowly. When I got to the second tape, I caught him.
Denise and Diogo sat in a dark room. Two months had passed since the death of the child. The son of one of Denise’s girlfriends, and Diogo’s best friend, he had died of cancer after a long and appalling fight. Denise, a passionately loyal friend, had come to New York, where the boy and his mother were installed in Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital, and she and Diogo had been there throughout the last weeks. Denise had actually been there at the moment of his death. It had been a gruesome and tragic ordeal.
Here now, or so I had been told, I could see Thomas contacting the dead boy’s spirit. As usual, he yelled a lot. Soon lights started to flash in the room. The first one was almost in Denise and Diogo’s faces, the next couple further away. You could see the vague outline of Thomas moving about and waving his hands.
‘Look, look, look!’ he yelled. ‘He’s talking to you!’
They were bright flashes, like flashlights. I selected one in particular and slowed the tape down, moving the video forward a frame at a time.
Darkness. Darkness. Yelling. More yelling. Flash!
I reversed the video a frame. And there it was.
A clearly identifiable flash unit off a camera.
By its light, you could see Denise and Diogo’s rapt faces. Off to the right, part of Thomas was visible, his arm, the side of his face, yelling, and the hand with the flashlight in it.
I called Denise in to look.
She stared at the frame in shock. It was brilliantly simple. The first flash going off in total darkness, with Denise and Diogo’s pupils dilated, effectively blinded them. The yelling then covered the sound of the flashlight recharging and popping again. The audacity of it was startling. If he was capable of this, what else might he be capable of?
I showed the tape to Diogo, who was then thirteen. He was furious.
A week or two passed. Denise seemed a little depressed. When she spoke to a friend of hers in Brazil, she told in amazement of what I had discovered, and admitted ruefully that she’d been conned. After a few weeks, however, she began to revise herself. Thomas was not a scam artist, after all; he just performed this
one
scam, perhaps a couple of others. It was hard to have these powers, sometimes he couldn’t conjure up the real thing, so he faked it. That’s how it is with gurus. They don’t want to disappoint anyone.
one
scam, perhaps a couple of others. It was hard to have these powers, sometimes he couldn’t conjure up the real thing, so he faked it. That’s how it is with gurus. They don’t want to disappoint anyone.
Such reasoning is irrefutable. If a man claims he’s bred a herd of pigs that can fly, but when you test them they all stay earthbound, you haven’t proved they
cannot
fly, only that they didn’t fly that day. On the other hand, having thrown his entire herd off a cliff and seen them all crash, you might rationally conclude that in
probability
the claim was false. And whatever Denise told me, or even herself, I believe that deep down she now knew her old friend was a charlatan. I thought she’d be outraged at him and grateful to me. Instead, she has never forgiven me. And why should she? I had taken from her something she valued.
cannot
fly, only that they didn’t fly that day. On the other hand, having thrown his entire herd off a cliff and seen them all crash, you might rationally conclude that in
probability
the claim was false. And whatever Denise told me, or even herself, I believe that deep down she now knew her old friend was a charlatan. I thought she’d be outraged at him and grateful to me. Instead, she has never forgiven me. And why should she? I had taken from her something she valued.
As ridiculous and grotesque as it was for Thomas to pretend he was invoking the spirit of a dead child, he at least had the intention of comforting Denise and her son. What I had done, out of a genuine love of truth, certainly, but also out of petulance and jealousy, was to take away that comfort. What I had done benefited no one.
Within a year, I would be facing the death of my mother, and I would have only Denise to comfort me.
Flowers and the Promise of Moonshine
The day arrives for my departure back to Tennessee and, to my great disappointment, the script is still not finished. I pack the computer and kiss my wife goodbye. She and Anna Bella stand outside our apartment building with our little white dog, Gracie, and grin at me and wave. They are amused, you can tell, by my Quixotic journey.
I’m disappointed that I have to take the script with me, but soon I’m on a plane, out of my narrow railroad office into a tubular arrow, sprung from the ground, whistling south. The rubber rips, the body-bag unzips, light surges through the rounded window, and life yawns and stretches and opens her arms.
Next to me on the plane is an irritable woman. She’s in her mid to late forties and well dressed. She is reading what appears to be a self-help book called
Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart.
In front of me is a child. The child keeps throwing himself against the back of the seat and then peeking over the top at me. I eventually snake a hand around the edge of the seat and prod him in the ribs.
Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart.
In front of me is a child. The child keeps throwing himself against the back of the seat and then peeking over the top at me. I eventually snake a hand around the edge of the seat and prod him in the ribs.
The woman next to me seethes as I relentlessly turn the key in the child’s hysteria. She’s a big, blonde voluptuous woman, magnificent in her way, and now she’s throwing her big tanned legs around, one across the other and back again, twisting around on her big arse, and grunting softly each time the child’s head appears over the seat.
She’s going to pieces
and
falling apart.
and
falling apart.
I observe her out of the corner of my eye and make some guesses. Fifteen years ago she was a real beauty and married
some guy with money in Atlanta, maybe in real estate or hotels. The guy dumped her, or even worse, didn’t. Now she’s a confirmed and bitter Republican who plays golf and drinks too much, and right now she’s angry. She’s angry at me, at the passage of time, at the kid, at the turbulence, and at the fact that she’s not in First Class and the seat’s too small. Furthermore, the plane is late taking off and the pilot won’t stop talking, and this is really annoying her. Every time he comes on with his capable, piloty voice, she sighs massively and lunges from side to side on her big cheeks. In this area of her pissed-offness I’m in total accord. When the stewardess arrives to take our orders for food—against the pilot’s continuing description of the geographical features below and exactly how high we are above them and exactly how late we’re going to be—I grumble: ‘Maybe if he’d stop talking and concentrate on his driving we could pick up a little time here.’ And the irritable woman laughs wildly and introduces herself.
some guy with money in Atlanta, maybe in real estate or hotels. The guy dumped her, or even worse, didn’t. Now she’s a confirmed and bitter Republican who plays golf and drinks too much, and right now she’s angry. She’s angry at me, at the passage of time, at the kid, at the turbulence, and at the fact that she’s not in First Class and the seat’s too small. Furthermore, the plane is late taking off and the pilot won’t stop talking, and this is really annoying her. Every time he comes on with his capable, piloty voice, she sighs massively and lunges from side to side on her big cheeks. In this area of her pissed-offness I’m in total accord. When the stewardess arrives to take our orders for food—against the pilot’s continuing description of the geographical features below and exactly how high we are above them and exactly how late we’re going to be—I grumble: ‘Maybe if he’d stop talking and concentrate on his driving we could pick up a little time here.’ And the irritable woman laughs wildly and introduces herself.
This is what I like about travel: it’s such an antidote to your preconceptions. The woman and her husband live in Mexico, where they own a large flower farm. She spends most of her day painting in a big white studio. Their life is a big adventure: big money, big risks. The book is by a Buddhist psychiatrist in New York and when I read it later it’s fascinating and smart. She and her husband have been married for over twenty years, sticking by each other through poverty and wealth, and still adore each other. They have two children who are doing interesting things and from the way she talks about them, amused at their individuality, you can tell she loves them and they love her back. She’s curious, lively, acerbic, and, the more you look at her, the more beautiful she becomes.
We spend the rest of the trip laughing.
When we get off the plane and she and her husband have hugged and kissed and grinned and laughed and patted each other with the delight of teenagers, she asks me if I have time to come smoke a joint with them in the car park before I catch my next plane. I don’t, but thank them. They walk off, she with
her big arm around his shoulder, he looking at her and smiling as they talk.
her big arm around his shoulder, he looking at her and smiling as they talk.
I imagine them waking up in Mexico in the middle of a billion swaying flowers, a light breeze carrying the scent of their crop into their white bedroom, a distant church bell, the husband on his side watching as she rolls toward him with her smile and her big tanned legs. And there was I putting her on a dry, shaved golf course with her bitterness and disappointment.
I’ve decided to fly all the way to Chattanooga and pick up a car there with my British licence. Now, however, it starts to rain and the next plane out is late and getting later and I have a very bad feeling about the whole thing so I decide to rent a car here and try to make the two hundred miles to Dayton before it gets dark.
When I was younger I broke the law without much thought, once seriously, a crime that could have put me away for several years. I figured then that if I ended up in jail I’d have time to write. But middle age in general, and fatherhood in particular, has made both a coward and a hero of me; a hero should it be necessary to protect my daughter, a coward should it result in separation from her. Trucks rear up behind me and slam on their brakes, impatiently waiting to pass. I’m so intent on keeping within the law my eyes are on the speedometer not on the road and once I almost crash into a car ahead. The rain gets heavier. The earth rotates the invisible sun away.
In spite of losing my way and having to cut across country through dark hills, sensed rather than seen, I arrive in Dayton and check into the Best Western. It’s an ugly, sprawling hotel out near Ayola’s, the Mexican restaurant. The woman behind the counter can’t find my name in the reservations book, but it’s not a problem. I ask for the best room in the hotel. It’s available and it’s the bridal suite. The best room in all these rural hotels seems to be the bridal suite.
A monumental light-green plastic Jacuzzi in Grecian style occupies at least a third of the room. It’s right
in,
the bedroom, one
tortured edge, scarred with cigarette burns, almost touches the bed. I decide to go for a drink.
in,
the bedroom, one
tortured edge, scarred with cigarette burns, almost touches the bed. I decide to go for a drink.
The Best Western bar is the only other place apart from Ayola’s where you can get alcohol, beer only, and so I assume it’ll be a festive place, brimming with Dayton’s fun-loving, mirthful set. Maybe there’ll even be some fellow sceptics in the bar, down here to laugh with me at the re-enactment.
As I round the corner of the hotel in the drizzling, damp, enveloping hotness of the night, I encounter a sodden behemoth standing at the rear of his rusting car. He’s in the act of pulling a vast, sweat-stained T-shirt up over his head, revealing a pallid stomach as big as a VW Beetle but covered in matted hair. I nod at him as I go by and enter the bar.
It’s a corridor drenched in a dull, gloomy yellow light. There’s a jukebox at one end. Two or three tables and chairs are crushed up against the wall opposite the long bar. There are five inebriates here, two women and three men. A young pregnant girl stands behind the bar, smoking voraciously. I take a stool down the far end and order a beer. Conversation starts up again. The behemoth enters in a clean shirt and engulfs a bar stool which you feel is his and his alone.
The men are obviously manual labourers, tough and stringy, hands ingrained with dirt. Everyone’s exhausted, surfing on the sugar of alcohol, waiting for the wave to beach them. The barmaid is a pretty, dark-haired girl who can’t be much older than twenty, but this is going to be her second child. She looks up at you with her head lowered as if you might smack her, and her mouth sulks as she talks. Having noticed even more signs about the sheriff race, I ask what the general feeling is about Sneed and she tells me she’s a niece of his, but not close.
‘I’m a
poor
Sneed. I was raised by my mama.’
poor
Sneed. I was raised by my mama.’
Her apparent lack of loyalty to the Sneed family opens a door and the drinkers charge in to give their opinions. They don’t like Sneed at all. He’s too strict on drunk driving.
Oh.
I buy everyone a drink and move up closer to the big man, whom I’ll call Emerson. Emerson’s pear-shaped head reminds me of a medium-sized bag of laundry with some chins added at the bottom. He works up at the La-Z-Boy factory and just came off his shift. It’s getting on for midnight, when the bar closes, and the barflies start to drink faster and faster. Emerson and another man order beers in pairs and down them one after the other with barely a pause for breath. I try to keep up but it’s not possible.
‘How’s the moonshine situation down here?’ I ask, gasping at the gaseous chill of yet another beer coursing down my throat into my stomach.
‘You want some moonshine?’ asks Emerson. He has friendless eyes, a character actor in the play of life, Falstaff without a king, but now there’s a certain comradeship: I bought him a drink, he bought me a drink.
‘Damn straight,’ I say, falling easily into the vernacular.
He says he’ll get me some tomorrow night. ‘I’ll have to go up in the hills and get it, but I’ll do it.’
‘I’ll pay,’ I tell him.
He waves me aside. ‘You jes buy me a drink, we’ll talk about that. Be back here around ten o’clock tomorrow night an’ I’ll take care a ya.’
I stumble back to my room, so drunk and exhausted I can’t even be bothered to take a Jacuzzi. I go to sleep and then wake up an hour later with a dry mouth and a headache. I lie on my back for half an hour, trying to will myself to sleep, but as usual it doesn’t work. I feel apprehensive about something but I don’t know what.
I turn the light on. Maybe I’m anxious because the subject of my book, the trial, has faded, subsumed by the more clamorous demands of the movie business. I’ve brought the trial transcript with me. I take it out of my bag and locate a postcard of the Magnolia House which projects out of the pages about halfway through. When I stopped reading, Judge Raulston had adjourned
early on Wednesday afternoon to give both sides time to prepare their arguments on the admissibility of Darrow’s vitally important expert witnesses.
early on Wednesday afternoon to give both sides time to prepare their arguments on the admissibility of Darrow’s vitally important expert witnesses.
On Thursday morning, July 16, 1925, the opening prayer was typically biased and threatening. ‘We thank Thee for Thy blessings upon us all, and for Thy watch, care and protection over us; we pray Thy blessings upon the deliberations of this court, to the end that Thy Word may be vindicated, and that Thy truth may be spread in the earth.’
William Jennings Bryan Jr. stood up and made the argument for the prosecution. From all accounts it was a lacklustre performance given in a voice so low (and so in contrast with papa’s) that there were frequent requests for more volume. In essence, he argued that expert testimony was not required in this case because the matter was simple. The defence admitted Scopes had taught evolution, which was against the law, so what was the purpose of expanding the matter? Furthermore, he claimed, expert testimony in this case was in fact only expert
opinion
, which, unlike other testimony, was not subject either to contradiction by fact or to the rules of perjury.
opinion
, which, unlike other testimony, was not subject either to contradiction by fact or to the rules of perjury.
There was a short adjournment and then the judge came back to give the floor to the defence. Well, to give it to them with a caution. ‘We have some lawyers in the case who at times indulge in a lot of wit … The floor of the courthouse building is so heavily burdened with weight … and the least vibration might cause something to happen and applause might start trouble.’
In mock humility, Hays responded that he was embarrassed by the judge’s suggestion that his argument would cause ‘such thunderous applause that the building might come down.’ He then went on to argue that to not allow evidence on evolution was to hear only one half of the case, the prosecution’s. Bryan had stated to the press that this was to be a ‘duel to the death’ between evolution and revealed religion. If that was so, then under simple rules of fairness the defence should be allowed to ‘reveal’ their side.
Hicks reiterated Bryan Jr.’s argument and Ben McKenzie followed.
McKenzie, who later became a good friend of Darrow’s, was an amusing and likeable old Southern gentleman, and opened his argument as follows:
McKenzie, who later became a good friend of Darrow’s, was an amusing and likeable old Southern gentleman, and opened his argument as follows:
‘I want to say this. Since the beginning of this lawsuit and since I began to meet these distinguished gentlemen, I have begun to love them, every one, and it is a very easy task. In fact, it was a case when I met Colonel Darrow, a case of love at first sight. These other gentlemen come right on, but you know they wriggled around so rapidly that I could not get my love turned loose on them until I got a chance …’
Then he began to defend the Christian version of creation against that of science, stating confidently what the defence witnesses would say if they were allowed to testify. Eventually, Hays asked him how he could possibly know what they’d say without first hearing them. McKenzie responded rather irrelevantly by asking Hays if he believed the story of divine creation.
Hays replied, ‘That is none of your business.’
Judge Raulston asked him to apologise to McKenzie for his rudeness.
‘Instead of those words, I will say I think it doesn’t concern General McKenzie.’
‘And I will say to you,’ said McKenzie, ‘that I have as little concern as to where you emanated from or where you are going to as any man I ever met.’
‘Now, may I ask for an apology, your honor?’
‘Yes, sir.’
McKenzie apologised. ‘I did not mean to give offense. I beg your pardon.’
‘It is like old sweethearts made up,’ said Hays, mocking the old man’s protestations of love earlier in the day.
Court was adjourned until the afternoon.
After lunch, the judge once again warned of the dangers of applause and the possibility of it bringing down the building.
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