The Eden Express Read Online Free PDF Page A

Maybe we could get another hearing in a week, maybe not. I couldn’t stick around that long, so we’d just have to wait till the trial, which was set for some time in September.
    All that traveling, all that hassling for nothing, was a royal pain in the ass, but somehow I didn’t mind. This foolishness was telling me I had made a wise decision: to get away from all that shit.
    When I got back to West Branch, Virginia was barely able to say hello. She was rigid, almost holding her breath, one step away from catatonic. I had seen her in this state a few times before and I saw it a few times later, but it wasn’t something you could ever get used to.
    It was like walking in and finding someone crumpled up on the floor. “What is it? What’s wrong? Say something, please.”
    But she couldn’t say anything. She’d just sit like that, maybe nodding or shaking her head slightly. I’d go on frantically, “Is it this? Is it that?” Trying everything till I hit on something that would make her eyes a little brighter, her breath a little deeper. It was like charades. The warmer I got the more she loosened up, until I’d finally said what was on her mind. Then she’d gradually regain her ability to speak and go on as if nothing strange had happened.
    What she wanted this time was to turn around, to head back to Boston or New York, get an apartment, and find a job. In a way I envied her. Turning around didn’t seem like an option for me. If it was for her maybe she should do it. I knew what was back there and it was just too much nothing. There just wasn’t enough hope back there.
In my mind those bridges were burned and I had to keep moving till I found something that would either save me or kill me. I didn’t even care all that much which. I just couldn’t take any more limbo.
     
    BOSTON. My job had been an interesting one. In fact you’d have to say it was unique. How many full-bearded, hair halfway down their backs, B.A. in religion, pacifist chiefs of police do you know? I was chief of a twenty-man detachment of special state police that provided the security for Boston State Hospital.
    How did this come to pass? I had filed an application with my draft board to be considered a conscientious objector. I knew there was a good chance of their refusing my application, but just in case they accepted it, I wanted to have an acceptable alternative-service job going. That way they wouldn’t send me to East Jesus, Nebraska, to empty bed pans and might even give me credit for the time I put in prior to their granting me my status.
    A draft counselor at the Unitarian Service Committee told me about a Dr. Bliss who ran the adolescent unit at Boston State and had hired C.O.s before. I figured teaching English or something to screwed-up kids wouldn’t be a bad way to spend two years and set up an appointment to talk with Dr. Bliss.
    Dr. Bliss is a big man who smokes big cigars and smiles most of the time. It isn’t a nervous smile like so many full-time smilers have, but still it made me wonder what the hell he thought was so funny. Part of what he thought was so funny was C.O.s. He wasn’t a pacifist himself, which I think was the first thing he said to me. His thing about C.O.s was a loving paternalism that flirted with sadism. In his eyes C.O.s were sweet, well-intentioned, upper-middle-class kids who had been overprotected and were in need of a touch of real work and real life, with which he was more than willing to provide them.
    After we had been talking and smiling for fifteen minutes or so he
appeared to have a brainstorm. I say appeared because I’m pretty sure he had it planned from before he even met me, it was so much up his alley. His brainstorm, his prescription for my pacifism, was that I take on the job of reforming and administering the security force of the hospital.
    “That would make you a chief of police.” A still bigger smile.
    “It sounds like the sort of opportunity I’m not likely to be offered