“Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.”
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
Promises of Peace
2001 – June
Darrin Youngblood was delighted to hear from Dave. Their brief visit at the Republican Convention the year before had bumped them back into occasional e-mail contact, exchanging articles and jokes, but neither had followed up with a phone call until Dave called Darrin at his place in Sabastapol, near Santa Rosa. Darrin was in the throes of working over the new business plan for Revolving Rocketry, the nominally dead company that had for a brief moment actually hoped to put a privately funded low orbit reentry vehicle in space. Several of the folks who had helped to build the initial vehicle, which had worked, rising several dozen feet off the ground before settling back to the thunderous applause of thousands of space devotees, were still working and living in the god-forsaken town of Mojave, hoping to resurrect the effort. This was their life’s dream and they were not going to give up easily.
But meanwhile, while they raised the 100 million deemed necessary to continue, they had other interests.
Darrin had gone on to join the group that, while still determined to make it into orbit, had shifted gears a touch. Since for now they were stuck on this god-forsaken ball of dirt they better make sure it would still be supporting human life when their grandchildren were born. This turn had surprised Dave, who knew from experience that Libertarians, the most intelligent and intellectually innovative end of the Republican Party, were inclined to be from the Earth First – We’ll pave the other planets later persuasion. They had been at Moundville, anyway.
Darrin had to explain in more depth what had happened. Then the outlines of this new direction started to make sense to Dave. These savvy technophiles had simply reapplied their views of individualism and turned Green with a market attitude; a trust but check viewpoint they hoped would help them avoid the problems that had bogged down the original Greens. After Darrin explained the issues it made perfect sense.
Living the principles of individualism means returning to the roots of the founding documents and understanding those principles as they apply to the 21st century, Darrin had told him. But the social model those Founders had known was based on very small towns for the most part. Their ways had depended on the misunderstood influences of knowing your neighbor well enough to identify his nasty ways. This underscoring of social governance, very present in America’s original context, broke down in the secrecy made possible in the anonymity of large towns and cities.
Knowing this, an edge group of the present younger generation of the Movement had shifted direction, identifying ways to keep control at the individual level. Darrin used the example of energy in California. He also knew that it was the uncoupling of profit from accountability that had given Californians such a different outcome than experienced by the residents of Pennsylvania.
Dave was well aware of the impact privatizing had had on the supply of energy; it had been bad, driving California towards bankruptcy. But he had not known that it was possible, using Green solutions, to disengage from the very idea of collectivizing the generation of energy. According to Darrin, few of their members actually used energy they did not generate themselves. Darrin got out a set of plans, even though they were on the phone, and started waxing on about the efficiencies of decollectivizing. He told Dave that if he could see his electric meter he would be astonished that it did not spin around like the pointer on a scale holding the 300 pound man. He had the meter because he and others actually planned to sell energy back to what he called “The Grid” at some point in the future. Darrin went on to detail an astonishing number of applications in every area of human life.
Most of these folks were now part of an incipient intentional community, living and working and planning up here in the Santa Rosa area. They intended to pick the members of their larger community so that they could be assured they could lower their transaction costs by correctly trusting those who were included.
Darrin went on to tell Dave, non-stop, about the community, its exciting innovations, and the car he was going to pick up that burned waste oil for fuel. The guy who built them was the engineer, a graduate of Cal Tech, who had designed and built the engine for Revolving Rocketry. A pause ensued. Dave suddenly realized he was supposed react, exclaiming in astonishment and delight. He did. In fact, Dave was amazed to hear that this had been accomplished. It just seemed kind of removed from space flight to his uninformed mind.
Discovering that Dave was actually in the area, Darrin asked him to come over and meet him. Then together, this being a Saturday, he could take him to see the genius who had built first the rocket engine and then the car engine. Dave agreed.
The set up was not what Dave had expected. But then he had long since learned that the Libertarian types, often brilliant in nearly every imaginable way, were disinclined to act very conventionally. Frequently they could not tell you what was conventional and this made it difficult for them to even simulate the behavior.
The shop where Brenden Banks installed his very much-altered engines in the very conventional chassis was next to flowing fields of berries, presently being harvested by hand. Dave, six feet four himself, found himself looking up into the face of Brenden Banks, who seeing them had stopped work, walked towards them from the field, wiping his hands on his overalls. Smiling he stuck out a huge paw, stained with juice. His eyes were bright blue, intelligent, and penetrating. Brenden then introduced his partner, Star. Star was also blond with beautiful eyes and features but a figure of what his Gramps would have called the well-fleshed variety. She worked as a reporter for a local paper and her hobby was belly dancing. She served up freshly baked pastries with the coffee. Their thin crust dissolved on his tongue almost before he could finish savoring the slight anise undertone. Star also turned a portion of their crop into a liquor, and she told them she was planning to market it on line.
Sitting around having freshly brewed coffee outside near the goat pen, the racks of machining tools visible inside the door of the workshop, they talked about world politics, Moundville, and philosophy. Brenden gave credit to a series of books he said had opened his eyes to the problematical relationship between the actions we choose and what outcomes we are really looking for. Evidently, making that transition had been difficult for him because he was raised by Objectivists.
Later, Dave wondered if this explained the ominous absence of intelligent young people, especially women, in the ranks of Republicanism. If the innovators had left, as he had learned from studying the dynamics of past movements, and these were the second generation of the movement that had started with Barry Goldwater, then what was going to happen to Republicanism even if it could be rescued from the plague of the NeoCons? Brenden was raised by Objectivists, that being the philosophy of Ayn Rand that had underscored the Goldwater Revolution in the 60s. Star’s mother had been a Libertarian. She claimed her mother was also her father. Dave found that confusing and so decided not to inquire further.
Even before he left the berry fields and the detailed explanation of the innards of the car that Brenden had delivered in a voice booming with enthusiasm behind him, Dave realized that he needed to rethink and recalibrate some of his assumptions. Smiling wanly, he listened as Darrin continued to enthuse over the possibilities of using waste oil to power cars and generators, living within a sustainable environment, and reunderstanding individualism. Dave did not need to ask for recommendations on books. Darrin handed him a list with the zeal of a convert and suggested he take their test on suitability for their intentional community. Dave took the questionnaire. Initially he had been skeptical and he was not sure he would want to join, but he was attracted to the clear idealism of their ideas, especially since they shared so many of those ideals with Gramps, astonishingly enough. Robert Heinlein was on the list of books.
His next meeting was not nearly as appetizing. He had arranged a face-to-face meeting with the private investigator he had hired to look into the death of George Weston.
Pulling into the small café in Walnut Creek where he had arranged to meet Diamond Tanner the next day, Dave wondered again about George and those last days of his life. Dolly had called to ask if he had found anything further. He hoped to have news for her soon.
What is a man named Diamond going to look like? Dave had been a little worried about recognizing the face behind the gruffly drawn out voice he knew from the phone, but as soon as he walked in he knew him. Diamond was reading the Canal Street Journal with a look of determination and wearing the biggest diamond ring Dave had ever seen on anyone.
Time had pouched Diamond’s face, pulling the flesh down so that he looked remarkably like a mastiff. His eyes were half closed except when he raised his eyebrows, raising the flesh enough so that at least more of the eyes became visible. His eyes were brownish grey.
Dave slid into the seat on the other side of the booth, taking just a moment to assess the man. Then he realized that Diamond was doing the same to him. Smiling wryly he stuck out his hand.
“Dave Elder, good to meet you. How is the investigation coming along?”
Diamond grabbed his hand, as if he had not expected this courtesy, rising a little from the seat.
“I have a report for you. It is not complete and it may mean more to you than it does to me.” Diamond slid a folder out of his briefcase, before invisible on the seat beside him, and opened it.
“The subject, George Weston, spent the nights of January 4th and 5th in the RV space next to the Elks Lodge in Fallon, Nevada. He sat in the bar some, groused a bit that they did not have his brand. The members remember him because he put a fifty-dollar donation in the kitty for the two-night stay. He rolled out of there in the early morning on the 5th, saying he was on his way west to California; had a meeting or something at a place in Sacramento. The members I.D.ed his photo, positive.” Diamond paused, looking up at Dave. He looked down again.
“His rig was pretty noticeable. A parking attendant saw his rig parked in a casino lot in Reno at around noon the next day. He was parked across two spaces in the back. The attendant knocked on the door and he hollered out the window that he was just leaving. Or someone hollered. I used the recording of his voice you provided to play to the attendant and he could not say that it was the same man. He did not actually see him. I did a thorough search of the casinos, looking for someone who could ID him and no one did. So there is no proof he was actually driving the rig by that point.”
Diamond looked down again and continued.
“He filled up his gas tank, or someone did, at an automated place about five miles from where the rig as found the next day. That transaction took place at 10:30PM, and the rig must have been nearly empty to have taken this much fuel.”
He slid the Xeroxed copy of a receipt across the table. Dave glanced at it.
“This is the full record of fuel bought from the time he left Texas. Receipts were in his trip notebook.”
Dave glanced at the receipts, recognizing George’s crabbed handwriting.
“The toxicology report, acquired covertly from my sources in the police department there, indicated under greater scrutiny that the specific drugs in his system were not prescription but acquired from an illicit off shore source. This source could have been located nearly anywhere but a cache of the same drugs, same exact chemical signature, turned up a few months ago in Washington D.C. They were taken off a mule also carrying a supply of cocaine coming in from Eastern Europe. Here are the specifics on that arrest.”
Another paper slid across the table.
“The mule is still in prison. I could not find the other end of the transaction, although the flight the mule was on originated in Munich. Here is a mug shot of the mule.”
Diamond slid a photo of a man in his early twenties across the surface. Dave looked at him. His arrest record was on the bottom part of the sheet and it seemed the ‘mule’ Jorge Estopalio, had been in this line of business for a good long time, probably since he was in his teens.
Diamond sat back, looking at Dave expectantly.
Dave opened his wallet and handed Diamond a check. “Keep looking.”
Diamond was reading the Journal again when Dave glanced back from the door.
1997 - North Carolina
Coop blew them out of the water. The year before he had written his first habeas corpus writ to extract himself from the wrongful jail time the judge in the case had arranged in response to his barrage of well written pro se briefs refuting the perjurous assaults of his estranged wife, Trudi, and her new live in lover. The issue was always custody, visitation and support for his daughter, Beatrice, or Bead. The issue was not the money. He always paid, on time or in advance; he had been Bead's primary caretaker since she was born, taking over the nightly feedings when Trudi found them too taxing before Bead was even two weeks old. When Bead visited her mommy her diapers remained unchanged, and diaper rash became a real problem. Trudi’s addictions to alcohol and various drugs took center front in her attention; motherhood was a simple means for acquiring money.
But the State, Coop had learned, made more money from mining Federal and State sources when support was not paid, or at least not acknowledged. So they would just forget to count payments.
As always his arguments in front of the court left the face of the judge red with anger and confusion, now accompanied by a growing touch of fear. Coop's body had a compact strength and energy that translated into flowing, decisive movement. When he spoke, his words cut to the point like the glass blades Eskimos use to cut through the bones and blubber of whales. Women’s eyes followed him, drawn by the strength he exuded.
When he had started his campaign against corruption in the court system, just four years before, he hadn't known much about the law; since then he had studied long into the nights while the blue grey wisps of smoke curled up past his head from the hot ember of his cigarette. He had started smoking when he was fourteen and living in Germany with his mother and stepfather on the Army Base near Stuttgart. He had been a boy-child on the edge of life, testing all of the limits. He had bought ration cards, trading the cigarettes, liquor, and coffee off base to German civilians for growing rolls of money. It had been illegal, of course, but pretty much ignored by the authorities.
Coop, still Jack then, was young but he had a reputation for being mean. He took no shit from anyone; never had. This had been brought home to the other kids at school when he had stood up to the school bully, daring him to take a swipe at him. The tall, lanky boy with the straight, dirty blond hair had backed down. Coop was younger and smaller but his attitude was deadly.
Then on the playground soon afterwards, the bully's cousin had stuck a foot out and tripped Coop's little brother, sending him face first into the gravel. Coop had picked up Jamie, then seven and in the first grade, picking the gravel out of his broken lip and soothing his tears before battering the curly haired sneering cousin up the hill and onto his knees. When they had pulled Coop off the boy was crying and shielding his battered face. But the playground supervisors had seen what happened. No one had complained. On an Army Base these things were understood.
He had been a rough kid in some ways. But he was also someone who was addicted to learning. He had been the one who persuaded the administration to set up a special curriculum for self-monitored lessons. Other students had taken advantage of the opportunities he created, traveling throughout Europe to study the depth of history offered from Italy to France. Coop aced every course. He had also begun taking courses at the high school while still in junior high. That is where he had met his first girl friend, Megan. She was two years older but they shared interests in rock climbing and nature. They had met when Coop was completing a sale of illicit cigarettes to the bus driver.
The first time they made love was on the baseball field, exploring each other under the glowing sphere of a billion lights. Coop never forgot how her skin felt under his fingers or the sweet taste of her lips on his. It ended when her parents caught them in bed together. He made it out the window just in time. They kept in touch until she returned with her family to Maine. Her skin stayed with him on nights that glowed with stars.
That was the same year he took the three weeks of survival training, learning to rappel and walk across structures suspended 45 feet up in the trees. A lot of teamwork was involved and learning to trust. It was a vivid experience, teaching on many levels. His team skied cross country, spending nights in the tiny huts tucked into the hill sides; cooking on the wood stoves around which the small cabins were built. The smell of burning wood permeated the structure and their clothing, staying with them into the cold, snow bound world of the next day.
It was because of Coop's bad behavior that Coop's interests took a direction that was to become a continuing theme throughout his life. He had landed in detention after causing a not very small explosion in chemistry class. Instead of letting him read, the teacher demanded he participate in a discussion on the Bible that spiraled into the question of who had created the Creator. Coop's take on this issue was not in accordance with the instructor's. After many heated debates, Coop found himself assigned a twenty page paper on just this question.
At first annoyed, Coop turned it into an opportunity to explore the libraries of abbeys, convents, seminaries and churches all over Europe.
One in particular had impressed him. The medium sized church was built with the nave extending out on each side, forming the shape of a cross. The church interior was ancient cedar, carved to represent the living, growing beauties of the world. The font was also wood, but a hard wood that was silk to the touch and carved with a riot of vines and leaves and flowers climbing up its sides to touch the graceful fluted edge. Coop had seen the shape of this church before, but he had not seen the books in this library anywhere else. He was not allowed to touch, but the monk in charge drew on gloves and opened the pages so he could read the words. This was the first time Coop read the Secret Gospel of Thomas. He could smell the ancient scent rising from the pages as he bent down to photograph them.
When the deadline approached, he asked the teacher for an extension, explaining the depth and breadth of the search which now included several other lines of research. The astonished man agreed. The final document was 128 pages of text with 30 pages of index and references. Coop had learned a lot about the history of theology and about the people who had lived it from 300 A.D. until present day. Researching and writing the paper raised questions in his mind it would take a life time to answer.
Then, in his senior year, the family returned to the United States. Bored with school in the US, Coop got his GED and began work as a mechanic.
Soon after his arrest for domestic violence, Coop started reading books from the local library finding that a lot of what he needed was on the Internet and easily available. His experience in Europe with the development of thought in theology had led him to a life long interest in the founding principles of freedom. Theology in Europe and Britain had eventually placed the issue of the human soul and the soul’s direct relationship with the Creator in the minds of the men who had formulated the theories of individual liberty on which America was founded. He had studied the works of Hobbs, Locke, Paine and Jefferson between bouts of excess in his early 20s. There had been more excess in his life than he liked to remember now.
He bought the law books anyway. He liked the weight and feel of books sliding through his hands and he liked the smell of the pages. Now, he indulged his taste for old texts, seeking out an original Black’s Law Dictionary, overlooked in a second hand store. Most attorneys did not have the quality of law library that Coop had assembled in his doublewide trailer.
It had not taken long before others were coming to him with haunting fear in their eyes to learn what he knew. He taught them and charged nothing. That was part of the plan that he had formulated in the aftermath of that long night on his knees. Things were going to change and he was the motive force that would make it happen.
You can accomplish a lot if you don't know how to take no for an answer.
Coop was leaving the court, walking away from the judge without a backward glance, when a woman confronted him. That she was upset was obvious, but that did not detract from the smooth glow of beauty that made her so arresting. The second thing he noticed was her eye lashes, which were long and thick, edging huge eyes the color of cobalt. Her face was heart shaped with high cheekbones. Glossy blond tresses flowed down over her shoulders. She wore her clothes tight so that they showed off contours that were well worth noticing. She did not need make-up and wore little.
"Coop Steigler?" Her voice held the cadence of rural North Carolina.
Coop nodded slowly, shifting slightly. Glancing behind her he noticed a man, looking embarrassed and uneasy.
"Mam?" Coop nodded again, putting a touch of inquiry into his voice. "That would be me."
Her name was Reba Monroe and her story was a lot like his own. They ended up talking, first there in the hallway outside the courtroom and then in the coffee shop around the corner. She drank iced tea, thick with sugar. Coop sipped coffee and her husband, the embarrassed figure in the background, had ginger ale.
It was a story Coop had heard all too often in the last four years. Reba had been married to another man, older than herself. He had promised a lot to get her when she was twenty and he was thirty-two, but after they married he had never been satisfied with the way she was. He wanted her to dress differently, less sexy he said. He wanted her to have dinner on the table precisely at 5:30, and he wanted her to drop out of school, where she was going part time while working. That had not been the deal. Reba had ambitions and they were not limited to the care and feeding of a used car salesman living outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Reba had a voice like an angel that put tears in your eyes and a sinking sensation in your gut. She wanted to sing, and she wanted to do that where she could be heard. She had started out singing when she was fourteen at church and moved on from there to wherever she could get an audience. She had moved on to small clubs; picking up gigs wherever they offered.
When they had married, she had already signed a record deal and arranged to go to Nashville. He had told her he would help her achieve her dreams; along with the singing she was studying to be a nurse; that was nearly finished when they married. Then, even before they were back from the honeymoon everything changed. He started making fun of her ambitions, complaining when she was working or at school, and especially when she had a gig. He would always be there, watching from the front table, but he never looked happy and he insisted on handling her contracts and all of the money. He let her finish her nursing training and then that was it for outside work.
Pretty quick she had gotten pregnant and then he had insisted she stop everything; even quit her first nursing job. Three babies later she left, tired of the continual abuse that had begun while she was still pregnant with the first baby.
She had gotten a job as the receptionist in the office of a podiatrist in the small town outside of Charlotte where she found an apartment. It was small--she slept in the living room and the kids shared the tiny closet sized bedroom. But pretty quick she had married the podiatrist, Dr. Chester Winthrop, who was sitting here looking uncomfortable and worried. He nodded every so often in agreement, looking at his wife, still amazed she had married him. The couple had had three more kids. Things would have been all right but the first husband, who shared custody of the first three kids, had waged a war of revenge that had come close to destroying them financially. His weapons had been the filing of false reports of abuse and the lactose intolerance of his three children.
The kids had been diagnosed as lactose intolerant, something they had inherited from their father, when they were still babies. Reba had learned to cook for them without milk or its byproducts. That had been tough, but she got used to it, and used to keeping them away from many of the things they loved, like ice cream. At home they got the no lactose variety. But when the kids visited the father he made sure he packed them full of ice cream just before returning them. He then went into court and claimed their mother had Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy and was using their resulting serial illnesses to get emotional visibility for herself. On that basis he got the Department of Social Services to remove all of the kids and give him custody of his three. Then he went after her and her husband for support. The other three younger kids were now in foster care and Reba and her husband were terrified and desperate.
The phenomenon of Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy, a condition so rare that it occurred in only a handful of cases in a generation, had become a tool of destruction just like domestic violence had been in his own case. This nearly nonexistent ‘condition’ was being used by unscrupulous social workers, psychologists, parents and the courts to justify assaults on mothers and fathers. It was not the only tool, but it and Parental Alienation Syndrome were two of such tools that allowed sloppy and corrupt courts to justify outrageous verdicts. Coop had come across other cases in his exhaustive reading. This was the first use of the invented phenomenon he had heard of here in Charlotte. The State had held a briefing on the syndrome, passing out a 22-page paper detailing how to find it earlier that year. Suddenly, a disease no one had heard of assumed epidemic proportions in North Carolina. No one bothered to inform the Disease Center in Atlanta, however.
All of the ways people found to abuse and steal fascinated Coop. All of them were pretty much the same. To make them work you needed stupid, credulous, unscrupulous and corrupt local authorities. Munchausen's was the newest handy tool, but it was only one more in an ever growing list.
In this case the father was the bad guy. He had been clever, and he had used the same allies that Coop had just bested in court. Coop smiled the hard little smile that both his friends and enemies knew so well.
Sitting back, Coop scratched his ear then put his forearms down on the table. This was going to be fun.
Coop joined Reba's case under rules 17 - 23, allowing him to argue the issues as a party to the suit. His own case, just heard, had been fought over many of the same grounds and with the same judge and psychologist. Coop had gotten the first psychological study on himself thrown out by challenging its factual content. He had carried a small recorder into the sessions and played them back for the court, demonstrating the untruthfulness of the psychologist.
Over and over he had hammered the judge; the law was not open to interpretation at the whim of any judge. It stood on its own, word for word.
Reba soon learned that Coop did not expect to go in and win the case for her with no further effort on her part. He demanded that she crack the books he loaned her, reading through the Rules of Civil Procedure for both the State of North Carolina and the Federal Courts and the statues and rules that would be at issue in the case.
The first time Reba drove over to Coop's doublewide she was nervous. The echoing, empty rooms her children had occupied depressed her. She had found herself sitting on their beds, tidying their toys, pretending they were only away at school, listening for the slam of the door and the voices that would signal their return. Coop was the man who could help her. What would he want in exchange?
When she knocked at the metal door she heard his abrupt response, telling her to come on in.
The house she entered was cluttered with piles of papers and books. A line of computers sat under a long table with a monitor and keyboard. Coop was sitting at the makeshift desk leafing through a pile of papers. Glancing up he smiled.
"Coffee's over there in the kitchen, if you want. Or there is iced tea." He looked back down to the papers. Reba poured herself a cup, adding sugar. She spilled a little on the counter and nervously wiped it up.
"Here. Look." Coop loomed over her. "This is the motion we will be presenting to the court……"
The next three hours left Reba raw with exhaustion. It had been only three minutes before she had asked Coop to stop talking so she could get a note pad and pen. Later that night she found herself transcribing notes and returning over and over to the law dictionary Coop had told her to buy for herself. He showed her how to use the Internet to pull up the essential codes and statutes. Two weeks later he had given her a reconditioned computer with some special internal features for security.
There had been no hint of sexual interest. Reba had been worried when she walked in. Now she was just a little hurt. While she had not wanted him to try anything, it was insulting that he hadn't even seemed interested. Women, especially beautiful women, are not usually treated like that by straight men.
Over the next weeks Reba learned that the court, along with the Department of Social Services, had built an assembly line to separate parents from their children, their money, and from the dispassionate process of justice. This was what Coop aimed to change. In this case he succeeded. The kids were returned to their parents right in court, much against the wishes of the judge.
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