Postmortem

Postmortem

I watch with horror the network satellite feed on the mounting holocaust. It's November 16th, 2019 and the SKYCAM captures the chaotic panoramic beauty of the Bronx ablaze. Without commentary the images record the running battle between the tribes: Roman Catholic Puerto Ricans and Santeria Haitians. A coalition of white Baptists and Methodists control fortress Dallas. Utah bleeds into the Great Salt Lake. Evil is compelling to watch.

As far as I can tell the first action occurred in the border cities of El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico in the summer of 1989. Four American students disappeared after a night of revelry only to reappear in shallow graves on a ranch near Matamoros. Their skulls had been carved open and their brains removed. Rumors passed through the peasantry of ritual cultic practices, some more far fetched than others. Mexican authorities captured a group of suspects, eight Mexican nationals (all male), and one young American woman from El Paso (an honors student from the local college). The young woman was said to exercise a demonic influence over the young men.

The next incident was reported in Ohio in December of 1989. Five members of the same family (father, mother, and three children) were discovered in a common grave in northeast Ohio. Evidence led police to the conclusion that they had been executed. News reports suggested the motivation for the murders had been a disagreement over religious matters. The murdered family had recently moved from Kansas and settled on the Ohio farm with four other families. Only the dead were found in Ohio. Three people, including the group's spiritual leader, were arrested in Nevada in early 1990. After that, the media lost interest and reports ceased.

In April of 1990, authorities in Kentucky discovered the body of a man shot by a 14 year old girl at a campsite where she allegedly had been held captive, raped and sodomized over a period of three weeks. Journals kept by the deceased seemed to verify the young girl's story and shed light on the disappearance of two of her friends, also young women, and also apparently abducted by the deceased. Journal entries spoke of their being sexually abused, murdered and dismembered. An arm was found floating in a nearby river. An accomplice was identified and arrested in Houston.

That was twenty nine years ago. With the passing of time the reports have come more frequently. Now the atrocities are reported daily. Once I shook my head in dismay. Now I am truly afraid.

Of course, events haven't been limited to individual tragedy. There is some evidence that the massacre in Tienanmen Square marked the beginning of the evil on a broad scope. The populist uprisings in Azerbaijan and Romania certainly were reflective of the age (especially in light of their recent darkness), as were the campaigns of genocide in Kampuchea and Indonesia in late 2014. In South Africa, Croatia/Serbia, Lithuania and Nicaragua the beast ran wild for five years. Hong Kong currently peers into the pit. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq float in bloated carnage and India purges itself with Gandhi-an discipline of Hindus, Seiks, and Muslims, depending on the province. Jerusalem still stands, but Ariel has become an altar hearth.

Japan seemed immune for a while. In 2009, they rearmed to counter balance the threat from the Korean peninsula but maintained order at home. Then in 2017 reports of violence emerged from Tokyo as youth gangs immolated immigrants from Korea and Thailand. Within a year, the passive/obedient Japanese had regained their tribal heritage.

Texas, Arizona and southern California fell into madness by 2016. New Mexico was silent as Anglos fled north. The pueblo Indians retrenched while the Navajo and Hopi moved deeper onto reservation lands and armed themselves. The Dakotas erupted with the Black Hills secession in 2017. The Sioux then claimed the eastern land around Sioux Falls, South Dakota and the Ojibwas raided 2500 square miles of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Mohawk began to self destruct in upper New York and lower Ontario. Boston and New York City dissolved into ethnic bunkers. Commerce ceased between islands of violence and shortages arose. It would be fascinating to watch my theories fall into place were it not so brutal.

Most fascinating is the explosion of nature. Mount Saint Helen's erupted twice in 2015 and Mount Saint Augustine once in 2016. The port of Valdez, Alaska, closed after a second major oil spill dumped 200 million gallons into the sound. Contamination from Rocky Flats evacuated the front range from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. Only the people remained. The Mississippi broke through the levees in Louisiana and reestablished her right of way, destroying numerous towns and villages and setting the gulf awash with the residue of overrun chemical plants.

There seems nothing to restrain things anymore. Locusts have devoured crops through out the Midwest each year since 2015. The Bald Eagles, whose return to the river valley between Iowa and Illinois was much celebrated, have been absent since last year - just disappeared. As did the alligator in Florida.

The National Council of Churches in union with The Association of American Hebrew Congregations (Reform) called for a National Day of Prayer after acts of desecration were committed against churches and synagogues in New York, Los Angeles and Florida in the summer of 2017. Forty two separate houses of worship were despoiled with human blood which shocked people into taking notice. Most of the country complied, or so it seemed. It even seemed to make a difference as we enjoyed relative tranquility for six months.

It's only recently that I've drawn any conclusions about what's happened. Like most people, I had become numb to the media bombardment. After my wife's death of cancer in August of 2016, I began to follow the news reports faithfully. Death seeking death I suppose. I started with contemporary events but grew curious as they seemed to escalate in frequency and intensity. Working out of the public library from back copies of newspapers and magazines, I began to categorize incidents past and present into religious, sexual, and racial classifications. I added a category for natural disasters later. A pattern of conflict soon began to emerge. Most of the individual atrocities were either racially or sexually motivated. Broader group actions were, for the most part, manifestations of either religious or racial hatred. The causes of the atrocities were inevitably irrational, a loosing of deep seated passionate fears and psychological disorders.

Harder to classify were the atrocities committed by the authorities. The "Blood" sweep of 2017, an action designed to eliminate gang activity in Los Angeles, California, (an action that at first would seem to have been racially motivated - were it not for the fact that the authorities in question were mostly black and Hispanic), clarified for me that I was dealing with similar phenomena. If ruling power and privilege were substituted for race the actions made sense.

The natural disasters went unexplained until early in 2018 after the rat invasion of Saint Louis. After an unusually warm winter the city found itself infested with a copious population of diseased rodents. Efforts to poison the creatures proved unsuccessful. Laboratory tests showed an immunity had built up within the rodent population to most commonly used poisons. Toxin levels needed to destroy the rats seriously jeopardized the public health. As did the rats themselves which carried plague. All natural enemies of the rodents were absent from the metropolitan area and the city ground to a halt. Watching the video report aired by CNN I knew what had occurred, how it all tied together.

All restraint has been removed. The civility that governs human existence and the natural laws that keep order no longer apply. Pogo was prophetic.

I don't know how much longer things will last. New Year's Day is six weeks away. The Reverend Henry Anderson, who was my Pastor while I was growing up in Minnesota, once said that things wouldn't end as we imagine. "There will be no bombs dropping from the heavens or armies invading from the east," he had said. "Once God decides he's had enough he'll simply remove his hand and leave us to ourselves. Armageddon is a purely natural event."

I can see the lake from the window in my den. A narrow vista opens through the birch and poplar and drops my gaze on the white beyond. In the summer the view is distracted by foliage, bits of green tugging at your consciousness, but in winter straight lines carry you to the frozen lake and beyond. Across smooth passage lies another shore.

The pistol is toy like, smaller than the BB guns of children. I hold it in my hand. The handle of death is held together by tape, the cylinder moves against its will. The weapon is reluctant. I know that from experience. It will fire only when primed, its hammer cocked against dysfunction. Three deliberate steps must be taken: the bullet aligned, the hammer cocked and the trigger pulled. I desperately want to weep but I have no tears. I wish for great sorrow, but my heart is empty.

The steel is strangely warm against the roof of my mouth. Still, the wound is small. There is no pain, no bleeding.

I close my eyes and see my wife's face. She is laughing with the joyous little girl's laugh that I adored. The vision becomes flush with detail; she is on the phone to her sister describing my bumbling attempts to install the satellite dish in our yard. "There were wires everywhere," she says. "A bronze and black thatch covered our yard. Guide wires, lead wires, ground wires, wires to and from the house; he finally gave up and called someone to do it." Her eyes are moist as she retells the story in giggling girlish squeaks. Now I weep. Now there is a wound.

I remove the pistol from my mouth and slowly uncock the hammer, laying the daemon on the table in front of me.

Night has fallen and the moonlight reflects off the snow covered lake. The trees across the bay are great shadows. Now I bleed. Sweat as great drops of blood fall from my forehead. I feel abandoned and I say my prayers.

"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take."