The Wages of Gin, An Anti-Memoir

The following is the opening to my new novel. If you like what you read here and you want more, I'll be happy to send you a chapter. Just ask.

"Memory believes before knowing remembers." -- William Faulkner

This book is dedicated to Dori, Vikki, Katharine, June, Wyoming Paul, Chicago Paul, Burt, Janet, Bruce, Queenie, ET, Marjorie, Gene, Barbara, Lissa, Karen, Jim, Dick, and all the other friends and colleagues who so bravely and soberly battled windmills with me. You know who you are.

The usual disclaimer: The Wages of Gin is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental. Yeah, sure. This book is not a memoir. It is meant to satirize that vicious plague that infects the published word. It is not concerned with people I have known or jobs I have held. Whatever, to use the current vernacular. Yes, I toiled away in school just like you and at newspaper reporting, magazine editing, advertising, even e-commerce during the halcyon days of the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, the no more long lunch Nineties, and the no more lunch at all Two Thousands. Still, this is a completely imagined work. My name is not Jack Collins, and I have never murdered anyone. Cheers!

Preface: I once worked for the late Jack Collins as a copywriter in his advertising agency. He was the worst boss I ever had. Before he fired an employee, a task he much enjoyed, he made him (he never fired a female worker, probably because he was sleeping with her and feared repercussions) type out his own termination letter. It was not unusual for him to throw objects at his employees. He once warned the art department about an impending storm with golf ball sized hail. He then began hurling a surprising number of golf balls at the poor artists seated at their drawing boards.

Oddly, I felt a certain affection for him. A man of average height, intelligence, and appearance, Jack was driven by two great forces: anger and the pursuit of vengeance. I used to hear him mutter, "I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the boss, when I take my vengeance on them. I do know my Bible." Yes, he was full of quotations, as you will see as you read his memoir.

Jack was completely friendless when I knew him. All his children, he had at least nine, moved away as soon as they came of age and changed their names. They meant to make sure that their father would never find them. His various ex-wives all clearly hated him just as they must have hated being married to him. Except for constant kvetching about how they abused him, he never reciprocated. No, he seemed quite afraid of each of them. Every time one of his wives would tell him how she had no respect for him, or when one would embezzle money from his business, or cheat on him with one or more of his male and female employees, he would take his misery out on those of us who were innocent.

He quoted as many facts as literary passages to us. For example, "Do you know that homicide is the second leading cause of fatal occupational injury in the United States? Nearly one thousand workers are murdered and another one point five million are assaulted in the workplace every year. What do you think of that?" We knew then that he was hinting at something perilous. But what?

At last, the mystery was solved when one day, not long ago, out of nowhere, Jack's latest wife called and asked me to hear his death bed confession to some murders he claimed to have committed. I believe he called for me because he knew that I was a published writer. He wanted to make certain that his memoir would see the light of a bookstore after his death. I knew from experience that the odds of that happening were somewhere between zero and zip.

Although he declares an intention to take his own life early on in this memoir, he actually died from a nose bleed, just like Attila the Hun, one of his great heroes. He was celebrating his fourth and, as it turned out, final wedding to a young woman named Malaysia who had been his nurse. She was just twenty-four. He was seventy something. If she believed he was well off and could take care of her, she was sadly mistaken. I could have told her that Jack had never taken care of anyone, including himself. I would also have told her that he was proud of this neglect. His personal slogan was "I can take it!"

As was his wont, he over-indulged after the wedding, downing numerous martinis and three bottles of a fine French Champagne, none of which he could afford. He was preparing to retire with his gin bottle and bride when his nose began to bleed. The drink prevented him from noticing the frightful state of his schnoz. Malaysia was repulsed. When he finally understood that he might eventually drown in his own blood, he asked Malaysia to call me. As she left the room to make the call, I'm told she announced to poor bleeding Jack that she was leaving him. Her last words to him were these: "Do you want to know my plans for us? I want you to get out the very moment your nose dries up." I arrived just as Malaysia was driving away, still wearing her bloody wedding gown. He was not able to get out, but she was.

Just before he passed on to his just desserts, Jack shoved a bloody manuscript into my shaking hands. "This is my passion. Try to get it published, I beg you. There are still some no good, rotten, living idiots out there; plus three and now four ex-wives. I want my revenge. Would you mind shaking me up a big martini? My spirits need lifting. My nose needs blowing." Those were his last words. Naturally, they were extremely difficult to make out, what with his bleeding beak and relentless gurgling. His final speech was not as moving, perhaps, as Lady Nancy Astor's question when she briefly awoke in 1964 during her final illness and discovered her family gathered around her bedside -- "Am I dying or is this my birthday?" And not nearly as memorable as Humphrey Bogart's last remark on January 14, 1957 -- "I should never have switched from Scotch to martinis."

I don't know whether Jack heard me, but I did promise to do what I could for him and his manuscript. So here it is. Thanks, Jack.

-- John Anderson, March 2010

Free Love

FREE LOVE

by John Anderson

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute." -- Rebecca West

My soon to be published book, Free Love, profiles the brave socialist reformers of America's nineteenth century and examines their experiments to establish a Garden of Eden in the new world. In all my writing work to date, my objective is to recover notable Americans from obscurity and false myths. Renegade reintroduces Simon Girty and examines how a myth created about him was used to achieve the racist ends of a few Indian-hating writers and public figures. This new book, to be published by American Books, attempts to show how a few courageous socialists built the foundation for today's feminist movement.

It has always struck me as odd that so few American heroes of the nineteenth century are honored today. Yes, the Civil War, its generals, and Abe Lincoln are given great attention. Otherwise, the middle period between the Revolution and the Civil War is largely noticed only for its oddities: mesmerizing healers; frontier outlaws; New York gangs; spirit speakers; clairvoyants and prophets; and notorious figures such as the polarizing Andrew Jackson, the crooked Boss Tweed, the terrorist John Brown, and the remarkably weak Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore.

What about those few who did so much to shape the nation we live in today while America moved so quickly from a developing country after the War of 1812 to a major world power by the end of the Mexican War of 1846? It was during this period that subsistence farming gave way to industry with innovations in transportation (the telegraph, the steam-operated printing press, efficient paper making), the mechanization of agriculture (McCormick's reaper, John Deer's steel plow), and mass production of almost everything. So many issues that faced Americans then are the same that confront us today: social reform; religious zeal; immigration; financial markets in crisis; wars criticized for their immorality.

The courageous socialists who set up egalitarian communities throughout America in their various attempts to make the new nation live up to its Constitution go ignored today because all their experiments failed. Teddy Roosevelt reportedly said, "Far better it is to dare mighty things than to live in that gray twilight that knows neither victory or defeat." Thanks to the socialist women and men profiled in Free Love who dared mighty things, women won equal rights and the feminist movement was established. The lessons that may be learned from the reformers who dared to try to establish a Utopian nation should be useful to those who today strive to cultivate a truly organic garden in America. The early risk takers lived something Emily Dickinson wrote, "We never know how high we are until we are called to rise; and then, if we are true to our plan, our statures touch the skies."

The Legend of Simon Girty

Simon Girty was an important figure in American history, and his story is one that Americans should not have forgotten as they have. I hope my book, GIRTY: The Legend, which is soon to be published by American Books, will restore him to some wider consciousness. My sincere thanks go to Grandfather Lee Standing Bear Moore, Kituwah (Cherokee) storyteller, historian, author, lecturer, and famed elder of the Manataka American Indian Peace Council, for composing the foreword to my book and for encouraging me to continue with this project. He is my esteemed brother.

There was a time when the name Simon Girty made grown men tremble and children behave. It was vilified in stories told around campfires and fireplaces throughout Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, in Canada and in all territories west. By the end of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, thanks to cheap novels and bad movies, Girty was a name known everywhere. The man who bore it was called "a monster of cruelty," "a depraved, wicked wretch," and "a whirlwind of fury, desperation and barbarity." Today, the name is almost unknown.

Girty deserted the American militia at Fort Pitt in 1778 to join the British in the war against his rebellious countrymen. Girty was no patriot, but neither was he a Loyalist. He probably was a psychopath, a defect that psychologists today call "severe emotional detachment." As far as we know, he never exhibited any empathy for his victims or any remorse for his deeds. He certainly must have been damaged by his appalling childhood. As a young boy, he saw his drunken father murdered by an equally drunk Indian as they celebrated the new year together. Simon and his family were later captured by a French-led war party in 1756. He was only 15 when he looked on as his step-father was tortured and murdered by the warriors that had captured the family. Eight years later, Girty was repatriated. There is no proof that he ever had a friend, white or Indian, or that he ever formed any real loyalties to anyone or to any cause. He was illiterate, so he played no role in creating his myth that soon spread all along the frontier.
The early myth-makers who spun tall tales about the great heroes, such as Daniel Boone (who did help create his own myth) and Simon Kenton, blamed Simon Girty for turning America's native people into a terrifying threat against civilized white society. By doing so, they claimed, this white renegade ensured the destruction of the only people he ever claimed to love, the Indians. If left alone in their wilderness, protected by a secure border, these child-like aboriginals would have lived peacefully with their white neighbors, or so insisted the myth-makers. (Well, not actually with civilized Europeans.) But the Indians had been tricked into doing evil by the clever, malevolent white renegade who taught them everything they needed to know about how to terrorize their white neighbors. In this way, the Indians were as victimized by Girty as his fellow white men, women, and children that he so gleefully killed and scalped. Thanks to Girty, the wild Indian was no more. Blaming him for the passing of the nation's native people disguised what really brought about their destruction -- white European contagious diseases, forced removal, murder, and neglect. The Indians were camping on land, lots of land, and the European settlers wanted it.

The North American Indian population was reduced by almost 98 percent from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to just 237,000 by 1900. Ninety percent of these deaths were caused by diseases imported from Europe, especially smallpox, that most lethal pathogen. As their population shrank, as their food and fur supply was taken by white hunters and traders, as their wilderness was chopped down and converted to plowed fields by white farmers, Indian villages and hunting grounds went up for grabs.

Populist writers and historians of the time created stories to explain why all this death and destruction was necessary. Girty served them well. He became one of the jury members in Stephen Vincent Benet's popular 1937 retelling of Faust, The Devil and Daniel Webster. The devil himself selects this jury, which is composed of the greatest villains in American history. Benet describes Girty as "the renegade, who saw white men burned at the stake and whooped with the Indians to see them burn." Girty was well aware of the hatred that Americans felt for him. He never said a good word about himself.

Any good American man or boy happily identified with Daniel Boone and Johnny Appleseed as they spread the seeds of white decency, health, and wealth through the dreaded wilderness. In truth, Boone hated fighting and probably killed one lone Indian in his long woodsman's career. He also refused to wear a coonskin cap, saying they were too heavy, especially when wet. The famous trailblazer preferred a stylish beaver hat. And what good American wouldn't hate Simon Girty, who at that very moment might be leading his pack of murdering savages right to your cabin? A fate worse than death would be to become a captive in the wilderness where you would be turned into a savage. Thank God for men like Daniel Boone who used musket and blade to force a great transformation on that wilderness. Violence was the way to convert it into civilization and to turn its wild inhabitants into enlightened humans. Natty Bumpo, who James Fenimore Cooper modeled on Boone, saves all of New York State from treacherous Indians as he leads a solitary life, pitting his strength and wits against the terrible forces of nature. Or consider Hawkeye. He never kills without provocation, and he would never kill for revenge. That is what Indians do. It's their creed. Only a white man who becomes an Indian could kill to settle a score.

Only a few heroes toiled in the violent wilderness, a dark, menacing, sinister place. Beware. Girty could watch as you roast over an open fire. It was going to take a bunch of Boones to transform the savage wilderness into a safe, urban, industrial landscape.

The story of Girty's involvement in the torture and death of Colonel Henry Crawford was well told. Not so well known was Girty's treatment of Abner Hunt. On the night of January 7, 1791, Hunt and three other white men camped along the Miami River in Ohio. Next morning, they walked only 100 yards from camp before they were fired upon by a party of whooping warriors. Abner Hunt was captured. Girty tied him up and forced him to accompany his party to raid Dunlap's Station, a small fort, on the evening of January 9th. There, Girty forced his prisoner to stand on a stump with a white flag to urge those inside to surrender. Girty promised Hunt that his life would be spared if the people came out. The people inside heard Hunt's pleas, but they refused to surrender. Abner Hunt was doomed. Girty ordered the Indians to burn him alive for all to see and hear inside the fort. Wretched Hunt was roasted all night long as the Indians danced around him.

Such stories traveled back east. Urban Americans developed a low regard for frontier society. Important figures, such as Hugh Henry Breckinridge, used the stories to show Americans "what have been the sufferings of some of her citizen by the hands of the Indian." He wrote, "As they (the Indians) still continue their murders on our frontiers, these narratives may be serviceable (sic) to induce our government to take some effectual steps to chastise and suppress them; as from hence, they will see that the nature of an Indian is fierce and cruel, and that extirpation of them would be useful to the world, and honorable to those who can effect it."

Breckenridge wrote that Indians "have the shapes of men and may be of the human species . . . in their present state they approach nearer the character of devils." These "animals vulgarly styled" had the inherent supernatural power to corrupt the innocence of white society and subvert it to savagery. The author succeeded in firing the fears of the fledgling federal government. It adopted a grand military initiative in the 1790s to tame and secure the Ohio frontier. Far more often than not, however, the Indians defeated and humiliated the U.S. military. The question became: how can an inferior race of savages periodically conquer a superior force of trained white militiamen and Indian fighters? Girty provided the answer: the white traitor was teaching them how to build a barrier against white expansion. Only a devious white man could empower the essentially weak and docile Indian. Girty may have degenerated to the level of an Indian, but he was still white. He retained the innately superior qualities of his race. The only way to counter his influence, then, was for white men to become better Indians than any Indian. Boone, Crockett, and Carson appeared along with many simple-minded, probably insane murderers. Each one was a super savage. As demonic Girty employed his borrowed savagery to destroy white civilization, the heroes used their woodland prowess to destroy the Indian so as to advance civilization.

The truth was that white men dispossessed red men with tools far more deadly than rifles. They used the ax, saw, and plow to eradicate the environment that the forest man depended upon for survival. Next came the land speculators. They were followed by whiskey and slave traders. Then came the politicians. The forest was soon plowed under along with the people who lived in it. By the middle of the nineteenth century, as America used the maxim of manifest destiny to wipe out surviving Indians in the west, Simon Girty was being turned into something that could only have crawled out of the black lagoon.

Not even the mighty Daniel Boone was ever able to take Girty's scalp. The infamous renegade died blind, drunk, miserable, and alone on his small farm in Canada. The mission of genocide was finally completed in 1890 when the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than 200 peaceful Miniconjou Sioux at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. The west was won. Girty served his purpose. Today, his story is useless, so his name is forgotten.

It is important to discover the real Simon Girty. By observing the life of this man in his time and place, perhaps we can gain a more honest, realistic sense of the past and our present. Maybe we -- white, red, black, yellow -- can even make a better future together. I hope my book serves that end. In the meantime, the next time you are sitting around the campfire on a dark, lonely night, ask yourself: is Charles Manson the reborn Simon Girty? Goodnight. Sleep tight.