Quodlibets

“He tells the truth well–-ultimately the only criterion of greatness.” – Gene Wolf (Commenting on Ender’s Game)

You can’t understand this story if you know nothing about the other players. The muscular man akin to “Rambo” whom Simmons called Skinhead was Christof. The six-foot, eight Indian Goliath he called The Chief was “Kicks Iron.” The man he called Lefty was Carl. You may think you know them from what you’ve read in the press, where they’re painted as misanthropes, but I knew each of them as a real person. My Grandmother used to say, “The best people have some evil in them and even the worst people have some good in them, except the Devil himself!”

They all had good in them. Each had credible motivations for his beliefs. Each could justify his actions. It would be as inequitable to justify the images created by the press carte blanc as to extol them carte blanc. You might have a higher opinion of me if I did, if I distanced myself, but someone must tell it as it was. I’m the only one who was close enough to all three to achieve a balance of perspective. If you’ll bear with me, your understanding of the entire episode will benefit.

Christof and I became friends by sheer coincidence. A few years after we moved to Montana, I happened to be in El Paso. It was late fall, cold, and I was down on my luck. I was in my early twenties. To save money, I stayed at a mission one night, the kind the churches maintain. They give you a hot meal and a clean cot for the night free. There’s a catch: Since most of the men that stay at missions are winos and riff-raff, you have to listen to a pulpit-pounding preacher tell you how lost you are and how Jesus will make everything all better. During the sermon, the guy eating beside me leaned my way.

“Do you think a real god would commit genocide?”

I turned to face him but kept working on the Turkey leg. “I’m referring to his story of God sending the Israelites into Canaan to slaughter the people; even kids, even the cattle? Could you worship a being capable of that?”