Disaster Among the Heavens - Don E Peavy Sr (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

in picture frames. A mixture of pipe, cigar, and cigarette smoke added to the foul odour swirling around the room. The dreadful stench invading my nostrils smelt like a road-kill skunk.
“Excuse me, sir,” I responded to what I considered an outrageous demand. “Perhaps you misunderstood. I’m here to review the declassified materials from the cold war.”
“All intellectuals have to be searched,” he grumbled. He hardly moved his lips as he spoke. I wondered if he carried a taped message inside his flabby double chin which he rubbed with his right hand each time he spoke.
I was near a state of terror. I had come too far to turn back and yet I had my dignity. Would I allow my government to strip me of my dignity?
“What will it be? Are you going to the secret room or do you go back to Texas a loser?” chided the man. He held one hand on his left hip while he rubbed his chin with his right hand. Perhaps I had misread him, or maybe he could read the desperation on my face. I took a deep breath. And then, for the first time in my life, I committed an act of charity. I did something solely for the benefit of another -- I undressed in front of him. When I was finished, he left the room laughing.
Before I could gather my thoughts, a dentist, dressed in Army fatigues draped by a white dentist cloak, came in and forced me into a nearby chair. He was a middle-aged man with short brown hair and sideburns that were nicely trimmed right at the middle of his ear lobes. He was cleanly shaved and wore wire-rimmed glasses. I now understood the purpose for my having to strip -- I was to be searched. He checked my cavities for hidden devices and bombs. The dentist explained that when the last group of intellectuals had come to Washington just before the start of the cold war, a battleship had come up missing.
Then a barber, with short-cropped and spiked blond hair and dressed in a black leather pants outfit, entered. She ran her fingers through my hair and gave me a shave and an edge up in the process. She was thin and about five-feet and four inches and yet she had certain firmness to her touch and a forced competence in her manners. She disappeared almost as quickly as she had arrived.
A voice came over a speaker in the corner that I had not seen previously and told me to get dressed and report to the desk in the outer office. The voice sounded like that firm, mechanical voice from one of the episodes of The Outer Limits. With great trepidation and equal determination, I did as ordered and reported to where the armed secretary sat.
“Well, sir, I’m pleased to say that you are cleared. However, the document you seek has not been released. The Kerner Commission Report is on file in our Archives. But it does not have the Appendix A attached to it. If you still want to see the Report, you may proceed through the door that says Public Vaults.”
Her calm but authoritative voice quickened my anxiety. I was desperate to read the Appendix A to the Kerner Commission Report. There were rumours circulating in the African-American community that the Appendix contained detailed information of the Black Revolution which had never before been released to the public. The existence of this report would prove that America had come to the brink of another civil war and the people had known nothing about it. Further, the report would prove what so many radical Blacks had been saying – the “Great Society” programs of President Johnson had been forced from him by the Black Revolution and had not been passed as a result of the Civil Rights Movement as the public had been led to believe. Surely I had not come so close only to be denied the prize. Must I too have to confront the reality that the Wizard is nothing more than an old man with pipes and horns?
Two corridors emerged before my eyes and I took “the one less travelled by.” As I entered the corridor to the right, I noticed that I was moving but my legs were still -- my feet were dug into the brick floor. I looked around for a spike to grab a hold of and saw none. Then, as swiftly as it had started, the movement stopped and I found myself standing before a door on which was engraved Public Vaults.
The door opened and I entered into what must have been Grand Central Station. It was a scene which only words can describe. People were all over the place. Books and files were scattered everywhere. There were television cameras, news reporters, and professors
Celebrities were there. World leaders were there. Yes, even the infamous Fidel Castro was there thumbing through a file which had a stack of missiles on the front of it. Was this what I had stripped down for? Had I surrendered my dignity for this Bedlam?
Perhaps I was in the wrong room. I turned to the door and was about to leave when a tender hand lighted on my shoulder. I turned to behold the face of a calm, beautiful young woman who looked as if she had just stepped off the cover of Essence Magazine. Her blond hair draped her shoulders and curled up in a gesture which beckoned me to come forward. Her eyes were brown and sparkled. Her lips were spiced with blue and were more the size of a child than a woman. Her make-up was flawless and her perfume put me in a trance to such an extent that I would have followed her anywhere. I was about to declare her an angel when she spoke and turned my dream into a nightmare.
For it was only when she spoke that I realized who she was. It was a Rupaul look-alike!
Sheepishly and embarrassed, I remained silent as I followed her. She led me through the maze to another room, quieter and much darker. She said nothing. She just glided across the floor as if she floated on air.
“There, there is what you seek,” she said. She pointed to a large crate which upon her words exploded open and revealed a limestone container in the corner.
Even amidst the turbulence of this room, even as files and papers and people floated around the room and the room looked like a scene from Kafka’s The Castle, I was yet hopeful that victory would be mine.
I walked over to the large crate. I turned to ask her if I could get some help moving it into the light but the Ru Paul look-a-like was gone. In vain, I tried to move this dusty oblong box but it wouldn’t bulge. Then, remembering my days as a Boy Scout, I flicked my Bic as I got down on my knees beside the box. I moved the flickering light over the top to read its inscription. Oh, what a chill rushed through my body as the light struck the word scribbled in red. What terror took hold of me!
Tsunami. What pain, what grief, what eternal misery had carved that word into the top of this box? What pain and suffering had overwhelmed its author? And now, as I beheld that word, each letter signified a private hell of suffering. I longed to know what tale of woe had brought some person to scribble those infernal words. I felt uncomfortable. A deep, penetrating fear overtook me. And yet, I felt drawn to open the box. There I was, dangling over the abyss of hell and I longed to be let loose -- to explore this uncharted territory. Neither darkness nor depth deterred me. Like mighty Odysseus, but without his cunning and the protection of the gods, I braved the darkness that I might be able to relate to you that which has helped to shape the place we call the United States of America today. And thus, finding a fortuitous tool box nearby, I forced open the sarcophagus.
Oh, that I had not -- that I had left it closed. For the tale I am about to relate to you is one of horror and shame and national disgrace. It is also one of national repentance and one bright moment in our nation’s history when she glistened with the hope of our founders.
What pain did I find within the walls of that box! It was pain that gripped me even as I pulled away at the top and took hold of the contents. Sweat poured from my forehead. My blood raced through my veins. My heart throbbed. I found it difficult to breathe. And yet, for your sake, I suffered all these things and more. For I was determined to bear witness to this darkness -- that perhaps others might be spared the pain.
With all the energy I could summon, I fought back the icy fingers which took hold of me. I closed my eyes and refused to see the ghosts that emerged from the box. And when I had felt the last faint being escape, I opened my eyes and started reading.
Oh, my reader -- pray that you have only to read this book and not the pages of that box. So sit back and listen to this tale of woe. Gather up a few beers -- no, a few cases. Call in your children, your friends and whoever else will come. For there is strength in numbers and you will need all the strength you can muster and more. Beneath the scrawled letters, beneath the cover of that box lay a story that had been buried in the recesses of our government’s secret chambers until the opening of the iron curtain. I have seen. Oh, that I had not. But listen, and know that what I say is true.
While I flipped through the blood-inked pages of the box, I became aware that what I was reading was the Appendix A that the secretary had said was not yet released and would not be released until 2018. Again, our government had failed to see what was right before it.
What the government’s agent had told me was not here was in fact here -- it was a highly classified report which had been penned by an undisclosed source under the pseudonym of Carpal Tunnel. Despite the anonymity of its author, the report was written with the same degree of clarity and detail as the grand sleuth of historical docudrama, James A. Michener.
I knew then that what I was about to read would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Even before I had read a single word of the report, I made the decision to adopt the report as my thesis. For though I had never thought about it, I was quite interested in learning the true genius behind Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society Programs -- the real architect who had constructed this brave new and exciting America.
I was a product of that Society -- having graduated from Job Corps with a general equivalency diploma and a certificate in general office after having dropped out of high school and turned to the streets. Job