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Dedicated to my friend, my war chief,
my paw waw on the Good Red Road,
the late, the great  MoonFace Bear


Chapter 1 - The Norwich Water

It's been a while since the newspaper stories about embezzling the pathetic wild animals' charity money to hang and jerk at the fabulous Indian casinos, about children being given drugs, counterfeiting, statutory rape, blood money betrayal, underground bunkers, warrens of caves. Years ago that newspaper wrapped fish, lined the floors of birdcages, created a faint memory of something weird and sordid.

The police, court and prison times are over. There are no secrets that have not been betrayed. All have defined, revealed their selves. It is the time for the story to go where the story has to go. It is the time of the truest story, the fulfillment of the book.

My story is about possession of place. My story is of the archaic world as well as this fallen world. My story is about the dreams, visions, vision plants, myths. It begins with the effluence, the water of my birthplace.

There is a great spirit, a great demon of place in the particular locality whose effluence emanates from Norwich, Connecticut. This is the place of the defining first contacts, first actions, first blows. This is the place where the factories fell, and will fall again. This is the place of the archaic aboriginal world's first resistance, its endless rising up.

The fall of the water made Norwich a city of factories. The water connected Norwich to all the world. There is a time when Norwich is a manifestly destined place built on seven hills. Then the factories fall. The rivers are dammed and silted. Norwich is a backwater, a place of ruins, a place of madness, the place of the state mental hospital.

Norwich State Hospital is also a factory. It produces lobotomy. Eyeballs are temporarily removed. Through the eye sockets the cluster of nerves connecting the cerebral cortex to the rest of the brain are deftly snipped.

The lobotomy factory is fallen. The procedure is no longer in fashion. But the brain-castrated are always with us. They sit by the rivers of Norwich unable to weep or laugh in their simple liberation from the so-called enlightenment.

As the lobotomy factory falls, as the time of the fabulous Indian casino begins, I rise up. I rise up from the box. I rise up to what the higher self demands. I become the wild man at the North American Wildlife Association's wildlife refuge. I become the herb-grower's apprentice.

Robert Salvatore is the herb-grower. He is from someplace else. He ridicules the Norwich water. He says it's a thing of hideous inbreeding, idiocy, fucking lunacy, a witches' brew that percolates, with the leachates of the Norwich landfills.

I drink deeply of the water of my birthplace.

That I am I.

That my soul is a dark forest.

That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.

That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.

That I must have the courage to let them come and go.

That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.

Chapter 2 - North American Wildlife Association (NAWA)

My first ambition was to leave Norwich. I left as soon as I could. I witnessed revolution, immersed myself in other places. I found I had a 'talent' for going native, engaging the indigenous, taking on the color of other places' dirt and dust.

In 1986 I returned after 14 years of being away. I was amazed at my blindness. How had I not seen how strange, how savagely beautiful my birthplace is? I went indigent and indigenous in my homeland, free fell into this archaic, aboriginal world.

My dreams told me I would live in the woods. I kept alert to what would make this happen. I hoped it would be the love of a beautiful woman. But I got Gloria and Robert Salvatore, the North American Wildlife Association (NAWA).

I had returned to the particular locality when Gloria and Robert and their cult of the pathetic wild animal were being celebrated. Their donation jars were everywhere.

They were the largest Mason Jars with a large slit in the top to receive the money. On the jar were pasted individually scissor cut outlines of wild animals and bubbles. The comic book wild animals were saying in the bubbles, "Please Help Me!"

I gagged on the ick being brought into the world of the wild animals, the whoring of the mystery. The wild life force was being thieved, obscenely sucked for the greasy tattered dollar bills, the shrapnel of coins.

I first saw the Salvatores on television. They looked way wrong side of the track. Gloria was a big manly woman. Robert looked a lot like Charlie Manson.

Before NAWA, Robert and Gloria were owned by Chester the wolf dog. He was the first animal they declared to be God and loved to death. He died by rich diet from too much steak and roast beef.

NAWA was dedicated to Chester's memory. The veterinarians who ministered to him while he died were the foundations of NAWA and Gloria's and Robert's life on the 26-wooded acres on top of the Pigeon Hill in East Lyme.

Before NAWA they were known for keeping hundreds of rabbits in cages for no readily understandable reason. They were known for their extraordinary attempts to keep old nearly dead horses alive. They were known for the motley gang of trail bikers that coalesced around them. They were known as thieves and shoplifters. They were known by the vehement hatred their immediate neighbors had towards them.

Before NAWA Gloria and Robert were known for their attempts to domesticate raccoons. They had raccoons for pets. They walked them on a leash as if they were dogs.

The altars of their cult of the pathetic animal were the plywood platforms they called the feeding stations. On these slimy altars they would pile rancid, stale donut and dog food. The non-incarcerated raccoons would come, and would become rat-like. Given enough time the rats would come. They felt transcendence in the midst of the snarling, clawing, biting, shitting bio-mass. They encouraged others to build the plywood altars. Robert said that those who built altars to feed the pathetic wild animals were "his people."

But Gloria would always correct him. She said Robert's people were those who entered into the kingdom of his herb.

Throughout his adult life Robert grew canabis. He didn't sell it. There was something regal about how Robert would seem to give it away. But Robert's herb wasn't free.

Gloria's realm was the association of resentful, childless women. The women who never had children or whose nests were empty would lavish their intense hormone driven affections on cat mangled birds, lingering road kill.

Gloria had power. She could resurrect dead animals. She could make birds' corpses rise up and fly.

NAWA only worked when Robert completely dedicated himself to Gloria and the association of resentful, childless women. It only worked when he renounced the kingdom of his herb. It only worked when Gloria was the fixed center in command of the world.

NAWA was the summit of their careers. It was their pardon for being white trash criminals. But this wasn't enough. They wanted the world's unconditional love.

They rescued a sea gull at Katharine Hepburn's house in Old Saybrook's Fenwick borough. The gull was a hardened veteran of savage landfills. One wing was a gory ruin. Ms. Hepburn told the newspapers the Salvatores and herself (the 'Me') rescued a "sea hawk."

It is the kind of publicity Ms. Hepburn likes. She asked Robert and Gloria, "What do you want money?" They asked only for a letter from her saying she approved of them.

She wrote a letter saying "I think Robert and Gloria Salvatore do good work." Ms. Hepburn framed it, gave them a $1,000 check and then gave them the only picture she ever painted that was released to the public's view.

The picture showed the mailboxes of Hollywood celebrities in the Hollywood Hills. It was something about a young Ms. Hepburn's full-blown fascination with celebrity. But what the picture mostly showed was that Ms. Hepburn shouldn't give up her day job. But Robert declared the picture to be God. He believed it was the supernatural, penultimate ticket. But it wasn't going to be fully redeemable until Ms. Hepburn was dead.

Robert and Gloria were not only pardoned by the particular locality for being white trash criminals they were paid $100 an hour to go into the public and private schools in Connecticut and teach thousands of school children about the pathetic wild animals.

When Robert talked to people he would stare directly, unblinkingly into their eyes. Soon after he met people Robert would bare his chest and show the scars of the open-heart surgery. In 1986, when he was 38 he had a near-fatal heart attack, a triple by-pass. I called the surgery scars on his chest the baboon ass, the baboon butt.

He would say his heart failed because he carried a large, mostly dead deer a long way out of the woods, or because he was sprayed by a skunk when he was rescuing it from a dumpster, or because he had to carry water up the hill to the clinic before the clinic was hooked up to indoor plumbing, or because every day he had to fastidiously, anally, clean the shit-laden cages of an ever increasing population of injured wild animals judged too fucked up to be released, or because he never got his well deserved fame and fortune and willing, worshipful servants to take-on his work.

But Gloria would correct him. She said the heart attack happened because of the herb.

Gloria's mother Waltina Green, a.k.a. Wally, lived with them until 1989. Her money, earned by working as a nursing home attendant for 45 years, bought the land and the materials for the house Robert and Gloria mostly built. She hated their childlessness, resented the attention they lavished on the pathetic animals.

Then she found out Robert had a vasectomy - that there would be no grandchildren. She tweaked, ratted on Robert's herb cultivation.

When the agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) came Robert helped them pull up the plants. He told them he was grateful they had come and found the plants because the horses could have gotten into it. He asked them if they wanted coke to see if they let him walk away. The cops knew it was his herbs. The wire fencing around the herb garden was the same wire fencing around the pathetic wild animals. But the cops let him walk away.

The cops knew it was his herb. They found the same wire fencing around the herb, around the pathetic animals. But they let him walk away.

He returned with Coca Cola. The cops took the herb, but didn't arrest him.

As Robert watched the police and the pick-up truck full of the herb plants drive away, he had his first mortal chest pains. A couple of weeks latter when he felt all the implications of not having herb, the loss of his kingdom, he had a big heart attack.

Being without health coverage it took him two days to get to the hospital emergency room. He begged for a place to lie down and die. But he got the best of medical attention. He got a rebuilt heart. He got to live long enough to wish the doctors had just let him die.

When he was released from the hospital Gloria vowed Robert would never smoke or grow herbs again. She promised that if he did she would leave him. Robert swore he never would, said he would change.

For two-and-a-half- years Robert smoked very little herb. He only had moldy sucker leaf. He broke the heart attack covenant, started the revival of his kingdom, when he smoked the moldy sucker leaf with Steven J. Gambini.

Gambini and his wife Kristin were the most avid believers, followers of the cult of the pathetic animal. They were already members in good standing of the association of resentful, childless women. But Gloria had power. She knew Gambini, in the deepest cheese of his bitch self, was a rat.

When Robert confessed to smoking herb with Gambini, Gloria immediately drove to the nearest convenience store to get a copy of the Niantic News to look for the expose on drug use at NAWA.

It wasn't there. . .yet.

I feel I'm the superior of most men I meet. Not in birth because I never had a great-grandfather. Not in money, because I've got none. Not in education, because I'm merely scrappy. And certainly not in beauty or in manly strength.

Well, what then?

Just in myself.

When I'm challenged, I do feel myself superior to most of the men I meet.

Just a natural superiority.

But not 'til there enters an element of challenge.

When I meet another man, and he is just himself - even if he is an ignorant Mexican pitted with small-pox - then there is no question between us of superiority or inferiority. He is a man and I am a man. We are ourselves. There is no question between us.

But let a question arise, let there be a challenge, and then I feel he should do reverence to the gods in me, because they are more than the gods in him. And he should give reverence to the very me, because it is more at one with the gods than is his very self.

If this is conceit, I am sorry. But it's the gods in me that matter. And in other men.

As for me, I am so glad to salute the brave, reckless gods in another man. So glad to meet a man who will abide by his very self.

Ideas! Ideals! All this paper between us. What a weariness.

If only people would meet in their very selves, without wanting to put some idea over one another, or some ideal.

Damn all ideas and all ideals. Damn all the false stress, and the pins.

I am I. Here am I. Where are you?

Ah, there you are! Now, damn the consequences, we have met.

That's my idea of democracy, if you can call it an idea.

Chapter 3 - The Brave Reckless Resentful Gods

I was the herb-grower's apprentice. I was the rock on which the kingdom of Robert's herb was re-established. The kingdom of Robert's herb was another kingdom founded on resentment.

The human condition begins with the resentment of being cut away from the wild animals' wholeness, being beautiful like the wild animals. The modern human is crucified on the cross of the car key, is a chimpanzee with car keys.

As a Jew with a sense of history how can I not be steeped in the resentment? I understand it. I am strong in original niggah resentment. To understand history, to understand the human condition, I say, follow the resentment.

I had a calling for the newspaper writing, a love of the waves, a love of the surfing on the great ocean of the zeitgeist. But I am the original niggah, never the fashionable niggah, never the one that got hired, got the real newspaper job. I was working but really not working for the Hartford Courant - the oldest continuously bad newspaper in the English-speaking world, and the New York Times - only the news that fits.

I was paid by the story. I was covering Old Lyme, East Lyme, Hadlyme, South Lyme, Lyme, Lyme disease. I was bored of selectmen, education, zoning, planning. I was barely making rent.

I covered East Lyme town meetings with young Gambini. It was the first time we had met. But we recognized each other, our brotherhood in the resentment.

Gambini covered East Lyme and Waterford for The Niantic News. It was the first of a series of jobs on failing marginal newspapers on their way to becoming advertisers. Even though I was no longer young we were both angry, resentful young men. We were just realizing the enormity of our situation. Not only was the world not making way for us, it was beating us down, locking us up in little lives, making us serve those we despise.

Gambini introduced and connected me to Robert and Gloria. It was because of him I didn't hold my first impression of the Salvatores. He said we were all trying to write our own tickets. We were fighting the same fight. He helped arrange my first clearing in the woods my place at the NAWA wildlife refuge.

Then Kristin takes him to Ohio and Gambini pretty much leaves the story until he and the tattoo he rides in on brings the NAWA apocalypse.

Before there was a challenge or question between Robert and me, before he was trying to incarcerate me, I was glad to salute the brave, resentful, and reckless gods in him. And he seemed glad to salute the brave reckless, and resentful gods in me. We became like children. We were Tom and Huck, Huck and Niggah Jim.

To the north of the refuge were hundreds of acres of forest, swamp and abandoned fields becoming forest. Most of the open tract of land had consisted of a dairy farm that had been owned by Raymond Mushinsky, and a tree and plant nursery business that had been owned by the Neff family.

According to Robert, Raymond Mushinsky got $475,000 for his acres of heartbreak. The Neffs got $550,000 for theirs. They could justify the abandonment of the land because none of the sons would accept the misery, the heartbreak of the legal agriculture.

In the legend of his self in his most cherished resentment Robert always would tell of the $750,000 offer that was spurned, thrown back into the face of Ronald Stevenson, the evil developer. And, of course, he did it for the pathetic animals.

But it always seemed to me Robert had gotten more than if he had gotten his money back. We ruled the wild, abandoned land. After the 1987 Stock Market Melt Down there was a time of grace when the land was owned by a series of failed banks, and the land was under no immediate threat of development. There was no one living on the land. It was ideal for the covert cultivation.

Robert is barely literate. But he had blood knowledge. There were important things to be learned from him. Then the questions, the challenge, the pins came between us. He tried to make me serve his gods. He challenged my gods. He put the slimy, plywood altar in my clearing in the woods.

I told him I was I. I told him my soul was a dark forest. I told him I was on my own mission of Jah. I told him I would not collaborate with the jailing of the wild animals. I would not bring the ick into their realm.

When I refused to serve them as they wanted me to serve them, Gloria urged Robert to evict me. She asked what purpose I served in their world, in their realm? She called me a parasite.

I was the grave digger niggah. I disposed of the garbage. Me, my pick-up truck, my strong back, my weak mind would haul the horses' hay and feed. I engaged the wild beast, reveled in the rodeo. I took care of the horses. But I would not collaborate with the jailing of the wild animals, bringing the ick into their realm.

I told Robert he lived in his square box house. He didn't live outside the box. He wasn't playing the game. He couldn't make the rules.

He never allowed me ease on the refuge. But he never stopped re-establishing the kingdom of his herb. It was Robert who proposed the building of a structure that he said would be my place on the refuge.

As for me I was content living in the sumac.

Because the real human soul, the Holy Ghost, has its own deep prescience, which will not be put into figures, but flows on dark, a stream of prescience.

Chapter 4 - The Sumac

The wild animals, the Indians, the soul shaking visions, the dreams, my apocalypse, The Apocalypse came into the clearings in the woods where I lived. My first clearing in the woods was in the sumac.

When I pitched my Caldor Cabin Tent in the sumac bushes the first week of May 1991, the sumac wasn't in it's flower. But Gloria, who had power, told me the bees would come. When the sumac flowered, the bees came. The sumac was thick with them.

I lived in a round clearing in the sumac. Later I found, about 250 feet away, a cemetery with the first white people who had cultivated the land. The circle was covered with a thick, springy sod. I would sometimes find myself spontaneously dancing on the sod, pounding my feet into the ground, loving the earth with my dance.

The round clearing had been a guerilla herb garden. When the apocalypse happened, it was again a herb garden. There was a trace of a path. Then the path would end. Then you had to crawl through a tunnel under and through the thorns, briars and prickers. The last ten feet had to be done crawling on hands and knees, with your head lowered to the ground. When you got into the circle you had to move a certain way. You could not be scared. You had to do something inside your self. You had to submit, completely yield to the bees.

At first light you would hear them. Their sound would put you into the deepest, most blissful, trance of sleep. The trance deepened as more bees came to the sumac. The hypnotic drone would permeate the early morning, the circle in the sumac, the dreams.

Sleeping in the sumac my dreams were laden with images, visions that did not seem to come from me. People in my family have premonitions. In 1928 my maternal grandmother was in Poland after escaping Russia and Stalin. She had a dream. The family fled Poland.

When his people who weren't in the loop began coming to him with dreams of the burning, falling towers Osama bin Laden said he feared American dreamers would know, would have warning would give warning of his conspiracy. But he had nothing to fear. Americans are the most fanatical people of the so-called enlightenment, the most incarcerated in the boxes in the sky, the most nimble in the not seeing, the recoiling, the most desperately commonsensible.

Those of the so-called enlightenment know myth, dream aren't about anything 'real.' They are the true believers in the myth of science, the scientific method. They believe in the "absolute truth" of science.

My uprising starts with the dream. It's about letting them come and go, seeing them for what they are. It's about submitting, yielding, obeying them.

I dreamed of the NAWA apocalypse. I knew disaster was coming. But I could not run. I could not hide. I could not escape. I had to yield, submit, obey. But the dream told me that on the other side of the suffering, the darkest despair, there would be joy, life its own self, loving the earth with my dance. The dream told me I would some day be grateful for the terrible knowledge of the lighting strike.

"We all gotz to ride the dragon!" That's what I said when Gambini, and the tattoo he rode in on, came to the refuge to begin the final countdown to apocalypse. That's what I say to everybody, now.

. . .The Nile valley produced not only the wheat, but the terrific religions of Egypt. China produces the Chinese, and will go on doing so. The Chinese in San Francisco will in time cease to be Chinese, for America is a great melting pot.

Chapter 5 - The Night the Trees Split

In the kingdom of Robert's herb, before the heart attack, Robert would make little effort to conceal the herb plants. There were years he had it growing right by his door.

I started living in the sumac three years after the DEA raid. I wanted to grow herb. Robert knew I wanted to grow herb. He waited for me to start growing herb.

But I knew a seal would be broken when I planted the seeds and resumed the cultivation, re-established the kingdom of Robert's herb. When Robert asked me on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend 1991 where I had planted the herb, I told him I hadn't.

In a hurried panic we both planted the seeds. I had wanted to cultivate off the refuge. Robert wanted to cultivate on the refuge. We ended up cultivating in a very concealed area on the refuge.

We harvested only seven female plants. But it was a good, worry-free cultivation. We made our covenant of the cultivation.

From each according to their ability to each according to their need. We would not tell anyone or include anyone else in the cultivation. We would be impeccable in the concealment in the security of the covert cultivation.

The next spring Robert violated every clause of the covenant. He included Don Watkins a.k.a. Dewey, the last person that should have been included in any serious, covert cultivation. Dewey is yellow shit, the shit of the infant sucking on his mama's tit. He had just been busted for herb cultivation. Robert arranged for him to do his community service at the NAWA refuge. He insisted Dewey was the second pillar of his kingdom.

When Robert had made me the rock of his re-established kingdom he had believed I would bring women to the refuge to him, that I would be like a pimp. I do not have this ability. Robert then believed Dewey would be his pimp.

Dewey brought women to the refuge. But the women were attracted to his fag-bait thing. They were scared of Robert and me and our neo-Neanderthal thing.

Robert and Dewey glaringly illustrated the fallacy of Marxism. Their need for herb vastly exceeded their ability to produce herb.

But Dewey had access to other people's growing rooms, other people's cultivation. He brought a seedling that had the most promise of any seedling I had ever seen. One night in late April 1992 we went to visit with this plant that I had named Kali.

There was a nearly full but setting moon. It was still. There was no breeze, no wind. We walked through fields and forest, through pockets of warm and cool air rising from the ground. The still but strangely volatile air amplified and muted the night's sounds.

You had to crawl through another tunnel that went under and through the thorns, briars and prickers to get to the Kali garden. You had to bow your head to the ground. When you crawled into the circle of the garden Kali was in your face. She was thriving.

As we admired Kali and the other plants IT! happened. IT! sounded as if the very fiber of the universe had loudly and catastrophically ripped. IT! was a noise like I had never heard before and like I have never heard since! There was the angry roar of a King Kong size ape, and then there was the noise of the trees falling as the ape trampled and pushed them aside. Then there was the sound of crazed stampeding horses.

We swore with intensity. Our hair stood on end. Horses were loose, stampeding through the fields. We ran to the sound. But when we got there, there was nothing but a field becoming forest.

We returned to the Kali garden and tried to explain. We agreed trees had fallen. But we couldn't account for the explosion, the awful ripping noise. We didn't even want to think about the larger than life animal roar, and the crazed horses that were heard but not seen.

We walked in the direction from where IT! came. Then our flashlights began to flicker and dim. The moon had set. It was dark. We took the long way back to the refuge, away from the terrifying mystery.

Two weeks latter I had a dream in Campsite 2. It was where I lived after Apollo, the thunderously farting horse who had been declared God, almost stepped on my head when I slept and drove me from the sumac. It was where the DEA had found the herb plants when Wally had ratted Robert. It was the cochina, our outdoor kitchen and lounge, in the time of the NAWA apocalypse. Campsite 2 was also a notable place of the dream.

In the dream I was returning to this place on the side of a hill in the woods which once was my home. The structure was dug into the side of a hill. The chamber in the ground was made of earth, rocks and raw logs. Above ground were the ruins of a screen house. The dream was suffused with a powerful emotion, feeling. It was a good feeling. When Robert woke me I remembered the slope of the hill. I remembered the feeling.

The waking time became dream time. I asked Robert where on the refuge was a hill that had the grade of the hill in the dream. I showed him the slope by holding my hand at a very precise forty-five degree angle. He thought for a moment then began to walk to the forest from where the noise had come two weeks before.

We took an old farm road that led to a ravine. Then we left the old road trace and walked through rhododendron, and mountain laurel until we came to a clearing in the woods that wasn't made by hand of man.

A big part of the clearing had been made from a recent tree-fall. There were two not particularly large or notable trees. But they had fused together. Then they had explosively ripped apart. Fragments of the trees were strewn through the clearing. All the live standing trees were in there first green leaf. But the split and felled trees had bursting red buds, as did all the trees the night we heard IT!

We theorized a rock had wedged itself in the middle of the trees' fused root bundles and then had wedged them apart, split the trunks from each other and felled them. It explained the explosion the ripping sound, the sound of falling trees.

But it didn't explain the larger than life animal roar, the crazed horses. I still had in my mind's eye an image of a King Kong-sized ape-man that rose above the forest and knocked down and trampled trees as he waded through them.

In the clearing was the slope I had seen in the dream. With sticks I outlined an about 12 foot by 16 foot rectangle on the forest floor.

A few days later Robert started digging. Then I began digging. Most of the digging was done alone. Robert dug during the day in the time he escaped from Gloria, and the association of childless, resentful women. I dug at night by the light of a Coleman lantern, after I finished my daily newspaper stories. As I dug into the earth I pondered the mystery.

From the time of the very first people in the Americas there has been conflict, conflicting myths, apocalyptic myths about the true possession. From the time of the very first people there has been war. The pre-historic bones and skulls are marked by violence and murder. Ancient cities are mysteriously fallen.

Anthropologists say it took tens of thousands of years for Africa to make the Africans, for China to make the Chinese.

The American Indian has been exposed to the spirit/demon of place for at least 12,000 years maybe as long as 35,000 years, long enough. Those whose ancestors come from someplace else have only been exposed for 400 to 500 years at the most. But because the Indian was in aboriginal, mythic possession of place, the spirit/demon of place did not work directly, overtly on them. But in the locality whose effluence emanates from Norwich the fabulous Indian casinos have happened.

The fabulous Indian casino is the Great White Swamp, the final assimilation, psychic destruction, extinction of the Indian and their resistance. The Connecticut Indian did retain much of tribe, culture, spirit of place, resistance. But all of that is whored to the casino developer. Indian forms are maintained. There are federally recognized Indian tribes. There are Indian museums. The Indian casinos have Indian decorative motifs. The largest plastic Indians shoots laser arrows into the ceiling. The museum is full of plastic Indians. The aboriginal language is an exhibit in the museum. The Indian is window dressing.

Greed is the corrosive slime of the Great White Swamp. The fabulous Indian casino is where the world of the chimpanzee with car key is further degraded, debased. It is where car key chimpanzees become rat-like.

But the fabulous Indian casino is getting the money back, the past due payment, the mounting interest, on the mythic resentment.

Follow the mythic resentment and it goes to the 1637 Mystic Massacre. It was the first large-scale murder the English did to the American Indian. It had the scale and passion of the violence of the Reformation. It has this day's dimensions of murder. As many as 700 men, woman and children were slaughtered with fire and steel.

After the massacre, the Mashantucket Pequots' Great Cedar Swamp became their refuge, their kingdom of the resentment. Then it became their reservation. Then it became their blood homeland.

Their Great Cedar Swamp was where the blood of the massacred had soaked into the dirt, into the mud and appeared every spring in the red crosses of the dogwood trees that grew only there. When Foxwoods Casino opened in the great sucking sound the Swamp was the place where the final blow was struck, the psychic destruction achieved.

And those whose ancestors came from somewhere else became completely exposed to the unleashed spirit/demon of place. In time those whose ancestors come from someplace else will become more like the Indian than the first ancestor who crossed the water.

That's what we heard in the Kali Garden. It was the spirit/demon unleashed, breaking out, taking it to the woods.

. . .The true liberty will only begin when Americans discover IT, and proceed possibly to fulfill IT. IT being the deepest whole self of man, the self in its wholeness, not idealistic halfness.

That's why the Pilgrim Fathers came to America, then: and that's why we come. Driven by IT. We cannot see that invisible winds carry us, as they carry swarms of locusts, that invisible magnetism brings us as it brings the migrating birds to their unforeknown goal. But it is so. We are not the marvelous choosers and deciders we think we are. IT chooses for us and decides for us.

Chapter 6 - The Split Tree

It took two months to dig the hole into the side of the hill and build The Split Tree. Robert would escape Gloria and loosen the layers of hard packed sand and clay with the pick-axe. He would leave big piles of dirt in the hole. At night I would shovel the piles of dirt out of the hole and dig deeper.

Each shovel of dirt had to be aimed when thrown out of the hole, placed so an even sill was formed around the hole. It was never just a hole. It was the bleeding, dirty blisters. It was blood and sweat dripping into the dirt. It was yielding to, obeying the hole. And only then did the hole yield. And only then did you become the "The Ho' Master."

Then "The Jesus Ting" began. All the materials, the chain link fence that stabilized the uphill wall of the hole, the rolls of industrial strength vinyl that insulated the hole, every piece of plywood, 4x4 beams, rolls of screen, had to be carried. You struggled under your load as you carried it through the woods, over tree falls, to the clearing. Carrying the æ inch thick sheets of plywood, was especially the "Jesus Ting." You had to take the posture of carrying the cross on a long, obstacle-ridden Via Dolorosa.

The Split Tree, like all buildings on the refuge, like Robert and Gloria's house, like the clinic building was built with stolen materials.

Robert and Gloria had been given the $30,000 bequest of Katherine Fleming to build the clinic. Ms. Fleming, a resentful, childless spinster, left the money to the City of New London for a wild animal clinic. But wild animals don't vote, New London wanted to use the money to make a quarantine room for the dog pound. Interim Connecticut Attorney General Claire Nardi-Riddle said this was an inappropriate use of the money. She studied the Connecticut non-profits and found NAWA. She made Assistant Connecticut Attorney General Thomas Fierantino live with Robert and Gloria.

It was a welcome change from Fierantino's usual job. One of Robert and Gloria's most cherished pictures was Fierantino having his face licked by a captive deer they had named Kissy Face. Robert confessed to Fierantino that most of the cages used at the refuge had been taken it could be said stolen. Fierantino said he had put the cages, the derelict materials, to good use. As a testament to the approval, the public adulation, the political correctness that was theirs, Interim Connecticut Attorney General Nardi-Riddle took the money from New London and gave it to Gloria and Robert.

But $30,000 wasn't enough money to build the wildlife clinic that Ms. Fleming intended. To build what Ms. Fleming intended Robert and Gloria stripped and looted all the abandoned buildings in the fields becoming forest. We did the same to build The Split Tree.

Robert joyously dedicated himself to the thieving of the materials, and the construction. He neglected his NAWA duties.

Meanwhile the media fame of NAWA grew. Not only were the lingering road kill brought to the gates of the refuge. There were those who wanted NAWA to have a place for the crippled, the retarded, the blind. This was the last thing Robert wanted. In his childhood there was no lack of teachers and social workers who tried to label him as retarded, as mentally ill and commit him to the appropriate institution or school program.

Robert's and Gloria's friend, Dan Curlin, was a regular donor. They were frequent guests on Curlin's, The Dog's, college radio program. He wanted them to make arrangements for a blind man to serve the pathetic wild animals.

Robert couldn't say no, but wouldn't say yes. One evening the blind guy appeared at the door of their house. Gloria was the only one home. She never suffered people easily. She was enraged Robert had allowed it to happen. She was enraged she had been left alone to deal with it. She left the blind guy standing at the door, and went for Robert.

We were at the abandoned Mushinsky dairy farm trying to dismantle an out building to salvage the plywood and 4x4 beams. We were pounding the building's main support beam with a sledgehammer. We were collapsing the building down on top of us. But the plan was to somehow get out a nearby door before we were killed. We were in a berserker joy of destruction. The entire building was swaying.

Then there were headlights rapidly approaching. Robert dropped everything and ran. I picked up everything, the sledgehammer, the wrecking bar, the crow bar, the flashlight and then ran.

As soon as I was out the door the headlights were on me, and in pursuit. Robert's stupid hat fell off and flew by me. I turned into the headlights, ran into the headlights, got the hat. I caught up with Robert just as he did a headlong leap into the thick of a bull briar patch. Without hesitation I did the same, was instantly shredded on the thorns. We left a trail of blood as we crawled through the prickers, briars and thorns to the far side of the thicket away from the headlights.

We believed it was the cops. They knew who we were. They were waiting in ambush on the trail back to the refuge. We walked away from the refuge. We walked all night to get back to the refuge by unlikely ways.

When we made it back at first light our faces still bleeding our hair matted with blood, Gloria, no less enraged, was waiting for us. Only then did we realize the headlights were Gloria's, not the cop's.

We finished digging into the side of the ravine. We capped the underground chamber with a raised platform that looked like a boxing ring. Because of the challenge, because Robert had declared his gods were more than my gods, and I had declared they weren't, we were ready to fight until someone was beaten dead.

But instead, we built a screen house. Everywhere you looked you saw the forest.

One night Robert and me crossed the swamp with bolt cutters and a seven-and-a-half foot wrecking bar. The plan was to take the electric cable at Neff's to connect The Split Tree to the power grid. We had found a place where the weight of the fallen trees had brought the wire a few feet above the ground. We were going to cut the wire and pry it off the trees and poles.

When the moment came to cut the wire, both of us knew it was a really bad idea. Robert said he didn't know if the electricity had been turned off. My guess was there was no electricity in the wire but there definitely was something in the wire.

We tossed a coin to see who would cut into the wire with the bolt cutter. Robert flipped the coin. I called tails. It was heads.

Robert told me stories about electrocution, how he and other people had been in the electric current and had been saved by someone hitting them hard to get them away from the current. So Robert positioned himself behind me with the seven-and-a-half foot steel wrecking bar in a batter's stance and promised me that if I were to get on the current he would definitely get me off.. In an idiot's voice I profusely thanked him.

As I was about to cut into the wire I remembered sea stories about rope, wires, and chains, under enormous tension that snapped and took on a life of their own, cut men in two. In a swift convulsive movement I cut the wire and dropped the bolt cutter. I felt something lashing snaking violently ahead in the darkness. I felt something lightly caress my face, kiss the tip of my nose.

The trees held up by the wire came crashing to the ground. The wire made an astounding reverb noise that traveled a mile and a half to Grassy Hill Road then back to us and then back to the road. It did this for awhile. It was another noise like I never had heard before and have never heard since. It made every canine for miles around howl than howl in strange, wild synchrony.

It was in all ways a stupid thing to do. We couldn't climb the poles and salvage the wire. We eventually took other wire to connect The Split Tree to the power grid.

When we got back to Gloria's and Robert's house I used the bathroom. When I looked into the mirror the skin on the tip of my nose was gone.

We live to stand alone, and listen to the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, who is inside us, and who is many gods. Many gods come and go, some say one thing and some say another, and we have to obey the God of the innermost hour. It is the multiplicity of gods within us that makes up the Holy Ghost.

Chapter 7 - The Spike

When The Split Tree was finished it was not the place I would have built if I had built it alone. It had electricity. It eventually had telephone, computer and internet. If I had built it alone I would have built it to Henry David Thoreau's specs. But when it was finished I considered it to be my home, a place mirroring an internal space. It was a warrior's bunker that belonged to whoever had the strength, cunning, will, power and determination to live in it and hold it.

I lived on the steep slope of a ravine. Hanging over The Split Tree the thing you would see as you lay on your back in one of the hammocks in the screen house and looked through the screen roof was a large dead lighting-blasted tree. It leaned over The Split Tree. Its top most length was a rotted brittle 30-foot lance ready to fall, spike, impale and destroy. The first two years I lived there I watched as it rotted, and became more and more a clear and ever present danger.

I urged Robert to be reasonable and let me cut the dead tree down and away from The Split Tree. But he wouldn't allow it. He told Gloria and the association of childless resentful women that I would soon be spiked and gone from the refuge. He told me if it was meant for me to be on the wild animals' refuge the spike would not fall on The Split Tree.

Every significant storm weakened the spike, increased its menace.

During a strong Nor'easter in the fall of 1994 I didn't sleep under the spike.

Next morning I drove back to the refuge. There were many tree falls. I stopped in at Robert's and Gloria's house. Robert laughed at me. He said The Split Tree was "totaled."

I ran out of the house up the hill, through the fields, into the forest. I stopped on the last bend in the path. From where I stood I couldn't see The Split Tree. But I could see that the spike had come down. I sprinted around the bend.

There was that beautiful feeling rising in my chest. The Split Tree stood. It was intact. The spike had fallen in the only possible way it could have fallen without destroying it.

The spike had fallen in one piece. It hit the three taunt guide wires holding up the screen house. It snapped the wires and broke into three pieces. All the pieces had bounced away from The Split Tree. The screen house sagged, but still stood.

Years latter seeing the fragments of the spike would still cause that beautiful feeling to rise in my chest. It was the feeling that suffused the dream in Campsite 2.

A curious thing about the Spirit of Place is the fact that no place exerts its full influence upon a new-comer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America. While the Red Indian existed in fairly large numbers, the new colonials were in a great measure immune from the daimon, or demon, of America. The moment the last nuclei of Red life breaks up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon of the continent. At present the demon of the place and the unappeased ghosts of the dead Indians act within the unconscious or under-conscious soul of the white American, causing the Orestes-like frenzy of restlessness in the Yankee soul, the inner malaise which amounts almost to madness, sometimes. The Mexican is macabre and disintegrated in his own way. Up till now, the unexpressed spirit of America has worked covertly in the American, the white American soul. But within the present generation the surviving Red Indians are due to merge in the great white swamp. Then the Daimon of America will work overtly, and we shall see real changes.

Chapter 8 - The Visionary Chairman

Everywhere I did newspaper an "Indian" story would become the most important story. When I worked in Maine it was the Pasmaquoddy, and the Penobscots land claim. On Cape Cod it was the Mashpee Wampanoug's claim on New Seabury. When I returned to Connecticut it was the Mashantucket Pequot's thriving bingo hall.

The politically correct newspaper story was about the return of the dispossessed aboriginal to their power, the biblical reversal of fortune, the getting the money back. But what I saw was the sinking into the Great White Swamp.

The Connecticut Indian people who were recognized by the colony of Connecticut and are recognized by the state of Connecticut retained much of tribe, spirit of place, resistance. But because most of the descendants of Connecticut Indians are dark-skinned people their Indian-ness has always been challenged, blood libeled.

The blood libel was first invoked by light-skinned people of Connecticut Indian ancestry who competed with dark-skinned people for the reservation's limited resources. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumental makes the blood libel the official state policy. The libel declares the dark-skinned people are "Monigs," more niggah than anything else. It says the grandmother of the dark-skinned ones was not Indian. She was a niggah whore from the south, illegally placed on the reservation by a white bureaucrat.

NORTH STONINGTON _ Because of a bitter inter-tribal dispute with racial overtones two Pequot Indian factions have lost a desperately needed $1.2 million federal housing grant.

The federal moneys were awarded to one of the tribal factions, in September. But because the American Indian groups have been unable to form a housing council to jointly administer the funds, the housing grant has been revoked.

The decades-old intertribal dispute has halted the economic development of the 224-acre reservation, uneasily shared by the Eastern Pequots and Pawcatuck Eastern Pequots.

The rapid development of the adjacent Mashantucket Pequot reservation where a Las Vegas-style casino is rising from the clear-cut tribal lands is in stark contrast to the tribe's rural lands that lie between Lantern Hill and Long Pond. The only structures on the tribe's land are small lakeside cottages and old mobile homes. Many tribal members are seeking employment with the Mashantucket Pequot's burgeoning gambling enterprises.

Yet even the $1.2 million grant is insufficient incentive to bring the tribe back together.

The lighter skinned Pawcatuck Eastern Pequot adamantly refuse to accept extensive genealogies and documentation that the darker skinned Eastern Pequots are in fact Pequots.

"Let's face it, this is a racial issue. There is absolutely no question in my mind that racism is at the heart of this matter," says Roy Sebastian, also known by his Indian name Chief Hockeo Running Deer, the tribal leader of the about 600 members of the Eastern Pequot faction.

What's clear is that the federal government will not release the grant to build 15 houses on the Lantern Hill reservation until the two factions begin to resolve their differences. But the two factions are unable or unwilling to begin negotiations to resolve their differences.

"The federal government will have nothing to do with a situation which could involve discrimination," said Leon Jacobs, director of Indian programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)(presently an employee of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Government).

"If $1.2 million doesn't bring these people together to smoke the peace pipe, then nothing will," said Jacobs, a Lumbee Indian from North Carolina.

"But this money will not be held, forever. If these people do not begin to reconcile their differences and live together as a single nation this money will be re-appropriated to other people in need of decent housing," he said.

"We will not negotiate. We are ready to go to federal court, but we will not negotiate with people whose claims to be Indian are based on forged documents," said Agnes Cunha, the leader of the about 140 Pawcatuck Eastern Pequot.

"If these people (the Pawcatuck Eastern Pequot) can't see beyond their irrational hatred, we don't need to have anything to do with them. We know who we are, and we'll make do without them and the housing grant," said Roy Sebastian.

All Pequots trace their ancestry to the American Indian tribe that was the dominant economic and military power in Southern New England in the 1600's.

But in 1637 English colonists and their Mohegan and Narragansett allies crushed the Pequots.

Many of the Pequot survivors were given to the Mohegan Indians as slaves, or placed under the control of the Narragansett Indians. But within a generation Pequots escaped from Mohegan or Narragansett control,and joined groups of Pequots who had never been captured.

The group escaping Mohegan control was eventually given a parcel of land in Ledyard and became the western or Mashantucket Pequot. The group that left the Narragansetts was eventually given a nearby reservation in North Stonington and became the Eastern Pequots.

In the last decade American Indians have found reasons to document their tribal ancestry. These include federal and state medical and housing benefits, new legal recourse to reclaim tribal lands or to obtain compensation for illegally seized land, and tribal economic sovereignty that can allow federally recognized tribes to build and operate casinos.

To get the HUD housing grant the Eastern Pequot and Pawcatuck Eastern Pequot must popularly elect a council to administer the federal money. The Eastern Pequot have expressed their willingness to negotiate with the opposing faction and comply with the conditions for the housing grant. But their overtures continue to be rebuffed by the Pawcatuck Eastern Pequot.

The Pawcatuck Eastern Pequots have challenged genealogies and records establishing the Pequot ancestry of Tamar Brashel, a young woman who lived on the reservation in the early 1800's.

Cunha contends Brashel was black, and even if it is proven she was not black, her Indian blood was more likely Mohegan than Pequot.

But state records substantiate the Sebastian's claims to be Indian and rightful residents of the Lantern Hill reservation.

"Tamar Brashel was without doubt a full-blood Indian but there is a difference of opinion about her being a Pequot," reads a state genealogy report prepared in 1936. "There seems to be no doubt she was found on the street in New London when about five years old, apparently lost. She was taken home and brought up by Captain Elam Eldridge and his wife and after she married Manuel Sebastian (a sailor from the Azor Islands) they lived on the Eastern or Lantern Hill Reservation."

The Eastern Pequots also have extensive documentation proving the Brashels had been living on the Lantern Hill Reservation since the 18th Century.

The Pawcatuck Eastern Pequots contend "Brashel" is a Mohegan surname and that inconsistencies in Tamar Brashel's wedding and baptism certificates show she was not Indian.

Ms. Cunha further contends Tamar Brashel was a New London prostitute who was illegally placed on the reservation in the 19th Century by a state-appointed, white overseer. Ms. Cunha accuses the Eastern Pequots of falsifying state records of Brashel's Indian ancestry.

"Allegations straight from the sewer regarding my ancestors are not worthy of reply," said Roy Sebastian. "We know we are Pequots, we have the documentation to prove this and we will not stoop...nothing constructive can be accomplished by calling each other names or making ludicrous claims about each other," he said.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the Lantern Hill reservation was occupied primarily by descendants of Tamar Brashel and Manuel Sebastian. In the 1930's Atwood Williams Sr., who was known as Chief Silver Star, Ms. Cunha's grandfather and a leader of the American Indian Federation, an Indian cultural revival movement, challenged the Sebastian's Indian ancestry and right to live on the reservation. Members of the Sebastian family claimed Williams was "a self-appointed chief," and would physically eject Williams from the reservation.

A 1933 report by J.R. Williams, an inspector for the state's Park and Forestry Department which administered Connecticut's Indian reservations until 1941 describes the racism of the lighter skinned Pequots and the state employees who administered Indian lands.

Mrs. Calvin Geer, an ancestor of the Pawcatuck Eastern Pequots and the Mashantucket Pequot is described by Williams as being, "short, round, fat, with a swarthy (Latin type) complexion. She has a pug nose, large mouth, rather comical looking. Mrs. Geer wanted it understood there was not a drop of negro blood in her. She was indignant at the "Indians" on the reservation at Lantern Hill who she says are a bunch of "niggahs."

The daughter of Mrs. Calvin Williams an ancestor of the Eastern Pequots is described as "a negress, resembles hippo, teeth and all. Slight reddish tinge is all that suggests Indian, is deaf."

"Mrs. Plouffe (the grandmother of Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council Vice-Chairman Richard "Skip" Hayward) has many grievances...against the "niggahs" at Lantern Hill. Claims none of them belong there - squatters, etc. Wishes the state would run them out, so both reservations could be sold so she could buy a farm in Vermont," writes the state inspector.

The state welfare department didn't take control of Connecticut's Indian lands until 1941. Welfare Department records show the state took special pains to place lighter skinned Pequots returning to either the Mashantucket or Eastern Pequot reservations on the "white" portions of the reservations, and darker skinned Pequots were placed in the "negro" sections.

In 1976 the Connecticut Indian Affairs Council (CIAC) ruled Tamar Brushel Sebastian was an Eastern Pequot. But the council reversed itself later that year when Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Chairman Richard "Skip" Hayward testified at a public hearing his grandmother and other tribal elders had told him Tamar Brashel was not an Indian. The council than concluded Tamar Brashel was a half-blood.

Pawcatuck Eastern Pequots moved mobile homes on to the reservation in the early 1980's. In 1984 when the Pawcatuck attempted to have state police evict Eastern Pequots from the reservation, Eastern Pequots armed themselves and blockaded the state road that goes through the reservation until they were assured state police would not attempt to evict tribal members.

In 1990, a state court ruled the state of Connecticut had no authority on matters regarding tribal membership and leadership, and left the tribal factions to their bitterness.

Cunha said she is ready to litigate the matter in federal court claiming the state unlawfully granted Indian status to the Eastern Pequots, and it is still up to the Sebastians to prove the accuracy of their documentation and genealogies.

Roy Sebastian said such a review is unnecessary. "The Sebastians' Pequot heritage is as strongly established as anybodies. If someone can deny us our heritage than the heritage of every other person of Indian descent in Connecticut can also be overturned."

The Mashantucket Pequot could resolve the dispute among Eastern Pequots, says William Bingham, legal counsel for the Eastern Pequots. "We are disappointed the Mashantucket Pequot have made no attempt to arbitrate or help us in this dispute," he said. "We keep the door open for any kind of discussion like this."

Hayward and Mashantucket Pequot Tribal employees assisted the Pawcatuck Pequots in their application for the HUD housing grant.

Despite Hayward's damaging testimony about the Sebastians, he accepted many Sebastian cousins into his tribe to bolster the Mashantucket Pequot population when the tribe sought federal recognition in the late 1970's.

In the 1980's racial tension flared on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation.

Although Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council members say these racial problems have been solved, lighter skinned and darker skinned tribal members continue to live in distinct and separate areas on their Ledyard reservation.

"The only factor here is who is an Indian," says Cunha. "The Indians have so little. This reservation was placed here for the Indians. If you are not an Indian, you have no business being here."

Roy Sebastian said his people belong.

When I was a child on this reservation the elders use to tell us about how on certain full moon nights this white mist would rise from Long Pond into the forms of the Pequots' good god and the Pequots bad god, says Sebastian. There would then be this terrible fight over the waters of Long Pond. Most of the time the good god would win. Sometimes he didn't. I think the elders use to think about our history and try to find lessons. They may have remembered the reservation was given to the Sachem Momohoe for helping defeat our Narragansett brothers during King Phillip's War. We have had to always struggle between doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing, between doing things for greed and doing things because it is the right thing to do."

The government genealogists, anthropologists, and historians recognize the blood libel for what it is. Even though the Pawcatucks never lost an opportunity to blood libel the Eastern Pequots, their petition for federal recognition was accepted. The Pawcatucks were told they could be part of the tribe of Tamars' descendants, or they could hang and jerk, forever.

Blumenthal hangs and jerks. He tries to reverse the federal recognition on the basis of the blood libel. The Pawcatuck show that in the end, right before the merging in the Great White Swamp, the only color that matters is the color of the money. They do whatever it takes to be window dressing to get a piece of the fabulous Indian casino.

In the spring of 1975 the visionary chairman, the Skip Hayward, the architect of this day, was showing a group of young Wampanougs, from Mashpee, Mass., the tribe's maple syrup business.

Skip and his light-skinned cousins had put a huge maple sap evaporator in the middle of the living room in a small house built with government money. The ceiling and walls were collapsing in the heat and moisture of the hastily improvised sugar-house.

Skip demonstrated how the trees were tapped. With showmanship and style he tapped into an oak tree. The laughter didn't shake him. His story was it was a maple tree and he was sticking to his story.

He was a politician with a stump speech. The speech was delivered well, delivered with conviction, it didn't change, it's his story and he's sticking to his story. He spoke about his grandmother who struggled against the state to hold the land. The struggle was about justice, being repatriated for what happened in 1637 and he's really pissed off about what happened in 1637. Needless to say he wanted his money back, the compounded interest of the unappeasable resentment.

Those who worked with Skip at Groton's Electric Boat shipyard for the construction of nuclear submarines remember a good ole partying white boy who wasn't at all exceptional in his dream of the lottery ticket, the end of the daily struggle for the little person's paycheck, the end of playing hide and seek with the bosses at the electric boat for $400 a week.

Aline Campoux's (the first of Skip's three wives) story is that Skip was always beating her up, and she wants her money back. But what she mostly reminisces about is how Skip was always restlessly, recklessly, resentfully seeking out this thing that would give him more money than any white man has ever dreamed of.

Skip would suddenly be sure this thing was in Missouri or Oregon or someplace else on the other side of the western horizon where things concerning Indians are suppose to happen. In the western places Skip would end up sitting around in his underwear, drinking vodka, snorting coke, watching television in some trailer park, while Aline would be working at the McDonald's.

But out west Skip had an epiphany. The Penobscot and Pasmoquoddy tribes are remnants of the Abenaki Nation whose armed resistance started in the 1670's and never officially ended. Like the Mashantucket Pequot they were recognized by a state (the state of Maine). They weren't federally recognized. They filed a land claim. They claimed almost half the state of Maine. They prevailed. They got their money back, the mounting interest on the unappeasable resentment. Skip's epiphany was the realization that the law allowed the Mashantucket Pequot to make the same kind of land claim.

Skip's resentment was blessed. He didn't have to seek out the right lawyer. The right lawyer sought him. Thomas Tureen (presently an employee of the Mashantucket Pequot) was the lawyer who got the Pasmoquoddy and Penobscot their money back, $40 million, 150,000 acres.

From that victory Tureen sought out other groups of people with ancestors from here, with great compounded unappeasable resentments and great expectations of getting their money back.

Skip and Tureen filed a land claim for the reservation land that was sold in 1859, with the consent of the tribe, but not with the consent of the federal government. Because the federal government did not consent to the sale of the Indian land the sale was in violation of the 1790 Indian Non-Intercourse Act..

At first everyone wanted to be benefactors of 'the Indian.' Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr., Governor Ella Grasso, Congressman Sam Gejdenson all wanted to be benefactors of the Indian. They supported legislation, a special act of Congress, that would settle the land claim, and give the Mashantucket Pequot federal recognition.

But when Congress was considering the special act, there was a problem. Skip's tribal entity had only a dozen people, only white people. There didn't seem to be enough people to justify a special act of Congress.

Anna Sebastian, Skip's great aunt had married Jesse Sebastian a descendant of Tamar Brushel Sebastian. She was beaten for miscegenation. She was exiled to the other side of Long Pond to the reservation of the Eastern Pequots. Her branch of the George family was by far the most fecund. But her descendants were not considered, never considered themselves to be Mashantucket Pequot. They thought they were only Eastern Pequot. During the same 1976 public hearing in which Skip had repeated his grandmother's blood libel about Tamar Brushel, Juanita Helen Sebastian, the mother of Kenny Reels (the second chairman of the federally recognized tribal council) said she knew she was Eastern Pequot. But she did not understand how she was Mashantucket Pequot. She had to have it explained to her.

Gejdenson made it clear to Skip. There would be no special act without the sons and daughters of Tamar and of Anna.

Skip believed what his grandmother had told him about his dark-skinned cousins. He knew if a dark-skinned cousin was allowed into his tribal entity, all eventually would have to be allowed in. He knew a day would come when they would be the majority. He knew a day would come when he would be deposed by a dark-skinned cousin. But he knew the only color that really mattered was the color of the money. He included the dark-skinned cousins.

Skip got his money back. He got the land, federal recognition, then the bingo hall, then the casino, then the slot machines. He made the dispossessed dark-skinned cousins possessed beyond their wildest imaginings.

But the dark-skinned cousins never forgot what Skip and his grandmother had always called them. They made one of their own chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council as soon as they could.

When his dark-skinned cousins killed all his projects all his seeds before they could grow, when they were getting ready to overthrow him, Skip said: "If I knew it was going to be about a bunch of fucking niggahs, I wouldn't have even started this."

For the animals and the savages are isolate, each one in its own pristine self. The animal lifts its head, sniffs, and knows within the dark, passionate belly. It knows at once, in dark mindlessness. And at once it flees in immediate recoil; or it crouches predatory, in the mysterious storm of exultant anticipation of seizing a victim; or it lowers its head in blank indifference again; or it advances in the insatiable wild curiosity, insatiable passion to approach that which is unspeakably strange and incalculable; or it draws near in the slow trust of wild, sensual love.

Chapter 9 - The Turtle

In fall 1994 we had our largest harvest. It was a ridiculous amount of herb, more than we could smoke before the next harvest. We began eating large quantities, became adept at making good food that gladdened the heart, the Rastafarian Stews.

On the hottest day ever recorded in Connecticut Robert put way too much bud in the stew. And just when we started choking it down Gloria came and took Robert away to instruct school children about the pathetic wild animals.

I was left alone with it. It was like eating hay. I fought the gag. When I was finished I was slimy wet from the exertion of eating it in the furnace heat of the mid-day sun. It was about 106 in the shade.

I was suppose to cover a Norwich City Council meeting for the oldest continually bad newspaper in the English-speaking world. But I was tripping. I thought I knew a lot about the herbs. But I knew nothing. I hadn't known that the herbs are a powerful entheogen.

I walked through the woods to The Split Tree, to the clearing in the woods. I walked the woods in the insatiable wild curiosity, insatiable passion to approach that which is unspeakably strange and incalculable.

Robert and Gloria were the self proclaimed prophet and priestess of a new covenant with the wild animal. They judged the wild animals to be too maimed, too fucked-up, too pathetic to ever be released. They judged themselves and they too were maimed, way too fucked up, too pathetic to ever be released. NAWA became a prison for Robert, Gloria, the wild animals. They tried to make it a prison for me.

I lived in the woods in a kind of wild freedom and exultant anticipation of the true covenant with the wild animals and the wildness inside one's self, a covenant that would make people as beautiful as the wild animals. I bathed in the pool I had dug in the stream at the bottom of the ravine. The water stayed cold in the heat of the hottest summer days. The water's chill stayed with me when I walked back up the ravine to The Split Tree.

I walked to the edge of the forest and the beginning of the open fields. In the full power of the sun there was such sensual creature comfort. I didn't want to leave this world and go on the pavement, become a car key chimpanzee. But I knew something was going to happen.

It surprised me I could drive. I drove about a mile-and-a-half then stood on my brakes when I saw IT!

IT! was an impossibly large turtle. IT! was an impossibly ancient creature. IT! was impossible. But IT! was. An impossibly large turtle for New England, at least a five-and-a-half foot diameter shell. A creature incredibly old, incredibly powerful was crossing the sun blasted front lawn of a red farmhouse.

I looked into the turtle's eyes. The turtle looked into mine. I remembered. Thirty-five years before and about 12 miles away I had seen this same creature.

It was at a picnic at Uncle Herbie's house in Colchester. Herbie wasn't a blood relation. He was the brother of an uncle by marriage. Near the picnic table where all the adults were sitting was a tall dense row of arborvitaes. I crawled on hands and knees beneath and through them. On the other side of the hedgerow was this very same turtle.

It was bigger than me. I still engaged it, tried to capture it, take it back with me to the other side of the arborvitae. The turtle was gentle with me. When I tried to lift him he went into a swimming motion that caused his claw-like feet to scratch my hands and arms drawing a little blood.

I crawled back to the other side of the arborvitae hedgerow and begged my cousin Stevie who was 12 to help me with the turtle. But by the time I was bandaged and Herbie and Stevie walked around the hedgerow with me, the turtle was gone.

I cried. I couldn't be consoled. I never stopped looking for the turtle.

I don't know how long I looked into the eyes of the turtle and the turtle looked into mine before a car came fast around the corner almost smashed into the back of my pick-up truck. Then I was fleeing the angry horn.

I couldn't remember where I was, why I was in my pick-up truck or where I was driving to. I saw a box turtle curled up in its shell in the middle of the road. I stopped, got out of the truck, brought the turtle to the side of the road it was pointed. When I got back in the truck I knew where I was, remembered where I was going, what I was trying to do.

I went to the Flander's Post Office and my post office box. I opened the box with my key. But when the post office box was open I inadvertently turned the key and put the latch in the locked position. I was then unable to close the post office box. I kept on banging the door into the wall until I had the full attention of everybody in the post office. I left the post office box open and fled.

When I got into the truck I was desperately thirsty. I drove real fast to the drive through window of a Burger King. I was dangerously dehydrated unable to find the moisture to speak. My unsuccessful attempts at human speech got the full attention of the burger workers. They watched in horrified fascination as I struggled to form the words "large coke," with my parched, cracked lips, swollen numbed tongue, and mucous choked throat.

I grabbed the bucket of coke when it was finally offered and immediately, as I was still parked by the pick-up window, poured as much as I could into my mouth. Much of it flowed freely down my face, my neck, my chest, my arms. I made throaty animal-like sounds. I threw money into the window, and my tires squealed when I drove away.

I knew I was scaring people. There was nothing I could do about it.

I parked in the most sun-exposed place in the parking lot. I watched as if from a great distance the suffering of the heat oppressed chimpanzees with car keys. I took a slow walk across the parking lot through the chimeras formed by the radiating heat to the newspaper vending machines. I saw my by-line on a front page.

It was my story about the treaty the Norwich city fathers were to sign with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation that day. The Mashantucket Pequots were to be given the Mercantile Block, choice city real estate overlooking the Thames River for $1. The Mashantucket Pequots said they were going to build a five-star hotel, they were going to build Newport, Rhode Island on the stony hills of Norwich.

After I had read the story in the rapture of the publication I felt I was through it, totally lucid. I drove to Norwich City Hall.

As I walked into the council chamber the grain of the wood became kinetic, the walls began to breath, the dead talked to me all at once. There was a babble of many voices. I heard something about the place's curse, something about me being part of it. But I didn't understand whether I was to lift the curse or make it much worse.

Again I was scaring people. I had to leave. I did not witness the signing of the paper.

A city block was leveled. A big hole was dug. But the Mashantucket Pequots decided it was bad business to build attractions in Norwich. Why divert the punters from the casino? This isn't the way the world's biggest plastic Indian makes the rain. For five years the crater was Norwich's most notable landmark.

I seek the turtle. I walk the forests, the swamps, the fields becoming forest. I study reptile field guides, books on the evolution of reptiles. I've found pictures of turtles with similar features. But the books say they are the proto-turtles, creature that lived long geological eras ago.

The terrible fatality.

Fatality.

Doom.

Doom Doom! Doom! Something seems to whisper it in the very dark trees of America. Doom!

Doom of what?

Doom of our white day. We are doomed, doomed. And the doom is in America. The doom of our white day.

Ah, well, if my day is doomed, and I am doomed with my day, IT is something greater than I which dooms me, so I accept my doom as a sign of the greatness which is more than I am.

Chapter 10 - The Baton

There was always someone who was scammed to do the shit work, to clean the cages. The "interns" were the most resentful associates of the association of the childless, resentful women. But they all succumbed to the seduction of the baton.

Robert would tell them they could be the one who would be handed the NAWA baton. They would have the fame. They would have the chance to do it their way, the right way, instead of the way Gloria and Robert did it.

I warned them all. Robert was never going to give up the baton. He was fucking with you by offering it. But Robert was always fucking himself with the baton.

At first the interns would be smarmy sycophants. But inevitably they would become conspirators, mutineers. Tammy was the intern in 1992. I made the mistake of dismissing her as stupid. But she had a low, malicious cunning, was the most successful of all the interns at working Gloria and Robert against each other, and Gloria against me.

At NAWA raccoons were fed 'Little Debbies', individually wrapped, crËme filled, oatmeal pastry. During the night breaks in the digging, in the thieving of construction materials I would raid the 'Little Debbies' bin. This would enrage Tammy. She ratted me out to Gloria.

One late night when I went to get some Debbies there was a note saying, "Stop stealing the raccoons' food!" On the same piece of paper I wrote, "Fuck-you, you Down Syndrome bitch!"

Problem was Tammy had gotten Gloria to write the note. The way Robert always told it Gloria gave an ultimatum. She said I had to go. He said he refused to give the ultimatum. On this he would hang his resentment that I caused Gloria to leave.

Gloria did a charade about leaving. But just went to a motel in Rhode Island. Robert fired Tammy, made her piteously cry. It was the first of the piteous crying. Gloria later said this was the time when she dated the beginning of the end of NAWA.

Robert tried to replace Tammy with Dewey to make the kingdom of his herb into NAWA.

Dewey believed he was the best marijuana cultivator in at least 12,000 years. His self-confidence, at first, impressed me.

The Robert technique was labor-intensive. It was working the dirt until you could sink your arm up to the shoulder in it. It was carrying tons of composted horse manure, thousands of gallons of water through the woods and the fields becoming woods. It worked. But Robert had not grown as a cultivator. He produced good herb. But he didn't produce spectacular, transcendent, jewelry bud.

Dewey believed in 'High Times' the magazine as if it was a holy scripture. Robert said "High Times" was a government disinformation conspiracy. Dewey read something in 'High Times' that made him believe he knew which plants were females, which ones were male when they were in their early vegetative growth.

He insisted Kali, our most extraordinary plant was a male.

I was always trying to mediate the discussion. I tried to keep the discussion free of dogma, fanaticism. I tried to keep the discussion focused on the art, science, and intuition of it. I tried to explain the herb cultivates you more than you cultivate it. Robert and me both knew Kali was the one, the extraordinary individual that the gods of the cultivation had given us, a great mystery, a great blessing, a great bitch. When Dewey insisted Kali was a male and tried to rip her out of the garden I stopped mediating the discussion. I knew then that Dewey was nothing but yellow shit, a danger to himself to any cultivation he was allowed to put his hands to.

Robert and I were smoking joints as thick as our thumbs as we were walking to the gardens on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, 1991. The first budding had begun and we were exuberant and careless. We didn't see the cop until he was on us.

He was dressed as a hunter. But when he yelled, I had no doubt he was a cop. He flashed the badge. He was a detective from Cromwell, a town about 45 miles to the Northwest. He had caught us. We were busted. I gripped the mostly intact, fragrant joint in my right hand. I could not hide my fear.

But Robert was in top criminal form. He went into the cops face. He told him, showed him on the map the cop produced that he was trespassing on wildlife refuge land, was where a hunter should never be.

The cop apologized. But he made us talk to him for at least an hour-and-a-half. We talked about wild animals, tried to account for ourselves by telling the cop we were looking for an injured animal, an injured hawk, yeah, that's the ticket. Robert gave his name. I lying badly gave a false name.

We parted, seemingly as amigos. He even invited us to the bar all the Cromwell cops drank at, told Robert to leave a NAWA jar there. The last sight we had of him he was walking the trace of a trail leading to the Kali Garden.

We tried to get hold of Dewey. But when courage, character and honor were needed, Dewey was never there. That night in pouring cold rain, without using our flashlights Robert and I crawled to the Kali garden.

We suspected we were crawling to the police, our doom. The trees in the rain were whispering this. I yielded to the mud, to the shitty, dumb misery of it. We were lost. But we didn't turn on the flashlights.

Then, as if in a dream, we were at the entrance of the tunnel that went through the prickers, thorns and briars to the Kali Garden. We ripped the plants out of the ground, stuffed them into black plastic garbage bags. We left a trail of plastic and herb into the refuge.

Next day Robert separated the buds. There wasn't a lot. But what there was of Kali was extraordinary, juicy and kind. Robert had to go to a wedding. He took one of the biggest Kali buds as a wedding present. He put the rest of the bud in a black, plastic bag and hung it in the midst of the briars, prickers and thorns towards the back boundary of the refuge.

I told him it was a bad idea to just leave the plastic bag full of our best herb like that. I told him the fragrant herb would draw critters. Robert accused me of libeling the wild animals. I deferred to Robert's experience.

Next day Robert returned to the place he had left the bag. It was gone. He shredded himself looking for it.

Glue and intravenous crystal methedrine had seriously damaged Robert. He heard dark whisperings. If Robert thought about someone and their actions long enough the dark whisperings would tell him a person was conspiring against him, was ready to do him. When I returned Robert was a bloody, insane mess.

I said an animal had taken the bag and brought it somewhere deeper into the briars and prickers. Robert was again incensed by the accusation against the pathetic wild animals. We were about to come to blows. Then we heard Dewey.

He was at least a mile away, at the ruins of the Kali Garden. But we clearly heard his crazed curses. "You fucking assholes!" he kept on screaming. Then he wept piteously.

Dewey didn't believe in the police detective from Cromwell. He believed Robert and me had just destroyed the greatest piece of herb cultivation in 12,000 years. He believed we ripped him off.

When Dewey came to the attention of the dark whispers in Robert's mind he became suspect.

Dewey didn't show himself at the refuge until three days later. I wasn't there. Robert took him to The Split Tree construction site.

When we first began the construction of The Split Tree Dewey enthusiastically worked. But when we told him The Split Tree was to be my home, my clearing in the woods and not a grow room he never moved a shovel-full more of dirt.

Robert tried to get Dewey to confront and fight me. He planned to join with the victor in an interrogation conducted with a lit cigarette and a penknife. The interrogation wouldn't end until the truth was known or someone was dead.

Dewey lusted for the baton. He was a true believer in the cult of the pathetic wild animal. Robert told Dewey that if he could beat me into submission, he would have the baton.

Dewey was 25. I was overweight and 38. But he was afraid of me. He drove a pick ax through the blade of a shovel, and didn't show himself at the refuge for over three years. The punctured shovel blade stayed where it fell.

We had left the rest of the herb in the wet garbage bags. We laid the herb out in a tent to dry. We put the tent in what seemed to be a very hidden place outside the boundaries of the refuge.

Another intern was still needed to replace Tammy. Two people applied for the position, an overweight, wall-eyed woman who Robert judged to be too ugly, and David Blair. Robert hired Blair.

Gloria immediately judged Blair to be a moron and called him Duh. He had grown up in a rural area. He had just gotten out of the National Guard. The first thing he told Robert was that he looked forward to exploring the forest and the fields becoming forest.

He was the exact wrong person to have around. The first day Robert left Duh alone at the refuge he found the tent. When Robert and Gloria returned he was waiting for them at the front gate.

He told them he had found a tent that could belong to someone who was squatting and hunting on the refuge. He claimed he had not looked in the tent. Robert and Duh walked back to the tent. But they did not look inside. If there was someone in the tent that person would have every right to shoot them, Robert told Duh. .

The dark whispers made Robert believe Duh was a cop. Robert made me believe Duh was a cop. Robert told me I had to get the herbs to a safe place.

Before first light I set out. I believed I was walking into the police, my doom. But in that night so thick with menace I felt alive. I felt my life like a wild animal feels theirs'. Somehow I found the tent. I brought the tent wrapped herbs to Campsite 2. I hid it in thick bushes.

Next day, while he was suppose to be training Duh and dealing with the incarcerated animals (Gloria would have nothing to do with Duh) Robert went to Campsite 2 to pick out the most potent parts of the plants. Duh went back to Campsite 2 to find him. He saw Robert. But he was no rocket scientist. Duh still didn't have a clear picture of what was going on.

That evening, before I got back, he went to Campsite 2 to confirm that the issue at hand was a large quantity of herb. When he was doing this, Robert called the clinic building where Duh and all the interns lived. When there was no answer, Robert ran up the hill to the clinic building. He arrived, just in time to ambush Duh as he was returning from Campsite 2. Robert interrogated him, made Duh cry piteously.

He was shocked, horrified there was herb on the wildlife refuge. He told Duh I had grown the herb alone. They took a black plastic garbage bag off the refuge on to the former Mushinsky property. The rest of it, the good stuff was drying on the canopy over Robert's bed.

Then I returned to the refuge. Robert and Gloria had to go. They had to give their pathetic wildlife education program to a troop of boy scouts. Before he left Robert told me Duh was definitely a cop. He said that Duh knew I had grown a shit load of herbs. He suggested I kill Duh.

I heard dark whispers. I scared Duh. I made him believe he was about to be killed. Again he piteously cried.

He confessed he knew all about the herbs. He cried out he just wanted to be our friend. He insisted he was not a cop.

I knew he wasn't a cop. But then Robert came back and made me again listen to the dark whispers. I had to go into the fields. I had to find the bag and take it far away from the refuge.

But I didn't know where the bag was. I begged Robert to at least go to the edge of the field and point out from a distance where the bag was.

For the first time, but not the last time, Robert told me it would be foolish for both of us to be busted. He said he had far more to lose than I did. He said I would not go to prison because I had no criminal record.

I told Robert I accepted all of that. But I needed him to show me where the bag was. He would not. I told him he was "a fucking coward." He groaned, turned and walked away.

Again I was stripped down to the wild, terrified, flatulent animal me. Somehow, as if I was in a dream, I found the bag. I walked to the front gate by unlikely ways. As I walked through the gate Robert began shouting "SAM! LIBBY!"

I ran to him, somehow stopped myself from hitting him. But in an intensely angry, hissing whisper I told him, "Don't ever say my name!"

The garbage bag was filled with sucker leaf. It was useless. I threw it in a dumpster.

We had a garden Dewey wasn't included in, the blueberry garden. It was the garden of the unbroken covenant, nothing but a beautiful thing. We smoked large.

I would laugh when Robert would try to seduce me with the baton. I told him he was fucking with me. But most of all he was fucking with himself.

Let's overthrow the tables, disconnect the cables. This place don't make sense to me no more. Can you tell me what we're waiting for senor.

Chapter 11 - The Siege of '93

MoonFace Bear was the last nuclei of the Red Life in Connecticut. He was a blood libeled dark-skinned Indian with a sense of history. He wanted a piece of the biblical reversal of fortune. But when Moon dreamed of the things he would do if he had the flow he dreamed of helicopter gun ships blowing up the dams. In his dreams the dead spoke to him in the aboriginal language and he understood. When the time came he rose up.

He was 13 when his father The Big Eagle rose up against the state. Big Eagle armed himself. He held off the state police. He built a log cabin on the quarter-acre Trumbull rez in defiance of his neighbors who wanted to keep niggahs out, and the state of Connecticut which wanted full control over all Connecticut Indian reservations.

It was the germinal event that made the MoonFace Bear. His father made him war chief when he was 14. Even then he knew his constituency was not only the Paugussetts. He worked with Skip's dark-skinned cousins in the first tribal businesses.

To show their appreciation Skip and Tureen helped Moon get the $200,000 HUD grant to buy the 118-acre parcel in Colchester, the Golden Hill Paugussetts' second reservation, Moon's home, his realm.

Skip made a deal with all the other state-recognized Connecticut Indians. In return for their support for Mashantucket Pequot federal recognition, in return for not raising the questions that could easily be raised regarding Mashantucket Pequot federal recognition, Skip was going to help all the other Connecticut Indians get federally recognized after Mashantucket Pequot got theirs.

This Skip never did. After the Mashantucket Pequots were federally recognized he sabotaged all the attempts by state- recognized Indians to be federally recognized. He protected the monopoly. Skip and Moon had a final falling out when Skip found out Moon was having sex with one of his sisters.

Moon dropped out of school when he was 12. But he became a noted and notable scholar of the Indian law. He knew everything about the Connecticut Indian Law was against the law.

He was a member of the General Assembly task force that wrote the bill that became state law. The law requires Connecticut's governor to negotiate a compact with any willing state recognized Connecticut Indian tribe regarding the establishment of tribal businesses on tribal land.

As the Golden Hill representative to the Connecticut Indian Affairs Council (CIAC) Moon helped get state money to pay for a review of the legality of the Connecticut Indian law. The review by Dale White, a Mohawk Indian (now an employee of the Mohegan Tribal Nation) concluded the Connecticut Indian law was against the law.

Blumenthal arranged it so White wasn't working for the CIAC but was working for him. When White officially submitted the report, Blumenthal refused to make it public.

With the blessing of the Hartford Courant, I got a state Freedom of Information Commission hearing scheduled. A week before the hearing, Blumenthal capitulated and released the report. His only statement was that he disagreed with White. He made no attempt to defend the legality of the state law or his policy, or his actions.

Armed with the state law requiring the governor to make business compacts and with the White memorandum, Moon escalated his war with the state. He built a pond on the reservation in open disregard and defiance of the state DEP and all state wetland law. Moon and his half-brother Aurelius H. Piper Jr., a.k.a. Ricky went to Hartford and told Weicker's lawyers they were ready to negotiate the Paugussett Tribe's tribal business compact.

Weicker had a lawyer convey a message. The way Moon characterized the message was that Weicker had said "it would be a cold day in hell before the Connecticut General Assembly and a bunch of niggahs claiming they were Indians could compel himself to do shit."

Moon knew a time would come when he would lead an armed Indian resistance against the state of Connecticut. He had a vision by the shores of Lake Zoar, his people's ancient homeland. He had organized trespass on Northeast Utility land. Moon, and his people, built a sweat lodge. In a vision Moon saw gunmen gathered.

Right after the David Koresh Waco massacre Moon began his armed resistance. He got AK 47's. He built a gun tower. He built fortifications and bunkers on the rez. Moon got cheap, untaxed cigarettes through the warrior societies at Akwasasne, the place where the partridge drums, where the Mohawk rules in defiance, in the organized criminality.

Weicker had made cigarettes bought in Connecticut some of the highest state taxed, most expensive tobacco, in all of the Americas. Moon sold cheap, untaxed cigarettes on the rez. Everyone came to buy the cheap cigarettes in defiance of Weicker and the horse he rode in on.

Weicker laid siege to the reservation. Gunmen came to the reservation from Mohawk, Lakota, Narragansett, Eastern Pequot, Tiano. Gunmen came who had no Indian blood.

Moon had well attended anti-Weicker rallies on the reservation. At first there was all kinds of support. There was money. All things, the helicopter gunship, the busting down the dam, seemed possible. But three years earlier Moon had broken with his father.

When I first saw Big Eagle and Moon together they were close, they were impressive, powerful together. But Big Eagle's greatest joy was a 19-year-old blonde, blue-eyed white girl. He told Moon everything he had was his. But he warned him to stay away from the girl. Moon couldn't help himself. He took the white girl, and his father's fierce, unrelenting curse.

Moon brought his half-brother Ricky into the tribal thing as a counter force to his father and his curse. Ricky had never seen himself as an Indian. He was a black man active in the NAACP. He was a social worker. He was amused by his family's Indian thing. Moon named him Quiet Hawk. (My colleagues in the news media thought it was a good name. He wanted to only communicate by fax.) Moon resurrected the tribal council his father had started. He made Ricky the council chief. He gave Ricky the authority over the petition for federal recognition.

Ricky still thought the tribal government stuff was an excellent joke. Then the casino developers began to explain to him it was all about him becoming another Sultan of Brunei. He saw the importance of being earnest. He turned against Moon, joined up with his father.

Big Eagle said he gave Ricky the tribal authority because he was the only son who went to college. He said he gave Ricky the power because he was sick and tired.

In the middle of the siege of '93 when Moon was surrounded by state troopers his father and brother "banished" him from the tribe. They blood libeled him and his mother. They said if Moon were to submit to a blood test it would show he was not Big Eagle's son, was not Paugussett. They asked the state of Connecticut to take him out, end his illegal occupation of the Colchester reservation.

During the 'Siege of '93' Moon was always seeing the devil. Many days seemed good days to die. The apocalyptic gun fight always seemed imminent.

In July, Moon came to believe the state police swat team was about to attack. He gave a pistol to his 12 year-old-son. He gave Quanah charge of the women and children. He told him: "Shoot if you see the face of the beast." He jumped on a stone wall, faced twenty shotgun armed state police with his holstered handgun.

"If I gotz to die then you gotz to die. If I gotz to go to glory, then we all gotz to go to glory," he told them. "Bring it on Weicker. Bring it on, bitch!" he said.

A reporter called Weicker from the rez and told him what was happening. She told Weicker, "for the love of god" pull the state troopers away from the front of the rez.

Weicker did.

In August Moon's 14 year-old daughter, Pretty Pony, was sitting in an old car barricading the main entrance of the reservation. Guarding the gate with an AK-47, and a Colt .45 handgun was a Lakota gunman who went by the nom de guerre of Mato. A state cop went to the window of the car and took a picture of Pretty Pony. Mato walked into the cop's face with his handgun and told him to get "the fuck out of here." The cop spent long confused seconds trying to maintain dignity, a sense of his authority. But in the end he didn't want to be the first to die for the state cigarette tax.

In September the Connecticut Air National Guard started to buzz the reservation with planes and helicopters. A large helicopter hovered over the big field. It looked like weekend soldiers were preparing to repel down lines and begin an attack. Dan Charging Hawk, another Lakota gunman, was in the field his AK-47 raised and aimed into the broad belly of the military helicopter. Dan had started drinking again. He was going to shoot.

Moon did a personal best sprint and hit Charging Hawk with a flying tackle. He smashed Charging Hawk to the ground. The unsecured assault rifle rolled amongst them. The gun didn't fire. The helicopter fled.

When Moon was running out of cigarettes, Weicker and the state police said the siege was working and vowed Moon would not be able to re-supply the smoke shop. Moon just had his people drive a van full of cigarettes on to the reservation. News of the re- supply and the celebration was on television.

Victor Mendez, a black man from Groton who drove the van boasted about it to an attractive white woman who was buying cigarettes at the smoke shop. She was a state cop with a wire. Mendez was busted when he drove off the rez.

Colonel Joseph Perry, an Eastern Pequot, the highest-ranking state cop, was in charge of the siege. He told Mendez that Moon was making all people of color look bad. He told Mendez to rat Moon, take him out for the sake and dignity of all us people of color.

Mendez didn't talk. Moon bailed him out. He asked him how the cops had found out he was the driver of the van. Mendez said I had ratted him. Moon knew it wasn't true.

Moon suddenly closed the cigarette shop. He said it was because all the money being made was doing no one in the tribe any good. Most of the money was going to his lawyer. He had begun to refer to the smoke shop as the Bill Breetz (his lawyer) Smoke Shop. He said he did it because his customers were going to get busted.

But that was a chance the customers seemed more than willing to take. Buying cigarettes and tobacco at the smoke shop had become a popular way for Connecticut cigarette smokers to show what they thought of Weicker and his tax on cigarettes and the horse he rode in on.

Moon closed down the smoke shop because tribal members he had entrusted with the money stole it.

He was ready to take the arrest. But C. Robert Satti, the state prosecutor in charge of the siege, said it wouldn't be over until Moon gave up his guns. Moon would not give up his guns.

The state police mutinied. No cop wanted to die for the state cigarette tax. They made their own unauthorized deal with Moon. A state police car picked Moon up on the reservation. The police had coffee and donuts for the ride. Moon remembered he had a small bag of herbs with him. The state police let him hand the herbs over to his brother, Geronomo. The police didn't cuff him. They let Moon smoke cigarettes as he was being booked. It only took a few minutes. Moon kept his guns.

He knew the law was with him. It was why the police did not come on the reservation. It was why the pre-trial lasted two-and-a- half years. But on the basis of the dispute over the tribal authority, the dispute that began between Moon and his father over the 19 year-old white girl, the state ruled Moon did not represent the tribe, was an individual subject to the state's criminal and regulatory law. A trial date was set.

Moon knew it would make no difference what the law was, the state was taking him out, putting him in a cage, locking him up for a long time. He vowed he would not be put in a cage.

When he was brought to Norwich's Backus Hospital in May 1996, two weeks before his trial was scheduled to begin he was mostly dead, eaten away by leukemia. When the doctors and technicians were connecting him to the life support equipment in the intensive care unit, his last words, his last moment of consciousness was to note, "This is cool. But what happens when the electricity stops?"

For 12 days Moon was kept alive by electricity and the machines. Politicians went to Norwich and paraded through the Backus Hospital intensive care unit in a prolonged wake. People of power who wouldn't give Moon the sweat from their balls when he lived came to the hospital. They no longer feared Moon when he was a thing kept alive by electricity and machines.

An unnaturally cold May gave way to three days of over 100 degree oppressive, steamy heat. The heat broke with a strange and violent storm full of electricity and tornado that moved from east to west. The lightening knocked out, stopped the electricity in Norwich. A lighting bolt struck the Backus Hospital knocked out the emergency generator. All the electricity in Norwich was made to stop. A few minutes latter Moon was declared dead.

Trees fell in a straight line from Norwich to the Connecticut River. Moon in his full powers went across the river playing mischief but doing no harm to the University of Connecticut women's crew team. The tree falls continued west in a line pointing to the Golden Hill.

Which will win in America, the escaped slave or the new whole men?

Chapter 12 - The Aboriginal Sovereignty

During the siege no state cop wanted to die in the defense of the state cigarette tax. They were confused, scared that all the gunmen on the rez seemed to want to be the first to die in defense of the right to not pay the state tax on cigarettes.

Moon explained it was about the Indian, the aboriginal sovereignty.

He had no illusions about the laws that retained Indian sovereignty. They were all a necessary legal fiction that created an orderly legal mechanism for the dispossession of the Indians' lands, the theft of Connecticut, the theft of the United States of America. After the Indians had been militarily defeated the law maintained the fiction that the dispossession of the Indian land was somehow legal. The law maintained that Indian tribes kept enough of the aboriginal sovereignty to dispossess themselves. By legally dispossessing themselves they allowed for clear, unencumbered title of their land.

Moon knew in great detail how Indian casino lawyers had worked the premise of the aboriginal sovereignty to create the fabulous Indian casino. He sought to regain the full aboriginal sovereignty.

The remnants of the aboriginal sovereignty had long been a refuge for the non-white, non-Congregational counter-culture of colonial Connecticut of early Anglo-America. Black slaves would flee to the reservations to escape and renounce their slavery. On the reservation the escaped slaves were accepted. They were allowed to be more than escaped slaves. What the escaped slave retained of their indigenous culture, their higher selves was incorporated in the counter-culture of the reservation. The aboriginal sovereignty provided refuge to white people who weren't vested in the consensus consciousness.

Moon's uprising was the first armed aboriginal uprising in Southern New England in 326 years. It was the first since Metacomet's. Like all the other aboriginal uprisings it could be said that it was in the end defeated, put down. Many believe Moon was poisoned, irradiated, infected, murdered by the state. But Moon's uprising anticipates uprisings to come, uprisings that have significant changes from the old script.

Moon never gave up his guns. He comes into his full powers. Moon set the standard by which I judge the uprising. What he fought for was to again make the Indian sovereignty a bastion of the liberation, a refuge for the new aboriginals, the new, whole people.

Never, my young men,

you who complain you know no joy in your lives,

never will you know any joy in your lives

till you ask for lighting instead of love

till you pray to the right gods, for the

thunder-bolt instead of pity.

Chapter 13 - Coming Into the Full Powers of the Niggah, the Dead Niggah

After Robert would show you the baboon butt in his chest he would speak of all the wild animals he had held while they died and how they had taught him death was not the worst thing in the world.

My first inclination was to say it definitely wasn't the best. But eventually I was able to better understand what was the worst and the best Being had to offer.

I am a niggah. We are all niggahs. When we die we become dead niggahs. A person's mortal struggle is to come into the full powers of the niggah. A soul's immortal struggle is to come into the full powers of the dead niggah.

Robert would always talk about death, his death. He would say there was no difference between a wild animal and a person, between a wild animal's death and a person's death. But I would mock him. I would state the obvious. The difference between the wild animals and us is all about our morbid awareness, obsession with our death. From this comes the human.

Wild animals are aware of their death. They fight into the last spasms of mortal agony to preserve their life. But in the end they are o.k. with their death. This is their power, their beauty.

Robert would say he was indifferent to his death, just like a dying wild animal. But when all is revealed he is defined by his terror his weakness before death.

When Gambini saw the hellish dysfunction of Robert World he vowed he wouldn't hesitate to suicide if he found himself in a comparable place. But Gambini also defines himself in his terror, his weakness before death.

What they couldn't avoid seeing, seeing all the time, fearing all the time was that every creature's existence is extinguished in spasms of solitary, helpless agony. This obsession was the basis of the cult of the pathetic wild animal, the association of childless, resentful women.

The full powers are the greatest of the human possibilities. The collective unconscious is always telling us of the full powers. But the immortal chimpanzees with car-keys, the prisoners of the boxes of the so-called enlightenment are always denying this, recoiling.

The disasters, cataclysms, the apocalypse, The Apocalypse, the lightening strike are opportunities to come into the full powers of the niggah, the full powers of the dead niggah.

This, whatever you're doing now, may be your last act on earth. It may very well be your last battle. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man.

Chapter 14 - Hanging and Jerking

Robert declared Ms. Hepburn and her painting to be God. She was going to be the great salvation of NAWA. She was going to give the money and fame that would allow him to fulfill the legend of himself.

But I would always tell Robert about the clay feet of those he chose to deify. I would tell of the black woman, a New York meter maid, that Ms. Hepburn beat until she was bloody, repeatedly closed a car door on her hand. This was not an isolated incident. She regularly brutalized the little people that crossed her path.

I would tell of her oldest brother who had the hidden vice of hanging himself, strangling himself under seemingly controlled conditions and masturbating - hanging and jerking. I would tell how it went out of control and he hanged and jerked until he was dead. I told him about Ms. Hepburn's vehement denial of this.

From there I would tell the story about a local East Lyme youth of good local family, of good local repute, who had this same hidden vice. I told about how things also went terribly wrong and about how he hung and jerked in his college dormitory room until he was dead. The family, of course, denies this. They say he was murdered, a victim of nefarious overarching conspiracy. The owner of a local funeral parlor, a family friend, had no illusions. He put the youth's body with the soiled sheets of an incontinent death in a sealed coffin just as he had been found in the dormitory room and buried him like a smelly, messy piece of yellow shit. The family found out about this, sued the owner of the funeral parlor.

Hanging and jerking became part of the inside jargon of those of Robert's kingdom. It came to mean you were being an imbecile, acting bizarrely self destructive, seeking a perverse tickle in self-destruction. You were a prisoner of a myth gone seriously wrong. When Robert would tell of how the Robert/Gloria entity came into being, I would say it had a lot of the hanging and jerking to it.

They met at the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival." There was a lot of fine women, but Gloria came with a dog, a German Shepard," is the way Robert remembered it. Because of the small German Shepard bitch, he knew Gloria was an animal person. But she seemed unattainable.

They were an unlikely pair. Gloria was, 15, pregnant, not yet showing, blond, blue eyed, very white little girl seemingly from a solid middle class place. Robert was, 20, crazed on crystal meth, a thug, a criminal, a graduate of reform school and prison. It was an unlikely union that could only have happened during strange days, disrupted times.

Because Gloria seemed unattainable Robert publicly fucked Linda Johnston, her best friend in the mud. She was attainable.

He tried to buy crystal meth from a Hell's Angel, got ripped off. He jumped the guy in the middle of the Angels' campsite. He put a knife to the guy's throat, demanded his money back.

He got the real thing, enough to almost blow up his heart, and to send him into permanent irreversible psychosis. After the festival he limped off to New York and stayed there till he was nearly dead. Then he rallied, hitchhiked to Uxbridge, Massachusetts and called Linda. She was going to be out of town but generously offered the porch of Gloria's mother's house. Wally was away.

He was real sick, withdrawing from the drug, masturbating his death, hanging and jerking. This seemed to attract Gloria. This is how Robert "courted" her.

Then Wally returned to her house, her porch. She was appalled, horrified. She called the cops.

With the bright red blanket Gloria had wrapped around him, Robert staggered into a cold, three-day, late September rain. In the clear morning light that followed the rain, Gloria saw the red blanket. Robert was lying mostly dead in the woods behind her house.

His skin came off with the black boots. He smelled like a corpse. Robert was the first rescue and rehabilitation. It was clear to Gloria he was maimed, pathetic, far too fucked up to ever be released: a pathological hanger and jerker.

The "rescue" and rehabilitation of the maimed, the pathetic, that which was too fucked up to ever be released became the North American Wildlife Association. But it never stopped being hanging and jerking.

Because of Ms. Hepburn's painting, NAWA had a much publicized art auction in New Haven in February 1990. The final bid for Ms. Hepburn's painting was $8,000. It was far less than the millions Robert was sure it was worth or would be worth once Ms. Hepburn was a dead niggah. He grabbed the painting and ran, refused to give it to the rich guy from Boston who made the highest bid.

Ms. Hepburn heard about this. She demanded Robert give the painting to the rich guy from Boston. Ms. Hepburn told him if he didn't she would come to the refuge, and "put my fucking foot through it (the painting)."

Robert would not give the painting up. He sacrificed Ms. Hepburn's goodwill for the painting. The painting was nearby when the police found the male herb plants on the canopy over his bed.

Much of car key chimpanzee behavior is hanging and jerking. We hang and jerk on the cross of the car key. We hang and jerk when we lose sight of the fact that what you are doing now could be your final or your definitively defining act.

He let's his consciousness penetrate in loneliness into the new continent. His contacts are not human. He wrestles with the spirits of the forest and the American wild, as a hermit wrestles with God and Satan.

Chapter 15 - The Geode

Robert would speak of a failed attempt to build a completely concealed, covert, underground grow bunker. He and an estranged friend (as all of Robert's friends would become estranged friends) Scott Bagley had dug a huge hole near Robert and Gloria and Chester's house. It was dug in swampy low-lying ground. It flooded. Gloria made them fill the hole back up. Robert lamented the waste of material and time, and in the end not having the concealed, covert underground grow room.

In May 1994 I just wanted to dig, to mix blood and sweat and earth as was done with The Split Tree. I told Robert it didn't have to be a grow room it could be anything he wanted it to be.

We walked the forest by The Split Tree and found the place. It was secluded, about 80 yards from The Split Tree. We weren't sure whether it was on the refuge. Our best guess was that it was right on or right on the other side of the boundary.

I loved the feel of the spot, the denseness of the bird song, the way the trees sounded in the breeze, in the wind, in the stillness. It was near the top of the hill. It seemed too high up too well drained for the hole to flood.

Each day I was drawn there. I looked forward to the workout with shovel and pickax. I did all the digging. Most of the digging I did alone. When Robert was there he drank cans of Coca Cola, smoked herb and watched me dig.

We called it The Geode. It was dug into the same glacial deposit as The Split Tree. When the last glacier had retreated it had smeared the hills, the stubs of mountains, with greasy clay and sand.

It seemed miraculous two massive holes could be dug in that place without hitting ledge. Huge rocks were encountered, rocks which strained every fiber of heart, muscle and soul. But they were all moved out of the hole.

I studied every rock, every strata. There was no sign of the car key chimpanzee in the earth. There were traces of the destruction of the original forest and the agriculture that followed. There was a lot of flint in the hole. Eight feet down most strikes of the pick ax made sparks and the smell of brimstone.

The hole was dug 10 feet x 10 feet x 10 feet. When Robert attempted to give directions, I in an idiot's voice would ask "ten feet?"

With the twilight last gleaming of my credit card credit I bought all the materials for an 8 foot x 8 foot x 8 foot plywood box. When the box was done, buried and concealed we hurriedly dug up seven of the harvested plants in the field and put them in The Geode. We had to hurry, cut corners. Robert and Gloria were about to leave on another junket.

It seemed like all the plants were going to make it. Then I found about an inch of water on the floor. I thought it was because of recent heavy rains. I put cinder blocks under the five gallon buckets that held the plants. Next day the hole was filled with water.

The electricity was in the water. Going into the water could be death. But the bulb the ballast had to be salvaged. I reached into the water, and wasn't electrocuted. Even though it was late November I took my clothes off and dived into the dark cold waters. I salvaged the Geode.

With the twilight last gleaming of my credit card I got a pump at Walmarts. I drained the hole. I began to believe I could restore the cultivation in the Geode.

Then the pump froze. Again the Geode was flooded. Again there was the possibility of electrocution in the water. Again I reached into the water, didn't die. It was December. I took my clothes off and dived into the underground waters. I again salvaged The Geode.

In April I began digging a ditch that would keep The Geode drained.

History shows again and again that nature defies the power of man. Godzilla!

Chapter 16 - The Black Chicken

Digging the ditch was the most arduous work that was ever done on the refuge. But I was determined to not lose the time and material that went into The Geode. I didn't want to fill it in. I didn't want it to become a lament like the hole Robert and Bagley dug and covered up.

We had not heard or seen anything of Dewey for over three years. At first Robert and I stalked him, sought to capture him, take him back to The Split Tree and torture and interrogate him about the missing Kali bud. But Robert found the black, plastic, garbage bag with the remnants of the Kali bud. Sure enough an animal had dragged it into the thickest part of the prickers.

Dewey's girlfriend, at that time, Justine, brought a lingering road-kill deer to the refuge. Robert relayed a message of goodwill. Dewey came with cloned herb plants.

The Geode was a tightly held secret. At first, Gloria knew nothing of it. Robert said that if Dewey was again included in the cultivation, included in The Geode, he would help me dig the trench. He would speed the completion of The Geode.

I argued against it. I reminded him of the agony, the terror, the yellow shit, the menace Dewey was to the cultivation. Besides, I was almost finished with the trench. But it was futile. It was the kingdom of Robert's herb.

I told Robert that if Dewey was included in The Geode he would have to be cut. He would have to bleed. He would have to make a vow of secrecy over his blood. Robert promised he would cut Dewey. Dewey consented to being cut. But Robert didn't do it. Dewey immediately began telling people about The Geode.

I had a dream. I was in my truck, smoking a thick spleef. I was driving north on Rte. 161 from Niantic to Flanders in East Lyme. As I was stubbing out the roach in the ashtray I looked to my left and saw a 100-foot tall Black Chicken.

IT! was kicking over trees as it waded through the forest. As the chicken neared the road she stepped on and smashed flat an auto body shop. She then straddled the road in front of me.

I looked into her eyes and she looked into mine. I saw no menace no threat. I drove between her legs. I pulled over to a public phone. I tried to reach a newspaper editor.

The herb had something to do with the grace that allowed me to drive beneath the chicken. From where I stood by the phone booth I could see an old Volkswagen bug driving beneath and by the chicken. Again it seemed the Volkswagen's unimpeded passage had something to do with the herb.

Then there was a SUV with women and children attempting to drive beneath the chicken. The muscles on her neck rippled. In one fluid cobra-like movement its beak smashed into the roof of the SUV, and exploded it. The chicken's beak went through the vehicle and hit the pavement in a shower of sparks.

While I was contemplating the wreckage and bloody body parts dozens of fork lift like vehicles manned by guys in white scientist/technician coats appeared. One of the forklifts had a cannon that fired a net of gossamer but strong material at the chicken. It entangled her for a moment. But then she broke free, impaled a white coat with her beak, flipped him in the air, bit him in two.

The Black Chicken broke all the snares that were launched at her. She stomped and destroyed the forklifts, the white coats. She gave a bloody call and walked triumphantly, unopposed east towards New London.

I reached an editor. I tried to describe what I was seeing. I didn't know what to say. I hung up the phone.

It's about the right posture in the face of great, powerful, savage mysteries. You take them light at your own risk.

When the two great elements (fire and water) become hopelessly clogged, entangled, the sword of the lightening can separate them. The crash of lightening is really not the clapping together of waves of air. Thunder is the noise of the explosion, which takes place when the waters are loosed from the elemental fire. When old vapours are suddenly decomposed in the upper air by the electric force. Then fire flies fluid, and the waters roll off in purity. It is the liberation of the elements from hopeless conjunction.

Chapter 17 - The Fires

Robert would say the reason he married Gloria was because she was the scariest thing, the scariest person he had ever encountered.

That was a big statement coming from Robert especially given who his father was. When Robert gave the narrative of his life he always began with his father, Frank, who was a born-in-Sicily, mafioso murderer. He would tell of the family boat yard in Gloucester, MA., how people would go out on his father's boat and it would sometimes seem less came back. He would tell about how the wetlands of Plum Island were haunted by dead Sicilian niggahs.

Robert's resentment would always go to the fall, the exile from the boatyard. A powerful colleague entrusted Frank with a truckload of bootleg cigarettes. Frank stole the cigarettes. He and his family had to flee for their lives, go to Elvis-country, a place where there are no Italians or Jews. They went to Jacksonville, Florida, definitively became white trash.

Gloria came from a seemly safe, middle-class place. Her father was a machinist or something. Wally worked at the nursing home. Then her daddy began fucking her, made her pregnant.

Robert said Gloria and Wally poisoned daddy. Robert said he was poisoned scientifically, skillfully. Robert claimed the death certificate says he died of stroke.

Gloria bore the child, a girl, and then gave her up for adoption.

Of the three of us Gloria was no doubt the cold-blooded criminal. But it greatly impressed me that Robert believed she was a scarier criminal than his father. It greatly impressed me that Robert believed she was scarier than all the psychopaths he had encountered in all the low places he had sojourned.

By the spring of 1994 The Split Tree was finished. But Robert couldn't stop himself from adding to it, improving it. He couldn't stay away from the herb plants in the fields.

I warned him. I told him to take care of business with Gloria. I told him to give her the fear she warranted and the respect she demanded. But Robert couldn't tear himself away from his true element, his kingdom. He would wake up before Gloria did, and take it into the woods. He would wake me up and then we would go to the fields becoming forest to glory in the cultivation.

One morning we found Gloria sitting on a rock besides the trail that brought us back to the refuge. There was something so desolate about her. Robert was cowered by her presence, her desolation, the implications of it. He did what she said. He followed her back to the business of NAWA.

I started back to The Split Tree. As I rounded the last bend in the trail I saw an orange gout of flame erupt in the screen house. I yelled fire, and then ran to the center of the fire and did the stamping out the fire dance.

It just made it worse. The green felt material we used to carpet the screen house was plastic. The burning plastic stuck to my cheap sneakers also made of plastic. The burning plastic was like napalm. The fire dance spread the fire. I still danced when I began to burn.

It was the drought of '94. The woods were tinder. If the fire took The Split Tree there would be no stopping it from taking the refuge, the entire hill, the forest, the fields becoming forest.

Robert heard my yells, raced to the fire, started to do some fire dancing, then watched me fire dance and burn. There was a long moment when it seemed like the fire was going to have its way, nothing was going to stop it.

I saw a shovel and began putting dirt on the fire. Robert found another shovel. But the fire wasn't out until the screen house had been seemingly trashed, totaled.

Through it all Gloria smoked a cigarette and enjoyed the entertainment. There was no doubt she had started it.

Robert did his first bitter Shakespearean soliloque. There was an unexpected eloquence. He spoke of how he had loved Gloria, gave her every measure of his devotion, made her the center of his world, made it so easy for her to terribly hurt him.

I asked Gloria if she had thought about the fire spreading to the trees, burning the forest. She said nothing but her smile said so much. The smile said she was way past giving a fuck about anything, and as for me she wanted me dead.

It cost about $300 to fix the screen house. But afterwards there was a leak that I could never completely fix.

Dewey returned to the refuge as Gloria was preparing to leave. Robert fully restored him to the kingdom of his herb, and again tried to make NAWA the kingdom of his herb. Gloria used Dewey in her escape plan.

Robert included Dewey in the rich harvest of '94, in the Rastafarian Stews. One night Dewey and I were fetching cooking water when we heard Robert yelling back at the cochina. It sounded like he was yelling fire. But his voice was muffled, strangled like he was hanging and jerking.

I dropped the water and ran. I saw Robert stumbling out of the woods. I started to run past him. He stopped me. He said there was nothing that could be done. Horrified I pushed him away and ran to the cochina.

The king sized grill's propane tank was fully engulfed in flame.

Dewey ran up to me with a five-gallon container full of water. He told me to empty the water on the burning propane tank. He didn't want to do it. But he wanted me to do it.

My best guess was something really bad would happen if I poured water on the burning propane tank. But I took the water, was considering what to do with it, when the whistling sound of escaping and burning propane suddenly stopped.

Why--I asked myself--is this not good? There was a voice in my head. It yelled "RUN!"

Startled I dropped the water, ran into a tree fall, limped to where Robert and Dewey were standing about 50 yards away from the burning propane tank.

Then a jet of flame erupted from the burning propane tank and shot about 60 feet in the air. The jet of flame ignited the treetops. There was a sound like a jet engine turbine. The top of the hill was illuminated like it was mid-day. Apollo and Barley whinnied in terror. My hair stood on end.

The jets of flame went right through the place I had been standing with the water. A second jet of fire blew out the fire in the treetops and then re-ignited the treetops. A third jet of flame erupted and did the same. There was a hideous shrill bloody scream as the propane tank began to fold and contract on itself.

The sound conjured the dream of The Black Chicken, the part when she had killed the white coats, was facing east triumphant, unopposed.

The last jet of flame blew out the fires in the treetops, but didn't re-ignite the treetops. We stamped out the brush fires.

I stood in the place where I held the water. In my mind's eye I saw the slag that was the only thing that remained of my belt buckle, zipper, the fillings in my teeth, of me. The propane tank and the king-sized grill were twisted, tortured pieces of metal. The slate table had broken in two. It was another miraculous deliverance.

I gave The Black Chicken's bloody call.

Know Thyself. That means, know the earth that is in your blood. Know the sea that is in your blood. The great elementals.

But Knowing and Being are opposite, antagonistic states. The more you know, exactly the less you are. The more you are, in being, the less you know.

This is the great cross of man, his dualism. The blood self and the nerve-brain self.

Knowing, then is the slow death of being. Man has his epochs of being, his epochs of knowing. It will always be a great oscillation. The goal is to know how not-to-know.

Chapter 18 - Original Niggah\Aboriginal Niggah

Some mistake me as being American Indian by blood. They suggest I hire genealogists, get a certified paper blood trail to a federally recognized Indian tribe with a fabulous Indian casino.

I know I am Hebrew (but only on my mother's and father's side of the family). I am descendant from prophets, scholars, priests of the temple of Jerusalem, rabbis, warrior kings of Zion, fucking lunatics. I am original niggah.

But I am also shaped by the spirit/demon of place. I am also aboriginal niggah.

In Norwich Jews are generally recognized as niggahs. Around Easter there would be the blood libel, some attempt to punish me for killing Jesus. I would protest, deny the murder, shout out the Italians did it. Then the Norwich water would kick in and I would think maybe I did kill Jesus because everyone says I killed him, wants to punish me for doing it and why would they say that, want to do that, if it wasn't true.

In my way I have found Jesus, original niggah Jesus, a Hebrew brother with attitude, a rising up niggah in his fullest power/dead niggah in his fullest power.

Jesus gave a lot of thought to apocalypse, The Apocalypse. He says it's all in the readiness. The readiness is all. You got to be right with the posture.

So when you see "the abomination of desolation", of which the prophet Daniel spoke, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judaea must take to the hills. If a man is on the roof, he must not come down to fetch his goods from the house; if in the field, he must not turn back for his coat. Alas for woman with child in those days, and for those who have children at the breast! Pray that it may not be winter when you have to make your escape, or Sabbath. It will be a time of great distress; there has never been such a time from the beginning of the world until now, and will never be again. If that time of trouble were not cut short, no living thing could survive; but for the sake of God's chosen it will be cut short. --Matthew 24

. . . .when you see "the abomination of desolation" usurping a place which is not his (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judaea must take to the hills. If a man is on the roof, he must not come down into the house to fetch anything out; if in the field, he must not turn back for his coat. Alas for women with child in those days, and for those who have children at the breast! Pray that it may not come in winter. For those days will bring distress such as never has been until nowÖand will never be again. If the Lord had not cut short that time of trouble, no living thing could survive. However, for the sake of his own, whom he has chosen, he has cut short the time. --Mark 13

But when you see Jerusalem encircled by armies then you may be sure that her destruction is near. Then those who are in Judaea must take to the hills; those who are in the city must leave it, and those who are out in the country must not enter; because this is the time of retribution, when all that stands written is to be fulfilled. Alas for women who are with child in those days, or have children at the breast! For there will be great distress in the land and a terrible judgment upon this people. They will fall at the sword's point; they will be carried captive into all countries; and Jerusalem will be trampled down by foreigners until their day has run its course.

Portents will appear in sun, moon and stars. On earth nations will stand helpless, not knowing which way to turn from the roar and surge of the sea; men will faint with terror at the thought of all that is coming upon the world; for the celestial powers will be shakenÖ --Luke 21


Jesus' world ended in blood and fire, in what the Roman's called 'The Jewish Wars.' The survivors were enslaved, carried captive into all countries, dispersed.

For original niggah, for aboriginal niggah, many worlds have ended. Columbus was of Jewish ancestry. Many that came to America with him were of Jewish ancestry. The Jewish world of the Iberian Peninsula had been murdered. Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism. Many, like Columbus, became devout and sincere Catholics. But many defiantly remained Jews.

Those of Jewish ancestry were the first targets of the Inquisition. Every "convert" was suspect. More than 90 percent of those murdered by the Inquisition were "Judaizers." The Jews came to America because at first the Inquisition wasn't here. But then the Inquisition came.

Those that survived obeyed the dream. They fled to the highest mountains, crossed to the other side of the most desolate deserts. They engaged the spirit/demon of place. They were shaped by IT!. There descendants are more like the Indian than the fir ancestor that crossed the water.

What then is Moby Dick?

He is the deepest blood-being of the white race; he is our deepest blood nature.

And he is hunted, hunted, hunted by the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness. We want to hunt him down. To subject him to our will. And in this maniacal conscious hunt of ourselves we get dark races and pale to help us, red yellow, and black, east and west, Quaker and fire worshipper, we get them all to help us in this ghastly maniacal hunt which is our doom and our suicide.

The last phallic being of the white man. Hunted into the death of upper consciousness and the ideal will. Our blood-self subjected to our will. Our blood-consciousness sapped by a parasitic mental or ideal consciousness.

Hot-blooded sea-born Moby Dick. Hunted by monomaniacs of the idea.

Oh God, oh God, what next when the Pequod has sunk?

She sank in the war, and we are all flotsam.

Now what next?

Who knows? Quien sabe? Quien sabe, senor?

Chapter 19 - 'The Resentful'

In the end the only space I had that was really my space was not the clearing in the woods, but my plywood platform on the ocean.

My boat didn't start out being a thing that was mine. It was built by my friend Tim Visel and his brother and father. It was built under the supervision of Earl Brockway, a mythic boat builder, the builder of universal niggah boats.

Knowledge of the construction technique of my boat has been disseminated throughout the world by the U. S. Peace Corp, by the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.) But she is my boat, as truly and uniquely mine as my resentment, as my brave, reckless, resentful gods, as my dreams and visions. She is my lifeboat in storm and destitution. She is my restoration to my element.

I named her 'The Relentless.' But those who know me call her 'The Resentful,' or 'The Reckless.' On her, on the waters of my birthplace, on the plywood, I see.

I see the human condition. I see the power of the resentment. I see that resentment is perhaps the greatest motivator of the human, the great engine of history. To understand history to understand the human condition, follow the resentment.

Following the resentment I can see why these times are a unique time, an apocalyptic time. This is the time when the hand moved by the niggah resentment is poised over the button that mass destroys the chimpanzee with car keys. The hand, the finger moved by the niggah resentment will always push the button.

On my plywood platform I work the lobster pots, work the sea. And the lobster tells me things. The lobster tells me our deepest blood nature be broke. The lobster tells me, the Pequod going down.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Chapter 20 - The First Time Moon Was Buried

I had a dream of an event, an Indian event. In the dream I was in a small car with three other large men. If the driver, a white- man in his 50's with white hair, had turned around in the dream I would have recognized him to be Moon's best friend Dennis. If the dark-skinned guy in elaborate Eastern Woodland Indian regalia, in the front passenger seat had turned around I would have recognized him as Lone Wolf Jackson, a leader of the Eastern Pequot. If the dark-skinned guy beside me in the back seat wasn't wearing thick theatrical Indian paint I would have recognized him to be Kenny Reels then vice-chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council. If I had recognized the building we drove to as being a funeral home, I would have recognized that it was a dream of the funeral of the MoonFace Bear.

All the players in the Connecticut Indian world, the living, the dead were there. The night before the pallbearers sweated in Moon's sweat lodge, in his spirit. Reels gave a long mostly incoherent, but definitely self-serving political speech.

There was a part of Reels that was of the spirit of the MoonFace Bear, champion of all the blood libeled, dark-skinned Connecticut Indians. There was a part of Reels that wasn't bought and sold by the casino developers yet.

Next day Reels watched as Lone Wolf, Moon's son Quanah, Larry Otway, a paralegal for the famous civil right lawyer, the Golden Hill Paugussett lawyer Bill Kunsler (Otway became his emissary to Moon), and I struggled to dig the grave.

When we got four-and-a-half feet down we hit water, a lot of it. We made a floor above the groundwater, and then made a burial vault. As we were finishing the pallbearers were summoned.

I cleaned up and drank deeply from a garden hose. I changed into an Indian ribbon shirt. Julia, Moon's crazy sister, braided my hair. And then I was in Dennis' car in the waking dream on the way to the funeral parlor in Colchester about six miles from the reservation.

I helped Lone Wolf get out of the car without breaking the large eagle feather on his head, just as I had in the dream. I tried to prepare myself. But I could not stop my tears when I saw the embalmers thing in the coffin.

After a service at the funeral home, over 100 mourners marched back to the reservation behind the horse-drawn caisson that held Moon's coffin. It was a long walk. Everyone had a lot of time to talk.

I heard the accusations that the state had poisoned, irradiated, somehow had killed Moon. I heard the accusation that I was the agent provocateur who caused Moon to die young.

When I remember the first time Moon was buried I remember the dream, the accusation, the brilliant splendor of the sunlight, the smell of the burning California white sage, the first time I felt the presence of Moon in the deads' full powers.

When you are actually in America, America hurts, because it has a powerful disintegrative influence upon the white psyche. It is full of grinning, unappeased aboriginal demons, too, ghosts and it persecutes the white men, like some Eumenides, until the white men give up their absolute whiteness. America is tense with latent violence and resistance. The very common sense of white Americans has a tinge of helplessness in it, and deep fear of what might be if they were not common-sensical.

Yet one day the demons of America must be placated, the ghosts must be appeased, the Spirit of Place atoned for. Then the true passionate love of the American Soil will appear. As yet, there is too much menace in the landscape.

But probably, one day America will be as beautiful in actuality as it is in (James Fenimore) Cooper. Not yet, however. When the factories have fallen down again.

Chapter 21 - The Jah DEP

Gloria would accuse me of being an undercover police agent. She would say I was Rasputin. She asked what purpose I served on the pathetic wild animal's refuge. She asked how did I serve the association of resentful, childless woman?

I told her I was the rainmaker, the drought breaker.

Foxwood Casino opened in a deluge. People abandoned their cars miles away from the raw, hastily opened casino. They trudged through the mud. They came to the fabulous Indian casino like refugees.

I took Robert to the fabulous Indian casino, a few months after it opened. His reaction was moronic. He ranted about how much Foxwoods sucked in comparison to Las Vegas. He was incensed Foxwood claimed to be the biggest casino in the world. He said Foxwoods was, "a stupid, hick, pilgrim place" that showed how much Connecticut sucked, would always suck. He would insist on calling the Mashantucket Pequots 'the Suckits.'

I said it was stupid to refuse to see.

The unthinkable, the unspeakable was happening. Gloria was leaving. Robert tried not to see. But there would be times when he tried to envision a life after Gloria. We began talking about The Jah Department of Environmental Protection, The Jah DEP.

Robert saw it as his kingdom of the herb usurping the moral authority. It was him taking the fabulous Indian casino money. It was him dictating wildlife policy while he smoked a joint as thick as his thumb. And of course it would be about a lot of beautiful, young women

One of the first things the Robert Jah DEP was going to do was upgrade the incarceration of Gloria. There would be an expanded incarceration of that which was judged to be too pathetic, too fucked-up to be released. There would be a second facility in some forsaken hills in the middle of a vast desolate desert in Nevada.

Robert had his blood knowing. He knew what the blood knew when it mixed with the dirt, when it carried the stone. He knew like the wild animal when he stalked and captured them. Stalking, wrestling, engaging the wild beast had been Robert's job. But after the heart attack Gloria prohibited Robert from doing these things. She said I had to do it.

It was another way of harassing me. I would be woken in the middle of the night. I would not be happy. In a vulnerable, groggy condition I would have to deal with the cop who had reported a deer had been hit by a car, maybe the police car. Then I would have to engage the beast, stalk it, wrestle it to the ground, pin it so it could be injected and sedated.

I'd put the unconscious beast in the back of my pick-up truck and I would hope like the capturers of King Kong hoped that the beast would not regain consciousness before it was put in a strong cage.

Eventually I looked forward to it. I looked forward to the adrenaline rush. I knew that whatever The Jah DEP was, this was a big part of it.

Robert had taken rightful pride in his engagement of the wild animal. He was good at it. But then Robert said it wasn't about the engagement of the wild animal. He said it was just about the money.

He said Mr. Las Vegas, Steve Wynn was God. Again I pointed out to Robert the clay feet of those he worshipped. I called Wynn the worse kind of dirt pimp. I said Wynn had sucked dry the west to stage naval battles for the entertainment of idiots like himself.

The state of Connecticut quickly became addicted to the casino money. The new governor wanted more. Governor John Rowland wanted a state-licensed casino in addition and in competition with Foxwoods.

Robert and Gloria did everything they could to help Wynn get the state-licensed casino. They wanted to serve him, be employed by him. They wrote letters to newspapers. They testified at state public hearings. They said casinos should be built in places of pavement and steel, not in the forests and swamps of the reservation. They said Wynn never used dead animal parts in the dÈcor of his casinos.

But not even Wynn could prevail against the autonomous, sovereign Connecticut suction. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation was chosen to attempt the development of a state-licensed casino in Bridgeport.

The Mashantucket Pequots were betraying their resentment, going against their power by seeking another casino in the shadow of the Golden Hill. History is clear about this. The Paugussetts were the only people who helped the Pequots. They gave them refuge in 1637. For that they were vanquished with the Pequots. The Mashantucket Pequots were again showing its just about the money.

It was the "good Indians" the collaborating Indians, Uncas' people, the Mohegans who killed the Mashantucket Pequot state- licensed casino in the shadow of the Golden Hill. The Mohegans had been dealt into the slot machine compact, the Indian casino monopoly when they became federally recognized in 1994. They would only consent to the infringement on the monopoly if they were dealt into the Bridgeport state-licensed casino. If they weren't dealt into the state-licensed casino, they said they weren't going to give the state 25 percent of the Mohegan Sun's slot machine-take.

Only in the aftermath of Wynn's failure to seize the state- licensed casino did Robert see that the Indian casinos were the only way of fulfilling the gangster legend of himself. Problem was, I was the only agency Robert had in the world of the fabulous Indian casino. And I had my own agenda.

Moon was a champion for the inclusion. He told me to be a champion for the inclusion.

The Simons are dark-skinned descendants of the Mashantucket Pequots. They have a higher blood quantum then members of the federally recognized tribe. They are the vast majority of the surviving descendants of the Mashantucket Pequot. They are purposefully excluded from the tribe.

The Mohegans exclude the vast majority of the descendants of the Mohegans. They include only those whose ancestors sold the reservation in 1861.

I contacted the Simonds. We recognized each other, our Norwich water, our resentment. We seized the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Cemetery. We invoked all the Mashantucket Pequot, the dead, the ones yet to be born, all one million of them. We asked to be included in the biblical reversal of fortune.

I did newspaper about the Simonds being the real Mashantucket Pequots, the ones who held the land, hadn't tried to sell it out to get a farm in Vermont. I wrote about the tribal membership laws that purposely excluded the Simonds and the vast majority of the descendants of the Mashantucket Pequot. I searched for the right lawyer, the one the power would show me. But the power never revealed that lawyer. I got Congressman Gejdenson back on the case.

At first the Congressman was confused. He thought all the descendants of the Mashantucket Pequot had been included. He had to have it explained to him. Then he understood how his intent had been subverted in the Pequot kingdom of the resentment. He vowed justice for the Simonds.

I believed the congressman. I believed the Simonds would be enfranchised in the federally recognized tribe. I believed they would get more money than they ever dreamt of.

They would, of course, be grateful. They would steer a ridiculous amount of money my way. I believed that when that time came the vessel that would receive the flow would be The DEP of the living Jah.

That DEP would make the rain, engage the beast, placate the demon, the ghosts, atone for the spirit of place, bring about the true, passionate love of the American soil, make America as beautiful in actuality as it is in James Fenimore Cooper.

We know enough. We know too much. We know nothing.

Let us smash something. Ourselves included. But the machine above all. . .

And after all, we have to know all before we can know that knowing is nothing.

Imaginatively, we have to know all: even the elemental waters. And know and know on, until knowledge suddenly shrivels and we know that forever we don't know.

Then there is a sort of peace, and we can start afresh, knowing we don't know.

Chapter 22 - Hydrophobia


Gloria knew rabies was coming to Connecticut. She knew that when it came it would change everything, all the things that allowed NAWA, and the cult of the pathetic wild animals to be.

Rabies was scary but it was only the beginning of the new plague and pestilences. There was far less pity for the pathetic wild animals. There was fear. There were far less greasy dollar bills, shrapnel of coins in the donation jars.

Gloria knew it was time to get out of Dodge. But Robert refused to see. He liked being the famous, the legendary wild animal dude.

I believed The Jah DEP would happen when it was meant to happen. In the meantime I tried to justify to Gloria my existence on the NAWA refuge. I tried to make the rain. I tried to get Indian casino funding for NAWA.

I told them to never say my name. I told them to not involve my subversion for the inclusion. If they didn't say my name then maybe, just maybe I could get them some of their money back.

Most of the Mashantucket Pequots come from the 'hood. On the reservation they are becoming familiar with the wild animals. Familiarity breeds contempt. They are not likely constituents of the cult of the pathetic animal.

But they are fervent proponents of the Indian tribal sovereignty. The assertion of the Indian tribal sovereignty is the basis of the fabulous Indian casino. A sovereign tribal wildlife policy made in defiance and disregard of the Connecticut DEP policy would be a legal, a powerful assertion of the Indian tribal sovereignty.

Connecticut law prohibited the transport, rehabilitation, or release of fox, raccoon and skunk, the rabies vector species. Robert and Gloria still rescued and rehabilitated the vector species. They needed a place outside the jurisdiction of the Connecticut DEP where they could release foxes, skunks raccoons. The released animals would be clean and vaccinated for rabies.

The Mashantucket Pequot DEP of course had no problem with the tribal totem, the holy fox. They really wanted foxes to be released on the rez. But of course they had a problem with the others.

There wasn't a fox that needed releasing. But there was a holy red-tailed hawk, message bearer to the gods. If the Mashantucket Pequot DEP let them release skunks and raccoons Robert and Gloria would also release the hawk.

Gloria and Robert (chronic, hopeless chain smokers) were charmed that the Indian employees of the Mashantucket Pequot DEP insisted on smoking cigarettes, burning tobacco during the prayers and invocations said before the release of the hawk. There was no more beautiful, auspicious release of a hawk in NAWA history. There was a picture of it on the front page of 'The Pequot Times,' the tribal newspaper.

Robert and Gloria then released the other animals in disregard and defiance of the Connecticut DEP, but as a powerful assertion of the Indian tribal sovereignty.

About a month later they returned to the reservation released a second red-tailed hawk. And again released the other animals.

But they said my name. They kept on saying my name. They included me, and my name, in everything. They believed the issue of me and my name was about me not wanting to be associated with them.

Because they said my name, because they invoked the subversion of the inclusion, they didn't get a dime, not even a red cent.

The American landscape has never been at one with the white man. Never. And white men have probably never felt so bitter anywhere, as here in America, where the very landscape, in its very beauty, seems a bit devilish and grinning, opposed to us.

And, nevertheless, the oneing will surely take place - some day.

Chapter 23 - The Return of the Wild Animals

There was the media driven hysteria about the mice, the crows, the deer, foxes, skunks, raccoons, ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, spiders, wild animal feces, West Nile, rabies, Hantu, Lyme disease, malaria, Dengue Fever, babesiosis, H.G.E., chaffeensis .

I worked the plague and pestilence because it sold newspaper. I worked it because it kept car key chimpanzees out of the forest, the fields becoming forest where I was growing herb.

But beneath the hype there is mysterious truth. The forest has come back in New England. There is more forest then there's been since the late 18th Century.

Norwich was known for its mythic abundance of poisonous snakes, particularly rattlesnakes. It took a long, focused, arduous effort involving substantial bounties well into the 20th Century to make Norwich seem to be free of rattlesnakes. Norwich was never without copper heads. Then the rattlesnake returned.

There was a time when deer were never seen. There was a time when seeing a deer was a beautiful transcendent Bambi moment. There was a time when NAWA thrived on its efforts to save the lingering road-kill deer. But now only the car body shops thrive on the road-kill deer.

The wild animals stave in the SUV's. They find their way into attics, basements, bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms, all the boxes where the chimpanzees with car keys live. They find their way into the nightmares. They make the landscape devilish and grinning opposed.

They're back.

American consciousness has so far been a false dawn. The negative ideal of democracy. But underneath, and contrary to this open ideal, the first hints and revelations of IT. IT, the American whole soul.

Chapter 24 - The Architect of the False Dawn

The white man's victory, the vanquishing of the Pequots was celebrated as a great biblical reversal of fortune. It was like the Hebrews' conquest of Canaan. It was the dispossessed become possessed beyond their wildest imaginings.

Captain John Mason founded Norwich. He was a made Mason, founder of the First Masonic lodge in the colony of Connecticut. He was a military leader/father of his country. The day of the great blow dealt the Pequots, May 26, 1637, was celebrated as the founding day.

They were wondrous days. The weather changed. The climate became relatively benign. The killer Nor'easters and hurricanes happened less often. The place accommodated the plants and animals from somewhere else. The wild animals began to fade from the world. The aboriginals strong in the resistance were the first to die of the plagues and pestilences.

It was in all ways a new world. But it wasn't a white man who was the architect of this false dawn of the new American day. It was the Great Sachem Uncas, who was born a Pequot.

The English translated Pequot to mean 'destroyers of men.' Much latter Skip would translate Pequot to mean people of the thin, the shallow water. Skip may have been speaking of how little water he mixes with his drink, or he may have been speaking of the Norwich water. But the Norwich water runs deep.

When Uncas was denied the succession, the rule of the Pequots, he broke away and made the tribe of the wolf people, the Mohegans. The land Uncas chose as the seat of his power was the place where the land was not aligned with the rest of the world. The ridges, the highlands in Connecticut are oriented north to south except in Mohegan where the ridges, the highlands are oriented east to west.

The Pequot War, the Mystic Massacre, the slaughter of as many as 700 men, women and children who were Uncas' relations, his people was about his readiness go against the place, to fight to the last Indian to become like a European king of his kingdom of the resentment. It was about Uncas' madness, his issue with the Norwich water.

He sold a big piece of his realm to Mason. Before it was Norwich it was Mohegan. When Uncas died it was said he had a will that left the rest of his realm to the governor and colony of Connecticut. All that was left of Mohegan was 1,550 acres that became a reservation then was sold to the state of Connecticut in 1861 to become Uncasville.

Uncas died like many of the Norwich water a pathetic alcoholic. He complained to all that had to listen about how he was denied the due credit his due reward for defeating the Pequots, the Paugussetts, all the other Connecticut Indians. He complained about now getting the due credit for being the true architect of the new dawning day. Needless to say he wanted his money back, the compounded interest of the unappeasable resentment.

Herman Melville named the ship, that was the stage of the greatest American myth, Pequod. In doing so he invoked the enmity, the resentment of the murdered aboriginal life.

The life murdered by Uncas, that which he killed inside himself, that which he killed on the Mystic Pequot Hill must be atoned, appeased, exorcised. Then it must be resumed.

Only then can the true American day dawn.

The hunter is a killer. The husbandman, on the other hand, brings about the birth and increase. But even the husbandman strains in dark mastery over the unwilling earth and beast; he wants to win forth substance, he must master the soil and the strong cattle, he must have the heavy blood-knowledge, and the slow, but deep mastery.

Chapter 25 - Setting Free the Deer

Gloria was leaving.

Robert tried to pile up things that he thought would hold her, more broken down plugs, more wild animals judged to be too fucked up to ever be released. But Gloria was breaking out, taking it into the woods (how Robert would describe an escape from the chain gang, his escapes from Gloria).

Gloria spent the mysterious money that was said to be from Wally, for cosmetic surgery, as well as junkets. She got a butt lift and a thigh reduction. She recreated herself in the surgically engineered new skin in preparation of her escape.

I was coming into the new skin, the real thing. When rabies came to Norwich I knew it was about the new skin.

The first encounters the children of Norwich had with the animal was at the Mohegan Park Zoo. It was a brutal old-fashioned zoo. The cages were small cement cells with bars. But the wooded deer enclosure was full of beautiful, angelic creatures.

There would be times when these creatures were jacked, murdered, butchered. When this happened there was the play of morality. The murderers would be found out. They would be identified as white trash. There would be public humiliation, punishment, a rough justice. The children of Norwich demanded this.

The official story about rabies arrival in Norwich was that a rabid raccoon had bitten a Mohegan Park deer in the face while it was eating from the deer enclosure's feeding trough.

There was the panic. Children who may have fed, touched or petted the deer were questioned. A child was pierced by all the rabies post-exposure shots. The guardians of the zoo, the city fathers said they would not risk the lives of the children of Norwich. The deer must die.

But no child of Norwich wanted the deer to die.

William Tallman, who was the city manager does not come from Norwich. He wanted to be rid of the Mohegan Park zoo, rid of the deer. He said the issue was needed economies, common sense.

Dr. Mark Graves, NAWA's vice-president, NAWA's veterinarian, was also the zoo's veterinarian. He kills the dogs at the Norwich Dog Pound. Graves completely backed Tallman. He said it was about life that didn't deserve life. He said that if the deer were set free they would infect the wild deer, the livestock.

Graves warned Robert to stay out of it. He told Robert to make sure I didn't get involved in it.

Gloria backed Graves.

I told Robert to have nothing more to do with it. I told him it was my mission of Jah. But Robert heard only the dark whispering in his head. They told him I was reaching for the baton. They told him Graves was fucking Gloria.

Even though it meant the end of the world as it had been known since the death of Chester, Robert got involved, tried to make the Norwich deer the permanent captives of his kingdom.

Robert was mad. He would rage against Gloria and Graves. He would threaten to stop feeding and watering all the animals in the cages. But Robert's cage was the last hope for the Mohegan Park deer.

I would help Robert make a cage. I would do everything I could to get the Mohegan Park deer in Robert's cage. And then I would let them go. And this would be a thing of the new skin, the real thing. This would be a thing of The Jah DEP, the real thing.

Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes.

Chapter 26 - The Winter of 1995-96

When we were building The Split Tree, Robert would say it was my clearing in the woods. But Robert lied. He put the altar of the cult of the pathetic wild animal right outside the winter bunker's door.

I stopped Robert from putting out piles of stale donuts and dog food. I acquiesced to bird feed. I put it out myself when the ground was covered with snow. But then Robert would violate the covenant and fully slime the altar of the pathetic wild animal.

The winter of 1995-96 was an old-fashioned winter. The woods filled with snow. The Split Tree was a magical place.

It was then that Robert and Dewey said The Split Tree was never mine. They said The Split Tree was ours. Then Dewey struck the first blow. While I sat in The Split Tree verbally sparring with the both of them, Dewey swung and bitch slapped the side of my head.

I leapt to my feet, grabbed Dewey by the back of his neck and ran his head into the door. I threw him outside, commenced to beat him to death. But I stopped when he showed me his throat, began to piteously cry.

A seal had been broken. The refuge was polarized with violence. But it had been a long time since violence between people had actually happened.

I told Robert he had made it happen. Then I began gathering my stuff, preparing to leave for Moon's reservation.

Robert grabbed the machete that hung on a wall. He put the point into my chest. He said too much of an investment had been made in me. I couldn't just leave

I smiled and said, "bring it on, bitch."

"That's the same smile you had in the dream," said Robert.

Robert talked of this dream of murdering me. I was leaving the refuge. I was bringing my stuff to the gate. When I was finished, I went into Robert's and Gloria's house. I somehow challenged, insulted Gloria. Robert put a pistol to my chest. Gloria told him the gun was pointed at the wrong place on my chest. She moved the muzzle. I made no attempt to stop it. Robert fired. I fell to the floor. Gloria checked for vital signs. She declared me dead. Then my spirit rose. Joyously laughing, in the full powers of the dead niggah, I flew from the refuge.

He dropped the machete and begged me to stay.

I told him he didn't play the game. He didn't live in The Split Tree. He just visited. He wasn't going to make the rules. He wasn't going to tell me how to live in The Split Tree.

To open out a new wide area of consciousness means to slough the old unconsciousness. The old consciousness has become a tight- fitting prison to us, in which we are going rotten.

You can't have a new, easy skin before you have sloughed the old, tight skin.

You can't.

And you just can't, so you may as well leave off pretending.

Chapter 27 - The Underground Jamaica

During the winter of 1995-96, the kingdom of Robert's herb was an underground tropical paradise.

When the trench was finished it was covered with plywood, totally camouflaged. A feeding platform was made with a hidden trap door to the underworld. In the trench/tunnel you had to at first crouch down. But as you walked uphill there would be room to walk fully erect. Then a vaulting space opened up above your head. Around a bend you'd see the light. There was the annex with the young hybrid plants under florescent light. When you opened the door of The Geode you needed sunglasses. You had to strip down to your tee shirt. We had deep tans during that winter of endless snow. Juicy herbs filled the brilliantly lighted underground chamber.

It was the last abundance in the kingdom of Robert's herb.

I brought the Marxist slogan, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need," into the kingdom. But it was nearly impossible to satisfy Robert's need for herb. It was impossible to satisfy both Robert's and Dewey's need for herb. Dewey not only smoked prodigious quantities, he was constantly thieving the herb to sell it. During every crucial juncture of the cultivation Gloria would unfailing take Robert away on a junket.

During the winter of 1995-96 Gloria left on the junket that was her escaping. Robert left on the junket that was him denying Gloria was escaping. He refused to give me authority over the Geode. He said Dewey and me had to work together.

When Robert left Dewey insisted it was getting too cold in The Geode. He said a propane heater was needed for heat and carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide was needed. But the plants didn't need any more heat. The hot grow light was on 20 hours every day. I told him to put his propane camp stove in The Geode. I told him the propane heater would make The Geode way too hot.

I had ruled no car key chimpanzee food would be brought to The Split Tree. Car key chimpanzee food in the woods makes the wild animals rat-like. Dewey insisted on bringing car key chimpanzee food to The Split Tree. He said my resistance to the propane heater and the chimpanzee with car key food, my insistence that his camp stove be used in The Geode and not for ncooking food in The Split Tree was me exercising a power that Robert had not given me, a power he didn't recognize.

He put a propane heater in The Geode. He promised he would check the room often. But he didn't. He cooked The Underground Jamaica, made it a paradise lost.

After I would not participate in any cultivation that involved Dewey. When there was no herb I quit. (You gotz some?) Dewey went on being a two-bit, scumbag herb dealer. Robert became insufferable.

Basta! It is enough. It is enough of life. Let us have the vast elements. Let us get out of this loathsome complication of living humanly with humans. Let the sea wash us clean of the leprosy of our humanity and human-ness.

Chapter 28 - The Gloria Escape

In April 1995 I met Robert and Gloria in Las Vegas.

The junkets to the west evolved into working vacations. Not only were they paid $100 an hour to teach school children in Connecticut about the pathetic animals. They were paid $100 an hour to teach school children throughout the west about the pathetic wild animal.

They would always go to Las Vegas. Robert would stalk Siegfried and Roid. He had walked into their house the year before. He had come to the attention of the Las Vegas Police. And of course he stalked his god, Mr. Las Vegas, The Steve Wynn, his wife Eileen.

He would lose a lot of money, hang and jerk at the slot machines. Gloria would say it was all Wally's money and there was some kind of poetic justice in this.

This time Robert got sick. When they left for the skiing in Lake Tahoe, Robert looked like a dead man walking.

In Tahoe he was rushed to the hospital. He insisted on the best of medical attention. He was given a place to lie down and die. When he didn't die, when it was judged that he was "stable," he was told to fuck off. He was told to go back to sea level. And then he was endlessly harassed about the bill.

Gloria could see that the NAWA incarceration was about to become much more severe. It was going to now involve imprisonment by Robert's always-imminent death. Because she had just seen world without end this was unbearable.

She had sex with the Egyptian tour leader during the previous year's junket down the Nile. Egypt loved Gloria. She was going back.

She told Robert she was going to Tibet. It was some kind of spiritual thing. And of course Robert couldn't go. The altitude would kill him. Robert was going to Sicily. I could go with him, if I could come up with the money.

She got her butt lift and thigh reduction.

Robert knew what was happening. But he wanted me to assure him it wasn't happening. I told him Gloria would never abandon her flatulent god, Apollo. She would never desert the pathetic animals that were too fucked up to ever be released, him especially.

I believed what I told him.

Robert wanted me to go with him to Italy. But I didn't have the money, had no prospects of having the money, and I wasn't going to leave Dewey alone with The Underground Jamaica.

After Gloria had made the travel arrangements, Robert said he didn't want to go to Italy alone. He wanted to visit with his sisters in the south, take a cruise in the Caribbean.

She arranged for Robert to leave first. She promised Robert he would have a big surprise when he got to the cruise ship in Miami. He was sure it was going to be Gloria.

I had to drive Gloria to the airport. She bitched about how put out she was with Robert for fucking up her travel arrangements. She bitched about how she had to pay top dollar for his cruise because she had to book late. She said Robert's family was a waste of skin.

I walked her to the gate, watched her disappear in the crowd. She had become a small, frail figure of a woman.

Natty and the Great Serpent are neither equals nor unequals. Each obeys the other when the moment arrives. And each is stark and dumb in the other's presence, starkly himself, without illusions created. Each is just the crude pillar of a man, the crude living column of his own manhood. And each knows the godhead of this crude column of manhood. A new relationship.

Chapter 29 - Delphos

The surprise that waited at the cruise ship was a wad of cash. Robert wanted to drown himself in the piss-warm sea. But he didn't.

When the boat returned to Miami his sisters were waiting for him. He returned to his element.

Tallman and Graves made plans for the final solution of the herd. I told Robert he had to come back to Norwich, build the cage, seize the deer. But he didn't want to come back until Gloria returned.

When Gloria didn't return I told him she wasn't back because something had gone terribly wrong. I told him he had to come back to investigate.

Weeks later he returned. We tracked Gloria. She had gone to Tibet, but then she had gone to Egypt.

Through Wally we told her of the unfolding events of the saga of the Mohegan Park deer.

Tallman told Robert that he could have the deer if he built an enclosure approved by the state DEP. We were finishing the deer enclosure, when under cover of night the deer were herded into a trailer and trucked to Woods &Waters of Delphos, Ohio, the largest animal auction house East of the Mississippi.

"Fuck you and the pathetic wild animals you rode in on," Tallman said to Robert when he called to ask what was happening. "You'll have to get your newspaper publicity somewhere else," he said.

Tallman said he shipped the deer to Ohio became he had no confidence in Robert or NAWA. He told the children of Norwich the deer were going to be auctioned only to petting zoos. He told the children they were going to good homes to be pets.

I was going alone to Delphos to let the children of Norwich know what happened to the deer. Then Donald Burr, a mysterious, moneyed man of Norwich comes out of the clear blue sky and makes $5,000 available to Robert to buy back the deer. It was something about wanting to embarrass Tallman, and the Norwich city council. It was something about being a child of Norwich and the water.

Robert went to Ohio with Dewey. I went alone. We all stayed at Gambini's. After his divorce every place he lived became a squalid hole.

We told Gambini of The Jah DEP. Whatever The Jah DEP was, Gambini definitely wanted in. But he never lost an opportunity to be a coward. He didn't go to the auction in Delphos. He said he had appointments, things he had to do.

Robert, Dewey and I went to Delphos. I filed this story:

DELPHOS, Ohio - Most of the Mohegan Park Zoo deer herd are bound to Texas game farms where they will be hunted and killed.

An East Lyme-based wildlife rescue organization bought eight of the deer and is preparing to transport them back to Connecticut.

Only 39 of the 42 deer that were given to Ponte Brothers, of Westport, Mass. made it to Woods & Waters a Western Ohio animal auction house. Three of the animals were so damaged by the transport they had to be destroyed on arrival.

During the Saturday auction, bidders were warned of the animals' injuries such as fractured bones protruding through their skin, open sores, and deep wounds. But the animals were auctioned at record high prices.

"This is only business," said Bill Ingles, the highest bidder for most of the deer. "I have people who are paying $8,000 for bucks and $1,800 for does. I have an order for 800 animals," Ingles said.

During the auction Ingles, and two associates, all wearing big black Stetson hats and black western attire made bids as high as $1,000 for a buck, $850 for a doe.

Ponte Brothers was given $3,600 by Norwich to have the deer tested for disease, and for taking the deer to the Ohio auction house. They made $20,000 from the sale of the deer.

Professional deer breeders wondered if the Norwich deer would survive transport to Texas.

As a result of a $5,000 donation from Donald Burr of Norwich, North American Wildlife Association was able to buy eight deer. Volunteers are trying to stabilize the animals and prepare them for transport to the association's 26-acre wildlife refuge in East Lyme.

"At the refuge these animals, the last remnant of a 60 year-old deer herd, will be able to live out their natural lives, and be treated with compassion and respect," said Robert Salvatore, the wildlife association's president.

Robert had demanded an explanation from Ingles. He said if Ingles explained nobody would have to get hurt. Dewey told us to kick ass. Then he hid.

Ingles said it was just business.

Gloria had returned to the refuge. She needed more money for her further travels and cosmetic surgeries. She told Robert to leave the deer in Ohio until the enclosure was finished, and approved by the Connecticut DEP.

I wanted to bring the deer back to Connecticut that night. But Gloria was back in charge.

Robert bought a donkey for Gloria. He hoped another equine would stop her from leaving again. But when we got back to Connecticut Gloria said she didn't want a donkey. She wanted a mule. She said I had to buy the donkey with the twilight last gleaming of my credit card credit. I became the owner of a donkey. I named her Rose. Gloria used the credit card receipt to further thieve my identity and credit.

They were the first of the strangest days. Things polarized around the deer.

The militant pathetic animal people tried to make it about the auction house. They wanted Robert and me to speak out about the animal abuse at the auction house. But the auction house was a well-run place where animals had solid monetary value and were treated accordingly. And there are no people more removed from the mystery and reality of animals than militant, pathetic animal activists.

The hunters, the businessmen in the business of animals, wanted to show that no dirty, stinking, militant pathetic animal activists could tell them what to do with animals. The militant pathetic animal activists didn't play the game. They didn't actually work with animals. They weren't going to make the rules. They weren't going to dictate how to do the business of animals.

Gambini said he would bring the deer and the donkey carrots, celery and gram crackers.

But it is truly a law, that man must either stick to the belief he has grounded himself on, and obey the laws of that belief, or he must admit the belief itself to be inadequate, and prepare himself for a new thingÖ.

As a matter of fact, unless a woman is held, by man, safe within the bounds of belief, she becomes inevitably a destructive forceÖ

Unless a man believes in himself and his gods, genuinely: unless he fiercely obeys his own Holy Ghost; his woman will destroy him. Woman is the nemesis of the doubting man. She can't help it."

. . .woman out of bounds is a devil. But it is man's fault. Woman never asked, in the first place, to be cast out of her bit of an Eden of belief and trust. It is man's business to bear the responsibility of beliefÖBelief doesn't go by choice. And if a woman doesn't believe in a man, she believes essentially, in nothing. She becomes willy-nilly, a devil.

Chapter 30 - The Burnt Offering

The deer were kept near the pigs. They began to die. The militant pathetic animal activists made anonymous, threatening calls to the auction house.

We had the media attention. We had seized the zeitgeist. As television and newspaper were seeking interviews Robert would accuse Gloria of her infidelities. He would break the doors that Gloria attempted to lock against him.

I concealed the dysfunction. NAWA got more money than it had since the arrival of rabies and all the plague and pestilences. Cleveland Amory, the television critic of T.V. guide, and internationally known animal advocate, on the recommendation of Laura Simons, his Connecticut agent, gave $2,000 from his Fund for Animals for the deer enclosure.

With the twilight's last gleaming of my credit I got the necessary materials and began building a donkey enclosure by The Split Tree. Just as I was finishing the enclosure Dewey came running with the news.

According to Dick Pierce, the one-armed cowboy who ran the auction house, the surviving four deer and the donkey had been loaded on the truck that was to bring them back to Connecticut. The driver went into the auction house's office to fill out the final paper work. When he went outside the truck was engulfed in fire.

The first report from Pierce was all the animals were dead. But then he called again and said a young doe had survived.

Pierce's story was always suspect. Pierce had us down as militant pathetic animal activists. There were other animals in the truck. But only the Mohegan Park deer and the donkey died.

Robert didn't believe the young doe was from Mohegan Park. He believed Pierce burnt the face of an available deer and offered it to Robert so the bill with the auction house got paid.

The fire happened right after Gloria had left again. It happened when a big passenger plane crashed into the Everglades.

Robert and Dewey were guests on a Norwich radio talk program. Robert said the death of the deer was of the same magnitude of tragedy as the car key chimpanzee burning in the Florida swamp. Dewey ranted about deer birth control and his early toilet training.

I had just found out Moon was on his deathbed.

Pierce said we had to go to Ohio and get the deer.

I wanted to see if Moon had anything more to say. Also I had arranged a meeting between Gejdenson and the Simonds.

I wanted to stay. But I had to go to Delphos.

Robert rented a van. I drove all night. At first light Robert took the wheel. I woke up when we were closing with Columbus.

Mournful, heroic music was playing on the radio. There was the news of an admiral's suicide over a point of honor involving a Vietnam service medal. I asked Robert if we were dead niggahs gone to glory. It seemed as if I had awakened into dream.

We searched Gambini's house for weapons. We spoke to Gambini like he too was going armed to Delphos. But Gambini never lost an opportunity to be a coward. He said he had appointments, things to do, really would like to go though.

Before we left Columbus for Delphos, Pierce told us the deer was in good shape. He said it would not be practical to transport her in a van. He said we needed a UHaul truck. He said he wouldn't give us the deer unless we had a UHaul truck.

I had to put the UHaul truck rental on the twilight last gleaming of my credit. Robert said there would be a "Reimbursement Day", a time when I would be compensated for everything. On Reimbursement Day we would go to Jamaica.

When we got to Delphos Pierce and all the auction house cowboys were wearing big guns on their belts. Pierce said the auction house was under siege. All telephone calls were threats against them and their families. He told Robert to give him his money, take the deer and he hoped to God he never saw us again.

We drove back to Columbus. Robert again fucked Gambini and himself with the baton.

Robert insisted on driving the UHaul with the deer. I drove the van. On the way to the highway Robert smashed into street signs, and parked cars. He hung and he jerked. I lost him on the entrance ramp of the interstate. I didn't know if he was in front of me or behind me. The plan was to rendez-vous at the Pennsylvania border. But Robert wasn't there.

He hung and he jerked, almost killed himself and the deer numerous times. When he stopped the truck to sleep, he forgot to turn his headlights off. When he awoke in killing heat, the battery was dead. He struggled to get the truck started and to get ice to cool the deer so it wouldn't die.

The god that protects idiots and animals somehow got Robert and the deer back to the refuge.

The Eagle symbol in human consciousness. Dark, swinging wings of hawk-beaked destiny, that one cannot help but feel, beating here above the wild center of America. You look round in vain for the "One being Who made all things, and governs the world by His Providence.

Chapter 31 - The Call of the Wild

The next day, a Sunday, was the first of the unnaturally hot days that punctuated the cold May of 1996. I was exhausted but unable to sleep because of the heat.

Then there was a call for wild animal rescue from the New London police dispatcher. There was a coyote on Blackhall Street, in the middle of the 'hood.

A crowd had gathered for the entertainment. There were people from the neighborhood, a dozen cops on and off duty, the New London police chief, the city dogcatcher. The coyote lurked at the back of the alley. It was more wolf than coyote.

Robert asked the cops why they didn't take care of the situation. The police said they weren't paid enough to do something like that. Besides, there was us.

The plan was I was going into the alley. The plan was I was going to drive the coyote to the alley's street gate. A hole was to be cut into the wooden gate. When the coyote went through the hole it would be trapped in a cage.

Police sanctioned vandalism cut and kicked a hole in the gate. The biggest cage the dogcatcher had covered the hole. A thin, tinny piece of metal was the only thing that was found that could close the opening in the dog cage.

To get to the other side of the alley, behind the coyote, I climbed on to the roof of a garage. I hung and then I dropped. I hit the ground running, grabbed a heavy sheet of metal resting against the wall of the alley.

The sheet of metal stank of urine. I used it as a shield to block the alley and drive the coyote before me.

The coyote threw himself on the metal sheet in the desperate fury of a cornered, wild animal. He staggered me, threw me back. I lunged back at him. I realized the disturbing sound I was hearing was me wildly, bloodily yelling.

When his back was against the gate, I stopped, stepped back and whispered to him.

He listened. He turned to the gate then turned back to look at me. Then he went through the hole into the dogcatcher's cage. Robert dropped the flimsy sheet of metal. He heard the tinny sound it made when it hit the pavement and had no respect for it. He rushed it, blew right through it, leaped for my throat.

I raised the sheet of heavy pissed on metal. Then the coyote defied normal physics, dropped to the ground, found a space between my right leg and the wall of the alley, was by me. He nipped me in the ass and was gone.

Robert and I went back to the refuge to get the right equipment. When we got back to the 'hood the sun was setting it was getting dark.

As I was getting ready to hang and drop into the alley a neighborhood kid warned me that, "if the coyoye don't chew up" my ass, "the police going to bust a cap into it." The police had their guns in hand. The carnival crowd was betting on the coyote.

My new shield was a section of steel mesh fence. The coyote took heart from the increased give of it. He felt safer in the dark. But I again heard that profoundly disturbing sound I was making. I lunged forward, drove him back. It took longer. But again the coyote's back was against the gate.

I again stopped and whispered. But the coyote was distracted. The New London cops were concentrated on the roof of the garage, over the gate. Their guns were drawn.

Robert roared at the cops. He told them to "get the fuck out of there!" The cops obeyed.

Again it was just us. Again I whispered. Again the coyote looked at the gate, looked at me. Then he went through the gate.

But this time he went into a strong cage, and stepped on a trigger that made a door come crashing down with a solid, locking sound.

He turned and looked at me, again. There was a sporting roar from the crowd as if the matador had killed the bull as if the niggah got lynched.

We took him back to the refuge, fed him liverwurst, cheese, salami, gourmet canned dog food. We gave him rabies and distemper shots.

I wanted to release him that night. But Robert insisted on holding him until the newspaper photographer came.

The stories and pictures of the deer and the coyote was in the same newspaper, as the story about the death of MoonFace Bear.

. . .the spirit can change. The white man's spirit can never become as the red man's spirit. It doesn't want to. But it can cease to be the opposite and the negative of the red man's spirit. It can open out a new great area of consciousness, in which there is room for the red spirit too.

Chapter 32 - The Second Time Moon Was Buried

Graves called and resigned from the NAWA board of directors, no longer gave pro bono veterinary services to NAWA. The dark whisperings in Robert's mind told him Graves was fucking Gloria. Then there was no doubt that Gloria had again gone to Egypt to fuck Kemal, the Egyptian tour guide.

From Robert's rage, his madness came some more strangely articulate Shakespearean-like soliloquies. "Oh fucking life! If I could only tear you from my chest, bash in my head, rip away this flesh that so wants to die." He gathered up all his prescription medicines and flushed them down the toilet in the clinic's bathroom. As the bright colored pills went round the toilet bowl, he said: "Like a swirling rainbow all my dreams, all my hopes flushed, gone, forever."

But Robert would always be persuaded by his doctors to get back on the medications.

I had co-signed a loan to make barns and horse enclosures for more broken down plugs to hold Gloria. As soon as I co-signed, revealed my social security and credit card numbers, Gloria began stealing my identity. She got an American Express Credit Card on my name, max-ed it out. She destroyed the twilight last gleaming of my credit card credit. Bankruptcy was the only option.

Robert insisted I dime Gloria. I said that was a real bad idea that Gloria would dime us on the remnants of the cultivation in the Geode.

Robert ordered Dewey to take away the surviving plants. I told Robert this was a real bad idea. I said we would never see those plants or anything that ever came from the plants. I said the plants would drown in Dewey's yellow shit.

But it was the kingdom of Robert's herb. I dimed Gloria to American Express. Then Robert changed his mind. I called off the investigation.

Dewey disappeared. When he returned he said the plants had drowned in a swamp in Vermont.

The Geode was never used again for herb cultivation. I was able to get new clone stock and resumed a modest covert cultivation in the sumac.

Robert continued to rant about letting the animals die in their cages. I urged him to just let the animals go. He said I was there only for the herb. He told me to get the fuck out.

I told him I would be more than happy to get the fuck out. If he wasn't careful I would.

Then Robert's sister Patricia 'Patty', her 15-year old son Bobby, and her boyfriend Scot showed up. Patty is an ugly skanky ho'. She would propose sexual threesomes, Scott included. She insisted that Bobby had to be included when herb was smoked.

Robert wanted to show her Mohegan Morning Star, his "$1,000,000 deer."

I had been waiting for the right time to let the deer go. But it wasn't for me to let the deer go. The wild animal is not pathetic. The wild animal follows its own way. Robert, Scott, and Bobby went into the enclosure. The gate wasn't closed. The deer ran through them, was out the gate, was gone.

Sparrow, a Puerto Rican of Tiano ancestry, was Moon's aide de camp and librarian of Moon's voluminous archives. Two months after Moon was buried he began having dreams that Moon's grave was flooded, that Moon was coming to him in his dreams asking to be taken out of the water.

Moon hadn't liked the water. It wasn't his element. He had tried to overcome it. Moon would get on the 'The Relentless. But he would get off as I tried to push the boat away from the dock.

Sparrow said we had to get Moon out of the water. Kenny Reels got us a back hoe. We dug Moon up.

There wasn't smell or corruption in the grave. There was no water in the grave, either. We put the coffin in a cement sarcophagus, started lowering the sarcophagus in the grave.

I stepped into the grave to line up the sarcophagus. Then the dirt around the grave collapsed on me. I was buried in Moon's grave.

There was confusion. I was pulled out of the grave. The sarcophagus rotated. When the sarcophagus was lowered back into the grave Moon may have been facing West.

It is our own fault. It was we who set up the ideals. And if we are such fools, that we aren't able to kick over our ideals in time, the worst for us.

Chapter 33 - Shaking the Dust

Gambini visited the refuge in August 1996. Robert showed him the abandoned, mostly dismantled Geode. After the tour Gambini saw me climbing up the ravine after bathing in the stream. He ran to me, got down on his knees and bowed to me. He said he had never seen anything "so amazing."

Gambini saw the devolution of the kingdom of Robert's herb into the White Trash Woodstock. There were people at the refuge who would never have been allowed on the refuge if Gloria had been there.

"You are the ruins of a great man," Gambini told Robert and kissed him on the top of his head.

He was at the first party of the White Trash Woodstock during the summer of 1996. When the party broke up, around 3 a.m., Gambini and I started back to The Split Tree. I didn't have a flashlight. But I always walked at night without a flashlight. But that night I came to a place, where I couldn't find the trail, where I kept walking into the prickers.

It was a mystery. But at first it was hilarious. I wasn't worried. I was entertained by the trick the refuge and my sense of direction was playing on me in the pitch dark.

But Gambini lost it, began whining like a bitch. At first I thought that was hilarious. But when I woke, next morning, I was disturbed by the memory.

That morning Robert offered Gambini the "driver's seat" of NAWA, again offered the baton. I again warned Gambini. But of course he reached for it. Then he returned to Ohio.

Gloria came back from Egypt. Then she called the cops, accused Robert of hitting her. Robert was arrested. Restraining orders were issued. Robert was exiled by law from the refuge.

It was the Gloria captivity. Robert lived in welfare hotels with his sister, Scott, and Bobby. Gloria, Wally and Mary Deveau, the second in command of the association of the resentful, childless woman, hired a lawyer and tried to seize NAWA. Robert hired a lawyer. The lawyer stopped the legalization of the Gloria captivity.

Gloria again fled to Egypt. She had the Deveau's credit card number.

I held The Split Tree. I walked through the forest, through the darkness by unlikely ways. I had no contact with Gloria. She didn't venture to the back of the refuge where The Split Tree was.

Because of the chaos of the spring I had started the herb planting late. But during the Gloria captivity the herb plants came to beautiful, potent maturity. Then the Gloria captivity ended. Robert returned to the refuge at harvest time. He stole the herb.

Laura Simmons had given Cleveland Amory's money to build the deer enclosure. She is the leader of all the Connecticut wild animal rehabilitators, who aren't Robert and Gloria. She is a beautiful woman. During the Gloria captivity I wrote a story about her for the The New York Times.

It was published just after Robert got back to the refuge. When he saw it in the newspaper that has all the news that fits he heard dark whisperings. They told him I had betrayed him. They told him I had given the perceived special grace with the wild animals to someone else. That's how he justified thieving the herb.

He went right at me. I was at The Split Tree. I heard him when he was still far-off. There was something broken, cracked in his voice, as he kept repeating his resentment. "Live in her back yard?" he angrily shouted when he saw me at The Split Tree.

Gejdenson tried to make the Mashantucket Pequot include the Simonds. But Joan Simonds, the family matriarch I was working with, said she didn't want inclusion in no dirty, stinking, niggah Indian tribe. She just wanted the money.

I told her she had to be included in the tribe to get the money.

"Fuck you Sam Libby and the horse you rode in on," she said.

I shook the dust off my feet and went to Mexico.

America must take up life where the Red Indian, the Aztec, the Maya, the Incas left it off. They must pick up the life-thread where the mysterious Red race let it fall. They must catch the pulse of the life which Cortes and Columbus murdered. There lies the real continuity. . .A great and lovely life-form unprotected, fell with Montezuma. The responsibility for the producing and the perfecting of this life-form devolves upon the new American.

Chapter 34 - Chiapas

The Mayans rose up. The Zapatista army came out of the jungle. Popocatepetl smoked. The peso crashed. It was as if I was being summoned to Mexico.

In October 1996 a busload of Mexicans representing themselves as "Zapatistas" and connected old school American Indian Movement (AIM) people did a long weekend at Foxwoods. But they were unlikely Zapatistas, unlikely revolutionists.

They said the Mexican Constitution was going to be changed so Indian casinos would be allowed in Mexico. They said they wanted the Mashantucket Pequot to manage their "Indian" casino.

It was crazy. When I questioned people in the Mashantucket Pequot's public information apparatus they ridiculed me as a head case, as a son of Syd.

But I didn't need much of an excuse to go to Mexico. I drove my Toyota light pick-up truck to Chiapas with a colleague from the Hartford Courant, young Michael Stoll.

Stoll's family had money. I had a few hundred dollars. I was hoping the Mexican adventure was going to be subsidized by young Michael. But in Mexico I found out for certain that the people at Foxwoods were Vera Cruz mafia. Young Stoll lost interest. He left me in San Cristobal de las Casas with 100 pesos.

But with my strong back, weak mind and pick-up truck I became the Mas Barato Transportation Co. of Chiapas. I would pack my truck with hippie backpackers and backpacks and go to San Cristobal, Palenque and other Mayan ruins. I charged considerably less than the locals. My slogan was 'The cheapest - when it rains, you get wet.'

Wherever the Mayan ruins are there is the Red Life Columbus and Cortes were unable to kill. I arrived in Chiapas when the luz (the electric light, the electricity) was turned off, and the Red Life was resurgent.

A lot of hydro-electricity comes from Chiapas. But most of Chiapas didn't have electricity. After the 1994 uprising the government did a massive rural electrification program in Chiapas. At first the luz was real cheap. But after two years the government subsidies ended and luz was just as expensive as it was in the rest of Mexico.

The Indians couldn't pay the electricity bill. The luz was cut- off. People got electrocuted, died doing the pirate hook-ups. When the utility men and the goon squad police came to disconnect the illegal hook-ups there were fierce, bloody battles. The government had the firepower. The government stopped the luz.

I was driving from Palenque to San Cristobal when the roadblocks began. Chopped down trees and chains stopped all traffic. The locals extorted every peso they could.

I told the New York Times' Mexico City Bureau what was happening. The grey lady found it all very interesting, would always take my collect calls. But there wasn't enough blood.

When my travels in Mexico stopped being about journalism it became about the shamanism, the ethno-biology. I stayed at the Panchan (the classic Mayan word for heaven) a new age insane asylum, two miles down the road from the ruins of Palenque. At the Panchan eastern mysticism met the Mayan underworld. The demon of place had its way with travelers from many places, many realms.

The Panchan was another kingdom of the resentment. The king was Moises Morales, then a vigorous 82, the most senior and highly regarded guide of Palenque and the classical Mayan World. Moises had a lively interest in the hippie chicks. But his queen was Rakchita, a German woman who was a post-hippie chick, about thirty years younger than Moises.

Rakchita was a disciple of an India Indian Baba. She had a temple built to her Baba and the Yoga Tantric Arts. Moises would sometimes give lectures about the Mayan world, the ruins, his legend of himself. There would be discussion about who were the descendants of the builders of Palenque.

Some thought Palenque was built by extra-terrestrials. Some said Palanque was built by the last stone-aged people found in the last remnant of the Lacondan jungle. But Moises said there was no mystery about this. The descendants of the builders of Palanque lived on the other side of the ridge. These people looked just like the people depicted in the Mayans art. They spoke the same language.

These Mayans had started coming over the ridge with machetes. They were the most resentful about the luz. They were robbing, and raping the tourists.

I followed the well-trodden trail over the ridge. The hike was harder, longer than I thought. I spent a long time by a river talking to the men and boys about the wild animals, watching the women bath. I started back much too late. There was a sudden, dramatic sunset, and then the rapid darkening. I raced with the onset of the night.

If I hadn't of smelled him I would have run headlong into the drunk. He was radiating fumes of cana (sugar cane liquor).

He told me to give him his money back, than laughed demonically. I pretended I didn't understand. I told him I'd give him a flashlight if I had one. I asked him how was he going to make it over the ridge in the dark.

He said he did it all the time. He insisted I drink from his bottle. It had a faint taste of diesel. When I reached towards him to return the bottle, he grabbed my arm and gazed into my eyes with eyes that had a cat-like night predator's shine.

He again laughed demonically, let go and disappeared into the darkness. I walked away asking myself if the boracho had been real, if it had really happened?

It seemed like I had won the race with the night. It was late twilight when I emerged from the jungle into the ruins. I was walking around the trees that had grown through a flight of stairs when something rushed me from behind, shoved me, set me rolling down the ruined stairs.

I sprang up, went into a defensive crouch. Then the pain of my injured right shoulder made me puke. As a wretched I heard demonic laughter receding into the jungle.

I kept on turning around, as I walked the paved road back to the Panchan. When I got to my pick-up truck I took two percocets, and went unconscious.

I woke in agony as my injured shoulder was being grabbed and shaken with agitated malice. I swung at my tormentor. But only gave Javier a glancing blow.

Javier was the bill collector. He collected the rent I was charged for parking my truck, sleeping in the bed of the truck. Chiapas was the beginning of another level of destitution, of always being broke. I often didn't have the money. I had to give Javier most of my clothes to pay the bill. But according to Javier I still owed big time.

He was from Mexico City, had workable English but insisted you speak to him in Spanish. He had a good baritone voice, was always singing to Rakshita, during the nighly music performances. He sang songs about ditching the old man. He sang songs about Rashita's best years being still ahead.

Moises couldn't ignore the insult. He lost no opportunity to humiliate Javier. Under the onslaught of Moise's patriarchal power, Javier broke. He went mad. But he was not the only one who lost it.

Donavan and his girl friend were cosmic pilgrims, new age ingÈnues from Chicago. It was the second year Donavan had wintered at the Panchan. He had all the attributes Rakchita wanted in the tenants. He was young, dumb as shit, a yearning pilgrim. He played or at least aspired to play a musical instrument, a guitar.

Emmanuel had all the attributes Rakchita didn't want in the tenants. He aspired to his own guru-dom. He wasn't recognizably musical. He was weird looking. He had a red haired step-child, white trash cast of features. In his travels in Mexico Emmanuel had seen many who had arrived at some level of 'spiritual' control over others. He studied the grifters, those who worked the psychic decay.

Donavan started the sÈances. He sought contact with the Mayan spirits/demons. Donavan and Emmanuel built an altar. They put rocks, seashells, unidentifiable things in plastic bags on the altar. Other would come to the altar.

Donavan's first teaching was, "No judgment in the garden!" But the first teaching was the last coherent thing Donavan said. After that there were only the screams and ranting that disturbed everyone's sleep. Then there was less sleep at the Panchan when Emmanuel began screaming and ranting.

Javier also became a disturber of sleep. A German guy who had been working at the Panchan for several years was preparing to go back to Europe. He had a kind of garage sale for the trinkets he had accumulated. Javier became excited about rosary beads that had a crudely fashioned wooden image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She was unmistakably an Indian. She was beaten up, but still strong. Javier negotiated a price. He got the price. Then he didn't want the rosary beads. But much latter that night he woke the German and he wanted the rosary beads immediately. Then Javier woke me.

He told me this American woman, an aspiring new age priestess, was trying to do an exorcism on Donavan. Emmanuel had showed up and was disrupting the proceedings. I had to help him subdue Emmanuel, so the exorcism could continue.

Javier ran to the palapa where the exorcism was being held. In the grogginess of the percocets I followed. Emmanuel was standing at the window of the palapa. He was yelling in a theatrical but no less scary voice, things like "Get away, he's mine!" Donavan was writhing and screaming.

When Emmanuel saw Javier and me he ran into Rakchita's temple. Javier immediately was agitated about the desecration of the temple. He ran after him. I ran after Javier.

Rakchita's temple was a pavilion fashioned from twisted, tortured metal where yoga instruction happened every early morning. In the center of it was the altar to Rakchita's Indian baba.

Emmanuel grabbed the baba's picture and began rubbing it with a yin/yang symbol, while chanting Om. Javier put a chokehold on Emmanuel and began strangling him with strong sure intent. I grabbed Javier from behind and tried to pull him off Emmanuel.

Javier turned and hit me square in the injured shoulder. The pain staggered me, made me wretch. Emmanuel got to his feet and fled, with Javier in hot pursuit, me weakly following.

Javier hit Emmanuel from behind with a flying tackle, climbed up his legs, pinned his arms with his knees, and threw the rosary beads on Emmanuel's forehead. Emmanuel writhed and made sounds that were unlikely sounds for a human to make. I looked into Emmanuel's eyes and I did not see Emmanuel in them. Whoever was in Emmanuel said the rosary beads burned.

Javier subdued Emmanuel. But it wasn't a thing of Christianity. Javier told the thing that was in Emmanuel that he Javier was God. He told Emmanuel to stop doing mushrooms, and to leave the Panchan with Senior Sam and forever be banished. Javier told Emmanuel to go to the Mayabel, the other campground, about a mile and a half down the road, towards the ruins.

It was a bad movie. It always went to the radically absurd. But I never lost the feeling of being followed by someone, something from the other side of the ridge.

Emmanuel and I forded the streams that had to be crossed to get to the paved road. When we got to the road I asked him if he had a hold on his own self, on the comings and goings inside his own self. He put his face near mine. He made sure I looked into the strangeness. The strangeness ranted and raved at me, told me he had never felt more powerful more in control than in this very moment.

He began taking off his clothes. He walked in the middle of the road. A drunk almost made him into road kill and then wanted to kill him for being an asshole.

"Mira, Look at him!" I yelled. "Do you want any part of this?" The drunk got back into the car. His tires squealed as he drove away.

Emmanuel streaked through the Mayabel, to an acquaintance's palapa. But the management of the Mayabel was running out of patience with Emmanuel's friend. The previous night two girls had freaked out, gotten sick on mushrooms and spent the night screaming and loudly puking. Emmanuel's friend had been given notice. He told Emmanuel he couldn't stay there.

Emmanuel smashed the heel of his right hand into the space immediately in front of the guy's forehead. Although there was no physical contact his friend flew backwards.

Emmanuel stayed.

Donavan spent another week at the Panchan. All the inmates tried to put him back together again with their new age powers.

When I tripped on the mushrooms it felt as if I could at least see what afflicted a creature. The official story was Emmanuel and Donavan were victims of the Psylicibin cubensis, the gold top mushrooms. But there was no rain, no mushrooms when they went insane. It wasn't the mushrooms. They had taken powerful, savage mysteries light. They were way out of their depth. They had been dismembered by the mystery.

I knew I couldn't put Donavan back together again.

Donavan's woman abandoned him. His family came from Chicago and brought him back to the land of assembly line lobotomy. They committed him to an expensive psychiatric facility. He may still be there.

Emmanuel could still be resident by the ruins. Last I saw of him he dressed in a black robe and carried a staff topped with a black cross. He would sniff-out the psychic rot, and feed on it.

Javiar became the pariah he always feared he would become, that he always became. He was accused of being a child molester, became a hopeless drunk was driven from the Panchan.

In Chiapas it seemed like I had been ruined for life on the other side of the Rio Grande. And then there was the recurring dream of disaster on the other side of the river. If it wasn't for Lily I would still be in Mexico.

Lily was a young, beautiful New Yorker. Her father was Jewish. Her mother was a Dane. She hung out with the Zapatistas. A man of revolutionary political power had tried to get into her pants. She resisted. She dimed him to the woman revolutionary committee. She made a powerful enemy. She had to get out of Dodge.

Lily broke the spell. I had to get her to the other side of the river.

We went to the border by way of Real Catorce, the holy land of the Huicholes, the place of the peyotes. I went into the desert to find the peyote. I spent a day looking but couldn't find them. And then I felt the beginnings of a kidney stone. I knew pain beyond endurance was coming.

I went back into the desert with Lily. She found beautiful, ancient peyote. We cut the buttons with sharp stones. We made offerings of water. I prayed for the strength to endure. I ate as many buttons as I could. The spirit came to me.

I pissed a bright jet of red that seemed like it would not stop until I had pissed all my blood. But it stopped when I pissed out the grit of the stone.

I gave thanks, danced with my machete, as I tripped on the peyote, and cut brush for the fire.

Next morning the truck's rear window was broken. There was blood from the hand that had broken the glass. Nothing important was stolen. But I felt the thing from the other side of the ridge standing besides me.

To put it bluntly, I've been assigned to this city, as if to a large horse which is inclined to be lazy and is in need of some great stinging fly, and all day long I'll never cease to settle here, there, everywhere, rousing and reproving every one of you.

span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Chapter 35 - Son of Syd

While I was in Chiapas, my father's uprising was coming to its defining, definitive moment.

He had antagonized a mayor of Middletown who was closely aligned with Blumenthal. At Blumenthal's behest he was committed to the last Connecticut state mental hospital, Connecticut Valley State Hospital, in Middletown. A public hearing had been arranged to decide whether my father could be incarcerated in the insane asylum until he was dead.

My father came from Rockville, CT. But he drank deeply of the Norwich water.

A seal was broken when Jack Kennedy's head got blown off in Dallas. Many cannot see events without seeing the hand of evil conspiracy. My father saw evil conspiracy in all the international and national events. When he lived in Middletown, he saw the city as the mother of harlots and abominations.

Perhaps the municipal government of Middletown is not the mother of harlots and abominations. But it is a closed, secretive governance, more like Sicily than New England. He found nepotism, corrupt inside dealings and flagrant disregard of the state's Freedom of Information laws (FOI).

Monday 5/15/00 Middletown's political gadfly, Syd Libby, dies By PAM DAWKINS and JOHN CHRISTIE Middletown Press Staff

MIDDLETOWN _ Sydney M. Libby, the city's most persistent political gadfly, will be part of the Middletown's Common Council meeting tonight, despite his sudden death Sunday at the age of 72.

Mayor Domenique Thornton said she intends to call for a moment of silence in his honor during the meeting.

"Syd was unorthodox, but he was part of the public forum," Thornton said of Libby. "I think a lot of people will miss him, I'm sure he's gone on to his greater reward."

Deputy Mayor and Common Council member Gerald Daley said he knew Libby had not been in good health recently.

There are always people who question and challenge government and political leaders, Daley said, and Libby availed himself of that right. But, he added, there was a side to Libby that many people didn't know - including that he was a fan of the University of Connecticut's basketball program.

In his personal crusade to keep the government in check, Libby seemingly attended every city meeting, especially the Common Council's where Thornton and other city leaders were often the targets of Libby's ire.

During the council's public hearings, he often berated it's members, warning them they were dragging the city down into the mud with their "Byzantine scheming," and accused mayors of various administrations of being under "the mob's" thumb.

Despite his eccentricities Libby often garnered public support and even helped in getting city officials to act.

"I think he wanted honesty in government," said his daughter Charlene Mehr, from her home in Glastonbury. "He really worried about the people," especially about residents paying large tax bills beyond their means, she added.

Her father made city residents think about what was happening in local government, she said. And the term "gadfly," which, according to The Oxford Essential Dictionary, means an "irritating or harassing person," was a term Mehr believes her father liked. People would stop him on the street and thank him for what he did for the city, she said.

"It made him feel like he was making a difference," she said. Libby, who was forcibly removed on occasion from town meetings, was willing to make sacrifices for the city and paid a big price for those sacrifices, Mehr said.

But at the same time, his efforts gave him a mission in life and kept him active, she said.

During the 1998 state elections, Libby ran as an independent for representative of the 33rd district. He received 68 votes.

In 1999, Libby worked with other citizens upset with the major tax increase to petition the council's budget.

While the petition did not force a referendum, it forced council members to repeal their former budget, make cuts, and lower the mill rate from 28.3 to 28.1 mills.

He also worked on former council member Joseph J. Vinci's failed run for mayor against Thornton during last year's local elections.

And, of course, no one who's ever met Libby can forget his signature sayings: "I haven't seen you since your bar mitzvah," which he said to people he had seen many times, and his credo, "Any schmuck knows that."


The Hartford Courant 5/16/00 Sydney M. Libby, Dogged City Financial Watchdog, Dies At 72 By BILL DALEY Courant Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN _ Sydney M. Libby, a gadfly who stung half-a-dozen mayors along with various city and state officials, died Sunday. He was 72.

While Libby became known as something of a financial watchdog and earned grudging nods for his doggedness in overseeing how the city worked, it was his fearlessly creative use of adjectives that made him a legend in this city of bare-knuckle politics.

There was very little Libby wouldn't say to your face in public or private, in English or in Yiddish.

In Libby's world, labor unions and mayors were mob-dominated. Journalists were paid off with drugs. City government was controlled by a secret international cartel made up of the CIA, the state of Israel, the Rothschilds, and organized crime - what he called the "Kosher Nostra" for short.

"Any schmuck knows that," Libby would always add at the end of whatever he was saying.

Libby lived most of his life in the Norwich area and owned a chain of shoe stores. He moved to Middletown with his wife, Dorothy in 1988 and began making waves almost immediately.

"He's like the little Eveready battery," a councilman once complained. "He keeps going and going."

Libby shrugged off ridicule and insults. He wouldn't curb his tongue or tame his vocabulary at meetings, even though that often meant being ruled out of order and denied the speaker's microphone. Libby would just sit down on the floor and wait for the police to come and usher him out.

His disruptive behavior at public meetings led to his arrest more than 30 times, mostly on misdemeanor charges of trespassing and breech of peace. The city filed a lawsuit in 1996 seeking to bar Libby from public meetings.

City officials used to complain arresting Libby mattered little because the judicial system seemed not to take him seriously. That changed in April 1997 when an exasperated Superior Court judge, tired of Libby's courtroom behavior, threw him in jail and ordered Libby to undergo a mental competency exam.

A month later, Judge Thomas P. Miano found Libby incompetent to stand trial, based on an initial assessment by the court's diagnostic mental health clinic. Libby was committed to Connecticut Valley Hospital where he remained for a number of months until a panel of probate judges decided he was not sick enough or dangerous enough to warrant further confinement.

Spending and open government were two issues Libby was perhaps most associated with.

Libby would pepper the state Freedom of Information Commission with complaints and won many of the cases. He also turned to the city's board of ethics for help and in so doing turned the spotlight on what had been a little-known or used agency. In 1999, he helped lead a challenge to the city budget that prompted the common council to shave about $232,000 from the spending package.

Marie Norwood, the council clerk, said Libby did raise concerns and questions about the budget that the council responded to.

" In a sense, he helped them keep a watchful eye on the city," she said. "Until he started going off on the Mafia and all that, he did raise some good questions."

Libby's final appearance before the common council was last Wednesday's special meeting to approve a new city budget for the fiscal year 2000-01. Not only did he fault officials for keeping taxes high but he criticized them for failing to properly publicize the meeting to the public.

"Why can't you do things right?" Libby demanded of Mayor Domenique Thornton.

It was a question Libby asked often of a number of mayors, beginning with Republican Sebastian J. Garafalo in the late 1980's. Whoever was in office was corrupt and incompetent to Libby, who always harbored the hope that whoever replaced the sitting mayor would be better. That never seemed to happen.

I found the best way to deal with Syd was to think he was teasing when he made those accusations and I teased him back," said Garafalo, now a common councilman. "He could be irritating, but I personally had no problem with him."

Thornton usually bore Libby's criticisms with patience. She would gently interrupt him when she felt he was getting off-track.

"One of the reasons I tried to give him great latitude was because I was thoughtful of the fact he might not be in excellent health," she said. "I tried to be deferential to the extent I could while he was in the public forum."

Town Clerk Sandra Hutton said city officials will miss Libby, not in the sense of losing a good friend or family member, but because he was such a part of the city hall routine.

"You learned how to deal with him, to let him roll off our backs," she said. "We will miss him in the sense of the little guy who is in every day."

Besides his wife Libby is survived by his son, Sam Libby of Mystic; a daughter Charlene Mehr of Glastonbury; and two grandchildren. A graveside service was held Monday at Knesseth Israel Cemetery, Ellington. His family will observe Shiva at his daughter's home in Glastonbury. Donations in his memory may be made to Russell Library, 123 Broad St., Middletown, CT 06457.


EDITORIAL MIDDLETOWN PRESS 5/19/00 Libby's passing marks the end of era in Middletown politics

It was with great sadness Sunday that many of us heard of the death of Syd Libby at the age of 72. Libby, who was a true political gadfly on the Middletown scene, attended nearly every Common Council meeting and led what seemed like a personal crusade to keep government in check.

In a day of age when it seems fewer and fewer people care enough about local government to attend the meetings, much less even turn on the government access channel Libby was a breath of fresh air. Libby was an eccentric person, to be sure, to those who knew him, but he often garnered public support for his actions and helped get city officials on their feet and take action.

What made Libby special was he truly seemed to worry about people. His daughter commented he especially worried about residents being able to pay large tax bills beyond their means.

"Syd was unorthodox, but he was part of the public forum," Middletown mayor Domenique Thornton said. "I think a lot of people will miss him. I'm sure he's gone on to a greater reward."

And as Libby used to like to say to people, any schmuck knows that. Somewhere out there, Libby is now correcting the wrongs of a better place. We'll miss you, Syd.

The press my father got in death was nothing like the press he got when he lived and raged. The newspapers always described it as hanging and jerking. I was ridiculed because of my father. I was called "son of Syd." I was embarrassed when he appeared at the reservation during the siege of '93.

My father came to an anti-Weicker, anti-cigarette tax rally with two large mad-looking black men carrying signs referring to the Waco massacre. Moon didn't know it was my father. He knew they were from Middletown. He assumed they were in some way connected to the Connecticut Valley State Hospital. But he went out of his way to make my father and his crew welcome.

The anti-Weicker, anti-cigarette tax rally culminated with a march through the state police line, through the pleasant rural neighborhood of the reservation. Misty, Moon's Indian wife, started to join the march, remembered she was carrying a loaded .38 caliber pistol without a permit. She handed it over to me before joining the parade. I stowed it in my pick-up truck. When I looked up my father was looking at me. He had seen the whole thing. He was looking at me with pride. It was the beginning of our reconciliation.

"My hospital was not built to incarcerate Syd Libbys," said the mental hositals chief administrator, during the public hearing. He referred to the Soviet Union's mental institute gulag. He begged Blumenthal and his minions not to make his hospital a prison for Syd Libbys.

"If you're going to lock up Sydney for the rest of his life, you might as well shoot me, because you're killing both of us," said my mother.

When the number of my father's arrests were cited as evidence of mental illness, my father's lawyer cited the numbers of times Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King were arrested.

When we spoke during the recess I asked my father how it looked to him. He said, "I'm going to walk." He did.

He was called a gadfly. But more often he was said to be a fucking lunatic. He was a fucking lunatic just as the prophets of Israel who ranted and raved and went into the face of those who thought that they were the power, who forgot from where the power came - were fucking lunatics.

My father would campaign for a mayoral candidate as if he was campaigning for the elect of God. But when his candidate became mayor he would discover the mayor was the same as the old mayor an abomination, a thing of the most putrid, evil corruption. He would resume his uprising, rant and rave, go into the face of someone who had again forgot from where the power came.

The faith of my father is that the next candidate would be the one, the elect, the eternally clean. The faith of my father is in the good fight, the just fight. The faith of my father is that righteous governance is possible. The faith of my father is that any shmuck knows that.

. . .when a man suspects any wrong, it sometime happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself.

Chapter 36 - The Columbus Conference

When I didn't come back during the planting season, Robert came to believe I wasn't coming back. He sought me out. He called my parents. He spoke to my father right before he was committed to the state hospital. He found out I was back on this side of the river. He got a telephone number.

He told me about Gloria's visit in February. She had been printing $50 bills on a laser printer. She was busted when she tried to pass four $50 bills to pay for the printing of the NAWA newsletter. She feigned dumb American blonde ignorance. She told the police she exchanged Egyptian currency for dollars with these Egyptian guys she met at JFK. The police let her go. Robert helped get her on a plane, go fugitive.

U.S. Secret Service suits came to the refuge. Robert gave them a tour. They may have seen herb plants. They left at least one electronic bug in Robert's house. One was found.

I was disturbed by Robert's report. I found it very troubling that he spoke to me as if it was foregone I was going to return to the refuge, that I was going to grow herb. I told him I wasn't going anywhere near the refuge.

About half an hour later Gambini called. He had the technology for a conference call that included Robert and Dewey. He said he was coming to Connecticut to serve NAWA, to serve Robert. He told us he had many phone conversations with Robert during the winter and spring. It had been decided that he was to be made a member of the NAWA board of directors, and the chief administrator of NAWA.

I enjoyed my friend, Steve Gambini. I thought he was a funny dude, vastly entertaining. I didn't hold anything against him, not the whining, not even the reluctance before Delphos. I wanted him to get the baton. I thought him getting the baton would help me hold The Split Tree, would help me win my tierra y libertad. I heartedly endorsed the plan. I said I too wanted to be a member of the board.

There was a stifled laugh from Connecticut. Of course I would be made a member of the NAWA board.

Gambini was writing his book. It begins with his admission that he has always been a coward. Then he writes, "For the first time in my life I'm choosing to do something dangerous.

"Sam is still sleeping on the porch. (The interior was disgusting. The porch was the furthest I could get from it.)

"He drove 22 hours straight to get here, catching only a few zz's in a Hardee's parking lot somewhere in the Midwest.

"After a few cappucinos he was able to stay up until about midnight, but his Norwich water began to show more and more as he got tired.

"He keeps trying to explain to me the intransigence of Robert and how his constant need to be at the center of everything has messed up a few good deals.

"I appreciate the difficulty Robert presents, but I think I can work around it, or at least convince him to leave me to do what I have to do, and to convince him his best efforts are confined to running the refuge.

"So far, it's been little things, like insisting Gloria remain on the board. Even Sam agrees with this, and I am inclined to go with him given that over the past five years Gloria tried to burn down the Split Tree, forged Sam's name to get a credit card and convinced him to co-sign a loan that she skipped on immediately.

"If after all that Sam is willing to leave her on the paperwork, there's no point fighting it.

"Given the Secret Service is pursuing her, it is unlikely we will see Gloria again.

"Sam thinks we just need to increase the size of the board to act as a counter to any renewed occupation of the property by Gloria.

"Compromises. . .

"I referenced a place called Split Tree earlier. This is the spiritual center of North American Wildlife Association, and in part the real reason I am traveling to Connecticut.

"Robert and Sam built the Split Tree about six years ago. While walking through the forest one night, they claim to have heard an explosive screeching and ripping sound they had never experienced before. The weather was calm, and they claim not to have seen any ball or heat lightening.

"Upon arriving at the location of the soundÖthey found a tree which had split in such a way to offer the perfect ceiling frame for an underground house cut into the hill. (ceiling frame?)

"It is there Sam has lived for the past five years. His uphill wall is of earth, and the low walls of stone he and Robert foraged and hauled.

"It is here that Robert plays Emerson to Sam's Thoreau. They are a wild pair. The three of us seem to belong together in this place for a reason. Bart and I will construct our own dwelling likely to become our community's future center for industry. But the Split Tree is the church, the place where the visions take place and the place where the people are."

Gambini had a plan. First thing was to change the NAWA logo, get the rabies vector species raccoon off of it. Luckily his particular friend Bart was a very talented artist. Then Robert had to be made right. Gambini figured he had to bond with a dog. Luckily his particular friend Bart had a beautiful, highly intelligent pit bull bitch. Robert had to be hooked up with a woman. Luckily his particular friend Bart was "a bitch magnet." NAWA needed steady income. This could be done by setting up beehives and selling honey, getting goats and selling goat cheese. An underground cabin had to be built to house these new enterprises. Luckily his particular friend Bart could build something like this.

I could see how the dream of disaster was going to be fulfilled. I saw how unreasonable Gambini's and his particular friend Bart's expectations were. I saw how dangerous their resentment and disappointment would be.

In Columbus my shoes fell apart. I didn't have enough money for a new pair, and the gas to get back to CT. Gambini bought me a cheap pair of sneakers. They were the shoes that walked me into prison.

See all men and women according to the Holy Ghost that is within them. Never yield before the barren.

Chapter 37 - The Return to the Norwich Water

I returned to the refuge on June 2, 1997. The gate was different somehow. I thought it was locked. I re-entered the refuge by jumping the gate.

I first encountered Mike, a horrifying eruption of yellow-shit. He had come to the refuge by way of Patty and Bobby. He was Robert's snitch. He said Robert was his adoptive father. He said he would take a bullet for Robert. He said he was going to be the next president of NAWA.

Robert came down from his bedroom smelling of cigarette butts, roaches despair, self pity. He immediately accused me of conspiring against him, his kingdom. He unloaded all the dark whispers he had since I had shook the dust off of my feet.

I said I was ready, my preference was, to leave immediately, forever.

Katy was summoned. There were never more pathetic, resentful baton seekers than Katy and Mike. They were Robert's playthings. But they were learning how to play Robert.

Katy was 19 soon to be 20. By the law of Connecticut she was legal. She had a trailer park slut thing going. The first thing she told you was her daddy fucked her. But what she was really saying was she had fucked her daddy.

The first thing Robert said about Katy was that she was a lying betraying bitch. He produced the diary of one of the "college kids."

Robert had recruited in the newspaper want ads for the White Trash Woodstock. Sarah, Jonas, and Kyle responded. They had somehow overtaxed Bard College's legendary tolerance. They had been expelled. Robert hired them on the basis of the high quality herb they smoked with him during the job interview. Robert fucked with them with the baton. They fucked Robert with the baton.

The college kids retrieved the membership list from Gloria's antique computer. They organized fund raising events. They made plans to build a geodesic dome to house all The Bard College banished. They made contact with the other Connecticut wild animal rehabilitators. They went to a workshop organized by Laura for all the Connecticut wildlife rehabilitators who weren't NAWA.

The dark whispers told Robert the college kids conspired with Laura. The dark whispers said Laura had told the college kids to do it right instead of the way Robert and Gloria did it. The dark whispers said Laura had told the college kids to release Rudy the fox, the last animal Gloria had declared to be God.

Rudy had never stopped trying to escape. He probably broke through the rotten floorboards of his cage. But Robert made the college kids run for their lives. He seized their journals, guarded them as if they were war trophies, powerful totems.

The journals were adorned with drawings of psychedelic mushrooms, fanciful bongs. Katy had tried to return Kyle's journal. She wrote a note to him. She wrote their expulsion was "the destruction of her dreams too." But she would stay at the refuge and hope for other "opportunities."

When Robert left the room for a moment Katy said Robert was going to fuck her and kill her. She appealed to me to be her protector. But I knew it was her fucking her daddies.

Robert asked me if Katy should be expelled. I asked, if she was expelled, who would incarcerate the wild animals judged to be too pathetic to be released?

There were 60 herb plants. Some were still seedlings. But some were already full bushes. It was my lost stock, descendants of the plants Dewey had drowned in the yellow shit.

Dewey had given clones to other cultivators. They had saved my hybrids, my hope of producing the transcendent strain that I was being cultivated to produce. They had saved the hope of The Black Chicken.

That night there was a White Trash Woodstock party. They ranged in age from 15 to 28. They were mostly from the wrong side of the tracks of Old Saybrook.

When Dewey arrived we went to the cochina and had council. I told them I was going to move the plants off the refuge. They told me I wasn't.

Robert said he was too sick to walk that far. Dewey said it wasn't my herb. Who was I to tell them what to do with their herb. I wasn't playing the game. I wasn't going to make the rules.

I told them someone of the White Trash Woodstock was going to rat or rip off the plants, or both. I told them if we got busted with the plants on the refuge it would be "the end, the apocalypse."

But they refused to listen to me. When I persisted they said I was planning on ripping off the plants by moving them off the refuge.

I told them to remember what was said that night. I told them to remember who said it.

Liberty is all very well, but men cannot live without masters. There is always a master. And men either live in glad obedience to the master they believe in, or they live in a frictional opposition to the master they wish to undermine.

Chapter 38 - The White Trash Woodstock

Every time Robert was doing a junket with Gloria he suspected me, or Dewey and me, were having a wild, crazy, rock festival, what he would call The White Trash Woodstock , without him.

After Dewey had fucked up the cultivation, after I had left for Chiapas, after the banishing of the college kids, the only place Robert could get herb was from those drawn to the cult and child crusade of the pathetic wild animal. Robert was trying to fuck the little girls (as young as 16). But the little girls played him. I would joke that Robert couldn't get laid at a whorehouse. He couldn't get laid at the White Trash Woodstock.

The cult of the pathetic wild animals was way bad posture in the face of the savage mystery of the wild animal. It was bringing the ick into their realm. When NAWA became the White Trash Woodstock, when it became a mockery of even the cult of the pathetic wild animals, it was asking for disaster.

There was a whole new dimension of wild animal gore and carnage. There were monstrosities. The first morning back in The Split Tree I was woken by Katy's screams, her piteous crying. There were three raccoon pups. Each had a leg ripped off.

A large raccoon had often been seen by the pups' cage. She had lost her litter. She was lactating. She waited for pups to be released into her care. But it was forbidden to release the animals judged to be too pathetic under any circumstances. Besides the pups were Katy's favorite playthings, her "Barbie dolls," as Robert called them.

The raccoon tried to pull the pups through the mesh of the cage. When a leg ripped off, she would try pulling another pup through the cage.

Only a veterinarian could legally administer the phenol barbiturate solution, the so-called euthanasia fluid. But Robert and Gloria had easy access to the fluid, administered it routinely. Katy had been given charge of the fluid of death. She wanted me to take charge of it. I didn't want it. But I was the only adult there.

One pup was an easy call. It was almost dead. I stuck the needle into its heart. The other two did not want to die. I didn't kill them.

I brought them to Dr. Ignatz Melgey, a veterinarian Graves had trained, who had done much of the NAWA work. He had a falling out with Graves. He had his own practice.

The three-legged pups became the star attractions of Katy's menagerie. The tide of gore and carnage kept on coming. The White Trash Woodstock teetered on the edge of hysteria, piteous crying, a whole new dimension of being pathetic.

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.

Chapter 39 - Convict 666

The devolution of the kingdom of Robert's herb was in all ways an unseemly thing. I felt as Gambini did when he saw the full-blown White Trash Woodstock. The stable had to be cleaned.

I believed hard labor would make it clean. I initiated great public works projects. I initiated the convict vegetable garden.

The vegetable garden was made to the same specs as the herb gardens. It involved tons of composted horseshit. The dirt had to be worked until you could sink your arm to the shoulder into it. It was much bigger than the herb gardens.

I tried to change the White Trash Woodstock into the White Trash Chain Gang. I tried to transform it from smoking herb to get stupid into working with shovels and pick-axes in the hot sun.

Robert was "the warden." I was the "head convict." I told the convicts the greatest freedom was the freedom to serve what you believe in. I told them that they had decided by being there. They could choose their three-digit convict numbers. If they didn't choose a number, a number would be assigned.

My convict number was 666. (Robert said it would be a hard one to live up to.) Robert gave Dewey 420. Robert wasn't to have a number. He was the warden.

A beer keg and mushroom party spontaneously happened the night before Gambini arrived. I tried to get everyone digging, moving dirt, moving horseshit. I tried assigning numbers to unregistered convicts. Eventually I was persuaded to eat some mushrooms.

I tripped with Robert.

He told me of all the times he had done mushrooms with the college kids. He said he wanted to always have lots of mushrooms. This was to be an important part of The Robert Jah DEP. He said he wanted to become immersed in the mushroom slime.

The mushroom slime was about sharing in the mushrooms' intent, their purpose. In their slime the mushrooms were telling him important things. They had told him what I was trying to do. They had told him, it would be a cold day in hell before anything that was his became mine.

The mushroom slime sounded a lot like the dark whispers.

But if we are living people, in touch with the source, It drives us and decides us.

Chapter 40 - The Night March

Gambini's face had an ugly expression when he arrived at the refuge, when he walked into Robert's house on June 17, 1997. It was an angry, resentful, pathetic expression. It was the expression that came with the surveying of the wreckage of his life.

His wife had fucked most every friend and male acquaintance including his particular friend Bart. Because of this he had to disband his heavy metal band 'Gravel.' He had to terminate his stardom in his own mind.

His divorce was unrelentingly ugly. He wanted to relocate to the refuge in February. But Gloria was there.

He still had a job prospect in Columbus. The ART Program, which creatively promoted garbage recycling. Lelia Cady was his new girl friend. She was a clerk/secretary in the Columbus mayor's office. She spoke to Imgard G. Schubert, the manager of waste reduction programs. She spoke to the mayor. The mayor reluctantly wrote a recommendation.

Lelia was about 15 years Gambini's senior. He deferred to her as if she was his mother. She chose the clothes he was to wear to the interview. All Gambini had to do was dry clean a suit, get his shirt pressed, maybe a little starch. This was beyond the ability of the ever debonair, in his own mind, Steven J. Gambini. The way Lelia would later tell it, he showed up at the interview rumpled and smelling like the rank, squalid spaces he created and inhabited.

The letter was dated March 7, 1997.

Dear Mr. Gambini,

Thank you for taking the time to interview for the re:ART Program Assistant's position. I regret to inform you that you were not chosen for the second round of interviews.

There were over 50 applications for this position and your credentials were impressive. I wish you every success as you pursue your career objectives. For your information, we will keep your resume on file for six months.

Sincerely, Irmgard G. Schubert, Manager Waste Reduction Program

That night Robert wanted to march through the kingdom. Gambini waxed poetic about being in the garden. Robert showed Gambini all the secret places we had used as herb gardens.

Robert moved with swift confidence, like he was 20 years younger. We went into the swamp. And then Robert lost the way. He began to falter. He began to look as if he was going to die.

I took the lead. There was no path. The going got harder. There was the bitch whine.

It was worst. It had become hopeless. Robert and me at first laughed. But then it persisted. And then Robert started whining.

I told them to follow me and I would lead them "to the promised land."

It persisted. It got worst. When I got them to the back gate of the refuge I called the both of them "bitches of little faith." I said they were unworthy of the promised land.

Bah, the Divine Father, like so many other Crowned Heads, has abdicated his authority. Man can sin as much as he likes.

There is only one penalty: the loss of one's own integrity. Man should never do the thing he believes to be wrong. Because if he does, he loses his own singleness, wholeness, natural honor.

If you want to do a thing, you've either got to believe, sincerely, that it's your true nature to do this thing - or else you've got to let it alone.

Believe in your own Holy Ghost. Or else, if you doubt, abstain.

A thing that you sincerely believe in cannot be wrong, because belief does not come at will. It comes only from the Holy Ghost within. Therefore a thing you truly believe in, cannot be wrong.

But there is such a thing as spurious belief. There is such a thing as evil belief: a belief that one cannot do wrong. There is also such a thing as half-spurious belief. And this is rottenest of all. The devil lurking behind the cross.

Chapter 41 - The Devil's Garden

Robert selected the vegetables for the convict vegetable garden. There was way too much squash. It over ran the garden. I draped the vines over the wire fence so other things could grow. Something did.

I'd ask everyone I showed the garden to if they knew what it was.

But nobody did. Before I knew for certain that it was a weed, it over ran the garden.

I wrestled with it. But I could never make it go away. When you pulled the weed out of the ground, an acrid, bitter smell would fill the air. Your hands would be sticky from the sap. When you threw it over the fence it would re-root itself, and resume its fecund growth. In the middle of July it erupted in startlingly beautiful trumpet-shaped purple flowers.

During that fateful summer waking reality was bloody, mangled animals, infection, pus, and maggots. The dreams were the same.

I was the gardener. I would pick the vegetables in the convict vegetable garden with hands sticky with the bitter, acrid sap of the scary weed. Only after the bust did I realize it was the Jamestown Weed.

The first English settlers misidentified it. They put it into their salad. It brought bloody, horrible insanity. It almost destroyed the first English settlement in the Americas.

Jamestown Weed became known as Jimson weed. Some know it as Dactura. Some call it the Devil's Herb.

The bloody, horrible insanity that brought down NAWA was far more than the sum of the individuals that comprised the White Trash Woodstock. It had a greater, malign life of its own.

Know that you are responsible to the gods inside you and to the men in whom the gods are manifest. Recognize your superiors and inferiors, according to the gods. This is the root of all order.

Chapter 42 - Pulp Fiction

"This is the most tremendous place in the world," writes Gambini about the refuge. "Elevating, heart breaking and frustrating in equal measure, within moments.

"No day is typical.

"In our continuing efforts to establish the organization fully as a voice for animals in the region, we are tremendously fortunate to have Sam Libby a reporter for the New York Times in residence at the moment.

"In the process of writing his last story, the arguments could be heard across the acreage as Robert and I read the story he had submitted.

"We were buried at the bottom of the story, and all my quotes were mangled beyond recognition despite my having planned what I would say in advance and dictating it to him twice when he called from the office to interview me.

"Boy what a change to be on the other side of the journalism curve. For two days after I read the story on his computer, I didn't want to talk to Sam, invoking a rule taught to me by a source many years ago.

"When the reporters don't behave, we cut them off for 30 days, that sends the message.

"It also didn't help that Sam has convinced Robert that getting the "last word" in a story is a good thing.

"To me, that means we're the first thing cut from a story for space by some paste up person with a razor blade.

"Fortunately, the story appeared today in the New York Times with a few quotes attributed to me, although written by Sam.

"It's a good day.

". . .Then I make copies of the article in the New York Times containing quotes from me as an associate director on the subject of raccoon euthanasia by wildlife control officers, or Nukos.

"The first copy gets faxed to Lelia for her take on it. Robert always is convinced Sam is screwing him on the coverage deal, and I admit I had my concerns.

"I suggested her as arbiter (sic). Robert likes her, and I know she'd crystallize it.

"The story did, however, look great. Lelia said it made us look like the authoritative source in the piece.

"I realize that for a lot of reasons, it is only with some bravado of his own that Sam can at the moment justify using us as sources in the New York Times.

"I do believe he is loyal to what he calls Jah DEP.

Gambini said it was like 'King Lear.' Robert was the king who had become sick and tired, and no longer wanted to be king. Everyone reaching for the baton were like the sons-in-law or maybe it was the daughters who were trying to outdo each other in their lying declarations of love for the king. He would ask me who I was. He suggested I was Lear's fool.

I said it was more like "Bonanza," the television program and Robert was like Ben Cartwright, and Dewey was like Adam and I was Hoss and he was like Little Joe. Mike and Katy were like Hop Sing.

Shortly after Gambini arrived we got a deer that had been on television. Gambini, a legendary spin-meister in his own mind, worked the television the newspapers about the reborn NAWA. The deer was slightly warm road kill. But because Gambini had involved the media, the deer couldn't just die. I was assigned to keep it alive.

I could still see what afflicted creatures. I could diagnose. I couldn't necessarily heal. But I knew how to keep the deer pathetically alive, live in spite of itself. I force fed the deer. I hung it on a leather harness so food would pass through it. I made the deer live when it was only a tube. It stayed that way for three weeks.

Gambini writes: ". . .Sam began administering apple sauce and baby pablum and oatmeal through a large barrel plastic syringe. Her (the deer's) food intake was extremely encouraging at first...Deer are both incredibly strong and stunningly weak. Although there back legs are among the most lethal defensive weapons in the forest, (I created this fearful obsession that Gambini had with the back legs of the deer. I terrorized him with horror stories of people losing testicles, being completely gutted by those fearful back legs.) even the slightest stress can kill an injured deer. Even though their hides are extremely tough, pressure sores from lying down are a constant threat...However, it appears the head trauma may have been more severe than we initially had imagined. Sam said the case will stand for him as a success because our job is to give the will to live inside these animals the chance to emerge. We can clean and dress and feed and worry, but the real work of recuperation lies with the animal."

Gambini helped me bring the deer's corpse off the refuge to a hay field going to forest for the "sky burial," leaving the corpse to the crows and vultures.

He ridiculed me. He mocked me. He said what I had done with the deer was like something out of the movie, "Pulp Fiction." He said my harness reminded him of the red ball gag. He said he felt like we were in a gangster movie. We had just done a hit, and were disposing of the body. He told me I was the physically strongest person he had ever known, but that, if I let him, he could teach me physical grace. He swayed his hips like a women to show me what he meant by "grace."

Gambini was right. It was more like Pulp Fiction than Bonanza. And it was also like King Lear, and opera.

What is the breath of life? My dear, it is the strange current of interchange that flows between men and men, and men and women, and men and things. A constant current of interflow, a constant vibrating interchange. That is the breath of life.

And this interflow, this electric vibration is polarized. There is a positive and a negative polarity. This is a law of life, of vitalism.

Only ideas are final, finite, static, and single.

All life-interchange is a polarized communication. A circuit.

Chapter 43 - Opera

Gambini's and Bartkowski's band was named 'Gravel.' Their music was an artless, resentful sound. The lyrics were much like Tourette's syndrone. But that summer Gambini had a new musical passion. It was Opera and Vivica Genaux.

He had interviewed an upcoming opera diva for the last newspaper becoming a shopper he worked at. He was in love. He played the three opera CD's he had, over and over. He wanted me to help him write Vivica about how his life had become opera.

Then in the same Sunday New York Times that had his name in it, he saw Vivica's name. She was going to do opera in Western Connecticut.

With his brother-in-law's credit card he got us tickets. But then Robert insisted on coming, believed that if he didn't come Gambini and me were going to conspire against him.

When we got there Robert became separated from us. But not before he saw all the opera faggots hitting on Gambini.

The opera "La Donna del Lago," by Gioacchino Rossini was unintelligible. Vivica played both female and male parts. When I led Gambini backstage it was painfully obvious there was nothing real between them.

She was confused. She didn't understand why he was there. "To Steve - My faithful follower!" she wrote on his program. Then she left for the party.

He would still invoke Vivica to explain his slack interest in other women. He still said his life had become opera.

Gambini believed Robert would hand the kingdom over to those who most avidly declared their love for him. They all made lying declarations of love for Robert. This culminated on his birthday, August 4, when he was showered with gifts.

I didn't love Robert. I let him know I was still pissed off about him ripping off the herb the previous year. I didn't hide my opinions.

I believed Robert was going to die sooner rather than later. I believed my only chance of securing The Split Tree was to be there. But I would not make no dirty, stinking lying declaration of love for Robert.

Because I didn't Robert fucked with me. He said it was his right to have taken the herb. He said he was going to do it again. When there was herb Gambini was given a lot, I was given little, or none. He made a big show of seeming to hand the baton to Gambini.

Gambini writes of this time: ". . .It never ceases to amaze me what a shrewd operator Robert can be, especially when it comes to certain kinds of business deals.

"We talk for about an hour or so, and Sam comes down from the Split Tree in the middle of that about 11:30 a.m.

"Robert begins to prod Sam about what he's done all day, and Sam replies that he's not really done anything at all except his usual routine of roaches and cappuccinos at the cabin, accompanied by some sort of reggae."

Gambini and Bart spent a lot of time in the basement. Gambini writes: "Time seems to disappear down here in the basement. The pendulum wall clock, as it turns out is losing time, a fact I only discover later.

"I hear Robert banging around in the kitchen. . .

"Life goes better when Robert's blood sugar stays where it should. When he gets too hungry, he can become extremely irritable, and begin one of his tirades, or worse yet, mournful depressive periods.

"It's hot and cold with him, and I really feel a lot of sympathy for the man."

Robert crept Gambini and Bart. He'd walk softly down the stairs in his bare feet. About two weeks after they got there, around the 4th of July, Robert claimed he saw Bart standing in front of a mirror jerking off on it, while Gambini watched appreciatively.

Robert began ranting about the refuge becoming "boy's town", and he would not have it. He wanted "bitches" living at the refuge, "real bitches, not faggot bitches." Only in prison was there an excuse for homosexuality.

Gambini still made lying declarations of love. But Dewey's prospects for the baton brightened.

Dewey and his mother had maintained NAWA after the Gloria captivity. Dewey had done the newsletter, which drove the contributions. His mother who had a business services business, did the annual non-profit paper work.

When Gambini arrived he insisted on taking over the newsletter. Robert let him. Then Gambini and Bart got busted. Then Dewey moved the rock. Then Dewey was the heir apparent.

When the convict vegetable garden was being dug a rock was encountered that was bigger than any rock encountered in the digging of The Split Tree or The Geode. I couldn't move it out of the convict vegetable garden even with the help of the best convict labor available.

I planted potatoes around it.

Dewey wrestled with the rock most of a night. He moved it, rolled it into my potato plants.

He became the head convict. He did his public works projects. He moved dirt and rock on the road that went by Robert's house, up the hill to the clinic. He cut the telephone cable. The telephone in the clinic never worked again. The rocks he removed had held the road. The road washed out and become impassible with the next heavy rain.

When it was obvious to Gambini that he wasn't going to get the baton he would come to The Split Tree in the mornings for cappuccino, roaches, reggae, my council, and consolation.

John Tedeschi, Robert's lawyer who had stopped the legalization of the Gloria captivity, would not allow anyone on the board without the unanimous consent of Robert, Gloria, and Graves.

Gambini began to talk about, "hard ball." He said he would go to Blumenthal and rat about Robert playing the slot machines at the Indian casinos with the pathetic wild animals money. He said he would go to the state DEP and tell them about the illegal use of the euthanasia fluid. He said he would go to the state police and tell them about the herb. He said he would go to the newspapers and tell them everything.

When he talked about "hard ball," I made a face that hurt him. I made a face that stopped him from coming to The Split Tree for cappuccino, roaches, reggae, council and consolation.

I asked him what would be gained by destroying everything? He said he was going to show that he wouldn't be taken advantage of.

Gambini would suggest I was Lear's fool in the unfolding Pulp Fiction production of King Lear. I would be pissed off about being called a clown, would show my displeasure at being called a clown. Then Gambini threatened me. He said that if he even suspected I was reaching for the baton he would "fuck me up," show me what kind of bitch he could be, show me who was "the real Siciliano."

Robert finally realized the struggle for the baton was becoming a mutiny. He turned to me to back him against the convicts.

I didn't love Robert. But I accepted that only Robert could decide what became of his kingdom that had become the White Trash Woodstock.

Do not come to the attention of cruel and rapacious rulers.

Chapter 44 - The Attention of the Law

From the time Wally had dimed him, Robert and NAWA had the attention of the law. But then the police became appreciative of the 24/7 services NAWA gave them. But as the Gloria/Robert entity began fissioning and unleashing the nuclear power of the psychic disintegration, Robert and NAWA again had the full attention of the law.

When he allegedly hit Gloria, Robert entered the domestic violence gulag. When Gloria did the counterfeiting, Robert and NAWA had the full attention of the U.S. Secret Service.

The dark whispers told him Patty was stealing from him. The whispers were true. Robert called her up and said he was coming to Worcester, Massachusetts to kill her. When he got there the cops were waiting. They made Robert and his gang of yellow shit lie face down on the ground. They were taken to the station. But they weren't arrested. The police said they wanted to help Robert.

When Robert banished the college kids, they returned with the police to get their stuff. Robert showed the cops all of the college kids paraphernalia, their writings about their parties.

When Duh returned to the refuge Robert showed him the Geode, showed him where he dried the herb over his bed. Duh was married. He had three kids. He got into a fight with his wife. He walked out on her. He walked all night. He came to the refuge. He called his wife from the refuge. He told her he was staying on the refuge.

Duh's wife went to the East Lyme Police. She told the cops about The Geode, about Robert drying the herb over his bed. She came to the refuge with the police. Duh was returned to her custody. The police didn't think they had enough for a search warrant, yet.

To be sincere is to remember that I am I, and that the other man is not me.

Chapter 45 - Becoming a Republican

Gambini came from Waterbury, Connecticut. In Columbus, he told me he had an inside Waterbury connection to Governor John Rowland and he had expectations of being a flack for the Republican governor of Connecticut. He said his deepest desire, his ultimate plan was to use his involvement in NAWA, his flack job for the governor as a springboard to becoming a Republican candidate for public office.

To show how serious he was he would show three navy blue blazers he had bought at a thrift shop. There was no one with greater faith in the Brooks Brothers' label.

He showed me a newspaper picture of the soon to be infamous Philip Giordano, mayor of Waterbury, CT. It was Giordano after he won his first election. He looked like the guy on the wedding cake. On the picture Gambini's mom had written: "This is what a Republican looks like."

Four years latter Giordano became the greatest political scandal in that city renowned for political scandal. The F.B.I. busted him for fucking children.

The blood must be shed, says Jesus

Shed on the cross of our divided psyche.

Shed the blood, and you become mind-conscious. Eat the blood and drink the blood, self-cannibalizing, and you become extremely conscious, like Americans and some Hindus. Devour yourself, and God knows what a lot you'll know, what a lot you'll be conscious of.

Mind you don't choke yourself.

Chapter 46 - The Time When the Herb Grew on Trees

The herb I had grown the previous year, the herb Robert stole was far more potent than any herb he had grown, or that we had grown together.

I was the gardener during the summer of the NAWA apocalypse. I supervised the work on the convict vegetable garden. I grew the vegetables and the herbs.

The dark whispers would of course tell Robert I was going to steal the herb. He told me he would steal them first.

This was not the reason why I wanted to move the plants off the refuge. That was just common sense. It wasn't going to be easy moving 60 tree-like plants in 60 five gallon buckets filled with composted horse shit. They would have to be carried over a mile- and-a-half away. It would be difficult moving them through the woods without damaging them. But I never stopped telling Robert it had to be done.

Robert never stopped believing it was all about me trying to rip him off. I told Robert to let me move half the plants off the refuge, the smaller ones, to lessen the legal exposure. He would not have it. It was still the kingdom of Robert's herb.

They were beautiful plants. I loved them. If I close my eyes I can still see them as they were the second week of August 1997. They had juicy, sticky, kind promise. They were of a whole new magnitude of size than any plants I had previously grown. There were many that would have yielded at least a pound of first-rate bud if they had come to harvest. They were the best of my hybrids. They were as high as 10 feet that fateful summer when the herbs grew on trees.

It is this perfect adjusting of ourselves to the elements, the perfect equipoise between them and us, which gives us a great part of our life-joy. The more we intervene machinery between us and the naked forces the more we numb and atrophy our own senses. Every time we turn on a tap to have water, every time we turn a handle to have fire or light, we deny ourselves and annul our being. The great elements, the earth, air, fire, water, are there like some great mistress whom we woo and struggle with, whom we heave and wrestle with. And all our appliances do but deny us these fine embraces, take the miracle of life away from us. The machine is the great neuter. It is the eunuch of eunuchs. In the end it emasculates us all. When we balance the sticks and kindle a fire, we partake of the mysteries, But when we turn on an electric tap there is, as it were, a wad between us and the dynamic universe. We do not know what we lose by all our labor- saving appliances. Of the two evils it would be much the lesser to lose all machinery, every bit, rather than to have, as we have, hopelessly too much.

Chapter 47 - The Restoration of Moon's Sweat Lodge

The second day I was back in Connecticut I went to the Golden Hill Paugussett reservation in Colchester. I burned sage at Moon's grave.

Moon's son Quanah "Kicking Bear" Piper, Misty's first cousin Mixashawn, a musician and artist of the so-called Windsor community, and Aurelius Dion Piper, A.D., Julia's son, Moon's nephew had moved and rebuilt the sweat lodge. I returned just in time to help re-consecrate Moon's sweat lodge.

We had warrior sweats in his tradition and style. Shaking visions came. There were three sweats before the apocalypse. Every sweat was strong medicine. They brought the thunder and storm either in the actual weather or in the shaking visions.

I invited the convict to the sweats. But they were all scared.

Gambini said it was about me wanting to get naked with niggahs.

I no longer hid my contempt.

And still when the great day begins, when Americans have at last discovered America and their own wholeness, still there will be the vast number of escaped slaves to reckon with, those who have no cocksure, ready-made destinies.

Chapter 48 - Convicts 13, and 013

Convicts could choose their three digit convict numbers. If they didn't want to choose their number, a number would be assigned to them. Gambini and Bart refused to choose their convict numbers. But numbers were tattooed on them. Both had tattoos incorporating the number 13. Bart had 13 tatooed on him because he blew his hand up with a pipe bomb on a Friday the 13th. Gambini had 13 tatooed on him because one of his grayhound's racing number was 13. I made Bart 13, the only convict with a two-digit number, and made Gambini 013. Only after the apocalypse did I realize Gambini's convict number was 911.

Gambini was horrified at the premise of the NAWA incarceration facility. He didn't want to play. He said he wanted to play foreign legion.

Bart and Gambini, two wild and crazy guys newly arrived from super-urbane Columbus, Ohio, discussed pick up lines they would use with the local women. They decided that if a woman asked them what they did they would answer: "Anything we want."

Gambini wanted to be the pathetic wild animal dude. He was going to continue Robert and Gloria's school program. He was going to go into the schools with his own really cool, stylish wild animal person clothes and of course his two gray hounds. It was going to be very tasteful, not at all the way Robert and Gloria had done it. He was going to do it the right way rather than the way they did it.

Bart and Gambini wanted to take care of the horses. Gambini writes about trying to find the horses at night to feed them: "Then I spotted him (Apollo) in the distance, only barely. He was on his back, legs straight up in the air. My heart began to pound and my breathing became immediately racy and panicked.

"Apollo was dead.

"Then I saw his legs start to kick as he shifted around on his back. This was followed by a tremendous expulsion of gas the way only a ruminant can. Despite his amazing girth, the horse shot to his feet and finally let out his what the hell do you want sound."

"...This is where our city slicker terror really settles in.

"It's much quieter on the refuge than the city. Consequently, the sound that is there tends to be amplified. Even a bird rustling in the laurel and blueberries along the trail sounds like an elephant pulling down trees. The footfalls of a horse particularly in the dark, sound very distinctly, as does its breathing.

"As we walk back to the paddock, under the light of our constantly dying flashlights, the horses continue to bear down on us. Nothing is going to stop 1,000 lbs of herbivore from getting at that grain, particularly not a couple of little guys like us.

"Even though both horses are easy to control, there is a panic that sets in, because in all ways we are being pursued by a huge hungry animal.

"This is the primal fear of a hunter gathererÖ"

Gambini and Bart wanted to resurrect the association of childless, resentful women. They wanted to play Barbie doll with Katy. Gambini writes: "All day long she's (Katy) talking about Lawson and Tripod and Catherine and Irene to the point Robert and I sometimes don't know if she's talking about a patient (usually a raccoon) or one of her friends from Old Saybrook.

Gambini and Bart wanted to live outside the box, to build their own Split Tree. In Columbus, they had shown me their plans. It was ridiculous. Most of the hole was to be for a terraced, underground vegetable garden. I asked them how it was possible to grow anything in an unlighted hole. They said they would light the hole. I asked them why they didn't just grow vegetables in the sunlight on the surface. They said they would grow things that didn't need a lot of light.

All the convicts wanted to live outside. They made some feeble attempt to live outside. But all their attempts were ridiculous.

I asked them why they were scared of living outside when inside was Robert the scariest, most insane creature they would ever encounter.

I told them The Jah DEP was not about doing what the chimpanzee with car keys wants. It was about doing what the higher self wants. The higher self refuses to be incarcerated in a box.

Resolve to abide by your own deepest promptings, and to sacrifice the smaller thing to the greater. Kill when you must, and be killed the same: the must coming from the gods inside you, or from the men in whom you recognize the Holy Ghost.

Chapter 49 - The Pathetic Wildlife Sentinels

Catherine "Cat," Bart's girl friend, came that summer with her three pit bulls.

Robert believed everyone's girl friend would recognize him as the alpha male, and have sex with him like he was Charley Manson or David Koresh. But they never did.

Cat had the craziest eyes, windows into a shattered being. She with the pit bulls always brought chaos. People would get hurt. Animals would get killed.

The morning after Cat arrived, Gloria called from Egypt. The Egyptian Police were throwing her in the hole. It was something about trashing a rental car. She needed $8,000.

Robert beat up the furniture, scared the convicts. He wanted to give Gloria everything. I told him he was a pathetic bitch. I reminded him about Gloria getting him arrested, the Gloria captivity.

Instead of everything he gave his gold totems, a gold lion ring, a 1912 gold coin, (all stolen) and $1,000 from a NAWA bank account.

Gloria called demanding more. She insisted on speaking to Gambini. She proposed criminal schemes. She wanted credit card numbers of NAWA members. She wanted the birth certificates of babies that were dead at least 40 years.

Gambini said Gloria was working with Arab Terrorists.

Robert kept on beating up furniture, scaring the convicts. He repeated his threats to let the animals starve in their cages. Then he resolved to go to the Middle East to be with Gloria.

He began taking as much money from the NAWA bank accounts as he could. Gambini took as much money as he could for the Gambini/NAWA newsletter. Soon there was nothing in the back accounts.

But Gambini had his newsletter, "The Wildlife Sentinel," the pinnacle of his journalism career. The lead story was, The Tale of Tashua, the Blind Fawn.

Not every case at NAWA has a happy ending, but sometimes losing an animal teaches our volunteers valuable lessons about life, themselves and the threats facing our environment.

Tashua, a 16-week old fawn, came to the refuge on a sunny Thursday afternoon thanks to the concern and dedication of two golfers in Trumbull who saved her from drowning. Trumbull Police Officer Daren Millington was playing golf at the Tashua Hills course in Trumbull when he saw the deer swimming in circles in a water hazard.

As it turned out, the deer whom Millington named after the golf course, was swimming wildly with good reason.

She was born without eyes.

With help from fellow golfer Manny Cox, Millington drove the blind fawn all the way to East Lyme where NAWA volunteers had prepared a receiving area in one of the deer enclosures on the refuge.

Kate, Bart, and Mike, three of our volunteers, took charge of the case from there.

While blind the fawn appeared otherwise healthy, and in the first few days after her arrival, eagerly ate two bottles of formula each feeding. She also began to pick at the grapes, carrots and grain.

The stress of being blind on the deer was a big concern, and initially Kate, the team leader for the deer, kept Tashua in the protection of a Quonset hut in the enclosure.

If the fawn got suddenly frightened by a sound elsewhere, the fear was she would do what deer normally do, and try to flee. Without knowing where she was going, that would have had disastrous consequences.

Since the deer could never be expected to survive on her own, our volunteers had to try to get her used to people, the opposite of our normal rehabilitation process.

The hope was Tashua could become a surrogate mother for future generations of fawn which arrived at the refuge.

Within a few days, Tashua had calmed enough she could be taken outside the hut for feedings.

Her progress increased, and she began to eat more solid food. Kate was able to leave her outside the hut for longer periods during the day.

But suddenly, the fawn began to take a turn for the worse.

Bart, who was on the feeding rotation on the sixth day reported Tashua was acting lethargic and not eating her solids.

This was Bart's first deer case, and he had grown attached to the blind fawn who up until then had been eating well every four hours.

The situation required close monitoring, and during the week temperatures soared to nearly 100 degrees, tough on any wild animal, let alone one already prone to being anxious from not comprehending its surroundings.

On Thursday, Mike stepped into take over feedings, and by the end of the day, began to notice improvements in Tashua's appetite and enthusiasm.

That improvement continued through much of the weekend.

But the sudden dip in Tashua's condition still remained a concern.

Tashua had a major birth defect we could see, and that meant it was likely she had others we couldn't, or hadn't even become an issue for her still growing body.

Our worse fears were confirmed on the 14th day, when Tashua died of apparent heart failure.

The night before, Kate noticed the fawn was again listless and had stopped eating with the gusto everyone had come to expect.

This time, she knew summer heat wasn't the issue.

Tashua's appetite, and apparent will to live, eroded rapidly in the last day.

The mood was somber on the refuge as everyone began to second guess every step they took in caring for the deer.

Deer are tremendously sensitive animals, and its likely nothing we could have done would have saved her life.

Ultimately, the deer team came away knowing they had done everything they could do to keep the fawn well fed, safe, exercised and comfortable.

While Tashua didn't survive, the way in which she ultimately left this world was better than the fate that awaited her in a pond on the other side of the state.

It may seem like little comfort, but to our volunteers, and we hope for Tashua, it made a big difference.

There was no truer follower of the cult of the pathetic animal than Gambini. If he wasn't going to get the baton than he was going to be the pathetic wild animal cop/sentinel. When Katy's Barby dolls began to die it was the time to be the sentinel

Robert was accused of deliberately murdering pathetic wild animals. This was the beginning of the mutiny. And when I didn't join the mutiny I became a criminal collaborator. But Robert wasn't the one who caused the raccoons to die.

A guy had been raising a raccoon in his home. The raccoon had become sexually mature and was no longer cute. Who do you call? He wanted NAWA to take the no-longer cute raccoon off his hands.

Robert asked the guy if he had any cats or dogs. He did. Robert asked if they had been in contact with the raccoon. Of course they had. Robert said he couldn't take the raccoon. He said the raccoon could transmit diseases to the animals on the refuge.

Gambini vehemently objected, said the raccoon could be kept in isolation on the refuge. Robert allowed himself to be persuaded.

The raccoon was brought to the refuge. Robert told Katy to keep it in a cage isolated from all the other raccoons. Katy immediately played Barbie doll with the raccoon. She named him "Rocky." She put Rocky in a cage with other playthings.

A couple of days later one of the raccoon playthings died. A day later another died. The bad insanity, the hysteria began. They believed it was Parvo, a cat distemper-like pathogen. Robert said that if it was Parvo it would kill at least 90 percent of all the raccoons in the cages. It would spread to the wild raccoons and cause similar mortality.

Katy had done a green card marriage with an Ecuadorian for money. The Ecuadorian gave her $500 to change her name to Santiago on her Connecticut driver's license. Robert said that if she really, really loved him, like she said she did, she would gave him the $500 so he could go to Jordan to be with Gloria. She gave Robert the $500. When the raccoons began to die, Katy wanted her money back.

She wanted to use the money for intravenous feeding equipment to save her Barbie dolls. Of course Robert didn't give the money back.

When Katy had gone to the state motor vehicle department in Norwich to get her name changed on her license there was a poster offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to a successful prosecution for marijuana cultivation. She closely read the poster. Then she said to Mike: "Does this mean I can get my money back?"

Freedom anyhow? The land of the free! This the land of the free! Why, if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that's my freedom. Free? Why, I have never been in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countryman. Because, as I say, they are free to lynch him the moment he shows he is not one of them.

Chapter 50 - The Pow Wow

I didn't reconnect with Connecticut Indians, other than the Paugussetts, until I saw a poster for the Mohegans' Pow Wow.

The state-recognized, now federally recognized Mohegans are the descendants of those who sold the reservation in 1861, and dissolved the tribal government. Because they did this it was theoretically impossible for them to be federally recognized.

But the Mohegans are connected white people. They brought money and power to bear. In 1994 they were federally recognized. The decision heavily relied on the Pow Wow to demonstrate cultural continuity.

But the Pow Wow was discontinued in 1994, 1995, and 1996 so the tribe would not be distracted while they built the Mohegan Sun Casino. The 1997 Green Corn Festival was the first Pow Wow since federal recognition. It followed the October 12, 1996 opening of the Mohegan Sun Casino. It was the celebration of getting the money back, the mounting interest on the unappeasable resentment.

Its theme was "Respect for Animals." I asked for space for a NAWA booth. I was warmly received. It was gladly granted. The tribal leaders, the casino developers were not unmindful of the newspaper I had wrote, the newspaper I was yet to write

I had written sympathetically about the Mohegan Hill Mohegans' efforts to be federally recognized. I did this because of Harold and Gladys Tantaquidgeon and their museum on the Mohegan Hill.

I had visited the museum and I had visited with Harold and Gladys many times while growing up in Norwich. I had no doubts about Harold's and Glady's authenticity.

Gambini had given me an ultimatum. I was to get Robert on a plane to the Middle East by the end of that week, or else.

Robert was agreeable to leaving on a plane to the Middle East to join Gloria. He had already bought a ticket to Amman, Jordan for the second week in September. But he was going to the Mohegan Pow Wow that weekend. He believed the Pow Wow was about the fulfillment of the Robert Jah DEP.

Gambini was confused by the great expectations being put on the Pow Wow. I told him he had to wait and see what happened at the Pow Wow, as a result of the Pow Wow.

I was told to set up the NAWA table in the middle of the Mohegan Tribe's exhibits and booths. We were in all ways honored guests at a Pow Wow whose theme was "Respect for Animals. There was a play/puppet show that mentioned NAWA and its work and ended with the insects taking over the world because people didn't respect the animals. Sidney Holbrook, the wheel chair bound commissioner of the state DEP, and loyal friend of the Mohegans, wheeled his chair to the NAWA booth. He told us we did good work.

That evening I told Gambini about, the great vistas that were opening. I told him to come next day. He said he would.

Next day we were in a plume of burning sage, in the sun of one of the hottest days of that summer, in the chest shaking throb of the big drums, in the center of the Pow Wow. Tribal leaders came to us, listened to us, said they would come to the refuge, would consider NAWA as a recipient of the tribe's largess.

But I felt nauseating fear when Gambini and Katy didn't show up. I thought about the tattoo that rode on Gambini's back. It was this hideous homonculus crucified on the circled A of anarchy. It always made me uneasy when I had to see it. Why would anyone want to put that on their back?

I was relieved to see Gambini was still at the refuge when we returned Saturday night. I again spoke excitedly about the day's events. I got Gambini excited about the day's events. He wanted to man the NAWA booth the next day.

But Robert told Gambini he didn't want a faggot freak show at the NAWA booth. He didn't want him or his particular friend Bart to be taking off their shirts to show their tattoos.

I stopped Robert's rant. I made him apologize. When I went back to The Split Tree it seemed everything was all right between them. They were amicably smoking the peace pipe.

But Robert went at Gambini again when I left. He said that when he went to Jordan Gambini was to do nothing except maintain the refuge. He was not to do fund raising or a newsletter, or unsolicited contacts with the media, or the Mohegans or the Mashantucket Pequots. He said I was to be in charge.

I woke early next morning. I made sure there were no herbs in The Split Tree. But I left my little wooden pipe in plain sight.

When I got to the house. I knew bad things had happened. There was a lot of hatred in the air.

Gambini stayed in his room (actually Gloria's room, upstairs next to Robert's room) until he thought we had left. But I was still in the house when he came downstairs. He looked real surprised to see me. He looked as if I had turned around right when he was about to plant a knife in my back.

"Hi Steve," I said inquiringly.

I wanted to talk to him real bad. But Robert was hanging and jerking yelling at me that we were late. I regarded him for a long moment. I again made a face that hurt him.

As I was leaving Katy came into the house. I thought I heard Gambini say to her, "Let's do what we talked about doing yesterday."

Right after we left, Gambini went to the marijuana gardens and picked the tops. He picked two to three ounces but he brought the state police two or three grams.

The police made Gambini, and Katy a big pot of coffee. They ratted and then they ratted and then they ratted some more. They ratted until the police got tired of hearing their rat voices.

They returned to the refuge just in time to intercept Mike. He had gone to a family funeral. They told Mike and his mother what they had done, that the police were soon to be there, that Mike had to go.

Mike's mother took him to Massachusetts. His mother told him not to warn us. He did what she told him to do, defines himself, seals our fates.

When I saw Quanah and A.D. that last day of the Pow Wow they told me about how they were busted by the Norwich police by the Yantic Falls, by Uncas' Leap, by the Norwich water. The police had them and their pipe fell of herb. Then, seemingly miraculously, the police let them go.

When we got back to the refuge nobody was there. The hungry, dehydrated animals were making piteous noises, like they were dying in their cages. When I remember the apocalypse I hear their piteous noises. I hear the stricken sound Robert makes when he sees the aftermath of Gambini's rampage in the gardens.

Robert wanted to immediately pull up all the plants. I stopped him. I told him Gambini was satisfied, avenged. He had gotten the herb. He had gotten his money back.

I released all of Katy's Barbie dolls, her whole menagerie of baby raccoons. I did this because it was the right thing to do. But I also did it because I knew I was striking out, hurting both the bitches.

Their explanation of themselves, their mutiny was that it was about the parvo, that Robert had caused the parvo to happen, was doing nothing to stop it from killing all the racoons, killing the world. Two of Katy's menagerie had died. Most of the menagerie had gotten to some extent sick. But it was not parvo. If it had been parvo nearly all the caged raccoons would have been dead. But they were alive and hungry.

I opened the cages of all of Katy's playthings. At first they wouldn't come out of the cages. I had to pour dog food on the ground to draw them out of the cages.

When I returned to the house the phone rang. It was my mother. She was scared, crying. She asked me what I was doing? Before I could answer she told me to "leave, just leave," get out of Connecticut, go to my brother-in-law's family place in Sturbridge, MA.

I told her I couldn't. We both piteously cried.

As I walked back to The Split Tree a thunderstorm swept over the Pigeon Hill. I got to The Split Tree just as the rain began. But in front of the door were the three-legged raccoons, others of Katy's menagerie. They tried to bite my ankles. I had to kick them away from the door. I slammed the door against them.

What true myth concerns itself with is not the disintegration product. True myth concerns itself centrally with the onward adventure of the integral soul. And this for America, is Deerslayer. A man who turns his back on white society. A man who keeps his moral integrity hard and intact. An isolate, almost selfless, stoic, enduring man, who lives by death, by killing, but who is pure white.

This is the very intrinsic-most American. He is at the core of all the other flux and fluff. And when this man breaks from his static isolation, and makes a new move, then look out, something will be happening.

Chapter 51 - The Bust

Sleep didn't come that night, many nights after. Early next morning I went to the rez to get Quanah and A.D. to help me clean up the mess that had been left and to feed the animals.

When we were driving away from the rez I pulled over and turned off the engine. "Anything can happen today," I said. "This is a war party. This is about holding your ground, holding the place where your blood has soaked in the ground and the dirt has got into your blood. We could be going into a bust. We could be doing a lot of shit cleaning. I'll understand if you don't want to go," I told them.

They thought about it. They told me they were with me.

When we got to the refuge we stopped at Robert's house. He was in a prozac/herb haze. The four male plants we had found in the Gambini raped gardens the previous evening were piled on the floor of the living room.

I offered to take the male plants outside and hide them. But Robert wanted to dry and smoke them. I told him the police could be coming. He said: "If the state wants to make me Jesus for growing the herb, taking care of the animals, then come on you motherfuckers."

I told him it was a hard thing going down by law, being nailed to the wood, doing the Jesus ting. He told me this wasn't the time for my stupid humor. I asked him: "Who's laughing?"

I put the plants over his bed. I put them there so they weren't in plain sight. On the way up the hill Quanah told me he had a couple of roaches, the pipe he had bought at the Pow Wow. I pointed to a tree, and told him to hide the roaches the pipe in the crouch of the tree. He said he would. I thought he did.

I got Quanah and A.D. started cleaning the clinic. For the first time ever I fed the caged animals, collaborated in their incarceration. As I was returning to the clinic to get more animal feed I saw a black man dressed in military camouflage.

He didn't see me. I turned and began to run. But then I stopped and turned and said, "Hey! Who the fuck are you! What are you doing here?"

He ran up to me, put the muzzle of the pistol in my face. He said I may not know who he was, but he knew, "all about Sam Libby."

The jack booted police thugs charged up the hill. Apollo whinnied in terror. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day. The day's light was the brilliant, clear light of New York on September 11. It was the same light that shined on Moon's funeral.

I was taken to where Quanah and A.D. were. "Look what I found on that one," said a cop pointing to Quanah. He was holding three roaches and the pipe.

I asked the cops to let Quanah and A.D. go. I said that they were just helping with the animals. But of course they didn't. They held A.D. even though he had nothing on him.

They took us down the hill in handcuffs in time to see Robert and the four plants being taken out of the house. My colleagues were waiting at the pavement for the perp walk.

A.D. and I were put in the same police car. I noticed a tear on A.D.'s cheek. I said "Don't worry A.D. They got nothing on you."

"I'm not doing no weak punk shit like crying for me," said A.D.. "This is for what has been done to you."

Quanah was put into a police car with Robert. He was scared. But at first he was strong. He only gave his Indian name, "Kicking Bear." But at the Montville State Police barracks he gave and signed a statement. He said he knew Robert and me were growing marijuana. But he had nothing to do with it.

And some of the great images of the Apocalypse move us to strange depths, and to a strange wild fluttering of freedom: of true freedom, really, an escape to somewhere, not an escape to nowhere. An escape from the tight little cage of our universe; tight, in spite of all the astronomist's vast and unthinkable stretches of space; tight, because it is only a continuous extension, a dreary on and on, without any meaning: an escape from this into the vital cosmos, to a sun who has a great vital life. . .

Chapter 52 - The Apocalypse

In jail Robert said he had chest pains. They took him to Backus Hospital.

I was strip-searched. I was photographed holding a number. I was put in a cold, isolated cell. The bed was a metal slab.

As I lay on the slab I saw in my mind's eye Gambini's tattoo. I saw the enormity the completeness of his role in the story. "Damn Gambini," I said aloud. "Look what you done to yourself!"

Then I had the vision of the fulfillment of the book. The book scrolled.

Quana and A.D. were released, and driven back to the refuge so they could feed the animals. They stayed overnight at the refuge. Robert called next morning. He was talking to Quanah when Katy and Bart returned.

Quanah told Robert about the sound Katy made when she saw the empty cages of her menagerie. He told Robert about the military assault rifle that Bart carried, and threatened to use if Robert or me showed up. Quanah told Robert they were taking away all the caged animals.

Robert pulled the tubes out of his arm and raced back to the refuge. But he didn't get there until they were gone. He got there when Mark Clavette, of the Connecticut DEP, the newspaper reporters, and the television personalities got there.

The cameras rolled when Clavette found the freezer in the clinic full of dead pathetic wild animals. They rolled when all the pathetic wild animal corpses spilled to the floor.

Robert didn't stop the television personalities and the newspaper reporters from going to The Split Tree. But they didn't find the Geode. Robert didn't stop the television personalities, the newspaper reporters from going back on to the refuge after the police had given them directions to the Geode.

On television that evening there were scary dark warrens of caves, bunkers, underground drug factories, frozen dead pathetic wild animals. Robert was on television. He looked like he was about to die. "The volunteers did it," he kept on saying.

While Bart and Katy had been at the refuge, Gambini was at Blumenthal's office in Hartford. He ratted, and then he ratted, and then he ratted some more. He ratted until even Blumenthal got tired of hearing his rat voice.

The most dangerous place in Connecticut is between Blumenthal and a television camera. That night on television Blumenthal said NAWA must die.

I was brought to New London Superior Court to be arraigned. I shuffled into court in leg chains. I looked into the faces of my colleagues. I had smoked herb with some that were there. They avoided eye contact.

My bail was reduced from $250,000 to $5,000. But it might as well have stayed at $250,000. I didn't have it.

The convicts at Corrigan County Prison called me Chief. I was given my respect, my space. I wanted to stay in prison. I felt safe there. I was protected from my colleagues and the television news personalities.

I had reveled in the journalistic destruction of other people's reputations, public images, lives. It was fun being the destroyer. There was a kind of poetic justice when I was the destroyed.

Robert made a feeble attempt to bail me out. But it was my parents that miraculously had the $500 that was needed to get me out. My father feared the state would hurt me to get at him.

Even though I had other places I could have gone, I went back to the refuge.

During the Pow Wow a tooth that had broken in Mexico began to hurt. In prison it became agony. Robert wanted to take it out with pliers. He had the pliers clasped on it. At the last second I decided I would not let Robert inflect any more agony. I went to the dentist, heard the sound of my tooth break into many pieces. It is another thing I remember when I recall the apocalypse.

Then there was the feeling of being strangled, suffocated by a bad summer cold, a hacking cough. Then I fell backwards off of Robert's porch. I somehow didn't break my back. But it felt like I did.

When I got back to the refuge, the first thing I told Robert about was the book. It would be word. It would be the truth.

He asked if I was going to write about Gloria setting fire to The Split Tree. I asked him how could that not be in the book. He said a person could make a lot of money, have a good life if they wrote a book like that. And again the challenge, the question, the dark whispering, the resentment came between us.

I told Robert I had no problem with prison. I said I would take the whole rap and write my book in prison. Robert said that wouldn't be necessary because he was going to die. He had willed that he would die in his sleep. He told me that after he was dead everything would be mine.

In an idiots voice I thanked him.

Always the same. The deliberate consciousness of Americans so fair and smooth-spoken, and the under-consciousness so devilish. Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the underconsciousness. Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only the love and produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction underneath. Until such time as it will have to hear.

Chapter 53 - The Newspaper Story

Gambini went to 'The New London Day' and he ratted and he ratted and then he ratted some more. He ratted until even the reporters and editors at 'The New London Day,' were tired of hearing his rat voice.

Meantime Princess Di was killed in a car crash. Mother Theresa died a saint. Saddam Hussein didn't die. The NAWA apocalypse still rose to the top of the front page. The Day reporters wrote it like it was going to be award-winning journalism. They wrote it big. They wrote it long.

The Day, Sunday, September 7, 1997 Charges Fly as Wildlife Refuge Leaders Face Serious Scrutiny Power Struggle Puts Non-Profit in Jeopardy By Maria Hileman and Christine Woodside

East Lyme - A power struggle at the top of the North American Wildlife Association has ignited allegations of financial mismanagement and drug dealing that are threatening the future of the non-profit animal refuge.

The state police Statewide Narcotics Task Force, alerted by complaints from Steve Gambini and other volunteers raided the 24-acre woods off Walnut Hill Road August 18 and confiscated 56 full-sized marijuana plants. They charged NAWA President Robert Salvatore and volunteer Sam Libby with growing marijuana with intent to sell and other drug-related offenses.

The raid, followed by an inspection by the state Department of Environmental Protection, which found unsanitary conditions and malnourished animals, set off a string of claims and counter claims between Gambini and Salvatore about who is to blame for recent events.

Both acknowledge, however, that they were struggling for control of the operation, with Gambini believing Salvatore was backing out of an earlier promise to leave him in charge at NAWA. Gambini said he was alarmed after he saw a travel itinerary booking a Korean Air Lines flight for Salvatore to Amsterdam and then to Egypt on September 9 where he was planning to join his wife, Gloria.

Gambini said he was worried about the rapid depletion of the non-profits funds by Salvatore in the past few months. He said he decided to call state police after Salvatore told him he wanted to suspend operations while he was gone, including soliciting donations and publication of the membership newsletter, and that volunteers at the center should get regular jobs until he returned.

Salvatore's attorney Rudolph Cohen, confirmed his client had plans to fly to Egypt, but said Salvatore won't take the flight because of pending court appearances related to the arrest.

Salvatore and Libby said Gambini's intent was to set them up by leaving the office and grounds in disarray, and to end Robert's life by causing him stress. Robert says he is suffering from heart disease. He said he had a heart attack and a triple heart by-pass operation in the mid-1980's.

"The thing I promise you and Steve Gambini is that the whole truth will come out," Libby said. "This is him trying to take Robert's life, his organization, the property that belongs to the organization. When Robert was not going to give it to him fast enough, this is what happened."

Salvatore and Libby also claim that the condition of the clinic and cages was the result of negligence by the volunteers during a weekend when they were at the Mohegan Pow Wow in Montville. "They were kept in filth like I haven't seen filth up here," said Libby.

"I knew it was a risk going in," said Gambini of his decision to take the position at NAWA. "But I had no idea the depth of Robert's problems." Gambini lived at NAWA in the late 1980's and moved back to East Lyme in June from Ohio to take over the position of office manager. He worked in Ohio as a newspaper reporter.

He said he found the office in a shambles, that no records had been entered into the computer since December and that the office had been run from January to March of this year by three students from Bard College in New York who had serious drug problems. Efforts by The Day to track these students were unsuccessful.

NAWA has about 500 active members on its mailing list, according to Gambini.


Checking the financials


The ongoing investigation by the attorney general's office is focusing on financial mismanagement of hundreds of thousands of dollars that were donated to NAWA over the last decade.

When investigators arrived at the NAWA office in the basement of the house at 11 Mountain View Drive, they found papers scattered across the floor, and the files missing and rifled.

"The financial records of this organization are in disarray," said Attorney General Blumenthal last week. "Until we can sort out and account for the funds of this organization, this group should not be soliciting additional funds."

Since that time, Blumenthal's office has filed a lawsuit seeking the dissolution of NAWA, largely citing the finding of the DEP inspection.

Federal 990 forms, required to be filed by non-profits, show the association took in $45, 521 in fiscal year 1991-92, $48,324 in 1992-93, $56,471 in 1993-94, $49,863 in 1994-95, and $57,100 in 1995-96.

Gambini, clinic manager Katherine Smith, and worker Robert Bartkowski claim the Salvatores regularly used donated funds on such activities as gambling and expensive vacations to the Far East. They went, Gambini said, on a two-month vacation to China in the early 1990's and took other vacations to Tibet, Singapore, and Egypt. He said NAWA had income from donations of as much as $80,000 to $100,000 annually during its peak years in the late 1980's.

Gambini believes Salvatore was falling apart emotionally and physically and that he intended to take as much money as he could to Egypt with him on September 9. There Gambini said, he intended to join his wife Gloria, who was the association's co-founder.

Bank statements given to The Day show withdrawals from a Liberty Bank account of nearly $3,000 during July. The Fleet accounts show withdrawals of nearly $1,900, mostly through ATM transactions, during the same period. It could not be determined how the money was spent, though some smaller checks were for food and animal supplies. Several large checks were written to "cash."


Communal aspect


Life at the wooded refuge had a communal aspect to it. Volunteers came and went frequently, workers often ate meals together, and some said young people congregated there to smoke marijuana.

Gambini claimed Salvatore gave young people marijuana, something Salvatore denies. Smith, who ran the animal clinic this summer, said Salvatore made jokes comparing himself to David Koresh.

The Drug Control Division of the state Department of Consumer Protection is also looking into allegations by Gambini that Salvatore was allowing volunteers who were not licensed to administer drugs to animals.

Gambini said Salvatore was obtaining drugs for the animals from Dr. John Caltabiano, an Essex veterinarian. Caltibiano acknowledged he provided drugs to Salvatore, but said the drugs were intended to be administered by NAWA vet, Dr. Anthony Flores.

Flores formerly had an office at 439 Salem Turnpike in Bozrah, but no longer works there, a receptionist said. She declined to say where he is working. Caltabiano said Salvatore told him Flores was unable to order drugs because "he didn't have his own practice and couldn't get drugs on his own."

"You need to have a relationship with ACME (the drug supplier), you need a practice, and you need a credit rating," Caltabiano said. "Apparently he (Flores) didn't have one."

Gambini said he, Smith, and others gave controlled substances to sick animals, and Salvatore acknowledged he allowed volunteers to administer drugs under his supervision.

Caltabiano said all the drugs he ordered for Salvatore have been returned to state drug control officials, but Bambini said he suspects volunteers at the center took some for personal use, particularly the tranquilizer ketamine.

Department of Environmental Protection wildlife biologist Mark Clevette, who examined the refuge after the drug raid, said Salvatore had done what was required to hold what used to be Gloria Salvatore's wildlife rehabilitator's license, though the federal permit to care for birds had expired. But he said the license does not exempt holders from complying with other laws that require veterinarians to treat sick animals.

"We have been administering drugs to animals since we started under the advise of the veterinarians," Salvatore said.

During the DEP inspection, officials found vaccines stored in refrigerators with animal carcasses and a five-gallon bucket of full of used syringes, according to the lawsuit.

Officials at Drug Control Division declined comment.

Gambini said Salvatore spent as much as $7,500 over the most recent eight-month period on marijuana for himself and others.

One of the checks for $200 written on July 20 to "Cash," was used by Salvatore to purchase a one-week supply of marijuana from a dealer whose last name was Gray, Gambini alleged. He said the marijuana was delivered by someone named Jack, whom he could not identify.

"Sam and Robert were giving away marijuana to kids," Gambini said. "They weren't selling it. And these kids were not volunteers, like I think a lot of them were telling their parents. They were just driving in and hanging out, smoking dope and consuming food. It was a kind of atmosphere Robert liked to have."

Colin Giles, 19, who volunteers at the refuge, said Salvatore did not give away drugs. But he acknowledged he and other volunteers did smoke marijuana on the land. "There was some of that going on, but only like me and my friends. We were legal adults up on the hillÖI smoked with Steve (Gambini) but never Robert, he said.

Gambini provided the names of four minors, but The Day was unable to contact them.

Salvatore denied he used drugs or that he provided drugs to others. The state police reported finding marijuana plants drying above Salvatore's bed.

Gambini also produced a $462.93 phone bill showing a series of nine calls totaling $149.64 to Egypt between June 25 and July 7.

A Connecticut Light and Power Co. bill dated July 25 shows NAWA was late on payments and owed $916.65.

Gambini said Salvatore was rapidly depleting NAWA accounts when he called state officials. He said that when he arrived in East Lyme from Ohio, in June, there was $8,000 in the reserve account at Liberty and roughly $1,400 in the operating account at Fleet.

"The last I knew, there was about $25 left in there," he remarked. He said Salvatore was withdrawing money to send to his wife, who had allegedly been arrested in Egypt for failure to return a rental car.

Attempts by The Day to confirm an arrest of Gloria Salvatore in Cairo were unsuccessful. Marie Radinski, an official with the State Department, said no such arrest has been reported to U.S. authorities. A check of major police precincts' records in Cairo, conducted by the Associated Press on behalf of The Day, also turned up no information.

Salvatore said to help Gloria he took $1,000, a lion's head ring, and a valuable 1912 coin to his wife's mother, Waltina Greene of Whitinsville, MA. Greene said she sent the money and additional money of her own to the headquarters of Budget Rent-A-Car to which her daughter owed money. She said she did not know why the money was owed.

Salvatore acknowledges that he was using money in accounts set up in NAWA's name for personal expenses. He said he had no personal bank account, and routinely used money from the NAWA accounts for living expenses. Salvatore said Gambini did not understand that he was getting money for personal uses from a private benefactor.

NAWA's largest contributor is Selina E.A. Silleck of Ridgefield, a long-time donor. Salvatore said as much as 70 percent of NAWA's annual income comes in some years from Ms. Silleck.

A retired physical education director at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., Silleck has donated at least $35,000 to NAWA since 1994. She lives in a modest ranch house in Ridgefield, and suffered a stroke in May. During an interview there, Friday, she said she has always had a soft spot in her heart for animals.

She said she visited NAWA once during the last decade, has visited other wildlife refuges, and said she was impressed with how well-run and clean the NAWA refuge was.

Silleck said her intentions in making the donations were to help injured animals, and that the bulk of the money was not intended for personal uses. She said she did write a check for $2,000 in August, a portion of which she intended Salvatore to use to pay a lawyer to defend him against the drug charges, which she believes, based on her conversations with him, are unfounded. She said she once helped Gloria pay off a car loan by sending several hundred dollars.

"Robert would no more have planted marijuana than he would go flying by himself," she said. "Robert was a Class A guy."

Nonetheless Silleck she is not intending to write any more checks to NAWA and has asked Salvatore to send back a recent $5,000 donation. Salvatore said he intends to remit her money, through the attorney general's office.

Salvatore said he told her the marijuana was found and that he suspected someone else planted it. "I said I got in trouble with a group of bad people I was with," he said.

Salvatore declined to discuss in great detail either the drug or financial issues raised by Gambini.

However, he denied that he mismanaged money, and claims he was using Silleck's funds properly. He said he doesn't take a salary, and he and some of the volunteers maintain he has given his life and property to the refuge's work.

He says he is now on public assistance.

Blumenthal said public charities like NAWA are required by law to operate separately from the accounts of the individuals running them.

"The entire purpose of the law is to ensure the integrity and legitimacy of the organization so the donors have a sense of confidence that their money is being used for the purposes they donated it," Blumenthal said, "Any person in a position of trust has to recognize the entity is separate from the person. The funds can't be co-mingled and used for personal purposes."

Blumenthal said the fact that some heads of non-profits do not take a salary is a matter of choice. "Not doing so certainly does not entitle them to raid the assets of a charity according to their whims or personal desires," he said.

The news of trouble at the refuge may have shocked the public, but it did not surprise close neighbors. "In all seriousness, why are they in this dilemma now if they were doing such good things? Said Joe Kwasniewski, a neighbor of the refuge.

Gloria Salvatore has been gone from the 25-acre refuge most of the last year. She is wanted by the Stonington police on a charge of first-degree forgery. A laser printer police found in a Stonington hotel room she rented last winter is the type used for counterfeiting. She was arrested in Warwick, R.I., Feb. 7 on a charge of trying to pass forged $50 bills at a Staples Store.

Gambini said police also confiscated bogus passports and templates for making them from the hotel room. Stonington police declined to discuss the case.


Couple's Problems Cause a Ripple Effect By Christine Woodside


East Lyme - Robert and Gloria Salvatore brought wild rabbits and raccoons into their kitchen. They named one raccoon Barry.

The young couple rescued a wolf dog, Chester, from a Maine animal shelter, and saved the life of a horse named Apollo that was blind from a parasitic eye infection. They molded their love for animals into a livelihood when they became wildlife rehabilitators, but maintained an aura of philanthropy by operating a non-profit wildlife refuge.

For a decade they received hundreds of thousands of dollars from an admiring public who dropped quarters, dimes and nickels Wildlife Association. The Salvatores incorporated as NAWA in May 1987.

A patchwork of press clippings and photographs of the Salvatores with various wild animals attests to their ability to win the hearts of animal lovers through their work.

All that has suddenly changed within the past two weeks, as state officials try to shut down the refuge in the wake of an August 18 drug raid. State agencies are engaged in a dizzying range of investigations into activities at the refuge, which range from allegations of potentially criminal drug violations involving use of marijuana by minors on the property to improper administration of drugs and mistreatment of animals.

Even after the discovery of marijuana drying above his bed, Salvatore claims innocence. He said he is being set up and will be vindicated in the end. He says the entire ordeal is a plot by a jealous volunteer to kill him.

"The information they (the attorney general's office) took out of here will show I'm more like St. Francis than anything else," Salvatore said in an interview 10 days ago. "I feel if all this causes me to have a stroke and die, it will be a message to the public of my devotion."

He says he is most upset about the charges relating to the animals because they have been at the center of his life.

The Salvatores mystique as animal lovers stemmed from such activities as their rescues of deer struck on the highway at all hours of the night. They got regular publicity in 1996 from their efforts to find a final home for the deer displaced by the closure of the Mohegan Park Zoo. That effort ended tragically when the deer were killed in a trailer fire in Ohio.

Over the years, the Salvatores trained a steady stream of devoted volunteers who cleaned cages and did paperwork at the 24-acre wooded refuge near a residential neighborhood.

"I never saw anything growing here but flowers, and leaves to rake on the grounds," said Louise Patterson of 14 State Road in Niantic, referring to the 56 marijuana plants confiscated by state police.

Even after the drug arrests, Patterson stopped by the refuge one day to "say hello," bring food for the few animals left and check in on Apollo. Another volunteer dropped in the same afternoon to pick up some cages he had loaned NAWA.

A halo of branches screens the house where Robert and Gloria Salvatore have lived since the early 1970's and which became NAWA's headquarters. Gloria papered the walls of the kitchen-dining area with textured striped paper.

On a recent afternoon, Salvatore sat at the dining room table, smoking Marlboros. He gazes intensely from liquid, puffy brown eyes. His neck is scarred from an operation on a carotid artery.

The adjacent living room has two large sofas facing a hugh entertainment center. From the house, a path winds up a rise past outdoor cages for animals. These are hard to see in the half-shade.

Further up the hill sit two three-sided barns for the four horses. Beyond, up a grassy path and through rocky woods is a half-underground cabin where Sam Libby lived, and where state police confiscated the marijuana crop. Patricia Ader, owner of the property, has evicted Libby from the land and he is now living in the house, which is owned by NAWA, with Salvatore.


A new picture evolves


Over the past six months, life at the refuge has come unraveled, and the picture the public is getting of the Salvatores has changed dramatically from the image cast over the past decade.

Now, Robert Salvatore is out on bond on a charge he grew and sold marijuana at NAWA. The attorney general's office is trying to close the place down on the grounds of improper care of animals and strong suspicions that donations were used improperly. Gloria Salvatore, who had the most expertise in animal care, has fled to Egypt and is wanted on a charge of first-degree forgery for allegedly printing counterfeit money.

Those facts and Salvatore's admission last week about a conviction a decade ago of attempting to steal a computer from a Norwich store, paint another side that has stunned the public.

How did an enterprise with such promise come to this pass? And how was the public led to give money to an operation that may have become a drug front?

A 10-day investigation by The Day suggests a significant change occurred at NAWA last March when Gloria Salvatore, seeking a way out of an allegedly abusive marriage, printed up counterfeit money in an attempt to leave the country.

The failing marriage and a tendency to co-mingle personal funds with those of the non-profit appear to lie at the heart of the problems at the refuge.

Salvatore and others who knew them say their marriage faltered in recent years. A worn-out Gloria declared to her husband last fall she had to get away.

She sought a protective order against her husband, and last November he was arrested for violating it and for first-degree criminal trespass. The charges weren't prosecuted.

Gloria spent the next three months in Egypt and returned briefly to the refuge. In February she was arrested in Rhode Island on a charge of possessing counterfeit bills, and police found counterfeiting equipment in a Stonington hotel room.


A troubled childhood


Robert Salvatore was born August 4, 1948 on Plum Island, Mass. off Newburyport. He gives the following account of the details of his early life.

His father built the house where he was born. He was the seventh child of 15, but he was the first son. His father, a Sicilian who was a professional boxer, ruled the household by terror, Robert said. He owned a boatyard and cottages on the island and also fished commercially. His mother worked hard besides her husband, but was afraid of him.

His father had business troubles and the family moved to Jacksonville, Fla, where they were extremely poor. Robert slept with three younger brothers. He describes a horrific scene of slipping into a hole in the mattress that had been made by urine and brushing away cockroaches trying to get at peanut butter left on their faces.

At school, classmates taunted him with knicknames such as "Slummatore," and "Salvo," (a brand of dishwashing liquid). At home, his father's words were like, " thunder in the skies." Once Robert's father threw a ketchup bottle in his son's face because he was watching him eat his steak. Robert was also punished for putting pieces of bread on an anthill and watching the insects carry away the crumbs.

A Catholic Church aided the Salvatores with food and free schooling, but at age eight or nine, Robert was accused of stealing tuition envelopes from the nun's desk. He said he didn't do it, but his father beat him up. He returned to public school, which he endured until he dropped out in the seventh grade.

When he was 13, he said, his father tried to kill him to collect insurance money, rigging up an electrical panel near standing water in the garage. It on stunned him. Salvatore also survived a life-threatening bout with blood poisoning that nearly cost him his leg. His father refused to allow an amputation, Salvatore said reasoning he might be better off dying.

He was about 15 years-old when he started running away from home. He and a friend stole bicycles and broke into convenience stores to shoplift cigarettes. "It was a real sad experience," he said.

This bout with petty crime landed him in a reform school in Alabama, where he remained until he was 18. He did well in the pecking order by fighting well. This gained him some friends, but his family never visited him.

When he got out, he went back home, where his father was in throes of a slow death from cancer. The family by then was in a farmhouse and raising pigs for food. Robert said he refused to shoot them when his father, prone on the couch, ordered him to. "He just slapped me around and said I would grow up to be a fairy," he said.

He was with his father when he died, but then he left home for Laconia, N.H. and then to the folk festival in Newport, R.I. There, he spotted Gloria and a friend walking down the street. She looked so beautiful he didn't think he'd get the opportunity to meet her.

It was 1969. He was 20, with a hippie-like mane of hair, and he was addicted to crystal methadrine. Gloria was 16.

Robert asked to sleep on her mother's porch in Uxbridge, Mass., but he said her mother Waltina Greene, threatened to call the police. He went up behind the house and lay down in a blanket and passed out. A day or so later, Gloria saw him lying up there, white, pale and weak. She fed him soup. "I started eating. She got me off the crystal meth."

The two went to Georgia to get married. Then they returned to Uxbridge, where Robert took a factory job. Robert said Gloria was pregnant when they got married and that the baby was put up for adoption.

They went cross country and supported themselves with factory, gas station, and cleaning jobs, first in Maine, and by 1970 in East Lime. They fixed up and sold old Volkswagens. With Gloria's mother's help, they bought land on Mountain View Road and built a house.

"We always liked our privacy," Robert said. "We built the house facing the woods instead of the road." They made stone posts and put up an antique gate. "We thought it was great to close a gate to the highways of America.

"Then, when we built the house we discovered wild critters were coming in our back door. We started to discover the magic," he said. They didn't want to have children, he said, because bringing children into the world would strain the environment. He said he had a vasectomy early on in their marriage.

Gloria spent several years earning bachelor and master's degrees in wildlife ecology and wildlife pathology at the University of Connecticut, and for a period it appeared to state officials that the refuge was well run and Gloria was well-qualified.

But relations with the neighbors were strained. Glenn Bennett, who lives above the driveway to the Salvatores' house, said Robert threatened him. He and Walnut Hill Road resident Joe Kwasniewski went to state and town authorities about a rat infestation. Bennett said he frequently found animal feces in his pool.

The two neighbors also said they overheard Robert and Gloria fighting.

Steve Gambini, the office manager, who called authorities to the refuge, said that the two had shoplifted up and down the East Coast in their younger days. Robert once told him he'd been arrested more than 20 times but convicted only three times.


Norwich charges


In May 1987 Robert and Gloria both were charged in Norwich with fourth-degree larceny after allegedly trying to steal a computer at Caldor in Norwich. Robert was fined $215 and got a 90-day suspended sentence and one year of probation. The charges against Gloria weren't prosecuted. Robert said he was wrongly accused of changing a price on a computer.

Gambini said Gloria and Libby, who also was arrested on cultivation of marijuana charges, didn't get along because Gloria didn't want them to smoke marijuana. Libby, who lived off and on at the refuge since the early 1990's, acknowledged tension between the two of them.

Gloria also objected to getting NAWA involved with saving the deer from the Mohegan Park Zoo.

"She told me she just wanted time off," Robert said, "time away from all this pressure. I kept insisting, Gloria you can't take time away," he said.

He said he began then to formulate a plan to find someone to take over the association so he could leave, too, and join her in Egypt.

Gambini said the two fought over an apparent friend she's made for whom she a vegetarian, was buying meat. And he said he found printed business cards Gloria had ordered with the name "Amr Kamel, Egyption branch of the North American Wildlife Association."

She also was suffering from lupus, Robert said, a connective tissue disease. He said she took Tylenol all the time to deal with pain.

"I believe that Gloria felt that she had to get out or we would end up dying shortly," said Robert, who himself has heart problems. He said he surmises counterfeiting money might have seemed a solution to paying bills.

Gloria's mother hasn't heard from her. She said when Gloria was running the refuge, "the animals came first, and Gloria came last."

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Chapter 54 - The NAWA Captivity

It enraged me that my colleagues said it was about "drugs," refused to listen when I insisted it was about plants, plants that had been cultivated by humans for 12,000. I wanted to testify about the natural rights the natural laws, the unalienable rights that the Declaration of Independence spoke about. But I couldn't.

Robert said we had to lie to save the refuge, his house. I tried to save NAWA. I stayed in Robert's house so I could field the phone calls from the reporters, television personalities, lawyers, sheriffs, Gloria.

When Robert didn't die, he tried to keep me to my promise of taking the whole rap, going to prison so he wouldn't have to go to prison. He said that if I took the whole rap went to prison I would save the refuge and the house. He said I would have a place to return to when I got out of prison. Besides, I'd do really well in prison. I was a funny guy. That would be appreciated.

When the yellow shit returned, they were told of the plan. The White Trash Woodstock resumed. I tried to find the high moral ground from which to fight for NAWA's survival. But I couldn't find it.

Robert went to Massachusetts the first weekend in December. Patty was pimping out one of her fat, old friends. When the yellow shit woke me up on Sunday morning I threw them out of the house.

Terry Marchand, a resident punk of the White Trash Woodstock came at me with a knife. I said "bring it on, bitch." He head-butted me, and then ran. He smashed up his car going through the gate. He went to the East Lyme police. The police came. I was arrested for disturbing the peace. I was put into the same cell.

Robert said I deserved what I got. I left the refuge.

Apollo died. Robert called me. He insisted I return and bury God. I told him to get a backhoe. But when I saw him in New London Superior Court, a few weeks later, looking like he was about to die. I took pity on him. He wanted to see his oldest sister, Nancy, in Atlanta, GA. I told him I would drive him there.

I drove as long as I could. Robert offered to drive. I was woken by the sound of loose gravel under the tires. Robert had fallen asleep, almost killed us.

Nancy explained to him that his only chance of not going to prison was to show he was worthy of the sacrifice of my freedom.

When we got back to Connecticut I had to go to a wedding. I needed my suit back, the suit Robert was wearing to court. When Robert saw me taking back my suit he started beating up the furniture. He threw me a steak knife and then came at me with a butcher's knife.

I didn't pick up the steak knife. I said, "bring it on, bitch." Robert brought it on, was sinking the knife into my neck, had drawn blood. But then he threw down the knife.

I left. I didn't return.

The Open Road. The great home of the Soul is the open road. Not heaven, not paradise. Not "above". Not even "within". The soul is neither "above" nor "within". It is a wayfarer down the open road. . .

It is not I who guide my soul to heaven. It is I who am guided by my own soul along the open road, where all men tread. Therefore, I must accept her deep motions of love, or hate, or compassion, or dislike, or indifference. And I must go where she takes me, for my feet and my lips and my body are my soul. It is I who must submit to her.

Chapter 55 - Of No Certain Address

I didn't have any money for a lawyer. A lawyer was appointed by the state. She told me the deal the state attorney had offered was four years in prison. I said I'd do two.

The prosecutors knew of the plan, my offer to take the whole rap, so Robert wouldn't have to go to prison. They wanted both of us. But if they could only have one of us, they wanted Robert.

They offered me accelerated rehabilitation. If I wouldn't take the rap, if I wouldn't go to jail so Robert stayed out of jail, if I didn't testify at Robert's trial that the cultivation was all me, then I would get the 100 percent walk. There would be two years of a totally unsupervised probation. I would not have to report to a probation officer. I would not be in the shadow of the pee pee tests. After two years the records of the arrest and the court proceedings would be purged. I would again have no police record.

I could see no reason to do otherwise. I didn't have to go to prison to write the book. I took the deal.

I restored 'The Relentless,' my platform on the waters, my restoration to my element. I wrote the book I had to write. I wander the earth. I always return here.

Robert's kept saying the volunteers, a volunteer did it, during his trial. He cried piteously when he was convicted. He said he was having a heart attack when he was being taken to prison.

He was taken to Backus Hospital. And then he went to Corrigan County Prison. He did less than a year. He returned to his house.

Gloria is still fugitive somewhere in the Middle East. Maybe she is working with Islamist Terrorists.

I see Gambini on the streets of New Haven. Something's happened to his face.

It's as if in the midst of his transformation from a tattoo-ed, pierced freak to a Republican war on drugs warrior the process was suddenly arrested, stopped in its tracks.

I call him "fuck face."

The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. And its like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff for ages. It hurts horribly.

The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeonhole any idea. But it can't pigeonhole a real new experience.

Chapter 56 - Reimbursement Day

I am still strong in the original niggah/aboriginal niggah resentment. I still drink deeply of the water of my birthplace. But I am no longer angry. I have no regrets.

I chose to rise up out of the box. I chose to follow the callings of the higher self. I chose to live in the woods, to obey the dream. I chose to expose myself to the full power of the spirit/demon of place. I chose to engage the beast. I sought the shaking vision. I fight to shed the old skin and come into the beauty and power of the new skin. I chose to be the herb grower's apprentice. I chose to cultivate the herb and be cultivated by IT! I chose to engage the indigenous. I submitted, yielded to the spirit/demon. I chose to be possessed by place.

In Delphos Robert promised "Reimbursement Day." It would be the day I got my money back. It would be the day I was compensated for everything, for the destruction of my credit card credit, for the libels and betrayals of the dark whisperings in Robert's mind, for being down by law, for being reviled and despised.

But it wasn't for Robert to grant Reimbursement Day. In being possessed by place I come into a possession of place that is far more real than real estate. This 'Experience' of being possessed and of possession is The Reimbursement, is The Jah DEP.